On the move

The last 2 months just flew by, what with my work life getting back to its crazed travel schedule. Luckily Freya is quite content hanging out with Steve and Oma, or so I tell myself in the tradition of "bad mommies" everywhere.

But I am not the only one on the move. Freya is speedcrawling across the lawn, up and down the driveway, up the stairs, down (with a little help from a friend) the stairs, and all over the house. She is experimenting with standing handsfree, and seems days away from walking unassisted. The beach is her favorite new place, not least because of all the sand, seaweed and driftwood she can put in her mouth.



Her big brother Beau is on the move, too, from one pre-graduation party -- sanctioned and otherwise -- to the next. His steps towards adulthood are no less dramatic than what Freya serves up, luckily he's mastered the art of walking in a straight line, and is moving on to figuring out college dorms, banking, and - most importantly in the short run - planning his fabulous trip to Europe.

And finally, all of us are on the move back to Portland! Our stint in Marin comes to an end next Monday. Not a moment too soon, as summer gets into full swing in the Pacific Northwest and we have been missing our garden.

Ode to Oma

After over 20 years, my mother and I have been living together again for the past 8 months. It's been working out much better than any of us expected, proving the old adage that daughters becoming mothers does wonders for the family dynamics. A few weeks ago we celebrated Ingrid's 70th birthday with a big dinner party, and we both had to think very hard about the last time she and I celebrated a birthday together on the actual day(s). We think it was sometime in the 1980s, before I went off to boarding school. Sometime in the 1990s we had a party on the mid-way point between our two birthdays, but basically it's been a while and now we get to enjoy each other's idiosyncrasies on a daily basis -- or at least until the CIS kicks her out, but that's a topic for another day. In the meantime, because I don't say it enough (and because I'll be very lucky to have Freya say it one day):

My Mother Rocks!

We have Liftoff!

Over the last two weeks we have been watching Freya put together the principles of locomotion. Hand out, another hand out, face plant. Hand out, one knee out, another knee out, belly flop. Then, the other day, she out them together in sequence, and boom, we have liftoff! She is off and crawling, routinely covering the 40 feet from living room to kitchen in increasingly more fluid motion. There was a hilarious pause when she transitioned from rug to hardwood floor - it reminded me of the difference between mastering downhill skis on the bunny slope and doing your first real run: technique matters! Several face plants later, she got the hang of the more slippery surface, and has been exploring the majority of the house ever since. Favorite stops include the book base with Beau's school binders, the garbage can (shiny and intriguing), and the fireplace - fun with ashes.



Suffice it to say, we are enthralled!

New tricks from Nebanon

Some days we call Freya the ambassador from the planet Nebanon, visiting us from a distant galaxy. That's a reasonable explanation for her curious behavior as she continues her exploration of our world:

Yesterday's boring toy today is the. most. fascinating. thing. in. the. world. She also delights in setting up what can only be described as experiments in adaptive management. As in, "let's see what my parents will do when I surprise them with rapid full-body flips from my back onto my tummy!" That's right, after it took us about 2,000 diaper changes to figure out how to change Freya's diaper to her satisfaction, she now insists on us doing it back to front. And by insist I mean scream at the top of her lungs if we dare to flip her back.

So our mutual anthropological exploration continues. Steve has talking to stalking her with his video camera like Richard Attenborough used to go after wildlife in Africa. More on that soon. In the meantime, here are a a couple of recent impressions:


Here is Steve giving in to Freya's telepathic command to put her on the Kitchen counter.


And here she is testing the new hands-free feeding device Ingrid constructed. It's a poor substitute for the 3 servants royalty is fed by on Nebanon, but it'll do in a pinch.

first sand

is so delightful... Here is a video of Freya's first hands-on experience with the products of erosion:

Off the chart, again

At her 5-month check-up last week, Freya clocked in at 15.5 pounds, and 28.5 inches. The former is average, the latter is off the charts. And so it goes. Poor thing likes to sleep sideways in her crib, so more often than not we've been coming in to find her legs dangling through the rail. So much for keeping her bedroom furniture decently sized! Thanks to IKEA, she is now the happy occupant of a larger, but still simple, crib...

Here are some slides of Freya over the holidays (clicking on it takes you to a bigger version):


Freya continues to embrace (literally!) every new food we offer, and her current list of pureed favorites includes:

• barley with pears
  
• potatoes with apples
• carrots with a pinch of salt and a dab of coconut oil
• oatmeal with banana
• cauliflower with butter
• sweet potatoes

Oh, and today we found that there is a first tooth breaking through. That explains the drooling the last few days...

Yoga and beyond

I discovered a neat trick: do what I have always done, just do it with Freya! So she and I hit the mat every morning and do our exercises, I a modified sun salutation, she a unique sequence of amazing feats of flexibility. For a while we were trying to imitate her latest moves, but pretty much gave up after Freya served up this one:



As soon as her head is more stable, we'll go running together, courtesy of a friend's loaner running stroller. Exercise time thus becomes quality time :-)