Lawyerish

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Wednesday Edition, and a Question

I know it's two days early, but some things just can't wait:

Even aside from the naked marching in a diaper and a ski hat, my kid has an enviably busy existence, to the point where I'm considering sending her into the office while I spend the day letting her nanny squire me around.  Seriously, look at this -- it's like having Auntie Mame up in here on a daily basis!

They take in high culture:

They run wild in playgrounds:

They meet up with friends ("holding hands and walking together!"):

They get their ya-yas out at the playspace:

They learn about science at the Children's Museum:

They play in the snow (that one was with me, actually, but I didn't want to disturb the theme, and anyway we were only outside for about three minutes before the wind almost blew Felicity away and she said in a wavering voice, "Go back inside?"  Then she told me she wanted to "watch the snow falling outside the window instead."  I was more than happy to oblige; cold and I are not friends.):

And they rest after all that fun.  Whew!

So here is my question, and it's really a curiosity rather than a burning problem: 

I know that kids behave a bit differently for different people -- for example, Felicity will eat ANYTHING that her sitter puts in front of her, pretty much, but then she'll refuse the VERY SAME FOOD when I present it to her.  She takes longer naps when J is here (I get the shortest nap days when I'm home with her on Friday -- UNFAIR).  I understand that other children are this way at daycare versus home; they are napping and eating angels during the week, and then on the weekend with their beleaguered rents, they're picky eaters and non-nappers.  I have heard this is because kids test boundaries in different ways for each caregiver/parent, the crafty little buggers.

But what I am curious about is why many toddlers seem to save their biggest meltdowns for Ye Olde Mama?  (I...hope that's not just me.) 

Mind you, Felicity is not into full-on two-year old tantrum mode yet, and the vast majority of the time she's sweet and happy and mellow and all that.  And she does get upset from time to time when she's with Joe or J and I'm not around.  It's not EXCLUSIVE to me.  Yet there have been many days when she'll be in a mighty fine mood, playing delightfully with someone else, and I'll enter the room and suddenly there is Big Drama about some minor thing.  What IS that?  It's especially bad if her nanny and I are both here, as if her mind is blown having the two of us in the house with her.

If I'm thinking in the most flattering terms, I like to tell myself that Felicity loses it around me more because she feels the most emotionally secure with me and knows she can let go however she needs to, but I suspect I'm kidding myself.  Is it a manipulation thing? She doesn't seem to have a real motive for it; it's not like I give her candy and balloons when she has a meltdown and I give her plenty of positive attention when she's happy.  Perhaps the overwhelming love for their mothers scrambles their little toddler brains and they lose their ability to coherently express themselves for a few minutes?  (Haaaa, that must be it!)  What do you think?

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Jumpin' Edition

The CDs from Felicity's music class get a LOT of play in our house.  "See How I'm Jumping" has been in heavy rotation lately:

I think she needs to work on her plie. 

Whenever we have one of our song-and-dance extravaganzas, Felicity has to take periodic breaks to lay on the cat.  

Atticus is surprisingly tolerant of her lounging on him and he will even nuzzle her when she comes running over to "HUG AND KISS THE CAT!"  This cat has never been much of a people person, but he knows where he stands so he pretends to like her.  The dog, on the other hand, has been spending increasing amounts of time in his crate; the unpredictable movements of a toddler and her exuberant attempts at giving him kisses are just not what he's about.  He has basically given up.

I guess I'll just make do with snuggling this bunny.

Since Felicity isn't old enough for ballet classes yet, she does "gymnastics" once a week, and she has become quite diligent about working on her pike position:

She also loves to hang on a bar of any kind (sometimes when she's in the bath she starts eyeing the shower curtain rod, presumably imagining the half-twisting double-back dismount she could execute onto the toilet), although her off-the-charts height makes it less hanging than...standing:

For nostalgia's sake, here was our little dance partier last December:

Happy weekend, everyone! 

Friday Baby Dance Party!: The Triumphant Return

It's been...really quite some time since we had a Friday Baby Dance Party(TM).  This is mostly because my attempts at photographing Felicity in action tend to turn out like this:

Nevertheless, TJ and Maura recently mentioned that they missed Ye Olde FBDP, and I am happy to revive it, at least to the extent I can get enough dance photos/videos to post one every now and then.   

Since she's crazy big and no longer confined to the supine position, Felicity has developed lots of new moves.  Here, she's prepping for a pirouette:

Here she's doing a bit of a Degas pose:

Here she's letting her bunny do all the work ("BUNNY'S DANCIN'!"):

 

She was not entirely satisfied with bunny's performance, however.  She has very exacting standards and clearly they were not met:

 

And finally, the stern taskmaster realized that if she wanted it done right, she'd have to do the dancing herself.  (Though, as you can see, she does not take direction well.  Really all you need to watch is the first 15 seconds and the last maybe five -- the rest is me trying to get her to show off her dance moves, and her ignoring me.)

Happy Friday, everyone!

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Laughing and Singing and Dancing Edition

It's difficult to figure out why kids find certain things hilarious.  Such as the other day, when Felicity went into hysterics over J saying the word "ponytail." 

It's equally unclear why they suddenly get scared of books that they usually love:

And, to sing us into the long weekend (so far I am sick AND I have to work, so...yay?), here's Felicity doing her rendition of "Wiggle, Wiggle" (a chart-topper from her music class) (please note that that is J's pretty singing voice you hear; you've heard mine and it is...not good):

To close, here are some stills of Felicity wigglin' it:

Have a great Memorial Day, everyone!

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Belated Fourteen Months Edition

Well, I am so glad that I'm not in the minority on the baby/bathwater issue.  Sometimes when I first put Felicity in the tub, she stands in the water and pees a little.  I always carry on and try to dip the rinsing cup for her hair in the theoretically non-pee-polluted water closer to the drain.  I realize this isn't entirely in line with the laws of physics, but it makes me feel better.  And pee is mostly water anyhow, right? 

Anyway, Joe saw this sequence of events unfold once and he was all, "We have to change the water!  She peed in it!  You're washing her with pee!" and I gave him a withering look, because there is no chance I'm going to drain the whole dang tub and start over unless there is a Solid Waste Incident (which is obviously, as Jive Turkey said, a gamechanger -- and that hasn't happened since she was wee-tiny).

ALSO:  Completely unrelated, but we FINALLY watched "Black Swan" last weekend, and hoo boy!  It somehow managed to both be rife with ballet movie cliches (dear Hollywood:  not every ambitious ballerina is bulimic and has an overbearing mother who had a failed dance career, OKAY?) yet also blow those cliches right out of the box.  What with, you know, the whole id/ego/superego conflict and the hallucinations and the paranoid delusion and, ahem, the ballerinas getting it on/engaging in hand-to-hand combat.  I was very engrossed by the whole thing, although in a way it almost seemed too over the top to be serious, yet it clearly took itself VERY seriously. 

But!  Natty P. really impressed me.  I usually find her about as emotive as a wooden pole, but she really brought it this time, or maybe the director just wrenched it out of her.  She was so committed to this role, and I believed her in it.  (Although I don't believe she did much, if any, of the technical dancing, beyond upper body work, because the choreography was too difficult for an untrained person to do without looking...well, like an untrained person trying to do professional-level ballet.  But I don't think that takes away from her ACTING work in the role, since she is an ACTOR and I would fully expect a ballet dancer to body-double her for the BALLET DANCING parts.  Yet she did totally pull off LOOKING like a dancer, which a lot of actors don't pull off in dance movies.)

Moving on!  Although this is late, for the sake of completeness I feel the need to do a monthly status update. 

At fourteen months, nothing sends Felicity into a tailspin like changing her diaper.  Hoo boy.  When she is in need of a change, I'll say, "We need to go change your diaper!" and she'll merrily scamper into her room, but the moment I hoist her up onto the changing table, she turns into a combination Tasmanian devil and wailing banshee.  I don't know what it is that she objects to so much, but lying her down for the proceedings is out of the question.  She will no longer be distracted by a toy or whatever random object is within arm's reach; she immediately casts it to the floor and redoubles her distress call. 

I have started putting her diaper on while she stands up on the changing pad and thrashes around, as it's marginally easier than trying to keep her supine, which lasts all of about 0.004 seconds before the cyclonic activity commences.  I am hoping she is going to turn into an early toilet user, because as she gets bigger I really don't see this going well for anyone; either I am going to end up with a debilitating back injury, or she is going to end up going diaperless much of the time. 

Other than that, her personality is usually pretty delightful and she's generally compliant with whatever we're asking of her.  We do get into some battles of will over the stroller, as she would much prefer to walk everywhere these days, which is great except that sometimes I actually want to GET to a destination in this lifetime, rather than changing direction eight thousand times or stopping to look at every blade of grass along the way, but the majority of the time she's happy to ride and point out dogs and birds and whatever "OOOOOOOOOOH!  OOOOOOOOOH!" refers to along the way. 

She continues to love reading, with her favorites as of today being Blueberries for Sal (she looks as astonished as Sal's mother every time Little Bear eats from her bucket); The Monster at the End of This Book; and this kind of random book called Whoever You Are that is about how children all over the world are the same inside (Joe calls it "liberal clap-trap" and for unknown reasons it features a guy wearing a suit with clouds on it, a cowboy hat, and boots, and he flies around carrying a group of children in his arms).  She will have you read each of those books ten times in a row, and then she'll still want to page through them by herself in case she might have missed some nuance of theme or character development.  Then she likes to take them and piled them up in her rocking chair. 

One of her latest things is that, when she's toddling around the house and she sees something she's interested in or realizes she wants to go Over! There!, she does this sort of JAZZ HANDS! move, where she flings her little hands out from her waist and squeals.  It is A-ONE AWESOME and I will try to get it on video. 

JAZZ HANDS! 

God, I love her.   

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Short and Sweet Edition

I was commenting to J the other day when I got home from work that Felicity hadn't picked up on the blowing kisses yet, and we looked over and there was the little lady, air-kissing away.  

I guess that goes some distance toward making up for the fact that, whenever I ask her to give Mama a hug or a kiss, she says, "Nooooo!" 

Friday Baby Dance Party: Royal Wedding Edition

Felicity donned her best sailor dress today in honor of the nuptials of Wills and Kate.  Because, really, is there anything better than some doughboy-style whites?  (One of my favorite things in New York is Fleet Week, because the sailors in those Fancy Free outfits -- sorry, uniforms -- are just so freaking adorable.  Even though I am old enough to be their mom.)

Felicity interrupted her morning playtime to observe the solemn wedding mass with appropriate respect.

Then she gave some color commentary:

Gorgeous dress, very classic and demure, yet grand enough for a commoner-turned-princess.  I approve.

Does William ever smile?  And who's the redhead with the smirk and the swagger?  You think he'll still be single in about twenty years? 

Evidently, the Queen does not sing the national anthem.  I guess it would be weird for her to sing "God Save [Me]."

I need to travel by horse and carriage more often.  Screw the stroller.

They seem cute together and all, but you call that a kiss?  I guess they've been together for eight years, but come on.  Put some oomph into it!

Eh, back to the Little House books...

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Mixed Media Edition

Felicity has been doing a lot of arabesques and attitudes lately.  I'm not sure what that's about, but I am choosing to see it as an expression of her natural affinity for ballet.  I mean, obviously.  Check it out -- she's working on her Swan Lake poses already:

(Yes, the leg could be higher and more turned out, but we have some time to work on her technique.)

She's also working on her percussive expression on a regular basis. 

Though sometimes she just wants to grab her purse and go shoppin' instead of cultivating her artistic talents.

But then she always comes back to work on her moves. 

(By the way, the photo in the last post was of Felicity, not of me!  The Apr 81 stamp was the result of Hipstamatic "retro dating", which is kind of silly.  And confusing.  We do look alike, but not QUITE to that degree!  Also, I was five in April 1981.)

Finally, for the first time ever, I present to you...a video.  I KNOW.  WOW!  Welcome to the 21st century, eh?  It features some month-old footage of our little walker (who is now much steadier on her feet) and my awful-voice narration (I would like to think that I do not sound this idiotic in person, but I suspect this is a futile wish).  Check it, y'all. 

(I actually have a better video of her "dancing", which would clearly fit better with the theme of the FBDP, but I could not get that sucker to upload.  Flip software SUUUUUCKS, which is probably part of the reason they are not going to make the Flip anymore.  LOLZ.)

Well, NEVERMIND.  It keeps crashing and won't load.  Mixed media FAIL.  If you're dying to see it, here's a link instead.

Friday Baby Dance Party: Sickies Edition

Well, I was wrong.  Turns out Felicity wasn't just teething (though she's now getting all of SIX teeth at once, including her incisors, which certainly isn't improving her mood) -- she has roseola (fever + irritability (that's actually a symptom, not just a charming side effect) + rash, caused by a little bastard of a virus)!  Whoops!  So that explains her shrieking like a banshee every time the infant Tylenol wore off. 

Here she is, in happier times, grooving in one sock:

And here she is, giving a little hip-shake to Pa's fiddle (you guys, she is SO INTO the "My First Little House" books that Allison sent for her first birthday -- she wants us to read them to her OVER AND OVER, every single day!  IT IS SO EXCITING FOR ME, you can't even imagine...well, yes you can):

She was well enough to continue applauding for herself and others (she claps whenever clapping is mentioned in a book, such as when Laura and Mary clap for Mr. Edwards dancing on the moonlit prairie):

But ultimately she had to withdraw from society and hide from her fans behind a sweet set of shades for the duration of her rashy illness:

We hope she'll be back to full dancing strength by next Friday. 

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Yessiree, I'm Walkin' Edition

Yep, Felicity is walking now.  Well, if by "walking" you mean "staggering around in a drunk-Frankenstein-like manner and falling down every few steps." 

I think it's kind of amazing, like so many developmental things, how it just sort of...happens.  The kid cruises around holding onto the furniture for a while, and then one day out of the blue she lets go and takes a few steps, and the next day a few more, and...well, babies are magical and all that jazz.  It's still going to be a while before we can just stroll on outside with her, holding her hand and expecting her to remain upright most of the time, but we're getting there. 

She seems to do best when she's holding something.  Not a favorite toy or something normal, no -- preferably my Blackberry holster or a crumpled up receipt.  She also loves to tear around like a maniac with her push-wagon, banging into doors and walls and terrorizing the dog, all the while shrieking with glee.  The other day, I crouched down in front of her and she tried to run me over, then she backed up and came at me again! 

I think she might be slightly bitter about the sudden switch I made from formula to milk.  Sorry kid, those are the rules!  But you're welcome to play with dirty socks all you like.  Deal?