Playing with Luey Baby

We are settling in to the swing of things here on the left coast and have gotten an opportunity to start enjoy the sunny side of life. This means lots of playing with Lucy and tapping into our creative sides to keep things interesting. She is definitely showing signs of boredom with older toys that aren't that interactive, although tasting them is always a favorite activity of hers.

Since we arrived I have been committed to spending as much time with Lucy exploring as possible. As much as I am looking forward to starting a new PhD program in the fall, I am DREADING seeing Lucy so much less. As she is forever showing me, though, we are living in the moment and making the most out of every day. Last week I made Lucy sensory bottles out of Dollar Store vanilla extract and beads, glitter and sequins. She has a difficult time getting her hands around them now, but enjoys rolling them on the ground. Gadagada (Jim's new name) just finished up her very first busy board. It was hard to choose only items that are safe for her to eat. The jury is still out on whether or not carpet squares were a good choice, but they are screwed in on each corner so she at least can't get them up.

 Lucy has been moving and grooving all over the place. It seems like taking her Gymboree, swim lessons and areas with other moving children has been really motivating to her. She still gets frustrated and seems to be crawling out of her skin sometimes. She even went soaring across the living room a few days ago and landed herself under the ottoman, but she figured out how to move forward after some time being stuck-ed. She is now all the way up on her knees and rocking back and forth. She is quite close to crawling. Her latest frustration is her inability to move from her belly back to sitting, as she can now easily go in the opposite direction. 

We finally made it to the Pacific Ocean to do a little rock climbing at Stinson Beach, which also happens to be the nudey beach. Questionable act in parenting, but Lucy doesn't know the difference. Live and let live, right?! The bouldering was great LouBear loved digging her toes in the sand. She didn't even seem to mind dipping them in the freezing cold water. Of course she loved touching everything and would have eaten sand for dinner given the opportunity. Despite spending an hour that morning throwing up egg yolk and milk (not spitting up, but vomiting) while we were at Muir Woods, she really enjoyed the breeze, the sound of the ocean and time together.

Seven Months of Sensational

Lucy's first bike ride. After much debate on how to safely
put her in the cart, we plopped her in in her car seat and
she was sleep before we even left!

Writing about Lucy from memory and not in the present moment is quite difficult. I have found that I am acutely focused on each minute I spend with her and have a hard time remembering every little detail. I love having photos of her, but I have attempted to put the camera down and tune in. It seems like startling was never an issue for us, although I can read this blog and know it was a major concern for many months. Surely we never had to support her head, right? And breastfeeding was second nature from the very first moment...no weird positioning or tearing up trying to figure out what to wear in public so feeding was easy and comfortable. Now she is doing an astounding number of new movements, vocalizations, interactions and habits that I, once again, have no idea where to being. I will never be able to tell her the exact moment she scooted forward for the first time or exact day she sat up independently. I will never be able to hand her a baby book filled with facts, but the three of us will always have lives filled joy and sweetness, gratefulness and love.

Since Lucy is so super advanced (she is even an advanced pooper, burper and spitter upper in her parents eyes :-), I do want to take note of some of the amazing things she has been up to and some of her newest nicknames.

• She is blowing raspberries like it is her job. And it is adorable. She used to really work hard at it, watching the finest movements of our mouths as she tried to imitate us. Now she blows bubbles when she is falling asleep, when she is eating, when she is happy, when she is playing. Oh, the things that have come to amaze this mama.

• Luey Baby (said with thick Long Island accent) is not sitting up independently. It is neat to look at her six month picture where Jim is supporting her and her seven month picture where she is trying to make a break for it and could have if I would have allowed it. She isn't a big fan of falling over, but is trying to transition from sitting to her back or belly. We try to be casual about the falling part, as she has a tendency to burst into tears when this happens, bottom lip out and all.We have play mats everywhere and try to ensure she falls onto a soft surface. She would really like to be able to sit up from a laying position, but that move is still in the development phase. 

• Suzle has been scooting her backwards in a caterpillar like motion for a while now, but, unbeknownst to me, Jim has been coaching in moving forward and I'll be darned if she didn't start moving forward a few days ago. This makes her much happier, as she can get closer to thing (or mommy) that she is after versus further away. Carpet is still a difficult surface, but she'll be there in no time at all. 

• We broke down and bought her a jumperoo after LuLu found her legs. All of a sudden a couple days after we arrived she started pushing up on the and even bouncing and hasn't been able to stop since. The thing is enormous, cumbersome and a pain in the tuckus to move around the house, but she gets a big kick out of it and seemed developmentally ready to be upright "on her own."

• Playing with Lucy is getting more and more fun. Yesterday I was gently tossing a stuffed block on her belly while she laid on her back and she was (occasionally) catching it in both hands and impulsively stuffing it into her face. Then we rolled the block from her feet to her hands and she found this absolutely delightful. All of a sudden she gets the "you stack it, I wreck it" concept and even tries to put cups and blocks back into a tower after she knocks it down. She has really gotten books and gets so excited any time you get them out. We recently discovered on a visit to We Rock the Spectrum indoor play space that she loves swinging (and that she can sleep in a swing for an hour+ while screaming children everywhere. Ordered one for the patio that evening). She is a definite nuzzler so I threw together a rough quilt with 16 different types of material as the squares. Sometimes she even uses the quilt as a pulling mechanism to bring a toy closer to her. We are trying to make the transition from toys that are simply fun to devour and toys that have cause and effect elements. 

• Now that we live in Berkeley there is an amazing number of things to do with Lucy. There are indoor play spaces, swim lessons at the YMCA and classes at Gymboree. I have decided to soak up every single minute with this awesome little babe before I start school in August and we are doing it all. So far she loves everything we have done. She has started to get a little clingy to Mommy and I am hoping getting her out and about with other kids and parents will help with the transition to childcare in the fall, but let's not go down that painful road just yet. 

• LuBear loves food. I mean, LOVES food. She gets upset if we eat in front of her and don't share. She likes all sorts of things...salmon, egg yolk, sweet potatoes are her favorite, peas, green beans and whole fruits to suck on, like peaches and plums. She isn't big on lentils and really hates bananas (WHAT?!), but it has been really fun to prepare food for her. I spent some yesterday freezing some food now that she has a variety that she can have. We will continue to introduce a new food every three days and have increased her meals to two a day. She would like about seven meals a day, but we have to pace her little internal system. So far I have prepared all of her food at home. Hopefully that lasts as school starts this fall.  

• 

Carpe Diem

At some point during the trip Lucy realized she has a tongue.
We got to see her tongue almost every waking hour for the rest
of our trip :-).

From Flagstaff, AZ we hightailed it through the desert to make it to our final destination, Berkeley, CA, a day EARLY. Although we held our breaths for the last two legs of our journey, everything went smooth as a baby's bottom. Driving through the desert at 106 degrees with the Mojave Preserve on our right and the same dry, brutal conditions as far as we could see in every direction with a six month old was the most nerve-wracking part of the trip for both of us. The drive to Bakersfield was 7 hours, the longest part of our trip. I could hardly believe we had arrived when we pulled into a Mexican restaurant and at that point all three of us were ready to be "home," wherever that was going to be.

Despite my fears of her screaming every time
we put her in the seat by the time we made it
Virginia, she seemed to take comfort in the
familiarity of the environment after about a week.

To my great surprise, we never tired of each other. We had moments of turmoil mostly surrounding finding a new definition of adventure and fun. For example, we went to a park called Slide Rock in Flagstaff where the rocks in the river make a natural water slide. This is something that Jim and I could have spent all day playing in together in a life I now can't imagine without Lucy, a life that seems so meaningless, but one that is also so clear in my memories. Jim and I have built our relationship on enjoying each other's company, mostly by playing outside and while it is rewarding and my favorite adventure up to this point, it is sometimes tricky to navigate what it looks like to play with a baby strapped on my front. Other than that, and the two hour detour Jim took when he drove to Fredericksburg, MD instead of Roanoke, VA, our marriage is strongly in tact. I am really going to miss him when he goes back to work. Jim getting laid off was such a gift and we have worked to carpe diem every day since.

Lucy Goes Camping and the Bisha's are Quitters

Spending uninterrupted time as a family has been exceptionally fun. I thought by the time we hit Nashville Lucy and I would be on a plane to California and Jim would meet us there with the car. Motherhood has taught me, once again, to give LuLu more credit than I think she may deserve and to be more gracious with myself and my marriage than ever before. I have to keep thinking, "what is the worst that could happen? What if she cries in her seat? What if we don't stay on schedule?" Jim is forever helpful in reinforcing that we stop if she cries and we show up a day late if our schedule gets messy.

Traveling really has been easy up to this point. This is the most rock climbing I have done since Lucy was born, which I would have never expected. We got to hit the gym in Roanoke and Nashville and then landed in Little Rock, AK to go outdoor climbing at Horseshoe Canyon with two nights of camping. Despite the difficulty of finding a campsite and of a general fear of humidity and mosquitoes destroying Lucy, we had a wonderful time. The Breaker family hosted us for an evening before we pitched tents in the canyon. I used California Baby bug spray on Lucy and we bought her hand-held fans in Washington to keep her cool. We even heated up some river water on our camp stove to let her have a cooling bath in the shade.

Climbing went surprisingly well, although having a third person was definitely beneficial. It is not a sustainable option, but we did carry in the boulder pad for both days of climbing and this gave Lucy a great play space and a comfy spot for nursing. When she needed to nap I put her in the front carrier and found a cool spot in a large rock cave to rock her to sleep. I fed her when she needed to eat. I cannot remember why I had so many worries about camping (and soooo much gear. I pack and play, a bouncy seat, a bath tub, two hand-held fans AND a bumbo seat was a little over kill).

I was so calmed down about camping that we decided to camp for one night in the Palo Duro Canyon outside of Amarillo, TX. What we didn't know was that this part of the country had just received a record amount of rain for the entire month of rain welcoming the horseflies to the canyon. We set-up camp at a lovely, well maintained desert site, napped Lucy in the hammock and momentarily enjoyed the awesome parents that we were becoming. Then a horsefly bit Lucy on the head and I lost all ability to think rationally. After cooling down in the gift shop, Jim convinced me to quit the adventure, pack up the tent and drive to Albuqueque, NM. This was some of the best quitting we have ever done as a family and I am still grateful that we did.

After the first round of camping went reasonably well unbelievable humidity and bugginess, we decided to stay for four nights when we got to Flagstaff, AZ. There were a number of differences that made this part of the trip much more enjoyable and that I would highly recommend to future us and anyone camping with a baby. Flagstaff had an amazingly enjoyable climate with little humidity and few bugs. We only used the hammock, baby bath and boudler pad for gear this time. I would recommend a high chair seat that clips onto a table for meals and cooking. We have two of them now and it makes meal time much more enjoyable at home and at restaurants. Having a space for baby to unwind was great. The boulder pad was awesome for this, but now that Lucy is scootching around we have a little pop up tent that we are going to try out for camping and climbing (report to follow). Carrying an umbrella is cooling than hats and covering skin with clothing or light blankets.  The baby bath was a lug to drag to across the country, but Lucy loved having time to play in the water outside and we just heated up water on our pocket rocket camp stove. Lucy had no trouble falling asleep while we were camping. I had nightmares of her screaming and keeping the whole campground up. She loves to be outside. As far as she is concerned she would prefer to live in a tent. She even rolled over and put herself to sleep a few times, which just does not happen inside. Is camping with a baby crazy? Turns out it isn't. It is actually quite enjoyable. And besides that, camping baby photos are too cute not to try for.