Category Archives: Primrose

Prim’s Birthday Wish List (or, what I would like to buy her, but won’t)

April 28, 2016

Prim’s birthday is now less than two weeks away, and even though we already bought Prim a gift (which she won’t receive for at least another month because it’s currently packed away with our stuff, sailing on the high seas to the Netherlands), I keep seeing adorable items that I would love to buy her.

I totally get why people go overboard with things for their kids. It’s so easy. Everything is so tiny! So adorable! Not quite as expensive as adult things! (Usually.)

We’ve been very good about keeping Prim’s toy situation to a manageable level — and proof positive that babies don’t need much to be entertained, almost all of Prim’s toys were packed up and shipped weeks ago, and does she care? Not in the slightest. Give this girl an old magazine to tear apart and she’s good.

The list below has nothing to do with what Prim actually wants for her birthday (because, let’s face it, what Prim really wants is to be able to go through the bathroom garbage and to play in Penny’s dog bed. Heaven!)

Here’s really what I have my eye on for Prim’s birthday (but won’t be buying her):

The cutest floppy mouse doll.

An adorable (and totally impractical for Amsterdam) summer dress.

Freshly Picked moccasins in granite, size 3. (Prim has the weathered brown pair in size 2, which I managed to purchase on sale. And even though I thought they were a little frivolous, I have to say that these shoes are the best — so soft, and they actually stay on! She wears them almost daily.)

A totally unnecessary (but oh so cute!) baby bonnet.

And finally, a rattle to remind her of her home state. ♥

Baby / Motherhood / Primrose

Monthly Motherhood Update: Prim at 11 months

April 11, 2016

Saying: Prim says what we think is “bye” pretty much all the time. Anytime someone leaves a room — “bye.” Sometimes she even accompanies it with a little wave. It’s too funny.

Eating: Prim still loves to eat (she does have her picky moments though — make no mistake!) She’s OBSESSED with Cheerios — anytime I pull the big yellow box out of the cupboard she smiles and starts yelling excitedly. Thankfully Cheerios are a “treat” I can get behind (because this mama isn’t really ready for all the carby/sugary goodness of “real” treats just yet!)

Sleeping: Prim has been sleeping through the night for the most part! It’s never a perfect process, unfortunately, but more often than not, she’s sleeping 11+ hours in a row! And let me tell you, my body doesn’t even know what to do with that kind of rest. It’s amazing.

Doing: Prim is still dancing up a storm and will now “ask” for music to be turned on (not verbally — it’s a carefully orchestrated series of gestures and looks in the direction of the Roku).

Latest milestone: Prim has graduated from pulling up and cruising to now standing unassisted. The funny thing is she always seems like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it — she just kind of lets go of what she’s holding onto, or even just stands up from the floor as though it’s no big thing. I’m pretty sure she’s just going to stand up one day and decide to walk across the room unassisted.

Favorite toys: She’s loving boxes these days because they can conceal other toys. She’ll open a shoe box and fill it with other toys before covering it again with the lid, then she pulls the lid off and “discovers” everything hidden inside. According to her it’s totally exciting and hilarious.

Sweetest things: This is something which is both sort of annoying and sweet (which is basically what a lot of motherhood is…), but lately she’s been waking up once after we put her to bed. I don’t know if she’s having bad dreams or what, but she’ll wake up 40 minutes after bedtime and can’t get herself back to sleep. KC or I will go in and she’ll lay on top of us until she falls asleep again and then is generally out for the rest of the night. And while the little post-bedtime interruption is kind of annoying, there’s just nothing sweeter than having her fall asleep on your chest.

Favorite thing about this age: She is clearly trying to communicate with gusto now. She’ll crawl over to me and pull herself up so she’s right at face-height and look at me very seriously while going on and on in her baby babble. I have no clue what she’s trying to tell me, but it’s obviously important and it sure is sweet!

Baby / Personal / Primrose

Monthly Motherhood Update — Prim at 10 months

March 9, 2016

Saying: Prim has been saying variations of “Mama” and “Dada” a lot, but I’m still not fully convinced that she’s using them correctly to refer to KC and I. True to form, she yells what sounds like “Dada!” when excited (like when KC comes home from work) and wails “Mamamama” when stressed or sad. Because of course.

Eating: Prim is still a champion eater, and (according to Alexis) eats like a truck driver. I can’t say this isn’t true — she eats almost as much as I do at meals. We like to joke that she must have a hollow leg with the amount of food she can put away, and it’s especially funny because she’s really such a long, lean baby still — all limbs! Where is it all going?? Her current favorites are soft-cooked eggs on avocado toast, clementines, and kiwi (and she also weirdly loves spicy food!)

Sleeping: Prim sleeps really well, for the most part, though this latest bout of teething has interrupted things a bit. Most nights she’s up just once to nurse, and though I know I could probably drop this feeding, I don’t mind waking up once for a middle of the night snuggle. I just keep thinking that the time when she’s this little is so fleeting, and we have a whole lifetime of sleeping through the night ahead of us.

Doing: This girl is on the move! She crawls at supersonic speed now and is cruising all over the place. She can pull herself up onto her push cart now and push it all the way across the room (though sometimes she prefers to crawl behind it while pushing it with one arm — hilarious).

Latest milestone: I don’t think this is really a “milestone” per se, but she’s recently started dancing when we turn on music. She rocks back and forth on all fours and bobs her head, or sits up and flaps her arms. Sometimes she gets so excited that she kicks her legs out to the side — we call it the “frog dance.”

Favorite toys: She’s been getting more into stuffed animals lately, which is adorable. She has a stuffed fox and bunny that we keep in her crib (I know, I know, calm down everybody), and when she wakes up from a nap, a lot of the time she’ll spend 10 or 15 minutes just playing with the animals (she especially likes touching their eyes, which is really fun for Penny, who basically looks like a big stuffed animal.)

Sweetest things: She’s always been a little bit of a mama’s girl, but it’s now getting a more obvious that she knows I’m her mama and the person she wants if she’s upset. If she falls down (or is maybe just tired and starting to fall apart) she’ll start to wail “Mamamamama” and make a beeline straight for me.

Favorite thing about this age: She is such a little fireball! She squeals and laughs and shrieks and has so many different sounds and emotions now. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with as she adds more words to her vocabulary.

Personal / Primrose

International Women’s Day

March 8, 2016

This morning on BART, I was standing in the aisle on a pretty uncrowded train. As I’m standing there, the train doors open and a man gets on. He proceeds to make his way down the mostly open aisle, pushes his way past me, and stands almost right where I am — forcing me to move over so that I’m not literally pressed right up against him. I looked around, baffled, because there was so much space everywhere else on the train — and despite that, he’d still made the decision to push his way to right where I was standing, and take my spot.

And I don’t know if it’s because I’m a fairly nice person (or at least I’d like to think I am), or because I’m a woman and I don’t want to cause a scene, but I just moved over. I didn’t speak up, I didn’t tap him and politely explain that he had just encroached on my space and forced me to move for no good reason. I just gave him the space he had rudely forced himself into.

And maybe this is petty and small, but I was annoyed. And I started thinking about all the small ways that I, as a woman, accommodate the men around me. The way I make myself smaller, take up less space, and shuffle to the side on crowded trains, while the men stand tall and fill up space they apparently feel is rightfully theirs, without apology. The way I laugh and look around nervously when someone hits on me — not wanting to cause a scene by shouting, “Look at my left hand! I’m not available!” even though I’m uncomfortable. (The closest I came to this was when I was 6 months — and very visibly — pregnant, and a man hit on me. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Um, I’m PREGNANT.” and walked away.)

As women, we all do this. We learn the art of diffusing situations early. Laugh away your discomfort. Keep smiling as he pursues you more and more aggressively — it’s better to let him down gently and not cause a scene, even though you’ve said “no” four times already. Men are taught to be strong, relentless, so maybe it’s no wonder that they don’t get the hint. “No” is just a jumping off point to start negotiation, because “she’s just playing hard to get.”

Now that I have a daughter of my own, I hope that I can teach her that she can cause a scene. She can be as loud as she wants. She can take up space. She can look someone directly in the eye and say, “No” and have it be the end of the discussion. She can stand her ground and not apologize for being strong. She can be “bossy” and “shrill” and “crazy” and “high-maintenance” and “spoiled” — because you can bet that if she were a boy she would just be “headstrong” or “a leader” or “a guy who can get the job done.”

Prim — I hope I can teach you that you are important, successful, and worthy of peoples’ time and respect. You deserve to be heard and treated (and compensated) equally. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re the CEO of a company or struggling to find a job, whether you manage a team of 20 or manage a household, whether you have a spouse or children or a career or all of the above.

You are smart. You are kind. YOU ARE IMPORTANT.

(And your mama loves you a whooooole lot.)

Baby / Motherhood / Primrose

Motherhood Update — Prim at 9 months

February 9, 2016

Similar to my monthly pregnancy updates, I thought I’d start documenting what’s new with Prim on a monthly basis. I love looking back at the pregnancy updates and remembering how I was feeling and what was happening at that time, and Prim is changing so quickly, I want to be able to look back and remember all the little details.

Saying: Nothing coherent yet, but make no mistake — this girl is a talker. She started babbling at 6 weeks and has not stopped since. One of her favorite things to do is pull herself up, stand and just yell. KC and I think it’s hilarious, and I love that KC is never going to have a moment of silence again with these two chatty ladies in his life.

Eating: Prim is a really good eater and loves alllll kinds of foods. She’s especially fond of her mama’s lentil soup, black bean and butternut soup, and beef stew. She’s really getting the hang of feeding herself now too — it’s not quite as messy, now that she’s sort of got the hang of the pincer grasp.

Sleeping: Prim’s bedtime routine starts with dinner at 6pm every night and is followed by bath time (because dinner is messy!), lotion and jammies, then storytime and milk with mama before being put to bed around 7/7:15pm. We are super regimented about her bedtime and have been for a long time. Prim seems to really love the structure and routine, and even though I sometimes wish we could scoot out for happy hour with her still, it’s more important to me that Prim is happy and comfortable (and sleeping well!)

Doing: Since Prim really started moving in November she has been all over the place during her waking hours. It’s amazing how fast she can crawl now and she’s pulling up on everything and even starting to cruise a few steps here and there. This phase is simultaneously adorable and terrifying, because she not only falls a lot (and I’m doing my very best to give her space to learn and figure things out) but she also finds the grossest and/or most dangerous thing in the room and tries to put it in her mouth (case and point: the photo above, where she found a rogue race car hiding behind the furniture, right by all the electrical cords. Of course.)

Latest milestone: Pulling up onto furniture is probably the latest, but she’s also learning names for people and pets. We’ll ask her, “Where’s Penny?” and she’ll search until she finds her and we say, “There she is!” My latest challenge is getting her to hand over whatever contraband she’s found digging under the furniture when I say, “Hand that to mama!” It’s a work in progress,

Favorite toys: Honestly, her favorite toys are Penny’s toys because she knows she’s not supposed to play with them. Usually if she’s really quiet it’s because she’s found one of Penny’s chews and is silently trying to sneak away with it so she, too, can gnaw on it. She also loves zippers and sweatshirt strings, and everything goes in her mouth.

Sweetest things: She’s started giving kisses when KC or I ask her, “Can you give mama a kiss?” (though she won’t give daddy kisses yet — only mama). I’m sure I’m the only person who finds it adorable because her “kisses” are literally just her dive-bombing my face with a slobbery open mouth, but I can’t get enough of these sweet, wet smooches.

Favorite thing about this age: My favorite thing about this age is how much her personality is showing now. Whenever we take her places with new people, she takes everything in for a bit (usually insisting on being held by mama until she’s comfortable), but then starts talking and yelling and “fake laughing” (which is the funniest thing ever). She’s clearly a chatty little extrovert and I think we might be in some real trouble about 15 years from now.