just too cute

as i'm sitting at the computer handling some business, the video monitor sits next to me and shows me what nissa is up to. it's past her bed time and she's in bed, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's sleeping. the night vision is working for once, so i can see her milling around her crib.

she just stood up, said "puppy!" and "mua mua" kissed the big stuffed dog at the end of her crib. does it get any cuter than that?

yesterday she did something kinda cute and funny too- the kitchen was a mess (ooh, big surprise) and i decided to order pizza for dinner. when the doorbell rang, i scooped up nissa to answer the door. when we opened it, nissa saw what the delivery lady brought and shouted "pizza!" couldn't have done it better if we practiced, i swear.

later that evening, adam claims to have heard nissa assemble 3 words into a sentence, but he conveniently can't remember what they were. i'm intrigued! nissa's mumbled what sounds like sentences (i sit, for example) but it's hard to tell if she's doing it on purpose. the most "complete" statement she says is "hat (points to head) aki (points to eyes, her word for sunglasses) outside (pumps arms alternately)." as a request to go outside. today she even added "park" at the end- so a specific destination for outside. she's a smart little cookie and gets smarter every day. i love it.

how???

how can one kid be so crabby and yet so irresistibly cute?

how can a 19 month old be so bold? we went to the park on friday night and after being there a few minutes, it was filled with a little league baseball team (6-8 yo?) running around playing tag, space ships, whatever. nissa was right in the middle of it all, getting climbed around, unfazed by the shouting, just plugging along to the top twisty slide, then taking her turn sliding down. a bit stressful for me, but good for her, i think. what really stressed me out was to watch her climb up the rails of the ramps. she is such a monkey!

how can that same kid be so easy going and flexible?



how can i be busy all weekend and still be woefully behind on so much?

how can i expect to be anything BUT tired after going to bed after midnight?

how can one person (me) be so lucky to have a wonderful family (adam, nissa)?

how can i magically make some time to get to the beach? go fishing with adam?

how will nissa manage on our camping test run this weekend?

highlight of the weekend: walking over to dunkin donuts to get coffee (coffee!!) and having a patron comment that nissa is really smart. um, thanks!

father's day

despite a lot of running around, i think father's day was kinda fun. we had the always the villain cd release show the night before, so we were out late and a bit tired on sunday. nissa spent the night at grandma and grandpa's and i met here there after getting my act together sunday. sure, i hoped to get there "early" but when you're not going to bed until after 4 and have to go grocery shopping and bake, it's going to take some time. i baked s'mores whoopie pies for the fathers and i think they turned out pretty well! i found the recipe online and they sounded perfect, as a special little something you don't have every day, unlike the chocolate chip cookies adam suggested. i made those too, but those were for everybody. adam came by after work and we enjoyed sish kebab and just relaxed for the evening. nissa even sat on his lap for a little while.

nissa was a mess when we got there and it was great. she was playing with sidewalk chalk with her cousins and really was enjoying herself. peter and maggie were grinding it down into a powder and using it that way, so there was a lot of dust around. nissa's entire front was dusty and even had some on her face. i'm still not sure if it's a good thing that i was ok with her being quite so filthy, but i'm not going to worry about it now. she was having fun, just as she should.

a funny story from the night before. . . . i had made arroz con pollo during the week and nissa and i enjoyed some left overs for dinner saturday night. there was a chicken leg we were going to share, but mostly rice. i pulled some meat off the bone and gave it to nissa (as we did the first time) but she was more interested in the whole thing. so i pulled the skin off and handed it over. i couldn't touch it again after that! nissa gnawed on that thing forever and got every last bit of meat off of it. she even spent a lot of time on the two ends, with no success. she wouldn't let me take it from her, but she did take suggestions on where to bite next, so that was kinda nice. when i was done eating and she had done all the damage she could do, i pried it out of her hands and took her to her room for a diaper change. i set her down to get the diaper stuff together and she was off in a flash: running to the dining room, climbing up onto my chair and reaching over the table to get the plate with the bone. i came in to her sitting on the chair and gnawing away again. she was really into the chicken leg!

new and interesting

last night's few hours after work were filled with new and interesting things. nissa was just getting up from a nap when i came home, so i got her up and we had a snack of baked ruffles and hummus. i know, not the most nutritious, but i'm giving the hummus a lot of credit. when we were done, i noticed nissa's face was red and blotchy, where the hummus had touched her skin (we're still a long way away from getting 100% into the mouth). looking back at the ingredients for the hummus, adam thinks she may be allergic to the pine nuts it contained. she's had the chips and plain hummus before (loves hummus, thank goodness), so he's probably right. we kept an eye on her the rest of the night and she ate dinner fine and breathed well the whole time. i'm just glad she doesn't have a severe reaction and it's something we don't eat very often.

did i mention she yawned at one point and she covered her mouth? how cool is that?

after our snack we went outside for a few minutes, but only after getting her hat from the car. nissa is practically obsessed with having her hat when she leaves the house. sometimes at other times too, but always for going outside. outside! nissa insisted on having a piece of mint from the bundle we got from grandma a. i pulled off a leaf and she promptly stuffed the whole thing into her mouth to chomp on. she loves the stuff! of course, she does spit it out after a while, but in the interim she is minty fresh.

after dinner (and making it amidst bellows of mama/mommy from downstairs from nissa), adam and billy went off to practice. nissa spent her last few minutes of dinner identifying the parts of her dinner: chicken, ham, green pepper, red pepper, rice. while she didn't like eating it, she really liked saying "ham" and pointing to it. when nissa was done identifying her dinner, we went downstairs in hopes of catching grandparents g at home, but had no luck. so we hung out, read a book, horsed around. literally. i was laying on my stomach to read a book with nissa on the floor (she was doing the same thing) and she got up and sat on my back, as she does to gibson quite regularly. then, very carefully, i got up onto all fours and took her for a ride around the basement. it was so new to her she seemed to be in quiet awe of the process. i know she liked it, because she climbed up for a second ride before we called it a night. i should probably warn adam about that one.

pre-father's day thanks

when my parents were in town last week, my dad was away for most of the time helping a friend. but for the few hours he was at our house, he was so amazingly helpful i can barely describe it. what would have taken me weeks to accomplish (working around nissa and such) he did in a few hours, much to my relief. he even put in that curved shower curtain rod i invested in (tricky, since he had to cut it down), and the little curve makes a big difference! i still wish they lived closer, but appreciate them so much when they come to visit (and not just because they do helpful stuff like install shower rods). i'm really lucky to have parents that are so supportive that they travel so far just to see us.

i'm also grateful to adam for being a great father and supportive husband. while he is crazy at work, he does everything he can to spend some time with nissa, even if it's just snuggling on the couch for a little while to watch "tee." and when i complain that i've had a shortage of 'me' time and could use a break from all work and little play, he listens, understands and works toward finding a solution. it helps keep me sane.

so much, so little time

so it occurred to me yesterday that next month nissa will be 20 months. that's just a few months shy of 2. when did my baby get to be not a baby? she's doing so many new things every single day, i'm going to be really disappointed that i haven't captured them all here, just in the last couple of weeks. is it just a landslide from here? it felt like almost vertigo for a second. . . whew.

again, since it's been so long, i'm going to just jot and go. that little kiddo of mine has been doing new cool things every day, it just has me tickled pink. i love every minute of it.

"whew" is something nissa picked up from grandma g, as is "mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm" it's very cute to see her do either. for a few days nissa was even asking about grandma when we ate dinner, but hasn't recently. i'm hoping we can web chat this evening some how.

we got together with rick and lisa a couple of times while my parents were in town, which was awesome. sarah is getting around better and better each time we see her, and lately, getting more assertive too. nissa can get a little possessive with toys at times and now sarah is returning the favor, or at least putting up a fight. one of the funnier things to see was them both trying to crawl through the toy doorway at the same time. man, do i need to post that picture (and a bunch more too, oy!).

i forgot to mention my crazy accident that ruined memorial day weekend for me! first thing saturday morning, i planned to go get our patio chairs from adam's p's, where they had been since nissa's baptism, so we could be prepared for a memorial day bbq. i pulled the van around back and started to pull the couch out to make room for the chairs (the back was full). just as i realized a flaw in my method, the couch fell onto my feet (i was standing on the step of the side door) and i fell backward onto the small of my back. as a result, my back kills (even pretty sore in places to this day), i scraped/slightly twisted my left ankle and all kinds of messed up my right ankle/foot. my right foot was swollen on the arch and had a scary lump on the outside, looking like a 2nd ankle, and for a long while, a serious cramp sensation in my arch. i stayed off it and iced it for several days and though improved, it still bothers me. maybe i should have gone to the doctor?

speaking of the doctor, nissa made her first er visit last week. i'm hoping not the first of many, but a first for us that was an interesting learning opportunity as a parent. while going upstairs to change a poo poo diaper, nissa was taking too long for my liking, getting hung up by the light switches. so i picked her up by her arms and "hopped" her up the stairs one at a time. she started to fuss, so i set her down; but then she didn't want to climb the rest of the way, so i hopped her up the last two steps too. i changed her diaper, but there was nothing but sobs the whole time and then i noticed she wasn't really moving her right arm. she seemed to be keeping it on her chest as if it were injured. i hurried up with the diaper change and then took a look at her arm. i felt around and rotated it, to see if it seemed dislocated at the shoulder. nissa made a fuss every time i touched her arm and was inconsolable with the crying. anyone who knows nissa knows that she never cries this much. so i called adam and when he came home a few minutes later, we were off to the hospital. after a wait (though shorter than others) we got called in, where we were interviewed by a short-tempered nurse who irritatingly shook her head as i told her what happened. i shared my annoyance, but moderately, and was ready to punch her in the face. she may know better from her experience of seeing this every day, but i'm a good parent, dammit, and she can just do her judging on her own time, not when i'm worried for my child's well being. grrr. anyways, the doc saw her, felt around and in the 5 minutes it took to wrestle with nissa to see/feel everything she needed to, whatever ailed her was fixed and she was back to her old self. we had compulsory x-rays (what a challenge those were), but the showed she was back to normal. her shoulder, however, showed an odd growth pattern in her humerus head - a bifurcation. it might just be an odd growth pattern, but we were advised to check in with the doctor. geez, i was supposed to check in 48 hrs later with her anyways. oops. so nissa was fine, officially diagnosed with nursemaid's elbow (dislocation of radius at the elbow), and was in such better spirits she waved goodbye to the er as we left. she's been 100% a-ok ever since. crazy.

last night she interrupted my dinner making to let me know it had started to rain (pointed out the back porch door and said "rain"). that impressed me.

nissa is very generous with her snacks. she will offer you one (a pretzel, fish, whatever) and even offer one to the dog. i'm trying to work on limiting the food she gives gibson, but typically she's snacking while i'm doing something else, so i don't have the opportunity to correct the behavior as it's happening. on the upside, gibson rarely crowds her for a handout, since she'll usually hand-deliver one right to him!

our friend billy is staying with us for a short while and nissa has taken to him well. if he's around, but not present, she'll ask "billy?" and yes, refers to him by name. adam suggested this is the first person whose name she knows, but i think she knows her cousins too, but i'm not sure.

nissa has been very interested in pointing out circles and hearts wherever she can. she likes to trace circles with her finger, very adorable. she likes to go through the "genius flash cards" and find circles; but usually this means her tracing circles with her finger on most all the cards and me saying yes or no. she has taken an amusing interest in the z card (zoological oddity) with the platypus. perry would be so proud!

i know the "books" say the concept of "i" is a way off, but i swear yesterday nissa said "sit" to me and patted the step, then turned around and said "i sit" and seated herself next to me. maybe i misheard.

nissa loves books. when she gets up from bed (nap or morning) she points to her bookshelf demanding a book, both to peruse as her diaper is changed and for you to read to her afterward. yesterday we read "danny and the dinosaur" and she listed to the whole thing. to date, she tended to favor short baby books, but this was a step up. she even knew the story was "over" when the dinosaur headed back to the museum, and i had to really persuade her to listen to the last couple of pages.

i love that she can fall and not make a big deal of it, but then make a big deal of a fake fall. yesterday, i brought out her frog camp chair to give her something to play with while i mowed the lawn. at one point, she tipped it over, resulting in a scraped knee and elbow. i only knew when i heard the "oh" when she fell over. then later, when billy was around, she "whoa whoa whoa" in the gangway and made a dramatic fall on purpose, much to billy's amusement. she is such an attention seeker!

i had my heart set on getting nissa a learning tower for the kitchen. it seems so ideal! but then i found a step stool that works just as well for us for 7% of the cost! such a deal. as a bonus for our purposes, nissa can move it around too, so she can decide where she wants to be a part of the action. for me, this is great because usually during dinner prep, she wants to be held and most times standing on the stool is an acceptable substitute! she can watch, steal veggies as i cut them, even help stir. she's learning "hot" really well without learning the hard way.

nissa's been fake sleeping and it's too cute. she will lay down (sometimes preceded by "nite nite"), close her eyes and "seeew" when she exhales to mimic snoring. it's kinda hilarious.

one of my favorite things she does (still) is the patting to get you to come to a place. she'll pat the seat next to her to have you sit by her (often accompanied by "sit"). she'll pat the ground next to her to have you stand by her (happens often at the playground). such a smart little cookie.

nissa has a 3rd molar coming in on the bottom (right, i believe) so that's pretty exciting. she's skipped her eye teeth. i wonder if that's common? yep, it is.

i think we're getting close to retiring the high chair in the kitchen soon. i don't use it much myself, since she doesn't like being in it much and she can do snacks from the floor now. what really is convincing me is the fact that she can get out on her own now. once or twice before i've left her in the high chair without being buckled, just to take care of something quickly. she doesn't move around too much, but once she did stand up. so when she did get out i was doing something in the kitchen, turned around and there she was standing there. she barely grunted and landed soft as a feather. at least i knew she could do it relatively safely! i know annette and adam rely on it on occasion, but it would be nice to have that floor space back.

i've also found out we dont' necessarily need to use the "my little seat" for dinner either. the other day i was getting dinner ready and put out our plates with food and went to get beverages. when i came back, nissa had pushed out my chair, climbed up and was eating my dinner! the little stinker. out of curiosity i just moved her over to her chair, but didn't buckle her in and she ate nicely. it wasn't until she was mostly done that she started fidgeting and turning around. i guess it's no different from sitting in a booster when we're out, which she does very well with :D.

circle

so, this past week has been an interesting one, starting with my injuries saturday (really ouch) and my parents coming in town. sunday nissa was extra dramatic for a crowd, and again on wednesday.

but what i really wanted to make note of was what she did while we read our nightly book before bedtime. she's been calling out the ball and cookies, then last night pointed out noses. but the crazy thing was she pointed out a circle. yes, a circle shape surrounding one of the puppies on the second to last page. i was a bit flabbergasted. circle.