Tag: Firsts

• the garbage man — given the lack of sirens on our new block, sparklet has turned her dulcet affections to the garbage men. each Thursday and Friday morning when she hears the truck, she runs out onto her balcony (which faces the alley out back) and yells out to the garbage man, who wave at her and shout back.
• random hugs — after two years of being the least cuddly baby on earth, sparklet has started giving mommy and i random hugs. even better? the lady sparkler was out of town five of the last seven days, and i only got one “where’s mommy” whine while she was gone.
• refrigerator trained — much to mommy and my amusement, last weekend we saw sparklet walk over to the refrigerator, open the door, get out a yogurt, close the door, open a drawer, get out a bib, close the drawer, open another cabinet, get out a spoon, close the cabinet, walk over to the table, pull out her chair, climb up her chair, sit down, put on her bib, peel off the yogurt top, lick the yogurt top, and start eating the yogurt with her spoon — all without even looking in our direction. serious, what the heck?
• sockpuppets — speaking of “what the heck,” sparklet has started taking off her socks in the car, putting them on her hands, and acting out puppet shows. quick reminder, she’s two years old.
• baby gates — speaking of “what the heck” (part 2), sparklet can now open the locked baby gate at the top of the stairs, go through, turn around, and lock the gate behind her, and continue down the stairs unimpeded.
• baby sleeping — speaking of “what the heck” (part 3), a few days ago i hear a loud bang, followed by sparklet’s door slamming closed, and then sparklet starting to walk down the stairs by herself (we’ve given up — see “baby gates” above). when i went to scold her anyway, she shushed me that her doll baby was upstairs trying to sleep. she then went down to the living room couch, picked up her other doll baby, walked back up the stairs, opened the door to her bedroom, threw her baby up and into the crib (that was the first loud bang, btw) slammed the door closed, and shushed me again.
• photography — after sparklet’s strong artistic burst of photography out of the gate, she now refuses to take a picture of anything other than herself (see above). i’ve got 400 pictures on the point and shoot camera, and 300+ of them are of sparklet’s forehead, stomach or feet.
• animal noises — her vocabulary still isn’t that great but with utterly no warning she has started to scream out animal noises. my favorite has to be the monkey sound she makes when we read the snail and the whale but we’ve got a full range of options — horses, cows, sheep, goats and dogs.
• speaking of dogs — she hasn’t quite picked up the name of my parents dogs (“toby”) so she just pants twice whenever she is thinking about him.
• speaking of not talking — yesterday, she finally strung together what can be arguably considered her first sentence — with a noun, verb and object: “i get ipad now.”

awesome.

that’ll teach mommy.

first crayons: plaza azteca, williamsburg, virginia.

crazy. next she’ll be asking for keys to the car …

• the lady sparkler is jumping up and down because she felt a tooth in baby sparklet’s mouth. she offered to help me feel it, but i declined as sparklet having a tooth means i will be *less* likely to put my finger in her mouth, not *more.*
• i am jumping up and down because sparklet took a bottle all by herself, including putting the bottle back in her mouth when it fell out. i’m sure at some point i will see this as a crushing loss, and the beginning of the end. but right now i’m feeling pretty good about it.

now, when does she start changing her own diaper?

besides making brownies that were ridiculously good — and great looking, too — sparklet’s favorite part was spraying a ziplock bag of sugar around the kitchen.

so, while the lady sparkler wasn’t involved with the actual baking, she was able to participate over the next twenty-four hours by picking grains of sugar off our kitchen appliances.

why? well, i just found them. apparently, i thought that the event — sparklet eating her first baby food, sweet potatoes — was important enough to use the “big” camera, instead of the crappy point and shoot we usually use.

unfortunately, it took the lady sparkler absconding with the crappy camera — and sparklet then falling into her toy box — for me to be roused to find the “big” camera again, and discover the long lost photos.

whoops.

she’s got this neat one where she rolls her lower lip, draws her face down impossibly far, and then begins to wail uncontrollably … until you feed her, of course, and then it’s all better.

up until this morning, her new favorite one was waking up at 4am because she’d rolled half-way over, gotten stuck, and needed mommy or daddy to come flip her back. that ended this morning when she rolled half-way over, got stuck, and then decided “meh?” and went back to sleep.

keep moving forward, sparklet. keep moving forward.

we gave it a go, because she’s been judiciously, scientifically monitoring the lady sparkler and i as we eat — like dog scientists studying the doorknob principle — that it starting to get uncomfortable. we were both ready for her to stand up, walk over, and slap us silly for not sharing.

more to come …

and with that, my idyllic visions of paternity leave — museums in the morning, a pint at the pub in the afternoon — have been put on hold for a bit. turns out that there isn’t any treatment for the mild version of the virus, so it looks like we’re just hanging around for the next five days watching bad TV.

the silver lining here is that one of the HD channels is running a Nash Bridges marathon (Don Johnson! Cheech Marin! Yasmine Bleeth!). It’s hard to be depressed in the face of such daytime TV excellence (i’m hoping for a “Walker, Texas Ranger” marathon tomorrow).

for the record, sparklet is taking this all in stride. she seems to be a little annoyed that Don Johnson hasn’t been properly recognized for the dynamic range he displays as the “smart-alecky” police inspector who fights crime on the streets of San Francisco.

other than that, she’s the happiest sick baby i’ve ever seen.

UPDATE: Not a full marathon, but i got FOUR whole episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger” this morning. My life is nearing a state of nirvana-like completion.

while we don’t have one, please imagine a picture of the lady sparkler and i doing a samba in celebration. the part that puts us over the moon, however, is that baby sparklet did this all miles away from us (well, 20 feet) in her very own room, in her very own bed.

words honestly can’t explain what it’s like to get sleep after months without, but i am pretty sure that the lady sparkler will talk your ear off, with joy, trying.

now, i’ve heard legendary stories of babies first interaction with water, and i’m thankful there was no meltdown of epic proportion. truth be told, she just seemed a little confused, like “um, what’s this stuff?”

well, that was until mommy inadvertently dumped a whole quart of water over her head. that part didn’t go so well … but they both recovered after the initial shock, and in the end they reached a happy place.

it took about 10 minutes of sparklet and i pawing around the bed, but we finally found it right where mommy would have found it later tonight while trying to fall asleep.

at least sparklet didn’t try and stuff it down her diaper.

sparklet’s already producing some top shelf imitations — she does a wicked good “goat” sound while she’s sleeping, a mean Gary Coleman face (“what’chu talkin’ ’bout Willis”) when woken up early, and a great “Nazgûl flying over Frodo’s head” sound when she’s hungry.

(UPDATE: she’s added a great dolphin imitation to her repertoire, too.)

other than that, we’re just settling into a routine. the family parker is up from virginia to provide cover until the family spindler can drive up from texas. sparklet is sleeping like a brick, and eating well considering the early date and her early birth.

leaving the hospital, baby spindler (and the lady sparkler) both checked out great … mommy is still moving a little slowly, and because baby sparklet crashed the party earlier than planned we’ll to keep an eye out for jaundice.

and with that, the lady sparkler and I are going to do a quick feeding, and take another of those 2 1/2 hour naps we’ve grown to love so well…