Piper may not like vegetables, but she loves her buddies. Elmo, Ernie, Big Bird, Grover and L'il Bert all share the crib with Piper. Most mornings, she only brings one or two of them downstairs with her. Yesterday, though, she wanted to bring Elmo, Ernie and Bert. And when I gave her a cup of milk, she wouldn't put them down. She just opened her mouth as if to say, "Please place the sippy cup into my mouth and follow me around as I go about my business." Which is exactly what we did, all the way into the living room. Where I laid her down on a pillow. She propped the cup up on the buddies and chilled for a good five minutes. And that's a long time for a toddler to chill.
Piper will eat spinach, but only if it's on pizza or inside a ravioli. In those cases, she can hardly get enough of it. As for any other veggie? I can't get her to try anything else. I tried to give her four itty-bitty edamame pods with her lunch today, and she gagged when one of them touched her lip. What's a mommy to do?
I signed Piper up for a free-trial class at The Little Gym. After much wailing gnashing of teeth (on my part; Piper was a peaceful little passenger) when I thought I'd gotten lost but I had really just been impatient and thought I'd gone too far and turned around right across the road from the place (ha!), we got there with about 15 seconds to spare before the "Beasties" class started.
I was disappointed that the instructor spun nary a Beastie Boys record, but Piper had a blast regardless. As the words, "You can hold her if she's not ready to participate" left the instructor's mouth, Piper let go of my hand and rushed over to join the horde of children running in circles around the mommies, the daddy and the nannies in attendance. That's right. There were nannies! This might be too posh for me. There were also children named SpencerAnna and Arcadia. Of course, with a Piper running around the house, who am I to talk?
I haven't decided yet whether we're going to sign up for regular classes. But Piper did love it, and she ate a huge lunch (including sweet potatoes!) and is now taking a monster nap.
When Piper woke up this morning, there was a little stain on her sheet. She has another molar coming in, so I'm pretty sure it was a bit of bloody drool.
(I know that's gross. But trust me, this gets grosser.)
So I changed the sheet, and we went downstairs and did our thing.* While Piper napped with The Buddies (Elmo, Ernie, Grover and Big Bird), I played Zelda** and washed the dishes and Flickred a bit. I heard Piper wake up and gave her a few minutes of solo playtime before I went upstairs to fetch her.
That was my second mistake.
She was holding Grover triumphantly over her head, as she normally does after her nap. But instead of her usual greeting -- "Halooooo! Grogo! -- she said a single word that made my blood run cold: "Poop!"
She was so cheerful. And so stinky.
There was pooh everywhere. On the formerly fresh sheet. On Grover's furry blue backside. All over poor Elmo. On Ernie's fashionably stripey shirt. On Piper's big toe. E v e r y w h e r e.
I whisked Piper up (at arm's length) and into the bathroom. After gingerly removing her soiled duds and setting to work on the woefully inadequate diaper, I discovered an additional horror. An even more horrible horror.
Her feet.
She must have done the jig in the pooh. The soles of her dainty feet were coated in it.
So I scrubbed her feet with baby wipes*** and put her in the bath to scrub her some more and washed the buddies and dried her off and put on a new diaper and took off the nasty sheet and put Elmo (the only machine-washable Buddy) in a pillowcase and threw the whole shebang (minus Piper, of course) into the washing machine and dressed Piper, and then we went to the post office.
And then we came home. And I gave Piper a snack. And I sat down to write this.
And then I found pooh on my sleeve.
. . . . .
*Our thing:
having a little breakfast
playing
watching "Sesame Street"
reading a couple dozen books three or four times over
playing some more
having lunch
more playing and reading
naptime
**A little freakier than normal this time. I turned into a wolf? Dude.
***and clogged the toilet with said wipes, which was a whole 'nother adventure.
Mary says, "This "pooh" experience brings back memories of when my kids were young. One peticular time too was when your brother decided to make art work with "pooh" all over the hallway wall at your dad's apartment. We should have know something was happening when he was too quiet. LOL" (6:28 PM, January 22, 2007)
Nichole says, "Ha! I'm sure Justin's going to be very happy to have that story out in the open :)" (8:54 PM, January 22, 2007)
Piper wakes up. Some mornings she gives an all-out cry. Sometimes she just stands up and says "Daddy-Daddy-Daddy" or "Mama-Daddy-Mama-Daddy-Mama-Daddy."
Alex wakes up to the sound of his little girl calling for him. (Or crying.)
Alex goes to fetch Piper.
Marsha takes advantage of the open bedroom door. She leaps onto the bed. If the ting-a-ling of her bell doesn't wake me up, her whiskers tickling my face certainly will.
Alex and Piper come back to the bedroom. Piper says, "Mama!" and dives for me.
Alex turns on PBS.
We cuddle and watch a little "Clifford" or "Bearnstain Bears," depending on how late we slept.
After the show, or whenever Piper is done with the show, we head downstairs for breakfast.
I was looking at these sweet little dumplings this morning, and it reminded me that last night I dreamed about tiny baby kittens. Oodles and oodles of squirmy little kittens wandering around, so small their itty bitty eyes weren't even open yet. I don't remember anything else about the dream.
Piper has a little singing Elmo-Ernie-Cookie toy that might just give me nightmares. It has three buttons, one in front of each character. Pushing the button makes the top of the character's head lift off, and then the little fella sings a note. And when you hold the button down, the character repeats the note in short, bleating bursts. And Piper is watching "Sesame Street" with her foot firmly planted on the Elmo button. And he's saying, "RiRiRiRiRiRiRi."
Piper's Grammy brought her the new Sandra Boynton book, which came with a free song! Sung by Davy Jones! It's mighty catchy, and Piper and Grampy love it. Here's proof:
(Piper's Grammy also has a camera that has video and sound capture capabilities.)
PBS Parents says that I'm still correct in calling Piper my "baby." I was worried that she had stumbled into toddler territory, but they say she's a baby until she hits 18 months. Which means I still have a few months left. Thank you, PBS Parents.
I wasn't really looking for validation on that point this morning, though. I was looking for some info on Piper's vocabulary. I've read that parents should talk to their babies to help them learn to speak. Most places suggest basically talking your way through the day -- "Now I'm putting away the dishes." "Now I'm brushing baby's hair." I've tried to do that, but I don't talk much as it is (Alex might tell you otherwise; don't listen to him), and I've found that I forget to do it much of the time. This is not to say that it's silent around here. We spend most of our day reading and playing. I just feel like I haven't done a great job at the talk-all-day thing. I'm most successful with it when I'm cooking. I just pretend I'm doing a cooking show with an audience of one.*
Anyway, I was wondering how Piper was doing with her language skills, so I turned to the PBS Parents site. And here's what it had to say:
During this period [up to 18 months], your baby goes from having a couple of babble-words to a speaking vocabulary of about 20 words. She won't necessarily pronounce those words correctly because the small muscles that support her mouth and lips are still developing. Many babies will speak one word at a time, but often mean whole sentences by these words. For example, a baby who says, "Mo" may mean "I want some more milk."
So I made a list last night of Piper's words. I think there are a few we've left off; if they come to me, I'll add them. Here they are:
hello
hi ... her first word. she's very sociable.
bubbles
Mama
Daddy
Bible
shoe
apple
Target ... her most recent word. and what does that say about how (and where) we spend our time? at least she hasn't said "tall Peppermint Mocha" yet.
Papa ... from watching two episodes of the Berenstein Bears, roughly two months apart.
bow-wow
Elmo ... this seems to be her catch-all word for the television.
potty ... and this is the catch-all for the bathroom. it's a start.
night-night
bye-bye
Pooh
go
baby
alright ... as seen on They Might Be Giants' "Here Come the ABCs"
no
please ... we're working on context for this one
oh no
uh-oh
seal
neigh
moo
baa
nose
eye
wow
nice
key
jump
She doesn't use them all with great frequency, but with the exception of "please," she uses them all in the correct context.** I'm a little surprised that she doesn't say "yogurt" yet. She's a little yogurt fiend. Instead of saying it, she just latches her little hands around the refrigerator's door handle and wails. It'll be nice when she is able to say, "May I have a yogurt please?" But I'll take a little wailing if it means I get to hang on to "baby" for a little while longer.
--- *When I was coming out from under anesthesia after having my wisdom teeth removed, I said, "I had a cooking show." So says Alex, anyway.
**I'm willing to give her "potty" and "Elmo" on this one.
I am proud to report, however, that we went cold turkey on the bottle this week. Piper hasn't had a bottle in three days (four? I don't know). I expected some major drama over the bottle. But after some minor drama on Day One, she seemed to forget about the bottle entirely.
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