Feeding the Ducks with Pappy

We drove to Hagerstown today so Eric could help my mom out with some broken things around her house. I dropped him off and then Hannah and I headed straight for Pangborn Park to meet Pappy. She doesn't do well being strapped into a car seat for long periods so giving her a place to immediately stretch out and run was a priority.  I've always loved Pangborn. It's got great tree coverage, a nice pond, and is a perfect not-too-big-and-not-too-small size.  As a bonus, this is also the park where my dad works so of course he keeps it clean and beautiful!

So, in addition to the previously mentioned bonus points for Pangborn Park, there was one unknown bonus: ducks that are sort of trained.  I was heading for a trash can with an apple core in my hand when my dad suggested we feed it to the ducks. We started with the closest ducks, but they took off so he suggested we go feed the trained ducks.  Trained ducks?? Whaaaaat?  So we started walking over to where this group of ducks was all huddled down beneath a tree. When they noticed us, they all stood up and and quickly waddled to us. I guess they're trained to know that the animals who walk on two legs typically have food. Anyway, when they got close, my dad held up his hand in the air, and the ducks stopped where they were and just waited for us to approach them!! How crazy is that! He's like Dr. Doolittle or something. Then he took out his pocket knife and started cutting up small pieces of the apple for Hannah to feed to them. Those ducks were eating right out of her hand!! It was crazy and awesome and definitely the highlight of our week!! 

After they'd eaten most of the apple, they jumped in the pond for a swim. Hannah thought this was a fantastic idea and tried to follow them.  She was none too happy about being held back. 

After a couple of attempts to jump in, and a number of fits verging on temper tantrums, we decided distraction was our best bet.  Lucky for us, Pappy brought a yellow bouncy ball which we took to the opposite end of the park.  Then Pappy taught Hannah how to kick the ball.

After an hour or so at the park we headed back to my dad's house for lunch and a nap. I wasn't sure how the nap thing would work and figured I had two options: 1) put her in a playpen and sit by that playpen while she screamed for up to an hour until finally falling asleep, 2) lay down with her, latch her on, and cross my fingers that she nursed until she passed out. I opted for option 2, and surprisingly she passed right out and stayed that way for an hour and a half. She would have slept longer but I woke up after about 45 minutes and was getting bored, thirsty, and antsy so once I knew she'd met her 90-minute sleep cycle, I took back my boob which woke her.

Dad brought out a big basket of toys then and we played on the floor for a bit.  At one point, Hannah tucked her lips in, hummed, and leaned in for a kiss. I miraculously had the camera in my hand and, knowing what that humming and lip pursing meant, stole a picture.  She really gives the best kisses. I'm glad Pappy got to experience a Hannah kiss.

Tickle fest.

 

Hannah found this book in the basket, handed it to Pappy, and then laid down on the floor to listen to a story.  After one read through, she started signing "more", and I caught it!! See in the photo below how she's signing more?  How fun is that! 

After a little more playtime we headed over to Grammy's to see how her and Daddy were doing and to get in a little QT with Grammy before heading out. For some reason I didn't pick up my camera there...But Hannah had fun playing with the teeny tiny dog who growled at her, jumping up and down and rolling around in the crib, and crawling in and out of the empty upstairs closet.

It was a fun trip, but I'm not motivated to make it any more often.  Hannah spent much of the car ride yelling and fussing and screaming and trying to get out of her car seat, which just stresses me out and makes me tense and makes the whole ride difficult for me. Eric sat in the back on the way there which helped her a bit I think, but I still stressed when she screamed. I got stuck in the back with her on our way back to Baltimore which, given my propensity for any kind of motion sickness, made it more miserable for me. I had to juggle being car sick with entertaining a very frustrated baby.  Not fun. I called my mom during a particularly bad crying spree (her, not me) in an attempt to prove to her that I have a good reason for never driving back there, but she didn't sympathize, just said lots of people had kids and still found ways to travel, like how she used to get us up at 4:00 a.m. for road trips because then we would still be sleepy and would sleep in the car so she wouldn't have to hear our mouths....I don't see me getting up at 4:00 a.m. any time soon. I do, however, see me continuing along on my current path of refusing to go anyplace that requires us to be in the car for more than 25 minutes.  

Hannah Learns Some More Signs

I know I've been quite the blogging slacker as of late and that has to do both with our general lack of any activity outside of our usual super fun routine and also with my recent organizing obsession.  I bought my neighbor's treadmill on Sunday and have been busy making room for it in our basement.  I posted my old dining room table turned craft table to Craig's List and then delved into my boxes of undergrad and graduate school work that were stashed under the desk.  There were three boxes of that stuff plus a portable filing cabinet thingy filled with old freelance stuff.  I consolidated and pitched all the freelance stuff, all my notes, all my papers (all stuff that I have saved to my hard drive anyway) and filed my old course outlines and teacher handouts in the portable filing cabinet thingy. I'd have pitched those too but I figure those notes will come in handy in the event I ever apply for and land a position teaching any one of those courses.  Once all that was pitched, I stashed all my wayward craft stuff under the desk after months of it being strewn about in various corners of various rooms.  I finished the bulk of this project tonight, the part that affects our living spaces anyway, and am at a good stopping point, so I thought I'd some of Hannah's recent milestones in communication.

Yesterday at the pool Hannah found some toys in the skimmer and busied herself playing with them until one of them one floated back into the skimmer. She panicked and started reaching for it while loudly and obnoxiously saying, "EHHHH!! EHHH!!!" which in Hannah speak means "GIVE ME THAT" or, in this case, get me that. As usual I looked at her and calmly said, "What is it? Do you need help?" while doing the sign for help. (For those of you not proficient in ASL, here's a photo of the sign for help that I found on this website.)

Sign language for help.

Hannah nodded her hand and attempted the sign.  She put the palms of her hands together with her thumbs up and moved her hands up together.  Amazing!!! My child is a genius!! Wahooooo!!!! I made a big deal out of her first attempt at signing help and applauded her  profusely before fishing the toy out of the skimmer.  Her little brain cogs started really rolling then.  She pushed the toy back into the skimmer, looked at me with a big grin on her face, and signed "help."  How awesome is that?!!!  So I applauded again and started really playing it up by saying stuff like, "Of course I'll help you get your toy out of the skimmer! Here you go, mommy helped." At that I threw in the sign for mommy.  Then I said, "Can you say 'thank you, mommy'?" and threw in the signs for thank you and mommy.  We repeated that scenario over and over again, making a game out of her ability to sign for help, and then during the bit where I thank myself for her, she put the palm of her hand up to her chin very deliberately and smiled big again!!! What's more genius-y than a genius??? That's my banana!!  (If you don't know it, here's the sign for thank you which I stole from this website):

Sign language for thank you.

Then later in the day, she picked up the sign for drink. In addition to this being her third learned sign in one day, this is one we've been working on for a looooonnnnng time.  She modifies this one by putting her index finger to her lips and tilting her head back. (A pic if you're interested, this one from the Dummies.com website):

Sign language for drink.

Hannah is not mastering control of her spoken words at all, which is fine, no rush, but I have to admit that I am LOVING the fact that she's picking up on sign language!  It is so flippin' awesome to be communicating with her, to know what she wants rather than have to hear her very loud, very insistent EHHH-ing which stresses me out while I try to guess the object of the EHHHH. But the awesomeness of this is not just how it benefits me, it's more how it benefits her.  I think for her, and for all babies I guess, communication is like this secret puzzle or code to crack, and watching her eyes light up every time she cracks the code is beyond amazing.

Now that she's catching on, I guess I need to increase my own signing vocabulary. I'm guessing that now that she's made the connection, it won't take her long to blaze through the handful of signs that I know and then resort back to driving me nuts with her constant EHHHHH-ing! 

15-Months Today

I took this cute picture of Hannah hanging out in her crib yesterday and was logging on to share it when I realized that today is the 5th of the month which means that she is exactly 15 months old today.  I had planned on doing my next baby pic comparisons at 15, 18, and then 24 months, but I don't have another baby pic of Eric until he's 17 months so we'll just do 17 and 24 months.  I do, however, have baby pics of me at 15, 16, and 17 months so lace up your boot straps and get ready for a baby Terri overload!

As you'll see in the 17 month shot, Hannah looks A TON like her daddy at this age.

So, no criticism on my mom who is amazing and awesome, but why the hell was I eating Burger King at 15 months old???? GROSS!!!!

Hannah's Got a Sleep Sack

I ordered this sleep sack for Hannah about a month ago and am loving it!  I was a little unsure of it when ordering and spent some time waffling back and forth and trying to engage Eric in my waffling before giving up and hitting the submit order button. It was only $20 so it's not like we'd be out too much if it didn't work out.  When it arrived and I had unwrapped it, my uncertainty heightened:  the dang thing looks like it could easily fit a 6-year-old in spite of the size reading 18-24 months. I was worried that all that bagginess would get bunched up under her while she was sleeping and annoy her enough to want to communicate her annoyances to us in the form of very loud screams at very early hours of the morning, but nope. It never bothered her. She didn't even look at us or it funny the first time we put it on her.

Hannah modeling her Halo SleepSack before nap time today.

Trying to dress her for sleeping is by far one of my most stressful daily tasks.  She always seemed hot in the summer, and we kept the thermostat on 78 degrees, but I worried that she'd feel a little chilly if she were just in a onesie or a onesie and shorts. Everybody likes at least a sheet over them, right? It's just comforting. So I kept her in thin cotton zip-up footed sleepers.  I think sometimes it was too much (her sweaty self was my clue), but I couldn't bring myself to dress her in any less.

The problem with cooler weather is that her room ranges from 1-5 degrees cooler than the rest of the house, including the hallway right outside her room where the thermostat sits. My guess is that underneath that very old plaster wall in her room, there is a miniature arctic playground complete with polar bears and penguins who radiate that arctic playground into her room.  I would like to replace that arctic playground with some heavy duty insulation but tearing out the plaster wall is not an option at the moment. Instead, I put a thermometer in there about a month ago and have been studying the situation ever since, tweaking the thermostat by a degree here and another degree there while monitoring the temperature in her room in an effort to discover the lowest possible setting that we can keep the thermostat on without letting her room drop below 68 degrees.  I was hoping to find a rule like "it's always 4 degrees cooler in Hannah's room than in the hallway" or something like that, but a rule like that would make life too easy so of course no such rule exists. So far, my research has shown that if the thermostat is on 71 or lower, Hannah's room remains 4 degrees cooler (so it'll be 67 if the thermostat is on 71).  But if we bump the thermostat up to 72, her room heats up to 71 and stays there.  How weird is that??

In an ideal world, we'd keep the thermostat at 68 degrees like we always used to, but the thermostat at 68 means 64 in Hannah's room which is 4 degrees cooler than I'm comfortable with, and that 4 degrees keeps me up at night.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a summer girl all the way and would love to keep the thermostat at 72 constantly (and since we signed up for Clean Currents, 100% wind power about a year ago, I don't have to feel too guilty about wasting energy), but I don't want to have to pay to keep it that cozy in here...

Fortunately, unlike her mama who HATES all things cold (except ice cream), Hannah doesn't seem to mind it and is actually sleeping better now than ever. She's down without much of a fuss between 7:15 and 7:30 and sleeps straight through the night until between 7:00 and 7:30 the next morning (7:45 on Tuesday!).  How amazing is that!!  This has been constant even though the temperature of her room has wavered between 66 and 71 while I've been doing my research/thermostat experiment.  The pajamas I've settled on is one of those fleece blanket sleepers with the feet, a onesie beneath it, and her sleep sack over it.  

I'll keep monitoring the thermometer, especially as the temperature outside drops, but I'll probably stop sending Eric into her room in the middle of the night with a flashlight and strict instructions to tip toe in his most ninja-like impression just to check the temperature.

Hannah and Her Grannah