15
February 2008
How about berry pie? Anyone can make it.
Guacamole? With a jar of Frontera guacamole mix anyone can make it.
Rice? I measure, she dumps.
Garlic? With a Quick Chop, as seen on TV, Delphine can bash it to a pulp.
Carrots? Delphine starts on one side and can peel straight through to the other.
Table setting? Well, what’s wrong with a little extra spilling here and there?
Low blood pressure? What about another job?
We’ve all missed a lot in the months without a report. I am a little worse for wear. Besides being tired and unkempt, I have a new scar at my hairline. I’m either moving too fast for my own good or thinking too slowly. I hit my head changing a hummingbird feeder in a December downpour. I failed to check the stepladder footing and it fell away under me into lawn soup. Bill, Ted and I spent 6 hours in the emergency room waiting for a student to stitch me up. We did. We allowed a student to sew up part of my face. Repeat after me, “Yes, you can evaluate my case, but, I’d like senior staff to perform any procedures.”
A week ago a house burned down a block away from us. We were at the park when the fire trucks started screaming into the neighborhood. One after another and another and another. When we started home, we had to wait at the crosswalk for yet another to speed up from the south and then turn onto our street. Only then did I start to think about how I hadn’t left anything on the stove.
We couldn’t follow that fire truck even though it was driving toward our home on our usual route home because Delphine, the fearless -- never said no to a pony ride or a jungle gym or a crowd of new people – was afraid. Fire trucks are loud and Delphine does not like loud. All told, eight fire trucks came to our neighborhood unloading at least forty firemen onto the streets and I was kept as far as possible from the scene. I never get out and on the one day that fortune brought the firemen to me I had to take the long way home and scurry inside.
Bill came home later after the start of bath time. Herding Delphine around in the upstairs hallway he showed some real enthusiasm about dinner, “What smells so good?”
“Kind of smoky?” I asked. “That would be the house on fire.”
I am afraid I’ve started to laugh at Delphine’s misery. Last night as Bill tried to sit her down at the dinner table she noticed that I had carried her plate of food to the table while she was busy with a present that arrived in the mail for Bill. She went crazy. Bill and Ted froze as she started screaming and jumping up and down. I watched from the kitchen guessing at the outcome. She would not sit down. She would not calm down. Fortunately Bill’s hands were full with Ted so that he could not make her sit down. In silent fury she picked up the plate carried it back through the kitchen doorway, turned around, brought it back to the table, and sat herself down. I, who have harbored nearly four decades of resentment at not being taken seriously, laughed myself silly.
Ted is a happy boy. He likes to be held. He likes to play on the floor, grab things, shake them, and jam them in his mouth. Whereas our first child was given a plastic cup to chase around the bathroom floor while we showered, the second child had to go find himself a plastic potty seat to slam around the room. He started crawling last week and has already been over to a bookshelf to rip out some books. Now we know for sure that it’s going to be like that again.
Hard to believe that someone so small could have a social circle, but Ted knows his family and loves to see them. He perks up for Delphine and Beate and has stopped nursing in favor of visiting when either of them is around. When Bill comes home from work Ted screeches and flaps his arms in what Bill calls the Screaming Eagle greeting.
01 November 2007
Let us sing the praises of Bill.
Bill took care of us all after Ted was born. He lived at the hospital and at home simultaneously. He did not blanche at the nursing responsibilities that were thrust upon him when I was released from the hospital still recovering from surgical complications. He cooked and ordered out. He cleaned for the cleaning woman without mentioning any perceived irony. He was Delphine’s single parent and best friend. He carried Ted around when Ted screamed for the sake of screaming. He got up first and went to bed last.
One afternoon, after he overheard a phone conversation with my friend, Harriet, Bill said, “It’s nice to hear you telling your friends how great I am, but, really, is the bar that low?”
Yes, men, the bar is that low. When you’re wife has a baby, if you can
1) hang around the house
2) keep people from going hungry or filthy
3) drive to the doctor
4) refrain from violent or selfish outbursts
you, too, can have the respect of every woman who ever hears of your exemplary conduct.
Delphine Says
“This is a good dinner. Thank you for making this dinner.”
Tuesday a week ago Bill didn’t make it home for dinner. I had to cook while Ted screamed and Delphine nagged. By the time we sat down to eat, Ted had to nurse. I was so hungry I was shoveling food into my mouth over Ted wishing for a big spoon. Delphine was eating without any monkey business for a change.
As she put her face down to her plate and pressed a handful of peas into her mouth, she said, “I like these peas.” Then she sat up and gave me a paragraph of gibberish held together with uuuummm’s and sooooooo’s. It’s the stuff of her pretend conversations on the telephone. They mimic the real thing even if the words don’t all go together.
Then she said, “This is a really good dinner. I like this dinner. Thank you for making this dinner.”
I was dumbstruck.
It wasn’t until she stuck out her ketchup smeared hands and said, “Here, would you like me to hold the boy?” that I realized she was filling in for Bill. I hadn’t noticed, but Bill is modeling good behavior at the dinner table. Even if we have to work on his delivery of peas to mouth, he’s saying all the right things all the time.
01 October 2007
I thought I was going to get through Delphine’s birthday party and then coast to Christmas, but that wishdream only lasted through lunchtime on the day of Delphine’s birthday. People didn’t nap. My aunt Trish showed up for a visit. Delphine had to start a new preschool. My life was all meals and school and nursing and meals and school and nursing and laundry. There was this baby that cried for an hour and a half after bedtime. Bill went overnight to San Francisco. Oh, and he played basketball one night and then yelled at me about my bad attitude the next morning.
That’ll fix my attitude for sure.
Delphine’s birthday party was a slam dunk. I don’t know how I did it, but I got into the three year old mind. What might four barely socialized primates want to do for an hour and a half of fun at my house? The answer was OPEN PRESENTS AND DRESS UP! Whereas the present opening and inevitable present snatching was a mixed success, the frilly party dresses gave everything that followed a boost of sparkle and swish.
It was another close call because Delphine and Ted and I got around to shopping for the dresses two days before the party. As we pulled into the Goodwill parking lot, I was explaining to Delphine that Ted would ride in the stroller and that she would have to stay close where I could see her. I didn’t want to have to hold her arm. I said, “I know you can do it.”
She said, “I know I can do it.”
It’s a good thing she could because Goodwill is like a field house full of clothing racks. While I looked for large toddler dresses, Ted cooperated by pretending to be a quiet baby, and Delphine looked for dresses to rip off hangers. Delphine wouldn’t try on any dresses to help me with the sizing. She preferred to be jammed into baby clothes. Because it was her birthday we were shopping for, I obliged her.
Bill took care of the party supplies and the keg. He dutifully put up streamers where Beate and I told him they should go. He hung around on the margins of the jumping and squealing waiting for Ted to go crazy, but Ted slept through.
Having provided the set and the costumes, we were able to turn the show over to the little girls. Two ate cake. Two couldn’t sit still for it. They all ran and drove for the balance of the party. No need for pin the tail on the donkey. No need to fear the wrath of the three year olds.
Delphine says:
stlower = stroller, Wiwla = Willa
Ted has a new kind of buttsy.
“I don’t like this kind of cheese.” Moves her feta to the side. Picks up and eats a piece of raw onion.
I think, “Okay, kid.”
Ted says:
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
The high a’s indicate a frequency so high only dogs can hear.
He was colicky for a while. It was awful. Even when he was quiet he was pretty wrapped up in being unhappy. He’s much better now although Bill is at this moment down in the bedroom trying to work through the bedtime screaming with him.
Ted is big. 13 lbs and then some. He’s strong. He struggles, tries to stand, and kicks marathons in his bouncey chair. Last night I dreamed he stood up and walked.
27 July 2007
Our son, Ted, was born on Friday, July 20. Unlike Delphine, who came into the world around 2:30 in the afternoon, Ted made it just in time for lunch.
Unfortunately Ted brought with him 2 lungsful of amniotic fluid. Although he was able to cry loudly for several hours, he had considerable trouble absorbing oxygen and blowing off carbon dioxide. The oxygen trouble abated within an hour or two, but he maintained high levels of carbon dioxide in his blood throughout his first day. He was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for further observation and treatment.
It wasn’t a very good start for a small person. Whereas I have seven tracks in my arms from IV attempts (3 of them successful!), Ted has so many tracks from IV attempts and blood draws all over his head and body that I was able to decide not to count them. Of course first thing’s first and a baby needs to breathe properly, but a lying alone in a plastic box for hours on end is a pitiful thing for anyone, especially a baby, to have to endure.
Ted was declared healthy and released to my care after two days. I was more than ready to start messing up his life on my own. We entered normal hospital life with wakings and interruptions at all hours. The constant activity and carrying on sent Ted into an hourly nursing schedule that had me driving away meddling pediatricians from my sleeping baby. “He’s not nursing again until 10:00! I’ll call you when he wakes up.”
We brought him home on Monday and he received further clearance on Wednesday from our pediatrician for life as usual. I am happy to be home. Ted must be happy to be out of the hospital. Bill is happy to be tending to his family under one roof. And Delphine? Delphine isn’t quite sure what her trouble is. Hasn’t put a name to it yet and we hope to keep it that way for some time. Now that we are all together again, she seems to be settling down.
In the past week, we have had a very small taste of the kinds of things that can go wrong in childbirth. The experience was unrecognizable in comparison to Delphine’s birth. Still, we all came home within a matter of days and we count ourselves among the fortunate. We are delighted with Ted despite the hassle.
12 June 2007
In the Midwest, you always knew when it was time to take the down comforter off the bed for the summer. Here in Seattle, you keep it on the bed until it becomes unbearable one weekend in May or June. Then you throw it down into the laundry and regret your decision for the rest of the season.
We’ve been freezing with the heat off. We haven’t put our sweaters or coats away. There’s warm weather for almost a week and then it rains like a son-of-a-bitch through the weekend. Except for the few almost hot days we have had, it might as well still be winter out here.
The news is all pretty old now. I spent a couple of months getting ready for a conference at the end of April. My advance prep of a 20 page paper turned into a 15 (oops 16 ½) minute presentation among something like 2000 other 15 minute presentations. I was cutting material right through my last practice run in the hour before the symposium. Only afterward did I realize I was having such a hard time because I had at least an hour and a half’s worth of material if not a week’s worth of lectures.
Working with only 6-12 hours of free time per week, the writing was a white knuckles affair all the way to the Austin Hilton. I also had to get my act together and order some business cards – what six years since my graduation? Bill and I recently had a small laugh about how, technically, my Ph.D. is still in its wrapper. In the fury of activity before my departure, I very nearly rush ordered 150 magnet backed business cards. The only thing that saved me was the up-sell screen that popped up as I was checking out, “Customers, who order magnets, usually order 250 business cards as well.”
“WHAT!” I almost died right there. Had I not read that screen a few times over, I might already be a household name in the Society for American Archaeology.
“You remember that woman with the bag full of magnets, Erica Tiedemann. I heard she erased the hard drive on her symposium’s laptop with 8 presentations to go.”
After the conference, I was free to work on entertaining, Gudrun, my exchange mother, who came for a two week visit in May. Just like you might do, I rented a camper so we, Gudrun, Delphine, and I, could set out and see the Northwest. In Seattle we were restricted by naptimes, mealtimes, laundry, and all the usual clutter of life. On the road, everything went up for grabs.
We drove around the Olympic Peninsula and up the Columbia River Gorge returning through central Washington. The variation in landscape was stunning. I saw the most while driving because, when we stopped, I tended to be looking at the backside of Delphine as she ran away from me.
We stopped overnight in Portland and paid a visit to my cousin Lou Ann. She very graciously took over the hosting duties, fed us like kings, and brought out big boxes of Brio trains and tracks for Delphine. The little girl never had it so good. At risk of sharing too much, Lou Ann took so much pressure off me that I got to go to the bathroom by myself once.
Lou Ann then accompanied us for a day trip going east from Portland along the Columbia River. We visited Multinomah Falls, which must appear in every foreign guide book ever published. The falls were impressive, but we found the busload of Polynesian dancers traveling in costume with babies and toddlers to be more interesting.
We also took an afternoon train ride on the Hood River Historic Railroad. With lovely weather, the ride on the historic (read: worn out) passenger cars was hot and dusty. We learned that the people who go in for historic train rides, like me, have screaming kids. Fortunately Delphine was more interested in observing the screaming than she was in screaming herself.
At the end of the 2 hr excursion, everyone was justifiably wiped out. With several hours of daylight left, I made the spot decision to drive home from there. I fortified myself with a bag of gummy bears, called Bill and told him to send the hookers home, and set my mind on a 250 mile drive. It couldn’t have gone better. We drove through desert, pine covered mountains, ranches, then farms, and finally the Cascades. The eastern face of Mt. Adams was the major feature on the horizon. We had beautiful weather, good roads, and sunlight that lasted nearly to the end.
Delphine Report
Delphine has grown up considerably in the last several months. She has begun experimenting with narrative structure, which began with loops like, “When I’m 39, then I’ll be 26, and I am only 2 years old,” told to me over and over while I took showers in the morning. She uses “tomorrow”, “next time”, and “yesterday” to indicate the future and past as in, “Tomorrow I will behave,” or “Yesterday, I went on an airplane to LA.”
On March 5, 2007, Delphine put on her own jacket and zipped it up. I had shown her how to do a zipper in November and apparently wasn’t paying much attention to how she was making use of her time in the intervening months.
She puts together 12 piece puzzles. In the jumble of little kid life where everything gets pulled out and ripped apart at once, she has started assembling two 12 piece puzzles simultaneously. She builds “houses” with blocks. In a surprising act of reciprocity, she built one of her first houses for Tim, the architect who designed our house.
She is building some kind of comprehension of maps. She can find the state of Washington, and then Seattle, and Tacoma in the Rand McNally road atlas. Today while coloring, she drew several “long ways” to Seattle. This is all even weirder than the puzzle assembling skills that I watched her develop where she’d snap some pieces right into place without a thought and then try to jam others in by force.
Toward the end of March I figured out part of why I couldn’t remember anything anymore. I thought exhaustion was the cause, but then I realized I had been spending at least a half hour of every day reading and memorizing a Hawaiian bird book with Delphine. It’s an adult tourist book with good pictures that my aunt picked out because she knows Dp likes birds. Delphine wanted to know what every bird was every day. We know the i’iwi, the oma’o, the po’o’ulli and on and on through native species, invasive species, and sea birds. I even had to start telling her what they all ate. No wonder every other detail of life was falling out of my head. THERE WAS NO MORE ROOM.
Delphine eats:
Tofu – spicy tofu, Thai tofu, tofu squares dipped in soy sauce
A couple of weeks ago I didn’t cut the bok choy small enough so she was able to reject the green things mixed into her rice. Instead of going back to the kitchen to start over, I hid it on the spoon under the tofu.
Pasta with puttanesca sauce – who would have guessed?
Kale – Delphine has always had a taste for kale. The other night when she pulled a piece off her spoon and wiped it on her bib, I told her she was getting rid of the kale. She went back to her bib, picked up the piece of kale and put it back on her spoon.
She thinks bow tie pasta with black beans and kale looks like Jackson Pollack. Everyone’s a critic.
Delphine does not eat:
beet salad: I think it is pretty yucky.
grilled cheese (?!)
04 February 2007
Delphine is sick this week. Whereas we hear that other children sit quietly on the floor and fall asleep when they are sick, Delphine lay herself down among the railroad tracks and cried. Whenever her nose needed wiping, she still had enough energy to get up and walk into the kitchen to have it wiped for her. NO, she does NOT want a kleenex of her own.
We had another Big Snow for Seattle. It was bad enough that I had to shovel and the babysitter couldn’t make it up the hill to our house, but not so bad as to keep Bill from driving downtown to work.
At the end of January, Frank had the old maple in front of his house cut down. It was leaning from the tree lawn onto both of our houses and kept us all in a minor state of agitation. Frank had begun to call home to hear his answering machine pick up whenever he was away and the wind started to blow. If it didn’t pick up, he was going to assume that all the power lines on the block had been pulled into his yard.
It was a big job. It took the tree crew from nine in the morning to well after dark to cut back the branches and finally fell the trunk. I will not miss the sodden, early December leaf drop that rivaled the output of my two maples, but, judging from the large swath of sky that has opened up just to the left of where I’m sitting, I will miss the shade sorely within a few months.
Delphine Stops at Four!
For many months Delphine has been able to recite the numbers from one to eleven. She has even invented a few to fill the space up to twenty. Until this week, however, counting has meant “counting” any plurality up to ten (e.g. you see three: she can count them all the way to ten). On Monday, while eating some M&M’s in separate color batches, she lined up the red ones on the table.
I asked, “How many red ones do you have.”
She put her finger on each M&M as she counted all four and then stopped at the end of the row. Yesterday she did the same for a picture of seven penguins.
03 January 2007
Despite early, mid, and late season apathy, Christmas Day was a success. On Christmas Eve, Bill had a the brilliant idea that we should go see Snoqualmie Falls for our morning outing. We had no idea we were driving into the teeth of another windstorm – not until the wind was shaking the car anyhow. Severe weather made for good parking when we reached the falls. At the observation platform the gusts were so strong that even I was afraid. Delphine focused on making herself understood “I want to go back to the car!”
Fortuitously, between the falls and an unplanned visit to the Railway Museum, we drove by a Christmas tree lot. We drove in, the last losers in the Northwest without a Christmas tree, and picked out the tree that would fit with Delphine in the back of my car. (We weren’t going to be the slobs who lost their tree in the I-90 tunnel the day before Christmas.)
The tree stayed in the car until after Delphine’s bedtime when Bill went to work. He put it up and decorated it while I wrapped presents. Within an hour or two we had a respectable Christmas spectacle.
The following morning, Delphine was up before the sun as usual, which meant she got the full effect of the tree lit up in the dark. She stopped partway down the stairs to the living room and said, “I wanna touch it.”
Between presents she made good on that. By about 10:00 she had all the ornaments on the floor. After that, every time we turned our backs, she started unscrewing light bulbs. At one point in the afternoon, I walked into the living room just as Delphine stepped up to the tree and licked a branch. Bill, who was standing right there with her, said, “How was I to know what she meant when she said, ‘I wanna taste Christmas.’?”
The tree was pretty. It smelled good. On December 26 it went out to the patio to be pretty without all the fighting.
Delphine Says
Late in the afternoon on Christmas day I had to wake Delphine from her nap. She snuggled around with her panda for a few seconds and then called, “Daddy, Daddy, I want my full bags.”
I said, “I don’t understand you, honey.”
She repeated, “I want my full bags.”
I said, “You want your full bags? I don’t know what that means.”
She sorted herself out and said, “I want my presents.”
toe-scrape = end table As in, “Oh, I see it under the toe-scrape.” Perhaps she made it up, or very possibly she and the end table have a troubled history.
17 December 2006
We are basking in the heat of our fully electrified home. You may already know that Windstorm 2006 took out the power all over the Puget Sound Region. Ours came back on while we were all out at the RealNetworks Christmas party. (I started to write “holiday party", but, because it was held on Friday evening when observant Jews would be unable to attend, we shouldn’t fool ourselves with all-inclusive modifiers.) Considering the five day forecast for power outages in outer King County, we were hardly inconvenienced at all. We ALL went to the Christmas party because I couldn’t get my mind around leaving Delphine and the 17 year old babysitter (two children!) home in a 40 degree house in a blacked out neighborhood. Call me overprotective.
The party seemed like a good party although we probably would have enjoyed it more without Delphine. Earlier in the day, while she was sitting still and politely asking for bites of coleslaw at KFC, three women at the next table wanted to know how old she was and told me their babies would never behave so well. At the Hyatt, where we knew people, she ran through the crowd like a streak of pastel lightning. When I told her to slow down and stay by me she slowed it down to a trot and complained, “I wanna go faster. I wanna go faster.” She also made friends with a piano player named Victor, who thought she was adorable right up until she started kicking his microphone stand while he was trying to sing.
There is little else to report about Bill and me. We’re still reeling from the shock of having the juice cut off.
Delphine Report:
Delphine plays elevator. In the morning, when I’m trying to read the newspaper, she brings me her magic erase pad, I draw two elevator buttons, “^” and “v”, she presses one or both, and then runs over to the rug, jumps up and down shouting “Up, up, up.” It’s good for at least eight rides and she doesn’t have to stop on anyone else’s floor.
27 November 2006
Bill sold his car! He met Barack Obama. He went to Hawaii.
I got back to weaving. I started volunteering in the Ethnology department at the Burke Museum. I stayed home alone with a two year old over a holiday weekend.
Delphine Report:
Delphine’s pretend life is expanding. Shara gave her a tea set last week and Delphine can now serve tea for hours. You never thought you could pretend to drink so much. Don’t hold out any hopes for sugar, because she dumps it all in her own cup.
Delphine also eats the cupcakes right off the pages in her books. If she’s feeling right, she’ll pick one and offer it to Mama.
We have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks “reading” the 2005 backyard birds calendar. It has a photo of a bird for each day. We go through the pages again and again looking for all the cardinals, or chickadees, or robins. Unlike searching for her under the coffee table fort for the 10,000th time, I kind of like this play loop. She’s learned to spot all the usual birds and we’ve both learned several unlikely ones. If we ever go anywhere again, we’re ready for painted buntings, gila woodpeckers, green jays and magnolia warblers.
A few days in the spring and summer have pictures of nests rather than birds. Delphine eats all the eggs
04 November 2006
Halloween week has been a mixed bag. The toilet was not clogged in the usual way. I spent the morning of Friday the 27th being sold a new toilet for $670. Delphine screamed and complained while the plumber huffed and he puffed, but he could not auger out our powder room toilet. He told me repeatedly what a piece of garbage the toilet was and insisted I needed a new, better toilet. I paid him for his work (it turns out he charged me twice what it was worth), and sent him away. Then I spent the afternoon of Friday the 27th finding someone who could find and fix the problem with my perfectly good toilet.
It was a test tube brush. Remember the bucket of dirty awning water? I’d been scrubbing hard-to-reach places with a test tube brush. Somehow, during the comedy of our day with Delphine, the test tube brush fell into the bucket, sank to the bottom, and Bill disposed of it in the toilet. For anyone who has worked with me in the past, I will add that this was a completely legal, purchased, test tube brush. Because I have not ripped off supplies from state or university labs, we paid for our trouble coming and going.
Over the next few days we saw lots of Bill’s cousin, Dave. The three of us started out on Friday night at McCormick and Schmick over a whole party platter of fried seafood, which had been represented as an “appetizer”. We stuck to foolish principles and ordered entrees as well. Afterward we all slithered off and curled up for the night like snakes. On Monday, I was delighted to have Dave spend his whole day with me. We went to Chinese class and then to Chinook’s at the Fisherman’s Terminal for lunch. Dave sat around with me while Delphine complained, screamed, and made mischief instead of taking a nap. He also pushed Delphine around Seward park where she finally went to sleep. Hanging out with Dave was great, just great.
On Tuesday, we struggled through Halloween. Delphine continued to reject her costume through the day, “No red riding hood!” She refused to nap for Beate (so it’s not just me) and was in no shape to go to Bill’s company Halloween party that afternoon. Only after dinner, when the trick-or-treaters started coming to the door did she agree to put on her red riding hood, but, “No pants, NO PANTS!” So we didn’t go trick-or-treating. She ate her first Snickers bar for dessert and stole a Reese’s bar out of the treat bowl while children outside were taking theirs. On the following day, she wore her red riding hood all morning.
Friday, Delphine refused to nap again. After she screamed and complained in her crib for the allotted nap time, I brought her downstairs for the balance of the afternoon. I instructed her to keep herself busy until Dada came home, which worked as well as you’d expect. After a few minutes of quiet, Delphine brought “Carl Goes to Daycare” over to show me the page where everyone takes a nap. She said “Children go night night.”
I said, “Delphine needs to go night night, so we can have a nice afternoon.”
She pointed to the picture where Madeline is lying asleep on her mat at daycare and said, “But Delphine doesn’t like that.”
Oh, good.
23 October 2006
We worked like crazy this weekend. By Sunday evening we had pork roast, chicken curry, tom yum soup, 3 qts of chicken stock, sweet potato and pear puree, eggplant salad, and spicy garlic eggplant, all cooked and set aside for the week. I washed the downstairs windows inside and out, did two weeks worth of laundry, and scrubbed the awning over the front door. We raked 2 or 3 thousand pounds of maple leaves. Delphine raked at least a hundred pounds of them in one direction or another and put as many into bags. We blew up an eggplant in the grill, “POOF!” We clogged a toilet -- probably in the usual way, but a bucket full of dirty awning water has complicated an already complicated story. Finally we broke the stereo.
At least we don’t have to listen to that stupid “Patty Cake” CD again until it’s fixed.
Bill’s cousin Dave comes to town for a conference this weekend. We hope we’ll see a lot of him.
Delphine Report
While Bill was out raking a week ago Saturday, Delphine was driving her car around the patio. Typically she gets in the car and tells us that she’s leaving, “Goodbyyyye. Goodbyyyyye. See you later.” Because Bill was paying attention to his work, he only half heard her call out, “Goodbyyyye. See you later. I’ll be back for my birthday.”
Bill said, “What?”
She confirmed, “See you later. I’ll be back for my birthday.”
Nowadays, when you’re 2, you get a medical robe at the pediatrician. I had no idea whose dignity would be preserved by a Looney Tunes medical robe, but I chose not to sass back at the nurse. When stripped down to her underpants, Delphine broke free to go back to spinning the doctor’s stool. I held up the robe and said, “Come on, we’re going to put this robe on you.”
Before coming back to me she added, “AND you will be cute.” Not only does this robe preserve dignity, but it also has magical self-esteem enhancing properties.
10 October 2006
Summer has only just ended. We vacationed at the summer home for the latter half of September. The weather was as good as we could hope for with a few rainy days, but also some 70 degree afternoons on the beach. On days when the waves were up, Bill and I could tolerate the cold water for body surfing.
We ate a lot of dessert. Is it possible to eat too much dessert? Perhaps, but we weren’t especially concerned at the time. Today at lunch while eating the chocolate bubka that I was feeding her in lieu of the plain bread I forgot to buy, Delphine asked, “Where’s apple criss?”
Where indeed! As if it were perfectly logical for the mind of a girl eating chocolate bubka for lunch to wander back to the apple crisp that Grandma made. As though a meal built on bubka could only serve as a reminder of spaghetti dinner driven into overtime with as much apple crisp as you could eat (hold the whip cream please). Delphine may not have a word for dessert, but she appears to have some acquaintance with the Platonic Form of dessert.
Because so many people have wondered at our choice to vacation at the beach in SW Michigan, I have posted several pictures of the beach. In anticipation of your reaction to the picture of Delphine and me playing, I propose an internet age variation on the Tree Falls in the Forest question:
If he hasn’t posted the pictures to his own website yet, has a person truly made an ass of himself?
Delphine Report
At two years old, Delphine is 34 ½ inches tall (75th percentile) and weighs in at 27 ½ lbs (55th percentile). She prefers running to walking and has become more deliberate about getting into everything. On second thought, I suppose she isn’t getting into everything anymore, she is concentrating her efforts on getting into the things I’ve told her to leave alone.
Delphine Says
(While descending into Seattle): I don’t want a big airplane a fall down.
07 September 2006
E: Let’s go see Bruce.
D: That’d be fun.
First use of the conditional tense. Or is it the future perfect? Fight among yourselves.
D (in the bath singing to herself): I am a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.
E: You’ve got that right, cowgirl.
Bill has been singing “The Streets of Laredo,” Johnny Cash version, to Delphine at night. She calls it “Raredo, Raredo, Radio” after a misunderstanding that she and Bill had over her pronunciation. Each and every time you hear your two year old singing
Throw bunches
of roses all over my coffin,
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.
you stop
short and wonder about the choices you’ve been making.Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.
29 August 2006
We had a series of warm days and nights such that I had to open up all the doors in the evenings. Two nights in a row, termites flew in the front door.
Delphine says
It’s a wet deer. = It’s a reindeer.
When we go home, en milk. = When we go home, then milk. First dependent clause.
24 August 2006
I’m still filling you in on the trip to Michigan here. While I was collecting milkweed plants all over central Ohio and southwest Michigan for my graduate research, my mother and I started a milkweed garden beside the porch at the summer home. If we ever had to do it again, we were going to start with our own crop.
Six years later, we finally have a small stand of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). While I was visiting we watched milkweed moth larvae (Euchaetes egle) eat the milkweed down to the stem at a rate of about a plant a day. We were also treated to the brief lives of several monarch butterfly larvae (Danaus plexippus). They may taste icky and be poisonous to birds, but wasps (hoanets, according to the taxonomy of my southern Illinois ancestors) like them just fine. I only saw one such tragedy. It was a big, gooey wrestling match, too awful to photograph. After word of that big kill got around, all the monarch caterpillars vanished before growing an inch.
Back here in Seattle I have a new beach hobby. Instead of dying of boredom sitting in the sand at water’s edge with my toddler, I stand in the shallows facing her and pick broken glass out of the rocks. I’m not talking beach glass; I’m pulling big, shiny, arcs of beer bottle out of the water line. Of course I’m standing there in bare feet wanting to believe in some glass-sand-rocks fluidity property that explains why I and 2/3 of the children in the neighborhood aren’t lame already. Too good to be true. With each fresh piece I imagine incredible horrors averted. It must be the thrill of danger that keeps me going back. (That and the compulsion to keep pattern spotting.)
Delphine says:
plump = plum
pukumber = cucumber
puntum buntin = the preferred pronunciation for painted bunting
Toot….in a bed! = first joke, appropriately told at the dinner table.
13 August 2006
Last Monday evening, Delphine and I returned from two weeks vacation at the summer home. She is a charming little flyer. When the plane starts to accelerate on the runway, Delphine shouts, “Ready, Set, Go, WEEEEEEEEEE!” Planes are fun, we say hi to everyone. Other children cry and that’s interesting. While the little boy in front of us slept, we talked and talked about how he cried at the beginning of the flight. Delphine didn’t feel the need to sleep until after we’d seen Mt. Rainier, four hours into the flight and two hours past her bedtime.
Back at the beginning of the trip, our arrival at the newly renovated and totally cleaned up summer home was not the homecoming that everyone had expected. While my mother was picking us up at O’Hare, my father and brother were caring for the family cat in his last few hours. On July 22, Bertrand (Bert) Tiedemann, born 30 March 1988, died of a heart attack or something. He was a good cat every day of his life and he will be missed. We waked him on the porch that night and held a short funeral on the east side of the house the following morning.
Delphine was absolutely unaffected by the loss of Bert. She kept us in the daily routine of breakfast, getting the hell out of the house, lunch, nap, getting the hell out of the house, and dinner. Early in the visit my father commented to me, “Your mother never missed an opportunity to leave the house.” Neither has Delphine. Since before she could sit up, she has wanted to be going somewhere, anywhere. We need to be going, not resting, not talking, not collecting our thoughts. We’ve seen all this now for 20 minutes at least; we need to be going. It suits Delphine just fine to drive all over creation with her grandmother looking for corn, melons, tomatoes, blueberries, peaches, horsies, and cows.
We were visited by Delphine’s grandma, June, my brother, Lance, and my cousin, JoAnn. June was there through the worst of the heat to sit through Delphine’s 6 o’clock dinners on the porch with the sun burning sideways through the trees onto the dinner table. This is where we hit the limit of the Harbert Tiedemanns' dress code. Delphine had to dress for dinner, that is, she had to at least wear some underpants. We noted the variance from the Fontana Dawsons' dress code where a shirt is required for attendance at dinner and, presumably, their sort can be trusted to take care of the rest.
June missed the after dinner dances with Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (we started those to get Delphine out of the way during clean-up), but she did see the last of the party bucket baths. Although a bath is ultimately more tolerable than a noisy shower with all that spraying water, Delphine prefers to hoist her leg over the side of the ice tub rather than sit still to have her hair rinsed. Both were pretty screamy, but the shower turned out to be less mess.
Delphine says:
Ahm a gonna drive a car!
Her favorite adjectives are big and fast.
21 July 2006
Oh, the bug bites. I worked the first 200 yards of the Mt. Catherine trail yesterday just east of Snoqualmie pass. Despite bug dope and adequate clothing I still have four miserable bites on my calves. I did some good work moving 50 yards of trail 1 foot uphill. How did I do that, you wonder. Instead of carrying anything uphill, I cut the edge of the trail a little deeper into the hillside and then pulled a bunch of rocks one foot off the downhill side of the trail. Still, in the hot sun with the bugs biting, it felt like work to me.
In the evening Bill and I went to a cocktail party at a former colleague’s house. We were invited as neighbors although Alex’s house is far enough from ours that we got in the car to drive over. We showed up in time for dessert – outstanding carrot cake and rhubarb cranberry crisp – and discussion. I hadn’t expected the discussion. As we were encouraged to settle in the living room I began to fear that we’d forgotten our checkbook and were going to need it to get out.
We sat down to talk about the circumstances of The Party. Well, everybody but me found a chair and sat down. While one guest was berating us, only half in jest, about being a bunch of limousine liberals, I couldn’t help but notice that the only person in the room who’d moved any rocks in the hot sun that day didn’t have a place to sit down. I looked hard before I noticed the unoccupied half of a piano bench that would save the evening for me.
I sat down too tired to resist. I smiled and sipped Pellegrino while strangers kept up a heated conversation about the midterm elections and potential presidentials. All these nice people getting worked up about all sorts of things that might never happen. Have you heard of Mark Warner? Have you thought of John Edwards? Now you have.
To tell the truth, I was out of my depth. Our host was as gracious as anyone could be. He put on the party to promote his friend’s organization, drinkingliberally.org and we did not need a checkbook to save face.
Last Friday Delphine and I visited my friends, Bud and Judy, at Bud’s family retreat on Whidbey Island. What a day we had! There was the ferry ride and then a tour of the property with orchard, nut grove, and historic cabin. Bud and I cut down some nettles to start my nettle project while Judy kindly kept Delphine busy pouring water from one container to another. When Bud and I finished up we all decided to head down to the beach.
To get there I was going to have to carry Delphine. I thought that wouldn’t be a problem until I was actually on the stairs. They were sturdy, but pitched like a step ladder on a living cliffside. As we climbed down, Bud pointed out the big chunk of earth, just there to the left, that had sloughed in this year’s rains. Climbing down 40 or 50 feet of that without my baby would have been a lot of fast living for my Midwestern blood. For her part, Delphine chose to climb by herself, which was easier on my back, but harder on my heart.
The beach was the best I’ve seen in the Northwest. We were on Useless Bay, which is useless for boat traffic, but quite nice for swimmers and beach combers. The tide was going out, out, out for hundreds of yards. We walked nearly to water’s edge by which point Delphine had soaked all of her clothes, first by walking into deep water and then by wallowing (really, belly-down, wiggley wallowing) in more shallow water.
Bud and Judy, thanks for a great day.
Bath time conversation
E: No. NO, we don’t drink bathwater.
D: Dat good. Dat good. Dat good.
E: It is NOT good.
D (pointing at water): It is yes good.
13 July 2006
Our neighbors to the east invited us to a BBQ on Sunday evening. Urs and Catherine planned to grill and asked guests to bring a side dish. Bill made brownies so we could go. The food was excellent. I loaded up on 4 kinds of homemade salad, baked beans, and salmon.
My trailies and I worked on the Denny Creek Trail this week. The last two times I saw this trail, I was charging down the mountain after having started the day at the Pratt Lake trailhead. That would put me in my 14th and 15th miles for the day and all I can remember is rocks and roots hurting my feet.
Starting with fresh feet and clean socks in the quiet of the morning after The 4th, I could see why the trail is so popular. The forest was beautiful even on a cloudy day when we never got out of earshot of I-90. I had a good day improving drainage and removing those rocks.
On the 4th I spent the afternoon at our friends, Bill and Tim’s house. We went over early to say hello before their big 4th of July party. Bill V. and Tim convinced us to stay, which meant I stayed while Bill W. took Delphine home for her nap. I helped Bill V. make vanilla ice cream and sat around a lot. After her nap, Bill W. and Delphine returned just in time to go on a cocktail cruise around Lake Union on Tim’s sailboat.
Delphine was interested in the ride for about 10 minutes before she started roaming around looking for things to mess with. She got under Tim’s feet while he tried to steer. Then she tried to take control of the wheel. She found the chip bowl and started taking chips to bite and return. We had to remove the salsa bowl from her sight. For a while she settled down to fill a small hole in the deck with ice cubes from the beer bucket. Mostly she made people nervous toddling around the outside of the boat.
I wish I had remembered my camera. I can only offer this picture of Tim’s boat from one of the local TV news stations. It was taken early on the morning of the 5th, hours after the Lake Union fireworks show had ended and well into the surprise NOAA pier fire. The sailboat, in the right foreground, was undamaged. Nobody was hurt.
Delphine says:
Ow, ow, shoes.
Gimme wig = Give me back my wig, lyrics from the Hound Dog Taylor song
eeAYEo eeAYEo = ee-ei-ee-ei-o, the chorus from “Old MacDonald had a farm”
Oh my GOD! (Reinforced at dinner Friday night when I shouted, “OH MY GOD!” right over her head. I ought to be excused because I was watching a rat run down the plum tree in our backyard.)
01 July 2006
I had a grand time on my first Wednesday out with the WTA trail crew. I drove an hour and a half in light traffic to the Perry Creek trailhead off the Mountain Loop Highway. We hiked two miles up the trail to the tool cache, forded the creek, and started work some time after 10:00 in the morning. I moved some rocks around in a dry creek crossing and dug out a rotten log that was holding water on the trail. I’ll point out that I left a hole beside the trail rather than in the trail. My friend, Bud, and I ate a leisurely lunch with a forrested view before I started back down the trail in order to make it home by 4:00 pm. I drove back out the Mountain Loop Hwy with the windows down and the stereo up.
Delphine Report: The Cruel Shoes
The first two times we tried to take Delphine out in her new sandals, we nearly snapped off her little toes. Last Friday, I twisted one back and under her foot and couldn’t figure out her trouble for at least 20 minutes. On Tuesday, after ample warning, Beate left the other little toe poking out the side of the sandal about 110 degrees away from it’s preferred orientation. After long conversations about how careful we’re going to be, a little following (not quite chasing), and something resembling wrestling, Delphine agreed to wear her sandals again later in the week.
Delphine says:
A frightened shoes.
I press a button!
Nein nein nein nein nein!
25 June 2006
Done With Potluck
We visited Seward Park four times this week. With the help of chopped prunes (pwumes) and cookies, I have conditioned Delphine to accept the 2 mile stroller ride around the park before I set her loose at the playground. Delphine and I saw herons this week, I saw eagles, and Bill and I saw ducklings walking on lily pads. We were back on Friday evening for a picnic with the language school.
I somehow got it into my head that this potluck picnic started at 6:00 pm. We showed up an hour late to find all the bags of chips, and trays of Costco sandwiches pretty well picked over. There was still plenty of potato salad. Even today, when there’s apparently no shame in cooking for a potluck in the aisles of a 7-eleven, nobody eats the factory made potato salad.
I made room for my beans and weenies between a ready-to-go tray of shrimp cocktail and spent party platter of chips and salsa. This was the first party for my 9 x 13 Pyrex pan with its specially insulated and heated carrying case, a modern potluck marvel. My mother gave it to me in 1997 as an engagement present. It was a practical gift and, I admit, I might have needed such a thing had I grown up to be a church member in the nine intervening years of my thirties.
Although I have had to move and store the unused casserole and carrier several times, who could blame my mother for weighing me down with her anachronistic ideas about bringing a dish to pass? Back then offerings from the freezer department at SAM’s Club had already begun to linger on the tables at parties. Today you can go from potluck to picnic to barbecue and eat the same Costco food at every one. My mother knew better and she paid me the compliment of assuming that I would want to share good food with my friends and family.
Until this week, I have always made a rice, potato, or bean salad in a vinegar sauce to avoid the need for special handling at parties. I got the unused pan out of the box on Friday because I perceived that this potluck was particularly loosely organized and there would be a need for main dishes. I guessed right. Even though I put out my beans and weenies after the cake had been cut, they still disappeared.
The heated carrying case worked better than I thought it might. The last scoop of beans in the pan came home hot. It’s too bad because I can’t imagine that I’ll ever use it again. I prepped the beans and the sauce on Thursday night. I added the weenies and baked them on Friday afternoon. While I was heating the hot pack for the carrier, Delphine threw a set of blocks into the fireplace and then went in after them. I had to scrub her down and pack for the picnic all at once. It was a lot of trouble to go to and then have to put together a dinner from bags, trays, and tubs of supermarket food.
Delphine Report
Delphine has language. She is able to talk about things she doesn’t have words for.
D: I want it. I want it. I want it.
E: What do you want?
D (pointing at the confiscated Mardi Gras beads): That one pretty.
E: You had your turn. We have to give those back to Frank.
D: A flower*. Frank gave you** a flower.
*Flowers are pretty. If it’s pretty, it must be a flower.
**See last week about Delphine’s trouble with personal pronouns.
D (pointing into the back yard): What’s that?
E: What are you talking about?
D: What’s that, a bell?
E: That’s the new humming bird feeder.
16 June 2006
We had a hectic week last week while Bill socialized with visiting lawyers from the London and San Francisco offices. On Thursday evening they all came over for drinks before walking around the corner to dinner at one of our neighborhood restaurants. It was nice to see all the new faces. They’re not that new, of course, but I’ve been sitting around at home waiting for them to come to me.
I won’t go into the grisly details, but clean-up before AND after the cocktail party was more than I had expected forcing me to work double time for a few days. I might have straightened myself out at yoga class on Saturday morning except that I was threatened by a pit bull while walking from the car to the yoga studio.
I noticed the dog as I tried to cross a quiet side street. It had no collar, no owner, and was hanging around aimlessly at the curb I was approaching. I thought to myself, “Stay cool and you won’t get bitten.” Being very nearly a genius, I was right about the biting. Still, the dog lunged and snapped at me twice. I felt hot breath on my right hand both times. Only hours later did I decide that a real genius would have gotten back in her car and found another parking place.
I went on in one piece to yoga class where I borrowed a cell phone to call 911. The 911 operator told me to call animal control and helped me memorize the number. I tried to call animal control four times before I realized I was locked into “911 Emergency Only” mode on the cell phone.
In the mean time, the class had started without me. I gave up on my civilized efforts to take care of the problem dog and joined the class. Because I kept my mouth shut about the BAD DOG OUT THERE THAT WANTED TO BITE ME, I didn’t mess up anybody else’s morning. Instead I pinched my neck and crunched my back because I couldn’t pay attention to what I was doing. All I could think about was how I could get back out there with a two by four to settle the score.
Delphine Report: Who’s on First?
One of the nice things about having an early talker is that we have a wide open window on her cognitive development. Since Delphine turned up with “I see baby,” one morning at 18 months, she has been keeping us entertained with all kinds of minimalist and cross-wired grammar. She stops on the sidewalk and says to her father, “Carry you.” At breakfast one morning last week she explained to me who was drinking what, “My coffee, your milk.”
At that point her confusion was so obvious that I decided to straighten her out. I started to say, “When it’s my coffee, you say ‘Your coffee,’ but when it’s yours, you say ‘Mine.’”
Blah, blah, blah, Delphine. Blah, blah, blah. Just try to explain personal pronouns to someone who doesn’t already use them properly. Maybe I’ll call Chomsky to remind him how right he is about everything.
Delphine is on a first name basis with the cat. One afternoon last week, Delphine got down in the cat’s face and said, “Name is Delphine.” Now, when Stella wants to play, she knows who to call. Stella has maintained her reserve, however. When Delphine asks, “What’s your name? What’s your name?” Stella mostly just sits there. Delphine waits a while and then answers, “Kitty Tewa.”
Delphine Says:
Why NOT!
I fear the worst is already upon us.
06 June 2006
I don’t have any pictures this week. Delphine was/is sick. She wasn’t sleeping well for a while. I don’t remember very much. It was raining all the time for a couple of weeks. Nothing to do and nothing to photograph. Until today, when the camera ran out of juice at the beach.
Bill was promoted to corporate vice president last week. He’s been waiting on/ working on this for two or maybe four years now. We celebrated over the weekend – another reason why I may not remember much. Now we have a better sense of scale for the banks of Veuve in Eddie Monsoon’s refrigerators.
On Saturday we had our conservative friend, Matthew, over for steaks and had such a good time I’d like to do it again with more friends except we’re having nine people from work over for drinks on Thursday night. I’m glad I decided two months ago that I couldn’t pull off dinner for 11, because I’m freaking out now about cleaning up an laying out snacks.
On Sunday night I went out with my friend, Chris, to see a concert. Who knows if I’ll get to another concert this year? Who cares! It was that good. The Eels list themselves as “alternative/acoustic/hardcore” on their MySpace page. To my great delight, they went hardcore for Seattle replacing the string section from the beginning of the tour with a drummer. I know about the beginning of the tour because Chris is a big, grown-up geek and he was there. I thought I was in for a night of chick music.
The world dried out enough yesterday so Bill could rush home from work and beat up the lawn with our reel lawn mower. It’s quiet, burns only the hydrocarbons that Bill has put aside against hard times, stores in the basement, halts the upward and over growth of the grass, and still we feel like we could come up with a better solution if we just thought hard enough. Delphine helped and helped until Bill couldn’t stand it anymore. The tipping point was when she started gathering up big clumps of cut grass to redeposit everywhere. On the other side of the house, I swept up the springtime detritus for the third of fourth time this year. You think it’s just going to be the leaves in the fall, but trees drop stuff and make a mess all year long.
Delphine Report
Beate gave Delphine a hardcover copy of “One Fish, Two Fish” last week. I mean hardcover, like the kind of books you and I read with paper pages, not the cardboard kind that really, really hurts when someone stumbles and smashes the corner of one into your face.
I told Beate, “She rips books.”
Beate said, “Its ok, the book is for her.”
Wow.
Delphine has had free access to “One Fish, Two Fish,” for a week now because that was Beate’s intention. She has not ripped a page. We have to read it to her two or three times a day. (I had no recollection that “One Fish, Two Fish” was as long as a novel.) When we’re not reading it to her, Delphine sits on the floor paging through the book and telling the story to herself, “One fish, two fish, wed fish, bwue fish, wittow taw, wittow caw … new fish…some mow…bike a thwee…wet pet…a foot a cowd…fwow wing...” She knows the whole book.
Delphine says:
gowerrrrr = girl, as in “Dada gowerrrr”
mocomovi = locomotive
mo-me-eye = oh me, oh my
Massew, quit it. = Matthew, quit it.
01 June 2006
We had a Memorial Day Weekend at home that compared to the best of them at my parents’ place in Michigan -- 40 degrees and raining. At least I had more than two pairs of socks with me.
There isn’t much else I can think of because we all got sick and Delphine started sleeping in 1 hour increments.
Delphine Report
Delphine contributes to our activity plans now. She gets up in the morning and says, “Pahk aday,” which translates to “Park today.” When we tell her what we’re going to do -- go to the store, for example, or visit Bruce -- she adds “Then pahk.”
26 May 2006
While I'm writing this, Bill is next door celebrating Mardi Gras in May. Frank’s friend, Chris Blake, is visiting from Costa Mesa, CA for his annual birthday trip. Chris loves to throw a party and he flew up with a feast of jambalaya, red beans and rice, corn bread, bread pudding with praline sauce, and chocolate cake. Thirty people are coming to dinner.
When I took Delphine over for a visit around 5:00 this afternoon, Frank was preparing Chris for a smaller party next year, “We’re going to cook here, and we’re only having a few people over. That’s how we’re going to do this next time -- just a small group.” The last I saw Frank, I was handing our chairs over the bushes to him.
Summer vacation is coming up and I plan to spend it working trail. Beate, Delphine’s Tuesday morning babysitter, will be taking her on Wednesdays so I can go out with my old crew. If I weren’t saving up energy for the extra work, I’d do a little dance.
Delphine Report
Delphine is 20 months old this week. Twenty months going on two if you take into account her aggressive sense of self. The straight arm that she used to thrust into a hug to prevent snuggling is now the “Back off!” signal. She shows it as soon as you move toward her with an offer of help. She would prefer to fall down the stairs (or not) depending only on her own wits and agility.
On Wednesday afternoon in the park, she was trying to climb on a bouncy bumble bee that was too high for her. She kept pulling her legs up underneath her in a kneeling position on the saddle and then falling off backward. I tried to show her how to grab a handle on the side of the bee’s head, but she couldn’t see where I was going with that and fell off again. The next time she tried, I offered her a hand to grab while she swung a leg over the saddle. She shouted, “No help!” fell off backwards, and pitched a fit.
I stepped back to see where this was all going. She tried about five more times jumping up and screaming with rage after each fall. Finally she got up to the kneeling position on the saddle, grabbed the handle on the far side of the head, and swung her leg over. She beamed and rocked the bee at top speed all the way to Spokane.
Delphine is starting to sing songs. So cute, she’s killing us dead out here. I would transcribe her version of “The itsy bitsy spider,” but I have the feeling that the written version would only be tedious with her heavy reliance on bitty and pidew to get through every line.
20 May 2006
If I don’t feel ready at all times to step outside the house and punch a bear in the nose, I must have run into another character flaw. That’s what I’ve been telling myself all these years. Now that I have Delphine, though, I have a control group attached to my hip. Let’s say I’ve been having stomach trouble all week and I wake up one morning wanting to lie in bed and cry. It could be that I’m weak as water. But, wait a minute, Delphine’s stomach hasn’t been right all week and she’s crying ALL THE TIME. If she’s sick (and it can’t be anything else because her character is perfect), then I’m sick, too.
It took until Friday for me to figure it out, but we haven’t been well this week. Fortunately Delphine went back on her kibble today and I hope I’m over my troubles by tomorrow.
Last week, we were invited to Sunday dinner by our friends, Tim and Bill. I was sitting on the front deck of their houseboat between Tim’s mother and his sister-in-law, when Tim came out to refill my Manhattan. Only then did it occur to me that I was sitting still and having a conversation because Delphine was being supervised elsewhere because it was Mothers Day! Nice work, men.
Delphine Report
Delphine is intelligible. She says, “I found a bug,” as plain as that. Then she might say “Gimmee bug,” followed by “Come-eew, bug.”
As she sorts out her word order, I hope our conversations about the babies in the Hanna Andersson catalog lose their troubling edge. Since we started “reading” the latest one, she has been pointing to the babies in their pajamas and saying, “Fwap babies,” or “Huwt babies.” Although I always insist that we never slap or hurt babies, I wonder if she’s telling me that the babies slap and hurt her. She has been clobbered by a couple of vice-grip crawlers lately. To her credit, she just took the abuse with a look of horror and betrayal on her face while somebody else peeled the little offender away.
Now that I have started turning around to find lights on that weren’t on when I turned away, I am beginning to understand the lasting effects of having Delphine.
12 May 2006
I was out on the trail again with WTA last weekend. I built 15 maybe 20 feet of fantastic trail near Exit 20 on I-90. It’s part of the King County Grand Ridge trail expansion outside of Issaqua.
I can rough AND FINISH new trail. I know I did it myself because my usual crew leader, Mike, wasn’t there to step in and patch things up before quitting time. It used to be that I could only rough: all day long I’d rip out plants, dig up dirt, throw saplings downhill, listen to the birds, look hard for salamanders, but I couldn’t make a surface you’d choose to walk on. On Saturday, I finished my stretch of trail with time enough to go work on drainage elsewhere. I’m better than ever.
Little Kids are Gross: the Delphine Report
Delphine drinks bath water and, worse yet, licks the shower floor.
Wondering about that finger she’s holding out in front of her? She’ll tell you, “Found it, booger!”
Delphine requests songs.
Who-ta-winnow, knock knock doe = Who’s that tapping on the window, who’s that knocking on my door?
Dowiva = Down the river
Oh wieso = Oh wie wohl
Tinkow taaw home = Twinkle twinkle little star (?)
Dao payo (sounds like “dog pile” and had me wondering, “Who taught her this? What does she expect is going to happen here?”) = Zhao peng you
04 May 2006
In a weeklong interval between beach visits, the swallows and swifts returned to Lake Washington. So have the bugs.
Last week we had two small dinner parties without suffering total collapse. I think I have just about mastered the essentials so that I can have fun, too. If you come for dinner, you’ll get something cooked in the oven for an hour or more, a green salad, a vegetable or legume made ahead of time, rice, and ice cream for dessert. Delphine will be in bed before anything goes on the table.
Since we’re on the topic of what we eat at my house, I’ll remind us all how happy I am to live next door to Frank. Frank lives the kind of full life in which a person always has garlic to spare. On a recent evening I was making pasta aioli (Frank’s recipe) when I found that we had lost the remainder of our garlic. A quarter bulb gone missing. I called Frank, who ran out of his dinner party to offer me a bulb and a half. I took the half.
Delphine Report
Delphine eats leftover Chinese food! Her only requirement is that it be chopped small and mixed in with the rice, casserole style.
Delphine pretends:
Pieces of strawberry are sailboats on her high chair tray. They also hide behind her cup of milk. “Hiding. Hiding. Wiew?” She stands small pieces of bread on end and tells them, “Don’t fah down.” This is what I tell her after I’ve spun her brains out on the spinning seats at the park. Finally, the slats peeking out of the far side of the guest bed are a "piamo."
Delphine says:
Hummy-ummy-ummy-um = a chant for “How many?” as in Hummy-um BOAT? or Hummy-um HIPPO?
kway mouse = kleine Maus
One of the reasons my mother named me Erica is because it can’t be rhymed with anything. In 39 years I have found this to be true with all attempts at rhymes sounding pathetic rather than cutting. Delphine has found otherwise. It took three generations, but Erica has finally been paired with haircut. It is the best I’ve heard and in her pronunciation it is a flawless, two syllable match.
27 April 2006
Delphine Report
We got Delphine’s first haircut yesterday. Like her mother’s, Delphine’s hair is now shorter than it probably ought to be. I would have taken pictures, but I was not a large enough filming crew to pull it off. As soon as the hairdresser tried to put the gown on her, everything went up for grabs. I was called in to sit in the chair under the gown and hold Delphine on my lap. Delphine screamed, cried, and tried to break away. The hairdresser chased her around me and the chair. If the line at the back of Delphine’s head isn’t very straight, she has no one to blame but herself.
At the end, there was no lock of hair to put in an envelope and carry home. It was all spread out, ground into our clothing, and pressed into our sweaty skin. Delphine may have nothing to compare this to, but I’ll use my authority to declare it the worst haircut of our lives.
Delphine can count two as in “two cackew,” or “two pinedcone.”
She has been working hard on the possessive for about a month. She is surprisingly tentative with my and mine, but “Dada’s. Dada piddow,” and “Mama’s. Mama dinna,” are solid concepts.
Delphine says:
Timp = Tim
pidew = computer
pie tay tow = potato
sweetabo = sweet potato
21 April 2006
You’ll never believe it, but traveling with a one and a half year old is no fun at all. We thought we couldn’t remember going anywhere when we were little because our parents were poor or something. After four and a half days in helLA, the scales have been lifted from our eyes. Our parents may very well have known what they were doing.
We spent every minute that we had alone with Delphine fighting with her to quit messing around with everything. At her aunt Meg’s home, other people chased her, took things away, and called it visiting. She stopped sleeping through the night. After she kept us up all night, she couldn’t take a nap and screamed for two hours instead.
While in LA, we visited Bill’s sister, Meg, and his mother. Meg’s boyfriend’s parents were also visiting. We enjoyed everybody’s company and we would have had a good time had we been unencumbered. The trouble with this realization is the one that follows on its heels: none of those people would have noticed our absence had Delphine been able to show up on her own.
The most pleasant part of the trip was the flight home. We withstood five lines in the Alaska departures area that each should have ended at a rollercoaster. Without having had a chance to eat all morning, we walked right out of security onto our plane during the final boarding call. We expected a meltdown like we’d never seen before because Delphine had been confined to hotel room, car seat, and stroller since the 6:30 wake-up cry. I buckled in her car seat beside the window, sat her down on it, said “Look out the window,” and she did.
I am still a little dumbfounded. She was totally engaged by all the planes and baggage trains. Bill and I had a conversation. When we started to taxi, I buckled her in with no protest, and she kept watching through the window. On the runway, she cheered on the pilot, “Fassa! Fassa! Fassa!” She announced the take-off, “Fining. Fining ahpane.” (She had apparently gotten her mind around our Thursday flight because that time she shouted, “Done! Down! Down!” as she watched the ground drop away.) When she got tired, she went to sleep without crying and slept until just before landing. We never had to get her out of the seat.
If you’d been worrying that we might show up with our child for a visit at your house, you can stop now. Until Delphine can restrain herself from pushing every button in a room, including ours as well as the ones on the remote control, we don’t want to go anywhere.
07 April 2006
We walked 20 blocks yesterday afternoon to find that my favorite bakery closed down a week ago. Delphine only yammered a little about the long stroller ride. She got to visit Bwuce at work and we stopped to play at two parks before going home.
On Wednesday morning, Bill was kind enough to admit that he now understands all I’ve been going through since I turned 39. I’m afraid his birthday week turned into a wind-down from my action packed birthday week. If he ever wondered what it’s like to have his birthday the week after Christmas, this was the year he learned. We started talking weeks ago about having some friends over for hamburgers soon. They’re finally coming over tomorrow, and, hey wait a minute, it was just Bill’s birthday. So Bill gets a party.
Delphine Report
Delphine has a new story to tell today. It’s a good thing because, for over a week, I’ve been listening to, “Jack. Hug. Fah down.” Today’s story goes something like, “Zoe. Bonk. Beddew. Ok?” If that’s not clear enough, I can fill in the blanks. A little girl named Zoe, rolled on her back and hit her head in music class. She cried for a little while and then stopped. Delphine kept giving Zoe’s mother a grave look and saying, “Bonk.” Zoe’s mother felt she had to explain that Zoe is better now. Delphine isn’t convinced.
Delphine says:
fessoo = bless you
gootite = Gesundheit
pey BOCKS = play blocks
one, two, fffffff
01 April 2006
My birthday week has been pretty good. Bill took Wednesday off so I would have a full day to go out and work on hiking trails with a Washington Trails Assoc. work crew. Several of my old friends are still working on Wednesday, our regular day. I felt like I was picking up right where I left off and I had a great time. Mike, the crew leader, even allowed that I might have gotten better at finishing what I’ve started. (I have left big holes in the trail more times than I want to think about.) At lunchtime I felt especially special because Bill made a batch of brownies so the birthday girl would have a treat to share.
We went out for dinner two nights in a row. It was just the two of us on the 30th and we met our friends, Sandy and Daniel on the 31st. We don’t see much of Sandy and Daniel anymore and I was very happy to spend an evening with them in the month before they move to San Francisco.
Delphine Report
Delphine continues to tell us about the things going on around her and what she did all day. She repeats herself until we affirm whatever she has said by repeating it back to her in proper English. This gets difficult when she sits at dinner saying, “Fwide. Fwide. Fwide.” and nothing that I’m serving is fried. One afternoon at the park when I was saying, “Home” and she was crying, “Fwide!” I realized that she has been telling us about her afternoons on the slide.
Yesterday she saw a big boy swing up high and leap off his swing in a big arc. He hit the ground and she took off running to catch the abandoned swing and get some of that action. Now, little and unsteady as she is, she rides the big swings where you have to “Hang on tight. Hang on tight!”
Bird Report
Out on the trail I heard my first winter wren song of the year. You’ll have to find the song under the “Sound” heading on the link I’ve given. Crank your speakers to 11. Try to imagine a tiny brown bird standing prominently on a branch, filling the forest with this song.
23 March 2006
The first floor windows are washed and the lawn has been mown. Hooray! One of Bill’s colleagues remarked to him that you get all your chores done at home after you’ve had a kid because you’re always there. Delphine, I’m afraid, did not usher in our era of good living at home. Although we are here all the time now, we haven’t found a system where we get to do more than feed and clothe ourselves each day. At risk of telling everyone about the mess at home, there’s a fly tape still hanging in the living room from last summer, the cat has to tell us when her dish is empty, and Delphine recently walked by the open coat closet and commented, “Messy.”
“Battlestar Galactica” and “The Shield” have ended for the year. Although I have Andre Braugher’s new show, “Thief” lined up in the Tivo, I’m hoping I don’t let myself get sucked into any more stupid TV shows. Sometimes I feel like I’m just keeping myself alive for the next episode.
I went to the weavers’ guild meeting today despite my lack of enthusiasm for the program. It was some tapestry weaver talking about color and design. I can’t stand tapestry and I count any moments spent on learning good design as wasted drops of fresh water in my ocean of ineptitude. My chief complaint with tapestry is that it’s all surface design and why would anyone bother to weave what they should draw or print?
Being the kind of jerk that I am, I didn’t bother to listen for the speaker’s name. Boy was she good. She makes tapestries that show the weaving and show off the yarns. Her technique is impeccable and best described in her own words, “I wanted the selvage to look like god wove it.” I thought several of her pieces looked like Mark Rothko or better because the varying saturation of dye in the yarns made the color fields even richer. So much for my knowing better than the programs chair of the weavers’ guild.
Delphine Report
Now that Delphine naps in her crib, she has to be supervised while she goes to sleep. I lie down on the couch in the room with her and pretend I’m asleep until I have to remind her to “Lie Down!” It takes her about a half hour to get to sleep. There’s all kinds of talking and rolling and kicking. She goes over the names of the other children pictured in the nanny’s cell phone. She reviews words picked up in Chinese class. She practices the texts of her books and rhymes like “Toe. Piggy, piggy, wee wee, home.”
Yesterday she was saying, “Heiw, heiw, heiw,” when she suddenly started crying. I assumed she’d pulled her own hair. She had never pulled it that hard before, but she seemed to be searching for things to do. I figured she’d drop off after a little of this. She kept crying. When she started blubbing, “Maddew, maddew,” her response to, “What’s the matter?” I decided to look. Nothing was amiss except one of her feet was poking through the crib slats. When I looked more closely, I found that she had put her foot through, pressed the sole against the wall, and then turned the foot ninety degrees pinching her ankle between the slats. Her Achilles tendon had compressed enough to really get the ankle jammed in there. I had to wrestle the foot back out, keep her lying down, and explain how it was still night night time so she could get to sleep within the usual half hour. Thank you for going to sleep, Delphine.
Delphine says:
Tephine
I see baby. – First self-built sentence.
hurt self – Frist reflexive construction. I overheard her practicing this in her crib right before she sat up and somehow smashed her nose on one of the slats. She hasn’t said it again.
Soo-eeee, soo-eee. Pig, pig, pig. – She’s been saying this on and off for a while, but it struck us as funny when she went into it while Bill was too slow with a piece of cheese.
gapuun = vacuum
muntin and mushin = muffin
sited! = excited
16 March 2006
While visiting friends on Saturday afternoon, I watched Delphine running to her daddy only to be stopped 3 ft short of him by the corner of a dining room table. Her legs continued forward, flying out from under her, and she went down on her back. The dent in her forehead swelled into a purple lump even before we could get the ice out for her to refuse.
That was pretty awful, but what made it worse was that she fell down two concrete steps at the park that morning landing on the other side of her forehead. She already had a round blue bruise marked with little red spots where the grit in concrete poked her skin. We could only call her lucky for not hitting the same spot twice. See for yourself.
I’m afraid both of these “accidents” happened while in her father’s care. Before we start any finger pointing, though, I will admit that she got her first goose egg while playing with me. I didn’t take much grief for it because it was magically hidden on the back of her head where she happens to have some hair. (Bill didn’t notice for days.) I can share an important lesson that I learned from that experience: when you’re playing with someone who’s just learned to walk, don’t pull her hood over her eyes and then tickle her under the chin. She’ll go down harder than the biggest tree in the forest.
In spite of all head injuries, Delphine says:
“Rain rain, go go” or “Rain rain, go wet.” It sounds like that and it could be her first misinterpretation of lyrics.
“Weady, set, GOOOO!”
“Ah did it,” although we never figured out what she did.
Bird Report
Since I switched the finch feeder for a suet feeder, we have hosted a new group of birds. I had hoped to bring in downy woodpeckers and red breasted nuthatches, but I haven’t seen or heard any yet. I am holding out hopes for the migration. The finches and sparrows are busy elsewhere these days. The bushtits have come out of the bushes and hang on the feeder 6 or 8 at a time. The flickers found the feeder on the same day the starlings found it. That was the only day we saw much starling action and I wonder if the bigger birds muscle them out on a regular basis. The flickers show up in twos and threes. The feeder only holds one at a time and the others wait around on the house or in the plum tree. Chickadees are still abundant. The chickadees will try anything, it seems. I have watched them making a go at the hummingbird feeder. Anyone eating outside should hang onto his sandwich.
I have been spotting low flying pairs of immature bald eagles at odd moments – while driving over the Montlake bridge or over our street while I am pushing Delphine to sleep in her stroller. Delphine saw her first eagle (immature) down at the lake on Monday. It flew near enough that she couldn’t have missed it. She confirmed the sighting by shouting EE-GO in response to my pointing and prompting. What a spectacular turkey. In comparison to all the usual birds, an eagle is like a freight train in flight.
Delphine doesn’t take any sass from the crows. She talks right back to them, “Caw, caw, CAW!”
09 March 2006
Bill has just returned from a two day trip to San Francisco. While he was gone, Delphine asked for him periodically. “Dada?” “Dada?” “Dada?” Although the uncomprehending questions could be expected, I was shocked when the action escalated to throwing one of my shoes into a full bathtub. The last time I’d seen anything like that, it was the nurse’s shoes being flushed in “Where’s Papa?” The coincidence was a lot to take in, but it’s worth knowing that the shoe gag was funnier than I remembered.
Delphine Report
Delphine has napped in her crib two days in a row! It isn’t easy, but she can do it.
Delphine says:
Who tat?
Cowdee = Courduroy
02 March 2006
I’ve been busy. Today, in the few hours that I had left to mark up the proof of an article that’s coming out in May, I found myself shooting the breeze on the telephone with K. Jakes, my dissertation advisor. I don’t get to catch up with her enough. Maybe if I wrote more articles and went to conferences and had a career… But I had to cut the whole thing short to run off and make lunch for someone who waits worse than I do.
You read right, up there: COMING OUT IN MAY. The article that was accepted on the day Delphine was born, pending minor revisions, is going to press.
Bill’s sister, Meg, came to see Delphine last weekend. We had our hopes up that she might decide to move here, but as soon as we saw L.A. Meg under cloudy skies, we let those hopes go. Anyhow she gave us a good excuse for an hour and a half of wretched excess at the Salty’s weekend brunch.
Although I had a good feed, I don’t live up to a buffet the way I used to. First I passed on the mimosa and then there was this short person at my elbow always grabbing my plate saying, “Yeah? Yeah?” I tried to go mouthful for mouthful with her, but I think she bested me by taking the first and last bites off of every plate.
We joined our friend Katie and Delphine’s classmate Jack bau bei at brunch. Jack is a week older than Delphine and he can already load a dinner fork with salmon and get it into his mouth. Way to go Jack. Delphine is still trying to grasp her spoon “pwoppy” with the concave side up.
Delphine Report
The other day I asked Delphine if she could say Delphine. She said, “Yeah, me-no.” Although she can say butternut, honey, sweetie, Kleine, Schatz and any number of things that people call her, she will not say Delphine.
I am interested by the choice of me-no in her response. This is an old expression in her repertoire that has puzzled me from the start. At first I thought it just sounded good to her and went on and on as in, “Maynomaynomaynomayno…” or “Nomenomenomenome…” This usage, however, makes me suspect that me-no has a literal meaning: it’s Delphine and she says no. I’m sure I’ve been avoiding the realization that she has built her identity on a foundation of negation. Where would we be after all if, in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with Me-no, and the Word was Me-no? Sitting around in the dark, that’s where.
Delphine says:
uh-hm dowie = open door Said while turning a key in her hand. Qualifies for first verb-object construction.
tee-pu = potato
ee-tow = thank you Used appropriately more and more.
tie-deh = tired (!!)
Meck = Meg
Jack
24 February 2006
Some mornings it would be better if everyone could stay in bed. While everyone rested up for another day, the things we would have found on the front walk might magically disappear. If you can bring yourself to look at the picture, you’ll notice that this appears to be a very healthy dead rat. Do you think that sharing some big dog’s food could give it that plumpness and glossy coat? Just wondering.
Delphine Report
Delphine continues to nap best under the influence of Tylenol. I have found a molar cutting through her top right gum. Its left side mate must be close behind.
Delphine says:
buckobuckobuckobucko… = a chant for buckle or booger depending on the context
wiew = where? not to be confused with WEE-O WEE-O for whale.
canky = cranky When the nanny asked her if she was fussy one morning, Delphine tried to say “fussy” and then offered “canky” instead.
16 February 2006
My favorite song today is Helicopter by M. Ward.
Bill was in London for a week. While I started reading Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson,” Bill ate a chop in one of Johnson’s haunts in London. I think he mentioned something about sitting in Johnson’s place. I’ve added this to my list of things that are wrong with this world.
My mother came to visit while Bill was away. Except for the horrible banana incident, she and Delphine had a great time. I asked my mother to give Delphine bites off a banana. It was ok to give her big bites, she liked big bites. The next thing I know, Delphine is standing on the stairs gagging with a huge wad of banana stuck to the roof of her mouth. She sat down, gagged some more while trying to chew, and then threw up. The banana stayed stuck to the roof of her mouth, and after a minute Delphine got it down. She has not eaten a banana since.
In my mother’s version of the story, Delphine jumped into the banana while biting down. Given Delphine’s energetic interpretation of standing still, this is entirely possible. I wonder, though, because my mother’s version of the story might not have included the crackers that preceded the banana if I hadn’t noticed them splattered on the floor.
We are now weaning Delphine from the steady flow of graham and animal crackers. She says “cackew” hopefully all day long. She is not completely out of luck, because her Tuesday nanny, Beate, is also free handed with the crackers. I can tell because Delphine eats about half her usual lunch on Tuesdays. Since Beate has grandchildren, I suspect that this is a grandma effect.
Bill has left today for three days in Utah. He’s sitting on a discussion panel at a conference. He gets credit for being a presenter, but doesn’t have to come up with a presentation. Some life, huh? I’ll keep knocking off a few pages of the Johnson each night before total exhaustion sets in.
Delphine Report
Delphine gives herself time outs now. She figured out that she gets a time out for ripping the oven door open, but also made the connection between her defiance and the time out. When she takes her shoes and socks off in the car while I say, “No, don’t take those off,” she tells me “Time out! Time out!” I have tried to reassure her that she is a good girl, but that has led to the random time out, a conversational “Time out” apropos to nothing. We suspect that the random time outs are ordered when she’d like to hear what a good girl she is because she parrots us saying, “Goo gih, goo gih.”
Delphine must have passed some subtle linguistic threshold because I have been speaking in the first person again since Monday.
02 February 2006
We survived the trip down to Portland, and I specifically mean the trip there. Bill insisted that we go despite Delphine’s steadily worsening sleep patterns. I was completely worthless by Thursday. On Friday evening I called and begged him to come home after her fourth time out. (Pulling my hair until I could pry her hands away, twice hanging off the chair that she will one day flip onto herself, finally ripping the oven door open. Some children get tired and hysterical; Delphine gets bloody minded.) When he got here, we ate our own dinner and started packing.
It took f o r e v e r. The only sign of tiredness that Delphine showed was that she spent more time in the horizontal than we normally see. She rolled around and did full body kicks on our bed and on the floor with her stuffed animals. Tylenol for suspected teething pain and the car ride finally knocked her out.
I was so mad I couldn’t sleep until well past Olympia. Why were we going anywhere when I hadn’t slept well in a week? Bill was going to drive off the road and kill us all.
Bill didn’t sleep until long after we got to Portland. He also went out with Delphine at 6 am and let me sleep until 8. We had a coffee shop breakfast and made it to our 10 am ticket time to see the Hesse exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. Of course we had to take a 10 block cab ride to get there because Delphine, who would stay up all week if we let her, can’t stand driving rain.
At the exhibit, Bill showed me the one thing I remember well, a dinner plate with a scene of a young man who, with the aid of cupid and a slide projector, is showing scandalous pictures to a young woman. One more example of how pornography is always at its best when conveyed by the newest technology.
I can’t say whether the exhibit was good or not. I don’t think it lived up to my expectations. I had hoped for more Holbeins, maybe some Dürers, I guess. The two dimensional work seemed pretty thin and that’s what might have interested Delphine. She wasn’t allowed to unload the chests of silver or send the Faberge eggs skittering into the far corners of the galleries, so what were we doing there anyhow?
That night we ate dinner at my cousin, Lou Ann’s, house. I’ve heard rumors that Lou Ann is a good cook and Bill and I are happy to confirm this idle talk. We had a peaceful dinner while Delphine slept in her car seat parked in a nearby bedroom. When she woke up for her own dinner, she was sweeter than cream pie. Lou Ann heightened her mood with a big bag of animal crackers. Delphine kept each hand loaded with a cracker while Lou Ann explained, “You can do whatever you want at my house because I’m not your mom.” I expect that Lou Ann will be a favorite.
On Sunday we drove home via Mt. St. Helens. We tried to, at least, and we made enough of a detour to really ruin Delphine’s long afternoon in the car. When will we remember that the weather in the mountains is a lot like the weather at sea level only worse? If it’s raining sideways and the rivers are swelling dangerously close to the interstate, then probably it’s snowing sideways above 2000 feet.
We arrived home safe on Sunday evening thanks again to Bill. It was a good trip despite the bad start. Since Saturday, Delphine has been sleeping a little more than usual, which helps me to see everything in a better light. If you get to the Hesse exhibit in Portland, tell me how it was. I’d like to have something to remember for having seen it.
Delphine says:
Taaah ME! = time out
PUTA = post office. After she shouted that eight times in the car on the way, I decided not to tell her where we were when we went in to buy stamps.
TWO, TWO, TWO = one, two, three.
Wammy = Lou Ann
25 January 2006
I filled the car with gas and got cash last Friday. The espresso maker at our local coffee shop was down on Monday. Do I need to continue?
Delphine says:
coona = corner (where you stop to hold mama’s hand)
dowa = stroller
tah chee = cheetah
mook (like book) = milk
chooWE = Cheerios
wotch = orange
moot = moose chili
This brings us to what Delphine eats. Unlike her father, she eats cauliflower and American cheese. She prefers her squash soup with goat cheese, but is still tired of the soup.
We really have moose chili. My aunt brought us some moose meat from Alaska. Delphine says “moot” because she eats it. If she didn’t eat it, she’d say, “No!” or, sucking air after each word, “No * No* No*”. If I pushed it on her again, she’d say “NA ME NA ME NA ME NA ME DONE!” and slap the tray in front of her.
14 January 2006
The following is a selection of titles from Delphine’s cardboard library.
BOOM BOOM BOOM! = Mr. Brown can MOO! Can you?
Cahng = Carl Goes to Daycare
Key = Goodnight Gorilla
Mm mm mm = My Big Truck Book
Mommie = Are You My Mother?
Mon = One Hungry Monster
Pockie = There’s a Wocket in My Pocket
13 January 2006
Delphine Report
Without anyone ever having told her not to, Delphine puts beans in her ears.
Delphne says:
hep = help
want
eh hmm = oatmeal
bip = zip
Her favorite toy is a panda (pahna) although just last week she showed enough attachment to hold her eagle (EE go) close for a long walk in the stroller.
06
January 2006
Lance
visited. We had a party on New Year’s Day. I made Hoppin’
John or so I thought until I googled it and found that the main
ingredient is black-eyed peas. We had northern beans Hoppin’
Sumpinorother. I knew I didn’t have it quite right. I did
get the greens right so you know we’re all gonna be rich this year.
Lance left. The following day Puget Sound Energy replaced our gas
meter and shut off the gas while I was out for an hour. I spent
the rest of the day waiting around for the gas man to come back and
turn on the gas when he could check that none of our gas heated
appliances would blow up.
Delphine says:
She says at least a hundred things.
wee-o wee-o = whale
hwowie = flower
showie = shower
hwang (accompanied by a special Queen of England wave) =
Frank
woa = Laurel
ani = Wenxin Aji (really)
ee ow = ni hau
She discovered pockets in her pants yesterday and immediately started
asking where her keys were. Maybe they’re in her purse.
We’ll look for them just as soon as she gets one. In the mean
time, my mother should check her purse again.
26
December 2005
We
spent a
quiet Christmas at home. The main event of the morning was
beating the cookie crumbs out of the presents sent from home. Be
forewarned that all the Scotch tape in the world won’t hold cookies in
a domed fruit tray from the grocery store -- not during the Christmas
mailing season, anyhow.
Today we fled the rain in Seattle for the rain in the Cascades.
We took a windy, wet walk around the far side of Rattlesnake Lake to
the drum garden at the Cedar River Watershed Learning Center.
Delphine complained a lot more this year. Driving rain doesn’t
agree with her yet.
21
December 2005
Be
careful
what you wish for. Things got interesting within 24 hours of my
last post. It cost me over $100 dollars to put the Christmas
mailing in the mail at the post office. That’s over and above the
cost of the cards bought on sale last January except for one box bought
last week (who knows, maybe you received a full price card), the cost
of the stamps, the cost of the babysitter so I could write the letter,
and the emotional cost of Delphine hanging on my clothes while I
stuffed envelopes. Had I saddled up the stroller and pushed the
cards to the mailbox, I might still be driving around with an expired
registration sticker on my license plate.
I was busted less than four blocks from home. I’m still kicking
myself for not being quick enough to ask if I could go home and start
over. I just sat there and, when asked, I dutifully searched the
glove box, ash tray, and my wallet for the current insurance card that
was at home on the kitchen counter with my registration sticker.
The latter fine can be waived, the officer told me, if I call a phone #
and send my proof of insurance wherever the person on the other end of
the line tells me to send it. “IF you have insurance,” he said.
Thank you, Mr. Motorcycle Cop. Merry Christmas and long live the
bureaucracy. Hope the 20 degree weather doesn’t hang around until
July.
I went home and started over. Delphine waited in the car while I
went in and found the sticker. The sticker instructions told me
to apply to a clean surface, not to apply in freezing weather, and not
to moisten the back. Too bad. Delphine waited while I got
the rubbing alcohol and filled a zip lock bag with hot water.
Sitting in the street, I cleaned the surface, unfroze it with the bag
of hot water, applied the sticker, and gave it 30 seconds more of hot
water bag weather. Delphine waited really well.
We made it to the post office on our second try. There was an
open parking spot right outside the door. I got out, whipped open
the stroller, and started loading cards into the basket from the
passenger side of the car. As I stood up from the stroller and
bent back into the car, I smacked my forehead on the top corner of the
open car door.
I said a very bad thing. Even though I felt good saying it in my
outside voice in front of the United States Post Office during the
Christmas rush, in front of my baby daughter, who still uses “bump” and
“boom” and “OW” for such occasions, I cannot repeat here what I
said. I leaned against the car with my head in my hands to
collect myself.
Someone started saying, “Ma’am? Ma’am?” I looked and there
was a woman peeking around the back of my car. When she had my
eye, she said, “As my father used to say, ‘Did you knock some sense
into that head of yours?’” Without another word, after bringing
us both back into her childhood, the woman turned and went on her way
across the parking lot.
15
December 2005
Being a plot-seeking reader, I’d really like to come through for you
now that I’m in charge. We have a heavy frost this morning, but what
kind of material is that without a good pratfall? The sad truth
around here is that the plot can’t be detected from week to week and
the live-action set pieces don’t just land in front of the house every
day.
Daily life is slowing down and speeding up for the holidays all at
once. Delphine’s classes (music and Mandarin) are out for two
weeks leaving us with a lot of time on our hands to start doing little
things. We can go buy the Sudafed that I’ve needed for several
days. We can hurry up and stand in line at the post office for
stamps. We can wrack our brains to think of something besides a
chocolate bar to give Bill for Christmas. Delphine won’t be much
help here because she thinks it’s a big deal to give Bill a piece of
bread instead of throwing it on the floor.
Last Friday night Bill and I got a babysitter for the company party and
then decided we were too tired to face the crowd. We went to
dinner and were happy to find that we had enough conversation left in
us to last through dessert. Our exchange would not have been so
pleasant had I been standing in the reportedly long lines for food at
the company party.
09
December 2005
Ho hum. Our Thursday
nanny quit yesterday. This may compound the trouble with a weekly
report – there isn’t much to report in the first place and now I have
less time to invent something interesting.
Delphine went to her first
rock-n-roll concert on Sunday. Because we combined the short
concert with lunch, she was ready to do something else by the time the
show started. Two songs and a sparkling backdrop held her
attention before she had to start running around as little kids
will. We got out of there. Next time, no lunch for us.
It’s almost Thanksgiving, about time for me to get this page running
for a Holiday letter announcement. Just trying to prove here that
I can update things.
20 November 2005
Delphine took off running
today. Perhaps now she’ll nap. All the panting and laughing
made her thirsty.
20 September 2005
Welcome to eggsntoast, homepage to Bill, Erica, and Delphine. Steve
Toepfer, my friend in good times and graduate school, has brought us to
you in great style. Thank you Steve.
As soon as I learn to handle the updates myself, we’ll have pictures.
Lately we have only been taking
pictures of Delphine, but Bill and I will try to remember to get in the
way of the lens once in a while.
We are recently returned from a
two week vacation at the Tiedemann summer home in southwest Michigan.
Although it felt more like taking care of a baby all the time than a
vacation, we did break up our routine. We got to go to the beach AND
swim even if just one at a time.
My mother saw to it that I had
three healthy meals a day including dessert, dessert, and dessert
stopping my rapid decline into two dimensions.
We also took a short trip to
Cleveland where we visited Bill’s aunts and uncle as well as two of his
cousins. Delphine was a good girl and handled the betrayal of a 5 hour
car ride during prime afternoon play time as well as could be hoped
for. I-80 has some nice rest stops with very interesting truck
assemblages. Rmmm rm rm mmmmm.
Bill’s mother, brother, and niece
also visited us in Michigan. Sophia Way taught Delphine to eat corn on
the cob. I hadn’t imagined it possible, but 3 ½ teeth are
apparently enough.
By handing her a peach after lunch
one day, my mother taught Delphine to eat peaches. I said, “She’s going
to throw that on the floor.” Instead, she took it in both hands and
smashed a bite out of it. The peach never hit the floor because
Delphine ate the whole thing. After that, she ate peaches for dessert.
What do I know about babies anyhow?
We’re getting ready for Delphine’s
first cocktail party – I mean birthday party. Saturday the 24th we
celebrate a year with Delphine.
