Skipping Town

This is the series of faces Lucia made last week when I told her to smile for the camera. The sneer in the third picture makes me laugh out loud.

11/17/11. Our calendars are marked. And our heads haven’t quite yet stopped spinning.

This weekend, we drove to St. Michael’s, Maryland, a small town on the Chesapeake Bay, for a birthday celebration for a Littell family friend. Andrew’s parents and sister were there, as well as the whole family of the friend, and we all stayed at a gorgeous place right on the water, spread out over a couple different inn-buildings on the grounds. Crab cakes abounded. Andrew went fishing. The weather was beautiful. However, it’s just hard traveling with a toddler who is very much attached to her routines. Granted, exceptions to routines should sometimes be made, like Friday night, when we joined the group for a big seafood dinner that began at 7:00pm. It wouldn’t have been right to not go—after all, we were there to spend time with everyone; plus, we wanted crab—and for a while, Lucia did fine. Then she was fussy and not fine. She didn’t get to bed until after 9:30; and she got up at 6:00 in the morning, when Andrew woke up for fishing. Fusskins decided she liked the Chesapeake Bay and ...

As Lucia and I walked down the street this afternoon, her pushing her toy stroller, me trying by any means necessary to get her to keep walking, it occurred to me that if there were an audio version of my day, with no visual evidence that I was talking to a child, I would sound completely insane. Here’s a brief transcript of our walk: Lucia, Lucia, that’s the street. Keep walking straight. Fast! Fast! Fast! Keep going! No. Dirty. Garbage. Yucky yucky yucky. That’s an A. That’s a B. Yes, see the ant? An ant. Can you say “ant”? Let’s go fast! Fast! Fast! Fast! Out of the way of the stroller. Move over, Lucia. Lucia, he’s waving at you. Can you say hello? Can you wave? Bye-bye! Garbage. Dirty. Yucky yucky yucky. Yes, that’s wa-wa. No touching. It’s a sidewalk puddle. We look at sidewalk wa-wa. Okay, let’s go! Fast! Fast! Fast! Whoooo, you’re so fast! Look, a little dog. He’s coming to say hello! He gave you a kiss. Bye-bye, puppy! Let’s walk back home. Let’s see if any cats are in front o...

Dear Little One, It’s official: you’ve taken your cuteness to a new level. Besides being an almost constantly pleasant and happy baby, you are learning at a speed-of-light rate and regularly surprise us with the new things you can do or say. For months now I’ve been keeping track of the words you’re adding to your vocabulary, but it’s at the point now where I think I will bring the list to a close. You add new words all the time. Just this week, we were at the park and you were touching a tree, which I told you had “rough” bark. Now, whenever we see a tree, you point and say “rough.” Your current favorite word is “cry,” which you learned last week and now use consistently whenever you hear a baby crying. We visited Baby Alex this week, who did a bit of infant fussing, and each time he cried you pointed, very concerned, and announced, “Cry.” We have to be careful what we say around you these days. Tuesday night, I was giving you your bedtime bottle in your nursery, and Daddy came in to ...

I know I'm the mama, but I think anyone would agree that this is one cute Mother's Day baby.

Lucia has entered her Sponge stage. For weeks it’s seemed her learning has accelerated—she’s been picking up new words, doing new things, just acting like a baby who’s moving up in the world. But in the past week or so, ever since we went to Connellsville, Lucia’s learning has sped up to warp-speed. I trust her sudden acceleration is not because, for the first time ever, I was not with her all day. I trust I haven’t been holding her back. I’ll credit it to the exciting new world of Connellsville (a front porch! a completely empty sidewalk! Grandma’s undivided adoration and attention!). In any case, she has gained so many new words just in the past few days, including toast and walk , and her second two-word combination: Mama car; Papa (Grandpa) car; Pam car. Pam is a neighbor, and Lucia for some reason instantly said, and remembered, Pam’s name. She seems to be struck by the idea of someone getting in a car and driving away, something she doesn’t ordinarily see in New York, when, on th...

Lucia and I are in Connellsville this week; we all drove in Friday night, and Andrew went back to NYC today. This is a week of work for me. With a month to go before I need to have my novella transformed into a novel, I need to bear down and really focus for a few days—for more than the length of a nap. An hour and a half a day isn’t useful for the kind of work I need to do at this stage, so I came to the only place where I could have full-day, free childcare from caretakers Lucia knows and loves: Grandma and Papa’s house. I pretty much haven’t existed for Lucia since she woke up Saturday morning. Mama? What Mama? Andrew and I did some Connellsville things this weekend—two Gabe’s trips, a feast of wings and other wonderful foods at Lynn’s—and now it is time to put all that aside and get to work. I will be at the library when it opens tomorrow morning, and I will be there until mid-afternoon. I will pack a lunch and turn off my phone. And I will write, and think, and cut-and-paste, and ...

On Thursday, Lucia and I went to Andrew’s office for Take Your Child to Work Day. We hadn’t given the day any thought, since Lucia is so young; but around 10:30am Andrew called and said everyone had brought their kids (even the babies) and spouses—and that Lucia’s and my absence was being constantly inquired about. So off we went. Andrew’s office had been transformed in honor of the day. There was a carnival area, with a band, balloon animal-making, face-painting, and more; the office’s many toys had been laid out and added to for the kids’ use; all the kids got a T-shirt. One of the office’s cafeteria’s offered kid foods—mac and cheese, fish sticks, grilled cheese, spaghetti and meatballs—and each kid got a lunchbox full of fruit on the way in. (Lucia won’t put hers down.) It was a chaotic scene, with kids running and—at least at our table—refusing to eat. But also pretty cute. After lunch, we went to Andrew’s work area, where Lucia was thrilled to get to play with large balls that so...