Not a good 12-step program

I suppose it is time to invest in a gate.
Or, would full-body armor be going too far?

What we're thankful for

Looking back on an extended Thanksgiving weekend and Elise's first real road trip to Chicago (Sorry, Duluth, you're soooo last month), we're thankful that:
-- Elise fell asleep as we pulled out of the driveway Wednesday night. In just over 6 hours of highway time, she was awake long enough to down a bottle and chat for a bit.
-- There was plenty of tasty turkey and sides on Thanksgiving. Oh, and that there were cranberries. I think you might as well cancel the holiday if you don't serve cranberries.
-- The child, who is eating with her fingers, sampled turkey, potatoes and cranberries -- and continued her streak of displaying no apparent food allergies.
-- We got to spend some time with George, who shared a few more classic stories that I'm still chuckling about.
-- She slept soundly that first night at my Aunt Renee and Uncle Fritz's place because, quite frankly, we were beat when we pulled into town about 12:45 a.m. (We've learned that as new parents we have trouble staying awake past midnight. Make that 11 p.m.)
-- Elise only was awake and irritable for about three hours of each of the subsequent three nights because of the pain of a growth spurt. Why are we thankful for that? Well, it could have been four hours a night. In reality, it was a rough few nights only when you compare them to recent months, when she has slept through the night.
-- We woke up at 6 a.m. Black Friday because of a baby and not because we were in pursuit of a Zhu Zhu.
-- We had a great day with some relatives we see just once a year. For me, the post-Thanksgiving soiree marks the beginning of the holiday season.
-- The annual jaunt across Chicago to visit our friends Mike and Anne and their kids continued this year. Good pals, good times. (And yes, you two, we promise to crash at your place next year.)
-- The Wentes traveled in caravan to Chicago -- we in one vehicle, my parents in another -- because as much as we enjoy time with my folks, we do not need to spend six hours down and six hours back pretending we're in a Shanghai subway at rush hour.
-- We drove instead of hopped a flight. Why, you ask? Well, you can't lob poo-filled diapers at the "Pay Toll Ahead" sign from an airplane.
-- We were able to share (show off?) a very happy baby with family and friends.
-- Aunt Renee pulled it off once again, making it an enjoyable stay.
-- Elise sometimes is all about the simple experience, like sitting in a rest area lobby for 10 minutes with Dad while Mom waited in the car. That gave the parents a much-needed break from each other during the drive home.
-- We only needed a short break from each other on the way home, because Wisconsin rest areas are only interesting for 10 minutes -- kind of like Wisconsinites.
-- We pulled into the driveway Sunday afternoon thinking, "Hey, that wasn't so bad. Actually, it was a good trip."

The family on Thanksgiving.

The ladies.

All eyes on the newest member of the family.

Huh. I wonder where Elise gets it.

The Royal Family may have the throne, but we learned recently that the Winters have the "formal bib," a familial relic worn by Anni and her two sisters at holidays when they were young. It was given to Elise this year and, judging by how snug it was around her neck, only this year.
I kept thinking the frilly collar was mashed potato that missed the target.

She got a kick out of riding in a swing at a park near Mike and Anne's house.
We got a kick out of her hair whispies.

Top Chef

Ahh, cheese, she's getting old

We reached another milestone this morning: Elise is starting to dabble with real food.
"The cottage cheese in the fridge is for Elise, not you," Anni said.
That's fine. Just don't ask me to share ice cream yet.

Mobile baby -- almost

Elise hit the 8-month mark late last week and to celebrate she crawled to the front door, opened it and made a break for the hinterland. She only came back because she forgot to bring extra diapers.
OK, so not quite. However, we predict she will crawl within a month. Which means we have a month to start baby-proofing the house. We will not turn this place into a rubber room, but those steep stairs -- yeah, they're getting a gate. Or two.

More Pollack than Monet

That's our daughter: jaw-droppingly fascinated by a plastic paintbrush.

The great pumpkin

Credit goes to my dad's cousin, Leslie, for the pumpkin costume. Good thing Halloween comes in October, because this little one would have burst through the feet of the pumpkin outfit if the holiday was a month from now.

Hey, look, it's the 21st century Village People. OK, so it's the costumed cousins. Elise is with Jacob, wearing a homemade Kyle Busch costume (Jacob is a fan of NASCAR -- and M&Ms.) and Randy, outfitted as a Transformer. (I should know the name, but was too busy with He-Man and Legos as a kid to watch Transformers.) You know who's bringing the Halloween fright? Rainie, Jenee and Greg's dog, dressed as a banana.

Now that's a Nuk.

Time -- It's not on our side

In a house where sleep is coveted more than ever before, the end of daylight savings time sounded like a welcome event.
Set the clocks back an hour. Swell idea. An extra hour of sleep for the parents, more rest for the baby. Everyone's happy come Sunday morning, right?
Well...
Turns out that even if you set all of the wall clocks in the house back an hour, the baby's biological clock doesn't spin backward as easily.
We woke up this morning thinking it was 6:30 because that's what the clock said and I had made sure to set the alarm clock back an hour last night. Elise woke up and did fine for the first half hour or so. Then we realized that, no, it in fact was 5:30 a.m. when we got up because somehow the bedroom alarm clock got screwed up, while Elise actually woke up at her normal time, 6:30 a.m., or what would be her normal time if not for the end of daylight savings time, but that meant it was an hour earlier for us.
I still get confused trying to figure this out.
The end result after only a one-hour time change: A baby who spent most of Sunday tired and ticked off, and two exhausted parents who cannot figure out why a one-hour tweak got us all out of whack. (You can scratch the seven-time-zone-spanning family trip to Europe off the list for a few years.)
You know, some states do not recognize daylight savings time. That seemed ridiculous, but after today I'm thinking Minnesota ought to follow suit. And please, let's make that happen before spring, when we otherwise will have to figure out how to set alarm clocks and biological clocks to spring ahead.
I need a nap just thinking about that.

Random video

If you listen closely, you can hear Raffi in the background. Yep, Raffi.
More on music later.

e=mc(scam)

I remember one thing about guests shopping for kids' books at Target when I worked there way back when.
They either wanted a classic -- something like "Goodnight Moon" -- or they wanted the new and supposedly genius-producing book.
Well, I hope those seeking the latter have a receipt to go with their disappointment. Check this out.

Words to play by

Elise is well into the grab-anything-within-sight stage, so we're having to move plates, glasses, picture frames and other household items out of her reach.
She is particularly fond of reaching for the TV remote, the iPod and my cell phone.
In response, Anni came up with a good phrase, even if Elise does not understand it yet: "If it's black or gray, it's not for play."
Look around you and think about that for a moment; it makes perfect sense. In our house, that puts off-limits electronics and remotes, my camera, the phones and music equipment. Oh, and the black-handled Wusthof knives in the kitchen.
Yeah, I would say that's a good policy.

Old tradition, new additions

We made it a tradition: Anni and I would head out to the orchard each fall for apples -- and so Anni could tell stories of when she had worked at the orchard years earlier.
Several years passed and then we started inviting our pals Dan and Erin to wander with us among Regents and Cortlands. It always was a good time for the foursome, and I would get my share of apples, apple donuts and cider.
And then there were five.
Last year was Dan and Erin's daughter Avery's first apple expedition. Again, a good trip, and I got my fill of cider and donuts.
Now, there are six.
Today was the annual orchard trek. Considering that last weekend the ground was covered in snow and it was sleeting just a couple of days ago, today's highs in the upper 50s, sunshine and a breeze made for stellar conditions. The apples and donuts weren't bad either.
Elise would concur -- about the apples, at least. It was her first apple trip with Dan, Erin and Avery, and she spent most of the orchard visit gummin' a juicy Haralson.
The '09 expedition highlights:

Elise does not give up easily.

Camera flare from the sun. Darghh!

Four at six

Here are our favorites from Elise's requisite six-month photos.
OK, so technically they are seven-month shots -- by a day or two -- but the first attempt at home-studio photography didn't go well, so a second was needed. Why not do the second right after the first? Well, you have to wait for a seemingly impossible pairing: good natural lighting and a happy baby. She was quite happy -- until this photo shoot got old, as you'll see.
(A quick note: I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Maxine for the pumpkin hat. It's getting lots of use.)

Back to Old English -- and not the polish

A brief departure from normal blog topics:

One of the many anecdotes sure to be included in my yet-to-be-written-but-always-threatened childhood memoir is what my Dad would say when Bryan and I were verbally lazy and slangy: "English is such a wonderful language. Why don't you use it?"
I thought of that tonight after Anni strongly suggested that I drop the occasional use of lazy English on the blog, even if it's conversational and used for a certain effect.
"It belittles everything else you do on there," Anni said, protesting my recent use of the word "'cuz," among other grammatical nightmares.
Anyway, her point was well taken. In fact, I always thought of this as your go-to site for highbrow, scholarly passages. Consider, if you will, this literary gem from an entry about Elise's bath a few months ago:

Everything was going swimmingly -- until someone had a bowel movement in her bath chair. I told Anni that we're definitely parents now when we have an exchange like this:
"There's crap all over the bathtub," I said while cleaning the tub.
"Well, it's one less diaper to change," she said.

Highbrow, indeed. Now back to writing about the baby.

In one ear...

The photo does not suggest it, but for the past four days we have been caring for Captain Crankypants.
Elise just has been acting out of sorts. Happy one minute, unusually fussy the next. Content to play by herself if you tell her you're walking across the room, but royally peeved if you just get up and walk across the room. Drinks a bottle of formula, then insists on turning the bottle into a chew toy. Asleep for a few hours at night, then awake and screaming.
So at the clinic's urging, off we went Monday for a visit with Elise's pediatrician, who Anni and I are growing quite fond of for her compassionate-without-the-frills approach.
The doc stuck the otoscope into Elise's right ear, then into the left ear.
"Well, her left ear looks fine. Her right ear doesn't look fine," she said.
You guessed it. She's got her first ear infection, or otitus media for all of you who dig medical terms. That, of course, explains her rough past few days.
The doc prescribed an antibiotic -- the ubiquitous amoxicillin -- and sent us on our way.
However, no trip to the clinic would be complete without a stop on the baby scale. At seven months, she is 18 lbs.
What's the mean, 18 lbs? Well, one way to look at it is she now weighs more than the heaviest ball allowed in regulation bowling. Huh.

They're posted because I like them

A sign of intelligence and...

The other day Elise figured out how to open the door to the entertainment cabinet. (Those Swedes at Ikea can give you mediocre furniture at a reasonable price, but don't expect it to come with child-proof devices.)
It was interesting to watch as she tried to pull open the glass door.


Then you second-guess that sign of intelligence, if only for a moment, when all she wants to do is play suction cup with the window.


Just stay away from stop sign poles in the winter, kid.

Silverware? Nah, I got pincers

There are certain obvious developmental benchmarks you watch for in kids. Even the oblivious notice them: Rolling over; sleeping through the night; teething; making sounds with the mouth other than burps; and crawling.
You know, the major stuff.
Well, there is another important developmental accomplishment. And by important I mean that, well, you kinda need this skill: picking up stuff with your fingers, namely food.
I fully admit that this was not on my list of things to look forward to Elise learning. It's not that I wanted her to go into childhood sans dexterity; it just never dawned on me that finger coordination is a learned skill.
Well, it is, and Elise is catching on.
She's getting pretty good at using those little pincers. She gets practice each day when, after her evening feeding, she gets a small handful of Cheerio-like puffed grain snacks. Yeah, I know, they sound horribly bland, but they're flavored and really quite tasty. Well, that's overselling, but they're not bad.
Anyway, it took her some time to figure out that when Mom and Dad are not going to shovel food in the mouth, maybe the thumb and index finger do the trick and make quick work of those puffed morsels.
I'm ready for the next developmental feat: eating real food with the hands. Maybe that will mean graduating from puffed grain snacks to a bucket of wings.

She's just so tactful

The other day we were marveling at one of Elise's new tricks (maybe it was turning on the light switch from her changing table, or maybe it was opening the entertainment center door) when Anni asked me the following -- with a straight face:
"Think of how much she has learned in just seven months. I mean, what have you learned in the last seven months?"
Huh. Good question.

And....we're back

Our computer situation is not entirely squared away, but clearly I have Internet access now, so it's time to update the blog.

An observation about this bottom photo: My hair suggests I shouldn't take photos right after I wake up -- yikes. Good thing your eyes are drawn to the little creature trying to crawl up my back.