Foodie

Sierra is becoming quite the connoisseur of cheese. I usually do not buy tons of different kinds at once because they run out at different times, but this past week I just happened to be getting a lot at one store run. As I put each one on the belt, she would announce what it was (of course, much to the amazement of the other nearby shoppers!) In her list on that particular day was Parmesan, Feta, Edam, Havarti, and Cheddar. We always get the vintage white super-aged cheddar, so on the occasions where she has encountered "regular" cheddar, she doesn't believe that it's cheddar and she calls it "yellow cheese". She also knows Gouda now, and she is very eager to help me choose new and unusual (and expensive!) cheeses from the deli. Well, ok, they are not that unusual in the sense that if they are wrapped in red wax, then that in itself makes them cool and very worthy! Of all the cheeses she has tried, though, her absolute favorite is Dill Havarti. I gave her a bowl of chili the other day and she looked up sweetly and said, "I'd like Havarti cheese on the side, please." Can we see where this is headed?

Observations

This afternoon we went up to the Duquesne Incline with a friend who was in town and wanted an overview of the city. There is a great view of downtown Pittsurgh from up there and we spent some time up there finding various landmarks such as the baseball stadium, etc. On our way home afterwards we drove past the other incline (there are two fairly close together on Mount Washington). Sierra pointed it out and I didn't figure there was much point to making a big deal that it wasn't the same one we had just gone up, so I said something like, "Wasn't that fun, going up and down that incline?" She got her little look on her face and announced, "In fact, that is a different incline!"

Evi's first solids

Evi finally got her mouth around some "real" food this week--on the eve of her 5 month birthday. We started seeing the signs about a week earlier. Every time we would eat she would watch us take the food from the plate and put it in our mouths and she was just drooling and looking so eager to get her hands on some of it for herself! Also, she started waking up hungry in the night, which she hasn't done for months. So it was pretty clear that we needed to start filling up her tummy a bit better. Well, right about that time Sierra was recovering from her broken collarbone, getting over the stomach flu, and Jonathan left for a week. I didn't think it would be prudent to introduce solid food right when she might be at risk for getting a stomach bug, plus Jonathan really wanted to be here for her first food, so I waited until he got back and we finally did it the other night. She of course had no idea what to do with it and most of it ended up down on the bib, but I think by today she is starting to get the hang of it. I'm sure by the end of the week, she'll be scarfing down massive helpings of her rice cereal.

Broken collarbone

Well, the moment I suspected would come eventually has indeed come--one of our children has a broken bone. Jonathan took the girls to a naming ceremony for the baby of one of his new grad students. While there, Sierra apparently fell off a chair and landed on her head/shoulder. She was in a lot of pain, but a doctor who was there checked her and thought that she didn't break anything. When it was clear that the pain was not going to blow off as it usually does after a spill, Jonathan walked home (with Evi in the frontpack and Sierra on his shoulders). I had just finished teaching and he called me to tell me what had happene, so I walked out to meet them and Sierra was just crying and crying in pain the whole way home.

We called the doctor and they said that if she could sleep with pain medication then it was likely that she didn't have a broken bone, so we decided to try that method and dosed her up really well and she went to sleep. We were relieved, but wondered what would happen when the first batch of medicine wore off. Indeed, when she woke up around midnight, it seemed clear that she was in too much pain to go back to sleep. Jonathan took her into the ER and they did the Xray and sure enough, that little collarbone had just snapped in two. They don't really do anything for someone as little as she is, except medicate for pain, so Jonathan brought her back home. When they got here, Sierra seemed to be in pretty good spirits and wanted to tell me all about seeing the doctor. She very solemnly explained to me that they took a picture of her bones and that the doctor said that her bones would heal up very nicely very soon. She really gave me a pretty thorough story of her whole experience there with basically no prompting from Daddy. We gave her more medicine and propped her up in a more sitting position (it seems to hurt more when she lays down) and she has been sleeping ever since. We'll see how things go today......

S-I-E-R-R-A

Yesterday Sierra spelled her name with just a very minimal amount of prompting. She had been standing at the fridge with her magnetic letters saying "Let's spell Sierra, let's spell Sierra" as I was just finishing up the last few bites of my breakfast. By the time I got over there, she had S-I-R-R, but was looking at it a bit quizically. I suggested that maybe there was something missing and she took away the two R's. I told her that was right and said, "S-I.....?" She shouted out "E"! Then she found it, put it in place and put the R's back. Then I said "S-I-E-R-R-......?" and she shouted out "A" and found one and stuck it on. Being her mom, I was of course, very impressed! :-)

Evi in the apples

This past weekend we made applesauce... a LOT of applesauce! We turned about 9 bushels of apples into applesauce, to be exact. Sierra is trying to kick off a pretty bad cold, and so we had to steer her clear of the festivities for the most part, because she would hack right into the jars or whatever, but we plopped Evi in her Bumbo seat and she just sat there right in the middle of all the action, looking around and chewing her hand, and probably wishing it was an apple. Unfortunately we couldn't get our camera to work, so we have no pictures of this.

A place at the table

This week Evi sat in a high chair for the first time--one of those wooden restaurant types. I sort of packed my purse and some other stuff around her so she wasn't swimming around in it so much (and so she wouldn't tip over) and she thought she was in seventh heaven. She just sat there and gawked around at everyone in the restaurant. I guess she was amazed that she could sit up to the table just like a big person (her usual place at home is in the bouncy seat on top of the table--like we were serving her up as an entree or something! She's probably relieved to be out of that hot seat!)

Cure-all

A conversation today with Sierra:

Me: I love you, Sierra!
Sierra: I yuv you, Mommy!
Me: Oh, that makes me feel so happy....
Sierra: Well, if you're sad, I'll bring you a band-aid.

Keep your seatbelts securely fastened....

Sierra is into playing "travel" right now. She walks around announcing that she is in the terminal heading for the gate to board a plane. She of course has her "luggage" with her, which usually consists of a gift bag filled with random toys, and her gold sparkly purse. She also usually has a huge entourage of "her kids"--a vast array of stuffed animals and dolls that are travelling with her. Then she'll sit on the couch or something and she'll "talk to the passengers" (she holds up an imaginary mouthpiece and says things into it, like a flight attendant). She loves it even more when one of us says the little flight attendant shpeal. When she does it, though, it is a little window into what adult conversation must sound like to her. When she is imitating adult speak, she makes up random syllables and intersperses them with actual words. So her "announcements" over the "intercom" sound something like this: "Oom op basta mano we're going to take off now op om."

Then everyone has to click their seatbelts, and we have to come through the cabin with snacks and drinks, headsets for the movie, etc. The funniest part is that she refuses to ever land. This game will literally go on for hours. If you try to "land the plane" for something as mundane as having lunch or something like that, she absolutely has a conniption. This is even with an extensive explanation that we are going up the jetway so that we can have lunch at a restaurant in the terminal before we board our next flight, etc., etc. (This is slightly relieved when she is in "train mode" since then you can simply get up and walk to the dining car.) The nice thing was that the other day I told her I had to bring my paperwork onto the plane so that I could work on it during the flight. So all morning we were "on the plane" and I managed to go through all the mail and get a lot of the bills taken care of! She cracks me up.... Maybe tomorrow I'll try to take some knitting on the plane. Genius.

By the way, her travel itinerary so far has included plane trips to California, Phipps (our local conservatory and botanical gardens) and the playground. She went on the train with Grandpa to Chicago, and continuing out to the West Coast somewhere.