Cool, Quirky Girl

There is an infernal racket going on outside the closed door of our office. We are having our air conditioning installed today! Today is not entirely accurate; it started yesterday, with the stripping and containing of asbestos, and will continue tomorrow, I guess because in addition to the air conditioning they are installing a new furnace (ours is circa 1957) and new "supply registers" so that we can actually feel the air conditioning once it's there. It's very exciting to know that this summer I won't be slick with sweat at 6:00 p.m. in July, but it's also a mite stressful to be negotiating three days of workmen and trucks and equipment with a one-year-old. I really had my doubts that Jarrah would get a nap at all today, but miraculously, she seems to have fallen asleep (albeit with more howling than usual) despite all the crashing in the attic and around the furnace closet right outside her room. So much for those days when I take off my shoes and literally tip-toe during her nap time! I will have to make a note of this.

When Jarrah wakes up, I think I will take her for a stroll at the zoo. That is always good for a laugh, and they have great changing facilities. Can you believe my priorities these days? And it's even more amazing that I understand why some of you are nodding in vigorous agreement. Today is my "half-day" because David will be home at 3:30 so I can teach NIA, but the workers said they'd be gone by then. I'm a little terrified about teaching today because my back doesn't seem to be getting any better. I actually woke up in the middle of the night and managed to convince myself that my entire spine has fused together in a single lump and I will no longer be able to perform bending manoevers.

Okay, now it's incredibly loud out there. How is it possible that Jarrah is still asleep? The other day when I put her down she made her disapproval known by systematically ripping every single fabric tie off the edges of her bumper and freeing the entire unit from the crib. It's basically garbage now. And we'd only had it two weeks! I was anti-bumper at first because of her age but otherwise she would bang her head into the crib bars during the night and wake up crying.

Yesterday was our two-month anniversary of meeting Jarrah. Two months, readers! And not even of being home, but of MEETING her at the orphanage. That is not very long. It already seems like a lifetime ago. It actually made me feel better because it reminded me that it's not so amazing that I'm still sometimes totally baffled by her. She has been rather sweet this week. It may be because I've gotten totally proactive about the witching hours, and fling her into the highchair with a handful of Cheerios at the first glimmer of displeasure. Either that or into the car for a "nap ride." Either way, there have been fewer incidents of floor-rolling hollering than even two weeks ago.

Yesterday I also hosted Animal Crackers for the first time at Allied Gardens park. It ended up being a really good location for us, lots of grass and tables near the sand pit so we could nip over for bagels when we wanted to. I am posting some pics here to demonstrate that Jarrah has made yet another milestone in her struggle with sand. I showed her how to use the shovel and rake and she spent a happy half-hour alternately making piles and snacking on granules. One of the moms said they can eat up to a cup at a sitting before it presents a health hazard. I felt a little guilty realizing that I never considered this possibility at all; I simply viewed the sand as roughage.

I had one of those super-cute moments yesterday when I was driving. At a stop sign, I craned around for a glimpse at the throne and caught Jarrah "talking" on her cell phone. She has a plastic cell phone linked to the car seat and enjoys chewing on it. In the past, however, I've occasionally seen her pressing the receiver to her forehead. My personal theory about this is she's seen us holding the phone to our heads so many times and she figured it was pretty arbitrary what PART of the head. That makes perfect sense to me. But recently we've been holding the phone up to her ear and talking to her (the real phone, that is) and she breaks into a delighted grin and begins whispering "Sha-sha, sha-sha" which...well, we don't know what that might mean, but she does it a lot. So I think she finally clued in that the phone is properly held to the ear.

Lately she's been ingesting a great number of beauty products and various ablutions; in fact, she seems obsessed with the snackability of these items. She is wild for my pot of Carmex and has figured out how to twist off the cap, insert her tongue, and poke up large chunks of the waxy yellow contents. She cries huge tears when I take it away. She also enjoys sucking on the lids of her baby lotion, and recently I caught her with a tube of my moisturizer half-way down her throat, lid gone, and clouds of white goo frothing on her tongue. She screamed when I took it away, but it was almost gone anyway. Right then David walked in and I was late to Fortune Cookies so I showed him where the tube was, said "It's all-natural" and left. Clearly her system is not averse to polymers and menthol.