Category Archives: Pictures

month fourteen

08.30.10

Dear Brooklynn,

Yesterday, you turned 14 months old. Before we had you, I never realized how much of a difference one month can make in the life a person your size. I used to think that people who said ages in months were a little snobbish, but I now I realize that so much happens between one year and 18 months.

For instance, you seem to think that once you have demonstrated sufficient mastery of a skill, you no longer have any need to perform said skill again. Say for instance kisses and waving bye-bye. A month ago, you would do both, almost on command. And now: nothing. No kisses. No waves.

It almost feels like you dismiss our requests with a miniature eye-roll and a sigh that seems to say, honestly guys, that was so last month. Get with the times, will you? Since when did an under-two-year-old come with the attitude of a teenager?

(And since this file-and-forget behavior dominates almost all of your actions, why do still play in the potted plant dirt? Trust me, you have it down.)

Your inquisitiveness is growing faster than you can explore. If either your mother or I have any sort of item that you catch sight of, you would like to hold it and have it, please. Only, you don’t say please. No, you reach your tiny hand up, pull on our legs, and whimper until you get what you want. Sometimes, if it is very serious, you will squeal and stomp your little feet on the ground to show your displeasure at being denied such a simple request as give me that.

I can’t wait to see what a full blown tantrum looks like.

You know your way around the house very well and you also know when we head upstairs without you. Yesterday, you were in the kitchen and I walked by to go upstairs with a load of clothes from the dryer. I paused halfway up and could hear the tiny stomping of your footsteps coming around the corner on your way to follow me up.

This insistence on being where we are is charming, but you also tend to get underfoot and in the way. You like to help unload the dishwasher regardless if the dishes are clean or dirty, especially the silverware. We do our best to steer you more toward the spoon and rubber spatulas and away from the forks and paring knives.

You also are a more than willing participant in sorting clothes. While I prefer to sort into whites, colors, and darks, you trend more toward in the basket and out of the basket. I know you’re new at doing laundry, but if I’m really honest about it, you’re a little indecisive. You will take one item out, study it, put it on the floor, pick it back up and decide it should really go in the basket after all.

One of your latest favorite pastimes is walking around with your purse on your shoulder. Or, really, anything that you can drape over your shoulder. You walk around with your arm straight up in the air to keep the strap up and march around the house.

Not a Purse

In case you haven’t picked up on the trend, you love to pick things up and carry/drag them around with you. And that’s fine. We like it when you play with your toys and even when you play with things that aren’t your toys. But maybe we could work on putting things back in some semblance of order. I know that you aren’t up late at night, but our house is actually getting to be a fairly dangerous place to walk around in the dark.

The days are getting shorter. The sun is down by the time you go to bed and it’s still dark when we roust you in the morning. We try to get you to sleep early, but there is just so much to do with you, like go on walks and bike rides and explore the yard. The mornings when we are working come far to soon for all our liking; just last week, I could have sworn you mumbled, Five more minutes, as I came into your room to get you dressed.

Speaking of speaking, you are doing very little of that. You still have no real words that you use in any sort of context. And that’s fine. You talk a lot, and when I say talking, I mean use many different sounds and inflections and cadences. You talk to us, you talk to your toys, and you talk to yourself. You are very earnest in your efforts to communicate. I often wonder if we still sound as strange to you as you do to us most of the time. Perhaps you already have your own language all developed and you’re just waiting for us to catch on so we can hold a decent conversation.

I know this is a recurring theme, but you are growing up so fast. Your hair is long enough to put into pigtails. You like to feed yourself with your spoon and you don’t need us to cut up all of your food anymore. (You could probably do with more chewing and less swallowing whole.)

We brush your teeth every night after that bath and this is now one of your favorite parts of the bedtime routine. You help put your clothes on in the morning and take them off at night. Sometimes, it feels like at the rate you’re growing, we’ll be handing you the keys to the car by Christmas.

Just remember Brooklynn, no matter how big and mature you get, you’ll still be our little girl. (And give your mom a kiss once a while. She’d really like that.)

Love,
Dad

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finally

08.27.10

Yes, Dad, I’m posting pictures of flowers.

We planted these Tiger Lilies the first year we moved in to our house. We planted them in clay from seeds and were pleasantly surprised when they came up. They’ve been neglected, gone lone stretches without water, and there were several times we assumed they had died.

Four years later, we finally got four flowers.

I think the wait made it even better.

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Climb On

08.18.10

Brooklynn has recently hit a growth spurt. At least we hope she’s hit a growth spurt, because if she hasn’t, she really needs to slow down on how much she’s eating. If you see Rhiannon or I and we look a little thinner to you, it’s because Brooklynn is eating all of our food at dinner.

She’s grown almost an inch over the last month (by our measurements), and the added height allows her to almost start walking up steps more than crawling. It’s getting to point where something has to be at least four feet off the ground in the house in order to be safe anymore.

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month thirteen

07.29.10

Dear Brooklynn,

A year ago, we had a one-month old living with us. Your mother was still getting up in the middle of the night, every night, to care for said child. And in between going back to work, having some family visit, and basically figuring out how to be parents, we both agreed that sometimes it felt like we were just watching some one else’s baby. And feeding someone else’s baby. And bathing someone else’s baby.

Of course we loved that baby like nothing else in our lives, even on the day’s when it felt as if someone really should come and take the child from us, if just for one day, to let us catch our breath. Life rarely comes with do-overs, and, when there wasn’t a reset button to be found, we forged ahead.

Brooklynn, we are overjoyed that we did. A year ago, we were happy if you would look at us with uncrossed eyes and maybe, just for one split second, acknowledge our presence. Now, when I come home from work, I am typically greeted with a shriek, a smile, and the sound of tiny feet toddling over to me to be picked up. Crawling is so for babies.

We do not have a baby in the house anymore. Since you have turned one, I don’t think you’ve crawled more than 15 feet in total. Everywhere is walking: around the house, in the backyard, up and down the driveway, and out in to the street.

A very common phrase in the house has become, “Where’s Brooklynn?”, often followed by the askee glancing around the room in an attempt to imagine where you might have wandered off to now. You have an uncanny ability to meander away when we’d like you to stay close and to suddenly become clingy when all we really want is for you to show some independence.

You are very interested in other people from a distance and then prefer to hide behind a leg or look away when they get close. I’m sure you’ll get over it. I think I started becoming more comfortable around strangers when I was about 22, so you might have a little ways to go.

Our life has settled into a bit of a routine over these past few weeks that we’ve been home, and if you happen to be looking at the dates of how often I’ve been writing, you’ll notice that routine rarely involves actually posting anything. We are in the middle of summer, and that means it’s time to be outside. You go on walks with Mom in the mornings, and in the evenings we head out into the yard to explore.

You prefer the stone path to walking on grass. You would very much like it if we would let you climb into the gardens. You enjoy digging bark and stones out of the landscaping, and you like to get up a little speed on the downward slope of the driveway. We worry that you will stumble and fall and, this past weekend, you took your first major tumble of your young life. You stepped a little too close the edge of the deck steps, and when your foot found only air, a look of panic spread across your face and you rolled down the steps head first.

Your mother likes to give me a hard time about my slow reaction time, but I did manage to get to you before just your head met the flagstone of the walkway. (She maintains that she would have caught you at least a step earlier.) But it’s ok. You survived, and you also went to be right after your bath that night with no bottle. And you haven’t had a nighttime bottle since.

This is the last week that you get to spend with Mom at home since she goes back to work next week; I imagine that you will be happy to get out of the house and see some other kids on a regular basis, but you will also miss spending time with your favorite person in the world. There’s no one who comforts tears or makes you smile quite like your mother. You certainly give her far more kisses than you give me, but maybe that’s because I don’t shave quite as often as I should.

We know you won’t stop growing and learning new things every day, but we might pause you right here if we could, just for a little while.

Love,
Dad

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summer nights

07.28.10

Yes, posting has been a little light as of late. Yes, we’re all still doing fine. Things have slowed down at work and, frankly, with the weather we’ve been enjoying, I’ve been trying to spend as much time outside rather than sitting in front of a computer as possible.