Tonight, she reads to us

At bedtime tonight, Aria picked up the Mother Goose Board Book and proceeded to quote the entire thing to us, page by page, with scary accuracy.

best buddies / big sur trip

Well, the century went pretty well. The training plan Adamen had set up for me was bulletproof - I give HUGE props to him for motivating me and giving me the right program to make this happen. I finished the ride in just under 8 hours - 7:54:03 to be precise - easily beating my goal of 9-10 hours. I raised just under $1300; overall, riders raised an astonishing $3 million. All of that goes directly to the charity, since the expenses were all underwritten by corporate sponsors. :)

My colleague Michael Green put together an online photo album with some pictures he took during the event. You can see me in a few of them, along with some other people from Accenture who rode and/or volunteered.

While I was riding, Hosanna took Aria to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which they both loved - especially the river otter exhibit. Then they braved the drive down the coast with the hundreds of cyclists. Honestly, I think the cyclists had it easier in some ways.

After a night in San Simeon, during which I slept VERY well :), we drove back up to Big Sur, where we spent two nights at the Riverside Campgrounds & Cabins. We got a small cabin with a kitchenette and had a blissfully relaxing time. Too short though. Here's a sample picture from the vacation. There are many more I'm putting onto Snapfish now, if you'd like to see them just email me and I'll send a link.



Highlights:

- Hanging out in our cabin. We got #11 which has a small kitchen. We spent a lot of time lying on the bed and looking out the skylight at the trees. So relaxing, and so good to have the three of us sharing it together.

- Hike up to Pfeiffer Falls and Valley View trail - beautiful scenery. Aria was enchanted by the trees hollowed out by forest fires. She kept talking about them for the whole rest of the day.

- Hanging out on Pfeiffer State Beach - we built sand castles and marvelled at the views.

- Dinner at Nepenthe - a splendid view of the sun setting over the ocean, plus amazing food. Aria and I had a great bonding experience afterwards as I walked around with her and showed her the grounds.

Summer catch-up.

Lots to talk about. It has been a pretty busy summer, what with three different weddings to attend, my bike training and a hellacious work schedule in July, and of course, raising a two year old.

To start with, I hit 2,000 miles on the bike at the very end of my last training ride for the century. Meaning, I rode 1,000 miles since June. Very proud of that.

So about that two year old. I have been so remiss in telling all the amazing things about this kid that have happened this summer. And of course, I can't remember them all now. So here are a few anecdotes.

The toddler bed experiment

A couple weeks ago, Hosanna was in Goore's with Aria looking around at stuff, and they happened upon the section with the toddler beds. Now apparently Aria got SO excited about them, and was playing on them for a long time. After they left the store, she kept talking about the beds for days, until finally, we shrugged our shoulders and thought, why not? So we got one:



We put away the crib, put her in the bed, and Aria was beaming with excitement about it. Which lasted until that night when she fell out of it. Twice. That, she wasn't so excited about. And neither were we. So, Hosanna ended up boxing her in with pillows, bumpers, anything that would work. That kept her in at night. Problem solved, we thought.

But the problem we just couldn't solve was how to get her to nap in it. She wouldn't stay in. (This seems predictable, but we really didn't know how she would react - naps are touch and go. Sometimes she really wants one, oddly enough, but usually she just kinda plays herself to sleep.)

She kept getting out of bed, playing around in her room, and running around upstairs (Hosanna had installed a gate at the top of the stairs). One of those days, Kathy saw her marching back and forth from our bedroom to the office, carrying stuff from room to room: dragging the woobies one direction, then a teddy bear back the other way, then a book, then a toy, etc.

The no-napping went on for three days straight. Even one day with no nap can be excruciating, when at 6:00 or so she gets really cranky. Three days of it was just crazy ridiculous.

The last day, I came home early from work to be with her. I noticed she wasn't her usual chatty, gregarious self. I asked if she was hungry, and she noncomittally said "yeah." So I made her a snack and put her in the high chair. She pushed her food around a little bit, ate some, then lo and behold, she started falling asleep right there at the table. This just doesn't happen. She doesn't just sit down in a chair and take a nap. Never. But here she was, head falling over, hand falling down and dropping her fork on the floor. Eventually she pushed her food out of the way, laid her head down on the table, and slept there for 45 minutes, even while I was noisily making dinner. She reminded me of my sophomore year in Mr. Mendez' English class.



That night, Hosie and I talked it over, concluded that it was just too early for a bed, and brought her crib back. Aria didn't seem too upset about it.

Weaning

I mentioned in an earlier post that I took Aria to Santa Cruz for a weekend to start the weaning process. That weekend was a big success, but how would she react when we got back home and was around Mommy again? Turns out, it wasn't as difficult as we thought it would be. She asked for "num-nums" a few times a day for the first couple days, but Hosanna just told her "I'm sorry honey, but the num-nums are all gone. Would you like [xxx] instead?" More often than not, Aria would say yes to the food. She never raised a huge stink or threw any tantrums about not getting the breast anymore.

But, Aria was definitely more insecure for a little while. She needed Hosanna to hold her and be with her much more than usual. This was a little frustrating for me, because I wanted to help out, but there wasn't anything I could do since the issue was entirely between mother and daughter. I think it lasted about two weeks, the extra clinginess, which jives with what other mothers have told us.

For Hosanna it was an emotional time too. She missed the contact and closeness. She also found out just how much she had been relying on her boobs as the final no-fail fussiness / naptime / bedtime solution. When nothing else would work, shove a boob in her mouth - works every time. So we had to learn new routines for naps and bedtime, and Hosanna had to learn to do what I've had to do all along - figure out how to calm Aria when she's upset without nursing her. Suddenly, what I was so jealous about (not being able to just stick a boob in her mouth) became my advantage. :)

I'm singing "Stay Awake"

Aria's language progress has been pretty amazing to me, and nowhere is this more apparent than in her assimilation of songs and books. She knows the words to several of her books - on any given page in a dozen books, she is apt to rattle off two or three entire sentences, nearly verbatim to what is there. It really stuns me. Her favorite books right now are Dr. Seuss - One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and The Sleep Book. Also, she is somewhat obsessed with this book called The Missing Mitten Mystery. I have read that book to her probably fifty times by now. She does still like simpler books too, like the Sandra Boynton board books and Spot. But they go by so fast, and she's like, um, ok, what's next.

She also sings along with several songs: The Teddy Bears' Picnic, Twinkle Twinkle, Two Little Blackbirds ("fly away Jack... fly away Jill"), a couple songs from Mary Poppins... there are a lot of them now. I don't even know them all, because Hosie and Kathy keep teaching her new ones that I don't know. Also, she keeps saying "you want changed your mind?" which means she wants to hear "I changed my mind" by Lyrics Born (from the album Same !@#% Different Day which is BRILLIANT by the way).

One morning I managed to catch her singing "Stay Awake". It's hard to get her on video doing these things now because she's really interested in the camera and it distracts her. So I have to be kinda sneaky about it.