DADADADADADA!

Our little Jane is becoming more vocal by the day. The serious faces she makes when she has something to say are so funny. Sometimes she'll talk and talk and other times she opens her mouth and moves it all around but nothing comes out. She sure is working hard at it! Sometimes I will make sounds for her to try to imitate (which she never does) and she will give me quite the look. Talking is serious work, apparently.
Our little pumpkin is now rolling both ways quite well. We had suspected that she could and did occasionally, but we could never catch her at it. Last Thursday we finally did. I had been videotaping her even, but had stopped taping and was adjusting my legs when she did it. She has done it several times since and rolls both ways in her crib at night.
Now on to sitting up! Some days she does really well and others not so much. I know she is getting strong enough and that when she figures out, she's going to love being able to sit on her own. After that I suspect crawling is next on the menu. It is hard to believe she is growing up so fast and that she will be six months old in just over a week. I'm not ready to let my baby grow up but I am enjoying these milestones so much!
This weekend we will attend a benefit for a classmate of mine who has brain cancer. Of course it isn't under the best of circumstances, but I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there and showing Jane off a bit. I just hope the crowd isn't too large for her!

Spoonerisms & mixed-up words

Do you ever mix up your words? I think we probably all have at one time or another. A few people in my life are notorious for this. One of them, on Monday, said, “I could have sworn I made a whole cube of ice trays!”

That got a good chuckle out of me and got me to thinking about other memorable word mix-ups. Years ago I learned about something called “Spoonerisms” in Bill Bryson’s “The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way.”

According to Wikipedia, a Spoonerism is “an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis). It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency.”

My husband’s word mix-up on Monday wasn’t exactly a Spoonerism by this definition, I suppose. But it was still funny. Wikipedia gives some funny examples of Spoonerisms that are often attributed to Spooner himself:

· "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (dear old queen, referring to Queen Victoria)

· "Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?" (customary to kiss)

· "The Lord is a shoving leopard." (a loving shepherd)

· "A blushing crow." (crushing blow)

· "A well-boiled icicle" (well-oiled bicycle)

· "You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle." (lighting a fire)

· "Is the bean dizzy?" (dean busy)

· "Someone is occupewing my pie. Please sew me to another sheet." (occupying my pew...show me to another seat)

· "You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain." (missed...history, wasted...term, down train)

Here are some of my favorite word mix-ups and Spoonerisms. (Names left off to protect the innocent, aka my family and co-workers.)

• Coff of cuppee (cup of coffee)

• Flotting swies (swatting flies)

• Look how horsey those happies are (happy, horses)

• Kapper Troothy (Trooper Kathy)

• Beth & Setsy (Seth & Betsy)

• Oasin ratemeal cookies (oatmeal raisin)

• Friendler usey (user friendly)

Some of these happened years ago and I still giggle every time I think about them. I have a couple other favorites, but I cannot share them here because the mixed-up letters resulted in profanity, and this is a family paper.

I don’t know why I am so amused by Spoonerisms and word mix-ups, but I am. It is funny how our brains and our mouths sometimes don’t work together very well.

Moody March

I haven't been in much of a mood to write here lately. It hasn't been the best couple of weeks and I've been crabby and annoyed for most of it. I still am, but didn't want to get too much out of the habit of writing. I don't want to go into what is bothering me, just suffice it to say that I'm not the happiest person on the planet right now. Add to it that it's March and it makes matters even worse. I hate March. With a passion. It's gray. It's still cold. It's muddy. It's just all around gross and I can't wait for it to be over. I'm hoping for happier times in April.
Jane is doing well. She still hasn't rolled over from tummy to back - at least not that anyone has seen. I know she can do it, though. The past week was interesting because we transitioned her back into her crib. Ever since she developed a cold around Christmas time, we'd been letting her sleep in her bouncy seat. Every time we planned to put her back in her crib she'd get sick again. Then it came to a point that we knew it would be a struggle to get her to sleep in her crib again, plus she started rolling over and we didn't want her sleeping on her tummy. Last weekend, though, it became obvious that it was dangerous for her to keep sleeping in her bouncy seat. Early one morning I went into her room to find her doubled over, head hanging way down. She hadn't been that way long, because I had just put her back down a few minutes earlier, but it still scared me. She's too strong and can pull herself into a sitting position. So began the transition that we had needed to make for quite some time. The first night went remarkably well. Tim was out of town that night, so I put her down at about 8:45 p.m. She slept until 4 a.m. and then I brought her in to snuggle with me until morning. The nights that followed were not so great. Most nights, she woke up several times. But we stuck with it and for the past two nights she has slept through. She has also done so while sleeping on her tummy. As nervous as that makes me, I realize that I cannot stop her from rolling over and at this point she can choose how she wants to sleep. As long as she is sleeping well, I'm going to have to get over my fears a little bit and let her sleep. Last night she slept from 10:30 until 6, and the night before she slept from 10 until almost 7:30. That's great and I hope it continues.
Jane is also learning to babble. Before she mostly just cooed, but now she is exploring more sounds. It is very funny because she makes the strangest shapes with her mouth, like she is trying to mimic us. I suppose that she is. She has made both "ma ma" and "da da" sounds. She is quite the talker and also has quite the laugh. A good game of peekaboo or airplane gets her giggling really well. It is so much fun to watch her personality develop.

I never imagined ...

Before I became a mom ...

I never would have imagined that I'd have a refrigerator full of breast milk or that it would be source of major pride for me.

I never thought it was possible to see a baby grow overnight.

I never imagined I'd hope for a baby to sleep through the night and then lie awake myself, listening to a monitor, hoping she'd make a noise.

I never thought it would be more fun to dress someone other than me.

I never imagined that little conversations consisting of "Ba, ba, ba," and games of "I'm gonna get you!" could be so interesting.

I never thought 1,000 pictures of a baby sleeping could be so fun to look through.

I never thought time could go by quite so quickly.

I never knew love like this was possible.

One year ago today ...

One year ago today, we saw Jane for the first time. I nervously sneaked out of work that afternoon and headed in for my first ultrasound. One year ago today, it became real to me that there really was a baby in there. Our little bean even looked kind of like a baby. One year ago today, I saw her heart beating. One of my greatest fears had been that we would not see a heartbeat that day. It was the first of many such fears I have felt since I got pregnant and became a mother. One year ago today, I was so excited about the future. I tried to imagine what our home would look like with a baby in it. I pictured baby gear strewn throughout our house. I imagined snuggling up to our little one on the couch. One year later, my dream is a reality.

4-month appointment

Jane had her 4-month checkup and shots yesterday. Our big girl now weighs 16 pounds and is 26-3/4 inches long. She handled the examination well, except for when the doctor looked in her ears. I don't know why she became so upset then.
Afterward, when the doctor was talking to us and answering our questions, she had a lot of things to say to him. I have never heard her talk so much to someone she barely knows before! It was hilarious. I think she may have been lodging a complaint against her incompetent parents. Or maybe she was just lecturing him for looking in her ears.
She handled the shots remarkably well. She got two this time - one in each leg. She also had an oral vaccine. She screamed a bit, but stopped as soon as I picked her up. She whimpered as we put her back in her car seat, but had completely settled down by the time we got to the car. She fell asleep on the five-minute drive home. When we got there, I changed her and fed her, and she fell back to sleep. After a 45-minute nap, she woke up feeling pretty chipper and played as if nothing had happened for the rest of the evening.
She found a new trick to do - making a smacking sound with her lips. She laid and kicked and smacked her lips and laughed at the fish. Oh, to be so easily entertained! I'll admit, I was just as entertained by watching her.

Babies and dogs

The old cliché is that a picture is worth a thousand words. I was at a loss for what to write about this week, so I’m going to give it a shot. I might not get a thousand words, but I’ll do my best.

What does this photo say to you? To me it says one thing: Trouble.

Featured we have the always adorable Baby Jane, and the cute as ever Weezer the dog. It’s been a tough past few months for poor Weezer. His people brought home a new, tiny person that makes weird sounds and smells. They don’t pay as much attention to him as they used to, because they are busy with said new, tiny person.

Fortunately for all involved, Baby Jane is becoming more independent. She’s also becoming more curious about the furry friends she shares a home with. She has a puppy friend at daycare, too.

What I like about this picture is the eye contact between the dog and the baby. Since neither of them can speak in a language I can understand, I can only imagine what this wordless glance between them means. I have a few caption ideas.

“What up, dawg?”

“In a few months, you and I are going to rip this place up!”

“If you think it’s fun to chase your own tail, just wait until I chase it!”

“I see competition for the morsels of food on the floor in the very near future!”

“I didn’t toot! It was the dog!”

“I didn’t toot! It was the baby!”

“Let’s get this homework-eating agreement settled now.”

• • •

I’ll be honest. It’s hard having pets and a baby. There have been some “What were we thinking?” moments. But things are improving. They might get worse again, but they are improving for now.

I think it’s good for children to grow up around animals. We always had dogs and cats on the farm growing up. It taught me some responsibility and compassion. Pets are great companions and playmates. They’re always willing to lend an ear without judging, and seem to know when you’re sad and need comfort. We humans could probably stand to learn from them in that regard.

So while our pets may have been temporarily displaced, I am beginning once again to see their importance. I hope Jane feels the same way. I think maybe she is already starting to.