Mom Remembers

Soren has learned two new words this past week: "soos" (shoes) and "duht" (duck). These words serve a very different purpose from all the other words that he knows --and I hope they are the beginning of a trend! All of his other words are very expressive. He uses them to tell us how he is feeling or what he wants. In his previous lexicon, there were words to convey happiness ("hi"), amusement ("aht" and "doh"), desire ("juz" and "eee"), or abject misery ("nono" and "mama"). But these new words he uses simply for the joy of naming something. With pride, he points out birds at the park and says "duht". He gets just as much pleasure out of holding aloft his toy duck at home. He also identifies his toy penguin as a "duht". I think that's rather clever since we didn't teach him that at all. And whenever we put his shoes on or take them off, he repeats over and over (while ki...

This post is a lot more about my feeelings (as Audrey would say) than I usually discuss in this blog but it needs to be written. It probably doesn't need to be written for any of my readers; perhaps it only needs to be written for me. It's about my experiences with Soren as a new baby and the valuable truth I want to remember when I have another new baby. A lot of my friends are pregnant with their first child right now and so this spring has been the baby shower season for me. Baby showers are a great opportunity to give gifts and advice, so I've been thinking a lot about the gadgetry I was most grateful for and the knowledge I wish I'd had when Soren was born. Picking out a baby shower gift is easy. Scott and I knew immediately what material possession made having a baby 10xs easier: our sling. We went without diapers and bottles and didn't use our bassinet or stroller for months. But we would never have survived the first week without the sling we carried So...

aht - "Watch out! I'm throwing stuff!" buh - "book" doh - "Hey, look! I just knocked those blocks down!" dops - "Whispering is fun." hi - "Hello, you. I am so happy to see you!" juz - "I'd like some fluid in a sippy cup." mamamama - "I am very unhappy." nonononono - "It's so frustrating when you won't do what I want you to." rrrrr - "I am pretending to drive this car." ssssss - "Look! It's a snake!" tsz tsz tsz - "Please read Caps for Sale to me!" uh-oh - "Well that turned out differently than I expected." wasat - "Give me the word for that thing I am pointing at."

It's long overdue but this is my official blogger announcement: the Duede family is expecting again! I'm pregnant and excited to welcome Baby #2 in late August. In connection with this announcement, I will be changing pretty much everything about this website, including the address. When I switch to the new site in a couple of days, you will be able to find updates on my children--plural children!--at www.momremembers.blogspot.com. I will also be making available a back-log of posts I have written and kept private for the past few months. You can find them in the archives, although I imagine they will pop up on your readers, too, as soon as I publish them. Eek! Isn't this exciting?

We went for our 19-week ultrasound this afternoon. I got a friend to come sit at home while Soren napped and then picked Scott up from work. We drove to the Women's Clinic, parked, and held hands while we walked through the corridors to the lab. "I'm mostly excited to make sure that it's healthy," I lied. "It's more important to count the limbs than know the gender." Scott smiled and squeezed my hand. He knew that I could barely contain my excitement to find out whether we would be having a son or a daughter. He saw right through my paper-thin disguise, I think because he felt the same way. There was only one important question: boy or girl? I'm sure the technician knew why we had come. I'm sure he knew we were all chomping at the bit to see those all-important boy or girl parts. But he took his sweet time getting there, looking at the heart and brain, measuring the bones and belly, snapping pictures of the limbs and spine. Everything ...

For a while now, I've noticed our son developing a funny quirk. When playing or eating happily on his own, Soren would sometimes look up at me and blink very deliberately. It was obviously a sign of contentment, as it was usually accompanied by an amusing smile, and he always seemed so proud of himself after he had done it. For a while, I thought it was just amusing and unusual. I would think, huh. My son blinks at me when he's happy. Weird, but ok. And then, one day, I figured out why he did it. I was reading a book on the couch and Soren was flipping through his own books on the carpet. I paused at the end of the chapter to watch my son for a moment. He looked up at me. I smiled and then I winked at him. And he blinked back. Suddenly, I understood! He was trying to wink! Excitedly, I winked at him again. He blinked back. Having confirmed my hypothesis, it is now really fun to see Soren blink/"wink" at me. He often does it without my winking first, and then...

Soren zipped into the kitchen while I was folding laundry this morning. I heard him open his favorite cupboard and start rustling around with the canned goods. I figured he'd be occupied for a while. I just kept folding. A few minutes later, he crawled out of the kitchen and back into the living room to play with some more conventional toys. When I finished the folding, I got up to put the cans away. I scooped Soren up and started singing our "clean up" song while walking to the kitchen. But when I got there, there was nothing to clean up. None of the cans where out of the cupboard. Instead, I saw this: