A trip to the Children's Museum

So, changes are abound in the Miller household as of late. I was offered a full-time teaching position at a middle school in Seattle, so we're going to be getting into the swing of the daycare thing. She'll mainly be going part-time, after December, since Al will only have to go into UW on M/W/F, but still a big change for all of us. It makes me a bit sad, I've had to fight off crying a few times, realizing that we're on our last few days together at home, in the routine we've had since she was born. But it's exciting, and it will be good for Rhia to be around other kids and learn some structure. This also means that we'll probably be trying to move into the city and thus closer to both of our jobs in the near future, which is, again, exciting and scary.

In honor of our last full week of Mom-and-Daughter-At-Home-Time, I took her to the Children's Museum at the Seattle Center today. They have a special Sesame Street exhibit about the body this fall, so I figured she'd love it. She did. It was great fun, and she fell asleep as soon as I put her in the car on the way home, didn't really wake up when I moved her to her crib, and is still napping, two hours later. So, some pictures, since who knows when I'll have time to update again after I head back to the grind (the first two are just for fun, the rest are of the museum):

Rhia loves to color. This picture, I realized, is misleading, because it looks like she's colored in Cookie Monster very well. It was a picture I'd started, and she "finished." Although I'd love to say she can already color that well. :) Regardless, she's really good at holding writing utensils correctly.

Touchdown Colts!! We are avidly Anti-Tom Brady. It's never too early to teach the kiddo how to cheer correctly, and in the correct attire.

Baking at the Children's Museum.

In the African Village exhibit--this is really on here for Teresa, if she ever gets back to the internet and checks this from her actual African Village.

Driving a mini-Metro bus. She also took a pot lid this morning (before we left) and was running around the house going "beep! beep!" and pretending it was a steering wheel. And so it starts...luckily she hasn't asked for the car keys. Yet.

Hanging out at 123 Sesame Street. She wouldn't sit on the steps, but preferred to stroll around the landing.

This was probably the coolest part for her--they have a life-sized "Elmo's World" replication (which means nothing to people that don't have small children that watch Sesame Street. Trust me, it's like the mecca of toddlerdom). Elmo is her absolute favorite, and she was just in seventh heaven being in Elmo's house. The thing I didn't get a picture of (because it required too much of my help) that she may have loved more was this Super-Grover jumping thing--she also loves Grover and asks for him by name.

so pigtails seem to have a demonizing effect

I've come to the conclusion that pigtails are directly related to how devious Rhia is on a given day. If I put pigtails in her hair, she is a monster. I'm not sure if it's the odd resemblance to horns, or if her head is just stretched a little too tightly, but something triggers demon Rhia. They're just so darned cute, I can't help myself. It's just exciting to have a daughter with hair, as up until recently she was my little baldy.

Showing me her teeth. She is obsessed with her teeth, brushing her teeth, showing us her teeth, etc. We're trying to instill good dental hygiene early, as it's been close to 10 years since either of us went to a dentist. I realized this while on the phone to my grandmother yesterday. We're not very good influences.

Chairs are apparently not for sitting. Who would have thought?

I had to work on Halloween afternoon/evening, so we didn't trick-or-treat or really do much dressing up. I was pretty down about it and felt like such a terrible mama that Al dressed Rhia up as a Giant's fan while I was in the shower that day. While it's not terribly authentic and does not match, it was pretty cute. We gave her a little Giant's bat that Al has, in an attempt to maybe get some pictures, but that experiment came to an abrupt end when she started swinging it at everything in sight. Safety first.

Rhia is very much my child and loves sugar. I read an article recently that said what a mother eats while she's pregnant affects what tastes their babies have. Apparently my diet of sour patch kids and lemon drops didn't encourage a love of broccoli. We've recently discovered that dum dums are a great bribery tool, so long as we're prepared to deal with the inevitable insanity and crash that follows.

She's getting really into trying to dress herself in whatever she can find. Here she'd found one of Al's flannel shirts. She ran around in it for awhile. She's also obsessed with shoes, hers or ours, and I've had to hide my shoes with laces for fear of her cutting off circulation to a limb. Her Bubbi visited last weekend and bought her a pair of Hello Kitty rain boots, which have also been hidden until we need to go out in the rain, because she insisted on wearing them everywhere and I couldn't take any more bruises on my thighs.

Hats are also a new obsession.

She's just getting to be so grown-up. Here she is playing with a toy turtle her Bubbi sent her from Hawaii. She's also very flexible. She's started to do some yoga with me when I do it, but her attention span doesn't last as long as I'd hope--she's already better at some poses than me, but I'm going to say the extra joints toddlers have might contribute to that.

All-in-all things are going well. We had sun yesterday for the first time in weeks, only to have it replaced today by torrential downpour. I'm regretting my decision to not go to the zoo while we had Vitamin D out. Al's mom came out last weekend to babysit, so we went and watched the disaster that is the Seahawks this year. We all keep busy, especially since Rhia's going everywhere at a dead run.

Yogurt and Independence

As I'm typing this, on a crispy Seattle Saturday morning, Rhia has yogurt all over her face, hands, jammies, and I think there may be some in her hair. There is no yogurt on her spoon. There was at one point, I'm sure, as the yogurt is halfway gone and it's not all on her person, but for now, it's a messy process. Until a couple of weeks ago I fed her yogurt in the morning, for the sake of simplicity (and probably my sanity, as well). Last week, she decided that she wants to do things for herself. Putting on coats and hats, eating, etc. It's been a messy week. We're no longer allowed to feed her things (unless of course we're having a snack that she seems to think she needs too, at which point she follows us around going "ahhhh, ahhh," with her mouth open. We're working on breaking this habit and replacing it with "please").

She's getting independent. And busy. Every time I've taken her out for the last couple of weeks at least one person has called her "Miss Independent," and the women that run the kid's center at the gym where I do yoga call her "incredibly busy." They had to put away all of the little chairs yesterday because she kept standing up on them and trying to jump off. She's a daredevil. So imagine the two of us, at home with her on any given day. Unfortunately, fall in Seattle is rainy, so that means a lot of time inside. Heads may explode soon.

Despite the challenges that Miss Independent has created for us, I'm really proud of her. I love that she's sassy and independent, although I'll probably recant when she's 14. But for now, I think it's a good start for a modern women. :)

We're all doing well. Al is plugging away at school, I'm working a few days a week for a local winery, and Rhia is smarter than both of us combined. She's exploded with vocabulary, yet again, and she's very polite and lovey. Tantrums are abundant, but from what I gather that's normal for a 1 1/2 year old. She's started to say, "I love you," which is all types of melt-worthy.

And, on that note, the yogurt container is empty. Time for Operation Clean-Up. This might take awhile.

Just for fun, I dug up a picture from last October. I think she's changed a bit, yes? :)

Feminist hippy in training.

Cool.

An Apple a Day

Today I had a moment with my daughter. She had just woken up from her nap, and, being the food addict I am, I sat down with her and her cup of milk to have a snack. Since we live in Washington and have abundant access to apples this time of year, our snack du jour was just that. A delightful Pink Lady apple. We sat on the couch, apple in hand. I took a bit, she leaned over and said "ahhhh, pees," which is, sadly, not her way of indicating a readiness to potty train, but her way of saying "hey, can I have some of your apple, please?" Being the mother of a toddler, I don't actually get food to myself anymore, so I held the apple in front of her and she took a big bite. Little did I know, but that bite of Pink Lady was going to bring me to the point of near tears, for a number of reasons.

Two years ago I was miserably sick. Miserably probably doesn't do it justice, but I may be a bit melodramatic about the whole endeavor. I was about eight weeks into a pregnancy that was going to, by its end, feel eternal. I couldn't eat, and what I did eat never sat very well. I spent most of my time forcing down lemon Gatorade and trying not to be sick on my 5th graders (which, thankfully, I succeeded in doing. Or not doing. Whichever is grammatically correct to mean that I was not sick on them).

During this time period of my life I had a friend who was about 5 months ahead of me pregnancy-wise. She had spent the summer in the same type of miserable state that I was currently in, and was thus incredibly sympathetic to my maladies. She kept, in her classroom, a little refrigerator full of juice boxes and snacks. One day after school, when I was to that point of miserable starvation and nausea that only a pregnant woman understands, she offered me a Pink Lady apple. At first, I didn't like the idea. I didn't like food, period, at this point. However, she encouraged me to try it, suggesting that it might make me feel a bit better. And it did. I bit into that amazingly sweet yet tart apple. As I ate, I began to feel better. Something about the apple's sweetness and sustenance had made me feel less sick, which was something that I was beginning to believe was never going to happen again.

For this moment (and many others) in my pregnancy I am eternally grateful to this friend. This moment stands out because it started a habit that I kept up for the remaining seven months until my daughter was born. Every day, no matter what, I ate a Pink Lady apple. Even when it was February and they were $3.99/lb, I ate those apples. They helped my morning sickness, they curbed the insatiable appetite that was to magically replace the nausea after about 25 weeks, and they reminded me that, even though I might have been over dramatic and miserable, there are things in this world that can make us feel better. I probably didn't *need* those apples. But I did need them.

So, when I sat down with my daughter and shared my apple, I realized that I haven't really not had to share my food in over two years, and this made me well up a little. When I was pregnant she was virtually parasitic (and I mean that in the most endearing way), when she was an infant she sought nourishment from me, and now, as a small child, she is still stealing my damned food. But I am alright with that, because there are few things in this world that can match the look that crossed her face when she took her first bite of real apple. It was almost a vague sort of recognition combined with utter joy, because they are really that good. There are few things that can match the contentment of sitting with this little person, who is a part of me and part of someone I love, and watching her discover something that she's actually known since before she opened her eyes. There are few things that can match watching her, and realizing that the pea-sized blob on the ultrasound that made me so sick is now a running and jumping toddler. Few things match knowing that the still-unseen entity that kicked my ribs when I ate those apples because they were sweet and sugar-filled is that little girl.

Few things can match the magic of just sitting with my daughter, enjoying an afternoon snack.

Catch-up time

So it's been awhile since I updated this--it's been a busy summer, despite being pretty mellow. If that can possibly make sense. Anyways. Rhia is growing leaps and bounds daily, I can't even keep up with it all. Some of her cool tricks that are amazing us at the moment include:

-Singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." She doesn't sing them perfectly, of course, but she rocks and does the general tune and tries to get the words out. It's amazing.

-Using more words in general. She's really good with please and thank you, we're working on excuse me, and she uses about 20 new words a day, I swear. Maybe not that many, but quite a few. At least a few times a day she says a word we've never heard her say before. She's recently started saying her name, but she says "Nannon," instead of Rhiannon.

-Mimicking us. Today she was walking around the house with a paper towel washing off everything she could find, including my pant leg.

-Running. Usually to get away from us when she's doing something she shouldn't be. Ahem.

-She's a master at animal noises, except that for some reason right now everything says "neigh," horse or not. In general, though, she's got those down pretty well.

-She cheers for the Mariners. Seriously. It started when Mom and Mark came out to visit, and we went to a Mariner's game. She loved all of the clapping, and after that she clapped whenever she saw the Mariner's logo. Now, she only has to hear the words "Mariners" or "Ichiro" and she runs around cheering "Mariners!" and clapping. She actually stopped playing the other day JUST to watch the Mariners segment of sports on the news. Then she resumed play as soon as it was over. She stops and watched the games if they're on. I think we have a lifelong fan on our hands.

-She loves to spin around in circles and yell "whoa!" as she's doing it, then stagger around like a drunken gnome, giggling. It makes us giggle, too.

-She has a video of the "chicka chicka boom boom" book that she loves loves loves to watch. She'll run around the house saying "boom boom" and then leads us to the t.v. to turn it on. we only watched it 4 times today, so we're cutting down.

She's just doing so well. Into everything and exhausting, but I think that's about par for a toddler.

It's been a fun and busy summer....lots of visitors, plus a trip to Montana. Al heads back to school/work on the 30th (really late start for UW this year), and I'm back to part-time subbing/hopefully working in some tasting rooms for a couple of local wineries on the weekends.

Some pictures to chronicle our summer adventures (they're not in any real order, because I'm too lazy to reorder them--I'll try to date them relatively accurately, though):

Taken today, after she discovered her box of teddy grahams out of the diaper bag. This is the "oh, the box is empty now," face.

Taken a couple of weeks ago, playing in jammies. She just looks so happy.

At Al's Grandpa Joe's 80th Birthday party, all dressed up.

Hanging out at Great-Grandma and Grandpa's house sporting her Grandpa Mark's hat. She's really into hats.

Checking out her Great-Grandpa Joe on his birthday.

Early August? She drives the thing backwards into furniture.

At the Mariner's game with Grandma Julie.

In Montana--Rhia, Me, Great-Grandpa, Great-Grandma, and Ashley (her birthday buddy/second-cousin)

time for a haircut!

Things are going well here.  We're roasting (in Seattle, who would have thought?) and temperatures are expected to hit 100* here this week.  Thankfully the landlords did fix our AC a couple of weeks ago.

We've been busy, Kordy came out with Monte and Rachel last week and we went to the zoo and showed them around, and next week Uncle JJ will be here to stay for a bit.  Last night Rhia got her first haircut, because here hair was always in her eyes.  I thought I'd post some before/after pictures. :-)  Enjoy!

So the first two have nothing to do with the haircut, but I thought they were cute.

This is how Rhia is laughing now.  She throws her head back and giggles.  It's incredibly cute.  And have I mentioned she's a little monkey these days?  Climbs all over everything--I'm going to have grey hair before 26.

BEFORE!

AFTER!  She can see!  (and is not amused)

I like this picture, because it's the first picture of her that I've looked at and actually felt like she looked like me.  Narcissistic, I know.  But it's sort of cool to see yourself in your child.

in the good old summertime

It's been awhile since I updated, so, you know, about time.  Things here are going right along.  At the end of June we found out that Al got to keep his funding, so we decided to stay put for another year.  I'm searching for a job (still), and I've branched out from just looking in classrooms, so we'll see.  I've applied for a couple of jobs with the Y, PBS, and some other various education-field jobs that aren't teaching.

In Rhia news, she's doing great.  She was pretty sick for a week or two with a nasty bug, but is doing much better now.  She's growing like a weed--she can't just walk under the table anymore--it now involves ducking.  She loves water and playing with her water table outside, she's getting pretty good at "coloring" (a.k.a. scribbling all over with whatever writing utensil she can find), and she is picking up new words left and right.  I can't even keep up with the new words she has anymore.  She loves to help around the house--when I clean I giver her the duster and she walks around "dusting" everything.  She's getting good at feeding herself with utensils--she gets to feed herself the last half of her yogurt every morning, and not all of it winds up in her hair.  She loves to play chase and watch Elmo with us.  She helps water the flowers on the porch now, and she is getting really good at animal noises.

A couple of weeks ago Rhia and I went out to Long Beach with Auntie Amanda....this is about when Rhia got sick, so we had to come home early, but she loooooved the beach and the ocean.

In a Beatles dress and a Paul McCartney vest.  Hip.

She loves this chair, and will actually sit in it and read now, not just crawl all over it.

Yesterday we went to Ellensburg for my friend Michelle's wedding.  We sat with the Sander crew, and Rhia and Elke had a great time chasing each other around the reception.  They were very cute, even if Elke thought Rhia was a pet.  :-)  (see below)

A fashionable lunch in the U-District.

summer fun

Summer is almost upon us....Al finishes up this weekend, and after that we'll be wandering into an unknown abyss.  We're not sure where we're going or what we're doing yet, but we'll figure it out in the next few weeks. Hopefully. 

Rhia is just changing so much every day.  We went to her 1-year well-baby, she weighed 21 pounds and was 29 inches tall.  So she's tripled her birth weight (yay!) and is over a foot taller than she was at birth.  50th percentile for everything again, except head circumference, but that's always been a bit bigger.  I'll say it's to hold her exceptional brain.  The doctor told us that Rhia is "incredibly bright" because of her language skills--she can do 4 signs and says a whole bunch of words.  She even has a sentence (and we have witnesses to attest to it!  seriously!)  I know it sounds far-fetched, but when she hands you something she says, "here you go."  She'll also say nana (banana), woof (anytime she sees a dog/hears a dog/hears the word dog), and a few others I think I've mentioned before.  She babbles ALL of the time.   

 She's walking like crazy and follows me everywhere.  If I leave a room I just have to ask her to come with me and she toddles along.  She doesn't crawl at all anymore, which is great when we go somewhere.  We went to the waterfront park for a picnic last weekend and she did laps around the grass.  

Still a little ham (as seen in a picture below), loves to be chased/chase, and loves to play "babyzilla" and knock down block towers.  She gives hugs now and pats you on the back when she does it.  She's gotten really into affection lately and loves to hug/kiss/snuggle with everyone.  Cats included, although I don't think they like it as much as she does.  When we go out on the front porch she'll walk around and smell all of the flowers in my flowerpots, which is just heart-meltingly adorable.  She's also learning to help clean up toys and her high chair tray after dinner (thanks, Aunt Kordy!).  She's just such a sweet, kind little girl.  We are so incredibly fortunate.

I think I emailed/Facebooked most of the recent pictures, but here are a few, because, well, what's a post without a few pictures.....

showing off

She's just such a little person now.

showing off

oops

Happy Birthday Rhiannon!

Yesterday was Rhia's first birthday!  I will say more pictures in the next day or so, but I am fried from birthday yesterday and going into Seattle today, so, for now....my baby is a toddler.  Quick comparison--May 30, 2008 vs. May 30, 2009.  It's amazing what a year will do:

And some birthday pictures--the cakes ones should be in the opposite order, but I'm too tired to fix it--if you go from the bottom up it makes sense:

look ma, no hands!

3 days before her first birthday, I'll go ahead and say she's walking a bit.  Not a ton, but she'll go from place to place for more than just a few steps on her own.  EEEK!

almost a year

I've been getting really sentimental lately about Rhia being almost a year old.  I just remember a year ago so well, and it doesn't feel like it was all that long ago.  It's crazy how much she's grown.  Expect a sappy, "oh my baby's one," post in the near future.  I just remember waiting for her and being so impatient and uncomfortable--amazing how much a year will change.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty rough for all of us.  Last Tuesday Rhia came down with a really high fever that tylenol wasn't bringing down, so we wound up in the ER at midnight.  They gave her some motrin and some more tylenol, and by the time we saw the doctor her fever was gone.  He diagnosed her with a viral bug and sent us home.  The next day she spiked a fever again, but we were less worried since he'd said it could happen.  By Thursday the fever still wasn't gone, so I called her regular doctor's office, and they wanted us to come in to check it out.  Again, by the time we got there, fever gone.  I was starting to feel a bit silly.  They agreed with the viral bug and sent us home yet again.  The doctor mentioned something called roseola, which is a high fever for a few days followed by a rash.  Friday she broke out in a horrible rash all over her body and her fever was gone.  So, apparently she had roseola.  It's really common, from what I understand a lot of kids will get it, so no big deal.  About the time her rash started to disappear she caught a cold, so for the last few days she's been sniffly and cranky.  To top it off she's cutting about 4 teeth, so she hasn't been sleeping well or in a very good mood.  I miss my happy, content,  smiley, mellow baby.  Her top two front teeth are through, but her gums are all lumpy and whatnot, so there are more on the way.  To make things better,  Al's funding at UW is still up in the air and not looking good, and school districts are laying off teachers rather than hiring, so we're worried about that.

Milestone-wise she's taken off--she'll take a couple of steps towards one of us, but she's not too sure about it.  Usually if we let go of her hands she just collapses and crawls away.  She's gotten really exploratory, crawling under the table, through chair legs, all over the house, etc.  She keeps me on my toes all day.  She's using  a lot of words.  She's added "kitty" to her vocabulary as of late.  She loves her kitties.  She's gotten really affectionate, blowing kissing and giving hugs.  She really loves going to the park and playing on the swings and the slide.  She's also started to sign "all done," in addition to "more" and "milk."  I'm not sure that the sign for all done is the real sign, but it gets the job done--she just started copying me sort of dusting my hands off and saying "all done," and it's turned into her sign for it.  She tries to say "all done," we think--it sounds almost like it, has the correct number of syllables, and she only does it when she signs "all done."  She's very big into communication skills, it's pretty neat.

She was up to 20lbs when they weighed her the doctor the other day, so she's gained a tiny bit of weight in the last couple of months--I guess only a little over a pound, but she's a whole lot more mobile, so I'm not too worried.  She's gotten pretty tall lately, too, so I'm excited for her 1-year appointment to see how tall she is now.  She's starting to lose a bit of that baby chub--so sad.  She's also completely weaned now and using cups, much to her mama's relief.

And some pictures, that are relatively recent.  Since she's been sick we haven't had many photo ops.

Still working on mastering cutlery.

pulling all of her pants out of their basket for Mom to clean up.

Getting into the candy.  That's my girl!

Too cool for school.

Fine-tuning those walking skills.