Musica!

I rejoined the orchestra at my university. The director called, as he does every semester, and asked if I'd be interested. 2 years ago I was pregnant for the first time, and renovating a house. Either one of those things can be overwhelming, but both at once? I just couldn't take on another commitment.

Last year I had a 5 month old and had just really been hit with the reality of full-time work. Although I went back to work when the Guajolotita #1 was 12 weeks, it was summer at a university. Two weeks before classes began, sh*t got real. 10-12 hr days, 5 days a week. Emailing evenings and weekends too. Unless the kid was REALLY sick, doctor-sick, I couldn't just stay home to spend time with her. If a sitter couldn't make it, I had to find another childcare solution. It was already too much time away from my sweet baby. (Things calm down about a month in, which I knew after many years at the same institution, but nonetheless I couldn't opt for MORE time away!)

So this year he called. I'm pregnant again, and overwhelmed with the thought of 2 kids. Childcare for 2. Family vacations for 4? 2 snakes kids on a plane?? Nooooooo! I can't pass the audition, I told him straight out. I'm a great sight reader, and a competent orchestral player, but I have 0 experience with any solo music (besides the Bach Unaccompanied, I can scrape out some movements of some of those because that's like the definition of playing viola). He just needed more bodies to round out the section, he said. So I said yes, half-intending to back out.

The next morning on my commute, still not having told my husband, I read this by Katie Allison Granju. (I also commented via my phone, but it appears not to have stuck. I thanked her for her post, it was a very heartfelt response, but alas, the moment is gone.) I cried. (Pregnancy hormones? perhaps...) I thought about Korinthia Klein, whose musical/luthier career (and overall excellent parenting/personhood) I find very inspiring. I resolved to ask my husband what he thought - and pick up the music that day as I'd arranged.

Since orchestra means coming home a bit later than usual, it means he must commit to being home "on time" so the babysitter can leave. Over the weekend I pulled out the sheet music and showed it to him. He was surprisingly supportive. He took the kiddo outside for at least an hour each day so that I could practice.

And I went. I've been to two rehearsals, sat in the back both times. I have no doubt most of the players ahead of me are more skilled than I am, and certainly most are in better practice. However, they're also undergrads. A lack of focus/commitment is a hallmark of the undergraduate (I don't think violas 3-5 ahead of me are string performance majors - maybe the first stand could be). As the conductor asks us to start again at bar 275 or G or whatever, one of the girls doesn't even pick up her instrument until the rest of us are a bar and a half along. Yesterday he told me to move up a chair, which I'm mostly glad about because I want to mark up my music as we go.

I really like the conductor, I'd say it's the second best conductor experience in my life. And the one time that was better was a week with a guest conductor that was just transformative - really an exceptional conductor and an experience I'll never forget. Anyway he's great, and I'm really enjoying this.

But the real point here is the Guajolotita #1 and her experience. Right now, this is our 7am anthem (also bathtime, parents-come-home-from-work time, and all-hours-of-the-weekend time):

Her favorite tunes now, besides the above, are Itsy Bitsy Spider and Happy Birthday. Johnny Be Good would take some work, and my viola-work right now is going towards Night on Bald Mountain (glad I've played that in the past! I think I'd be really intimidated otherwise!), but Happy Birthday I can do. :-P

When she comes inside and I am practicing, she gets fairly jealous. She wants to "help": she wants Up! Up! She shoves trucks on my lap, she tries to pull the music down, whatever she can do to disrupt the non-child focus.

So I knelt on the floor and had her grab the wood of the bow. Together we sawed it back and forth as I fingered the notes for Happy Birthday. It was so fun to do that together!! Now whenever she sees my case out, she starts asking, "Hab B-D-D?" In the last two days, she says "Musica!" and "Tocar!" as well, which is AMAZING.

Then, THCSITU found this video. He was working at the computer and she was using similar tactics as she does with me to make me stop practicing. So he thought this video would entertain her. We've never played a video for her before - we always just grab music and turn off the screen to listen.

Anyway, she was enthralled for a few minutes, then she disappeared. I heard her in our room - she was trying to drag my viola case out! She wanted to play too. So of course, I got it out and we played "Hab B-D-D" a few times together.

I'm so excited that she's interested. I have learned the melodies to some of her favorite Mexican children's tunes, so I can play along to her recordings. Whatever she might like, it's my side project (to this general viola side project) to learn. Whether she sings or dances or plays the ukelele, I hope she will always love music!

Again with the braiiiiiins

Well, the Guajolotita #1 was overtired and semi-hysterical by bedtime tonight. I think she needs 2 naps per day right now again. Perhaps she's growing a lot right now? She had 2 naps per day all weekend and tonight was really hard for her.

Anyhow I passed out after she was finally asleep at 10pm, and woke up when THCSITU was getting ready for bed at 12:30. I was SO HUNGRY and tried to sleep, nothing sounded good, blah. Then I remembered I have a ton of waffles from the last two weekends!

So I got up and have eaten a 4 quarters of waffle, had two cups of milk, written a couple of posts, read some articles... and kid will be up in 2.5 hrs so I better go back to bed!

Guajolote #2 purchases!

Well, I did order a few announcements to mail out to close family after all. They are the same alien/UFO-themed ones as last time, but I added a little alien to represent the Guajolotita #1, and of course the Guajolote #2's ultrasound image.

However I only ordered 15. Last time I think I ordered 30 or more??

Also, I ordered a shirt that says Only Child Big Sister. I'm figuring we'll put that on the kiddo when we tell my dad and my suegra, and thereafter she can just wear it as one of her everyday shirts.

Also, I bought some Old Navy end-of-season sale maternity stuff, and that came today too. I was pregnant at the same time -2 weeks last time, so I have pretty much everything I need for my size x the seasons here, except we will be going to visit family in warm weather when I am about 6 months pregnant. I don't have anything sleeveless, or a bathing suit, etc. for a body that size and shape! So for $35 I got a 2 piece bathing suit, 2 sleeveless shirts, a sleeveless long tunic, and one more long sleeve maternity nursing shirt.

I figure I can wear the tunic over long sleeve stuff once we are home from our trip too - last time an inch or so of my belly would peek out underneath as I guess I got too big for my maternity/nursing long sleeve shirts so that tunic might be my every day coverup. The Guajolotita #1 came at 38 weeks, 4 days. But since we won't (shouldn't) be moving when I will be 37 weeks and 6 days pregnant this time, it's possible this Guajolote #2 could stay inside longer. More days of even bigger belly to attempt to cover! :)

Dorking out about language acquisition

My boss pointed out that Guajolotita #1 generalized a rule when I recounted to her the evolution of "avion" I talked about in this post. However, today she expanded it to include a new word:

For weeks she had "avión" firmly in control. For weeks or even months before that, she used "ca" for "camión" (and "carro" and any other "ca" word). But, once she could finally say "camión", in the next day or so "avión" became "amión". That's about two weeks ago now.

She's said "arena" for a few weeks now as well. I don't think she says any "r"s at this point, so she says it: "aena". Today, I made steel cut oats for breakfast for the first time in a few months. She asked for "huevos" and I told her we were having "avena" (con pasas). After a few go rounds, she tried it herself - and it came out "amena" and stayed that way for today at least.


On a different track, the Guajolotita #1 initially did say "huevo" correctly. But she changed at some point to "huevi" and stayed that way for a month or two. Now, she says "huevos" and "huevo" but the singular has this funny non-native pronunciation: "wayy-voe".


Both of these changes happened around when she turned 17 months.

English

Her English phrases aren't nearly as many as her Spanish ones. And she doesn't have many translation pairs:

• "up" and "arriba" (and she uses "up" for "pick me up" - "arriba" (a-iba) only refers to the upstairs neighbors or perhaps the location of an avion)
• "outside" and "afuera" (afuela, she doesn't say any "r"s so far). These are used with the same meaning. I think she only says "outside" if she's heard someone use it (if she's been cued to that word in English). I suspect she never uses it with her Abuela, for instance. But if I holler at THCSITU "I'm goin outside to..." she'll start pointing and dancing, "Outside! Outside!"

But the English ones are key. Besides the ones she adopted early on as chronicled in this post, she also uses:

• "want that" (this is not clearly pronounced AT ALL, but it's consistent and a phrase constantly used by her cousin, her main source of English)
• hilariously, she used to say "ten" for "give me that", and then changed to "pa' ti" (short for "para ti") because those were the phrases we used when giving her something. So she'd be pointing and shrieking, "Pa' ti! Pa' ti!" when she wanted you to hand her something.
• "sit"
• "that one" also combined with "want that" to form "want that one" As you can guess, this is usually in a very insistent tone or a whine. 3 yr old cousin is a heckuva whiner.

Brought to you by....

Very good friends gave us a Melissa&Doug talking alphabet puzzle for the Guajolotita#1's birthday. We didn't open it for her at the time, as she still put EVERYTHING in her mouth. Recently the babysitter must have, because it came crashing down on my head in pieces when I was trying to reach something else in her closet.

So I am hauling everything out of the closet to try and find the letters, while the kiddo is putting the "puzzle" together. It's just one of those where each letter has its slot, they don't actually interlock or anything like an actual puzzle. And it doesn't talk yet as it has no batteries.

Anyway, of course I can't find them all. But l made good progress. I called out to THCSITU, "We're just missing N!"

He says, "I know where it is. Check the TV."

I said, "No, I found G above the TV, there aren't any more."

He says, "I mean on Sesame Street. I'm pretty sure I've seen it there."

Har har!!

(Which, also, he actually hasn't because we've never turned on Sesame Street or any other kids programming.)

Guajolotita #1 general update at 17 months

Weaning

The Guajolotita#1 still cries for "pecho" every morning when she wakes up. Sometimes other times too. I have become more hard-core about denying her the boob. Per a friend's excellent suggestion, we offer her a bottle of water for middle of the night or otherwise early wakeups. Right now, she's downing 20 oz of water overnight. The idea was that water would not be enough to wake up for, so she'd start to sleep through instead. Hasn't quite worked out that way.

Abuela took away her bottles cold turkey two weeks ago. That was a really rough 5 days or so. That first night, THCSITU and I were arguing about it as he had the bottle in his hand in front of her while holding her - then set it on the counter and handed her to me. Oh, the outrage! That was the last night she got the boob, I think. Now, she drinks milk out of a straw cup with no problem (or objection - there was some objecting for a bit over a week). She drinks water from any sort of vessel, straw cup, steel bottle, open cup, cups with handles, whatever. She'd drink milk from other cups too, but there is usually a bit of spillage and that gets sticky with milk. And, of course, her overnight water bottles. We wanted to wean her from the bottle, and otherwise she is, but as a kid very prone to constipation, being well-hydrated is important. So I won't fight about that one anymore right now.

Speaking

The number of new words, in English and Spanish, each day is amazing. I can't count them. Today one was "panqueque". Two weeks ago she finally learned to say "camión" which made her SO happy. She LOVES buses, I mean loves them, so she pretty much repeated "camión" from waking up till going to sleep for a few days. Interestingly, she's stopped saying "avión" correctly and has generalized to "amión". She also stopped saying "pan" and changed it to "pam".

THCSITU noticed that she's more conversational. Since she has 2 and 3 words sentences now and enough vocabulary, you can talk about things with her. It's noun-verb, with the inclusion of one or more of these to make a 3-word phrase: "no", "aqui", "más".

Also in the last two weeks, she's started saying "Sh!" to situations she deems need quiet. "Papi's sleeping," I tell her when she tries to go into our room after she wakes up. "Sh!" she says, with her finger to her lips. The babysitter said that she woke up during her nap this week, and she asked her if she needed to potty before going back to sleep. The Guajolotita looked up, said, "Sh!" with her finger to her lips, and then conked out in her arms again.

Another cute recent gesture is the finger wag for things that are "no". Especially in the book mentioned below, Joshua initially has an accident. There's poop and pee on the floor. She looks at you very seriously and wags her finger back and for at Joshua. "Eso no se hace" is the phrase we use to describe such things, which now elicits a the little finger motion - and just today she says it, as well: "no se hace."

Potty training

Last week was nearly accident-free. I know she had four consecutive days without accidents. In the last week or two, her Abuela has gotten her to love "Juja" (Joshua) in Once Upon a Potty. I got it, along with the much more entertaining Everyone Poops, to help her cousin potty train. This morning, however, she was demanding I read "Juja" to her while also demanding one of her tunes. As I looked up the song to play while we would then read, she peed all over the floor. We have had more accidents than successes this morning, I think in part because of the 20oz of water she drank between 3-7am. She's got the urge more frequently than she or I can predict. It seems that, while she rarely warns that she needs to potty, her interest in Juja may correlate. For now, we've got a bit of a rule that we read "Joshua" only while she's on the toilet. At least that gets her sitting there pretty darn frequently.

Pooping in the toilet is now finally an every day occurrence. This is in part because we did change from whole milk to 2%, I think. And Joshua sure helps.

Sleeping

We're at the same place sleepwise as we have been since she moved to a floor bed in mid-July. She goes down easier and easier - THCSITU puts her to sleep, to avoid the crying for the boob, and sleeps till 4:30-6 or so, about 4 nights a week. Then she gets her bottle of water, some time on the boob maybe, and usually sleeps again for an hour or so. The other 3 nights a week she wakes up twice, sometime between 1am-2:30. Recently THCSITU started going to her at that time, which is a huge relief for me.

Cravings

I want something salty! Like Ramen. Or Lays. Or seasoned croutons right out of a package. Pretzels aren't good enough, but maybe the vending machine has something else appealing.

UPDATE: Lays were so good! I had one bag before lunch and spent another dollar on a second near the end of the day. I was thinking I should get a stash for cheaper, but I'd consume so many more chips if they were just sitting in my office. I have to go 2 buildings and 2 flights of stairs and spend a dollar to eat them, so at least there's some disincentive.