mind + body out of commission

hi folks ... sorry about the lack of posts lately. i've been preoccupied with some projects and i'm dealing with a weird cough (as is ian). not quite a cold, but really annoying.

hopefully i'll be back to blogging within the next couple of weeks.

toodles!

[update: not a cold. confirmed by the nurse practitioner that it's allergies.]

maya's a real piece of work

yesterday was one of those days i wish didn't happen ... at least, i wish it had happened differently. it started off like any other saturday. but then maya woke up from her nap screaming her head off, which, admittedly, isn't that different from some other days.

the difference was that she was inconsolable for over an hour. and, at the same time, she was kinda lethargic. she was flopped over in our arms but tossing and turning because it seemed like she couldn't get comfortable. she refused liquid and food, and that got us really worried because we can always convince her to eat a snack.

after lots of rocking, dozing off in our arms (another thing she never does), walks outside and a lukewarm bath, on the "advice" of a pediatric nurse hotline, we headed to a clinic that's open on saturday. of course, they wouldn't take our insurance so we had to go to the emergency room. this is where i wish our decision making skills had steered us in a different direction. specifically, the direction of home.

no surprise the emergency room was crowded and it took four hours to get from waiting room to triage to registration to the treatment room. within that span of four excruciatingly annoying and boring hours maya was miraculously cured of her symptoms.

we spent the most time waiting for the doctor in the treatment room. it's difficult to remain patient when you see the doctor right there and you still have to wait close to two hours to see her.

and it's also difficult because the daughter you thought was sick is now happily walking around the emergency room, eating and playing. by the time we finally see the doctor all she can tell us is to go home and keep an eye on maya to make sure her symptoms don't reappear and get worse. gee, thanks for telling us what we already know. and that diagnosis of "irritability resolved"? so not true; maya continues to be quite irritable ... and irritating!

16 months.

maya @ 16 months :: march 4, 2007

• pretty much walks everywhere she needs to get to. most days we walk home from dropping ian off at school. it's a good half a city block so it's pretty far. when we get to the corner of our block she knows where to turn into our driveway. if she wakes up from her nap in time we'll walk to pick ian up too. she's gotten very popular on these walks because she waves at everyone. she's not running yet but she can get around pretty quickly. she also likes to pick dandelions on our walks.
• stairs don't bother her either; she's crawling up and down them with no problem.
• tries to get down from her high chair by throwing one leg over the edge of the seat. she also thinks she can pull herself up into the highchair; she'll hang from the tray, grunting and groaning with the effort.
• loves to play with and point out balls. anything round or spherical is "bah," like the large red concrete spheres in front of the entrance to target.
• doesn't particularly like butterflies; she shakes her head "no" when i point them out to her.
• some of her new words: "dog," "book," "banana" (all three syllables), and the big one: "no"
• imitates sounds really well; she's clearly listening and processing sounds in her mind and trying to recreate the sounds with her own vocal chords. for example, ian was throwing himself on the couch saying, "1-2-3-jump!" maya was watching him and she did the same thing, without the actual words but with the same intonation and rhythmic sing-songiness of ian's voice. she even made four sounds, one for each word ian said, before throwing herself onto the couch cushions too. she continues to laugh the emperor laugh from lego star wars 2.
• down to one 2-hour nap around lunch time.
• she's always had gi problems and bowel movements have been very painful for her. lately, when she has gas pains she rubs her belly and gives us the saddest pathetic face because it hurts her so much.
• she pretends to pick off the moles on my face and pop them into her mouth. at first i was like "eww" and "stop!" because i'm so self-conscious about them (and hate that about myself), but after awhile i had to laugh because she doesn't mean any harm by it and thinks it's funny.
• pretends to read books, turning pages and making sounds. about a quarter of the time the books are upside down.
• when she hears the star wars theme and the imperial march her ears perk up and she moves her arms like she's conducting.
• helps put things like her toys away: "nai nai" (not to be mistaken with the night-night "nai nai"). she is in fact pretty good about placing things back where she thinks they go, like the remote control and my mom's purse and eraser. she'll also help throw things away: "poi poi".
• she plays basketball in the backyard with her baby hoop while ian plays bball on his big boy hoop.
• other fun stuff: she says "honk honk" and pushes your nose (she always ends with a rather painful pinch of the nose). i also started pushing her belly button while saying "pin pon" (japanese door bell ring), which she says as "buh-pon." at ian's french class they have a large blue bird painted on the wall so i showed her quacking/chirping movements with my hands. she picked that up really quick and likes to do it when she sees pictures of ducks and birds.
• likes to listen to my ipod shuffle with me. she pulls one of the earphone buds out of my ear and puts it up to her ear and grooves to the music.
• some of her favorite toys are little star wars figurines that belong to ian. not surprising that she often goes for the emperor figure. she also uses crayons to mark up paper (before she would just carry them around). she has been very good about only drawing on paper we put in front of her. hope she keeps that up!
• obeys simple requests like, "bring the blanket to mommy" and "take ___ to daddy."
• this is actually not something new but she likes to put things on her head with both hands. it could be a scrap of paper, a piece of cloth, a toy, whatever. she holds it, raises her hands and holds it on top of her head and gives you a big smile.

proof of my obsessive personality

i hate to admit it but i started another hobby :: carving rubber stamps. i bought a speedy-stamp kit by speedball (which they don't even sell anymore) three or four years ago and i just opened it the other day. and now i can't stop carving stamps. i'm totally hooked!

along with not opening my kit, i bought a stamp carving book by keiko koma more than a year ago that i could only admire until now. i used her adorable illustrations to trace my images for the stamps i carved (12 of them in two days). i also carved 3 other designs :: one of a bird (i used the image from a newspaper clipping about doorbell plates by flopping fish) and two little girl faces for my "brand," sleepyhead paper designs.

that's the original reason why i pulled out the stamp carving kit in the first place. i wanted to stamp my logo on the items i'm creating. i plan to stamp one of the tags on my tagE*blankEs (that's what i've decided to call them) with my logo and the inside of the onesies i'm painting. i'm slowly but surely starting to think seriously about my craft as a small source of income.

girls' day '07

rupert claims everyday is girls' day ... at least at our house! once again we celebrated hinamatsuri at my parents' house; nothing fancy this year (last year was a bit more elaborate). lunch of tempura and chirashi zushi (no sashimi on ours today), some hina-arare (puffed and sweetened rice cracker) for maya, and pictures in front of the dolls.

usually it's really labor-intensive to set up the hina-ningyou (also known as ohina-sama), especially a set as large as ours. but my mom didn't take the set down from last year. great, right? but it turns out that the later you put the dolls away the later your daughter gets married. which i guess was a bad thing back in the day. so don't be surprised if maya ends up an old spinster with 10 cats.