I have no title for this post

[thanate]

I appear to be stuck in a cycle of Have thought-->Intend to journal-->Get distracted by baby [or realize I can do something else with non-baby time and do that.] Though this 8 o'clock bedtime and semi-regular naps thing does produce a wealth of potential time. When it works. Things about which you should imagine me writing deep and profound essays include:

*Narrative and Trauma, which is interesting and also I have semi-relevant anecdata related to my father (who was a great composer of narratives at most times), which were possibly also going to be related to thoughts touching on grief process and how major life changes relate to writing. Partially because the link was via fight or flight as applied to writing (wherein I am 100% on board with the first paragraph, and the rest of the essay completely fails to apply to me) via an elsejournal post on reconsidering writing goals.

*A weird series of anxiety dreams which mainly involved spaces and moving, sometimes with familial upheavals attached. In the weirdest one, a friend had left her husband and for reasons not to become clear probably ever this meant I had to help him move houses and was possibly going to be required to marry him despite no one actually wanting this to happen. But most of the dream was me wandering around someone else's house by myself when I was supposed to be packing up other people's stuff before anyone else go off work.

*We have developed a communication problem. The Megatherium has learned the sign for ALL GONE/ALL DONE (though she does it one handed. All signs are one-handed in this house. That way she can suck on her fingers at the same time.) She started using it half-way through diaper changes, which is perfectly reasonable from her perspective and not useful to anyone. But now she's applied it to food, which can be either "I am all done eating" or "I am all done with the food on my tray and want some more now." I suspect this is due to a lack of "or" as a concept, and the flawed parental teaching technique of trying to ask, "do you want MORE, or are you ALL DONE?" Oops.

(for those unfamiliar, all caps denote sign language usage)

*Toddling continues; she can now walk carefully most of the way across the room when motivated. She uses the step/fall standard walking motion when holding onto an adult's hand(s), but a very careful twist & step motion on her own. When she wants to get anywhere with a quickness, it's all crawling still. Meanwhile, I have been reading her The Book of Three and entertaining myself by building towered cities out of her blocks & stacking cups from which she then generally comes and removes the topmost block, often tripping over other things in the process. (There are pictures of this bit, but camera, blah-blah-blah)

*After months of poking at various things, we may have finally figured out how to get the treadmill to work without tripping the breaker. The secret appears to be that we cannot follow the instructions printed on the machine itself and stand on the foot rails rather than the belt when it starts up. I have no idea. But maybe I will now be able to do enough walking on a level non-frigid surface to get my metabolism back up enough to be not-freezing and maybe even lose the last 5-or-so pounds of ex-baby-support system. Nice theory, anyway.

*I should post about some books, and then stop trying to tie posting about books in with month-end, since that always seems to be a bad time to do it. Is anyone interested in hearing about picture book highlights, or shall I just stick to talking about chapter books and nonfiction?

*Grauwulf is about to start his doctorate of science program.

*It is possible that the reason I haven't made much in the way of new year's resolutions is that three months from now is a strange and foreign country. So was three months ago, for that matter.

Comments

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

Congrats to M on walking! We are still at standing and falling down, though now tottering along with the Coolest Truck Ever is pretty exciting. I am interested in picture book highlights. I keep having this thought that I'll use the jogging stroller to, you know, jog. Hasn't happened yet.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Thanks-- I was actually a little surprised by how long it took her, as she plateaued at almost there for a couple months. Now she's progressed to wandering about waving her arms in the air wildly, though cards, books, or small to mid-sized toys are also perfectly nice, particularly if they can be made to make noises or chewed on. Her grandma sent us a Harney & Sons tea bag selection, and she will carry around one of the crinkly foil/plastic wrappers for hours.

Current favorite picture books include Frances (whom you know) and Joan Lowery Nixon's Claude & Shirley series, of which I have had "Beats Me, Claude" since the late 80s and recently realized there were four more, which we now have. They're enough out of print/circulation to be a bit tricky to track down, though. There are a couple more that might be worth mentioning, though, so I'll try to round them up at some point.

Good luck with the stroller-- it does seem like a good theory, weather permitting. Of course, after getting it to work three times in a row, the treadmill is back on the blink again, so phoey on that.

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the narrating trauma link. I often find myself in a quiet listening counselling role for friends going through grief and trauma, and I think from one short blog post I never would have found in my own usual reading I might be able to be more effective in that role when it happens.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

You're welcome-- I figured I probably knew someone to whom that might be relevant. Glad it worked for you!