All's quiet between holidays

We are back from our too-fast trip to California, and the 384 Christmas pictures are too daunting to sort through, so here are a couple from the playground today instead. I can't decide which to post so here are 2. Okay, 3. It's late and I can't make decisions. 

Print vs Broadcast Media

Rosemary catching a little New York 1 (a local news channel) from her weirdest haunt - she likes to crawl under the magazine rack. Don't call social services, she doesn't watch SO much TV. But I swear her first words will be Pat Kiernan.

Cindy Lou Who and Rosie

Separated at birth? (Thanks Uncle John for pointing that one out.)

Happy Hanukkah!

Rosemary is a lucky little duck because her Grandma Max saved all sorts of fantastic clothes that belonged to her (Rosie's) Aunt Sam. Also lots of Jason's clothes too, including a tiny, totally radical little pair of Peter Max pajamas. Here's a picture of cutie pie Sam, wearing the same blue and white dress, and Maxine: 

Holly Jolly!

Last Monday it was an unseasonably balmy 65 degrees. You could hear doors slamming all up and down Hicks Street as parents went screaming out of their apartments to bring their babies to the playground one more time before winter set in. Then on Tuesday the weather did an about-face and it snowed big, fat pretty snowflakes for about five minutes. But it didn't stick. It wasn't until yesterday that we finally had a proper winter storm, where it snowed for hours and then turned to what the weather guy calls a "wintery mix," which sounds promising but is nowhere near as good as Chex Mix.

Twas the season, so some of my mama friends and I took the babes to Macy's to visit Santa. We thought it would be madness and were bracing ourselves to endure long lines, but it was pretty manageable and those Santaland elves are really, really organized. We had a blast. Things are really weird in the North Pole nowadays though -- I don't often describe things as post-modern but this really was that. (Spoilers ahead for young believers....) Instead of seeing Santa at the front of the line, each child is personally led by an elf through a crazy plywood "forest" -- trees painted on a maze of doors -- until you arrive at the one where your Santa is, in a tiny claustrophobic room. You don't see any other children in the forest - it's all painstakingly orchestrated and, I gotta say, those elves run their show well.

I just didn't think it would happen so soon!

Ok, the modern day chestnut about kids being faster and better at programming and using their technology-befuddled parents' computers and VCRs (ok, maybe not VCRs, and not their  8-track tape players or Clappers either) is already proving true. Yesterday I was on the phone with a friend and handed Rosemary my cell phone to keep her occupied. She managed not only to turn on the camera function and take this picture, but to save it. This last bit was the part that impressed me most, since I can't tell you how many times I have taken cell phone pix and not saved them right. But that's just me.

 

Home Baby Entertainment System

Yes, that is a giant speaker, one half of a pair that we decided was too vertical and too heavy to be flanking Rosemary's toy box in the living room. But in the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, we are making baby toys out of baby hazards. Jason was looking around for something that she could climb on and so he tipped it on its side and now...she LOVES it. Not much for our home decor though.

10 Months Today

Rosemary is now 5/6 of a year old and even though she's a pretty mellow babe she no longer sits still for the pictures we take every month. They are total yawnsville. This time she discovered the toybox right beside the chair and that was it for keeping her eye on the birdie.

Then we went up to visit friends at the Park Avenue Armory on the upper east side. It's a pretty remarkable place, not that you can tell from these really dark pictures. Rosemary spent some time investigating the parquet floors:

Mr. Finch and Girl

Pity the poor baby of two allergy parents, who doesn't get to log a lot of kitty cat time, especially since her second favorite page in the Brown Bear book is the purple cat page. (Her absolute favorite is the page with the teacher, maybe because the teacher wears awesome, eye-catching blue specs. Why do babies love glasses so much?) 

Yesterday we went over to see our friends Joe and Beth, and Rosemary spent a lot of time hanging out with their two happy cats, Mr. Finch and Girl. Those two kitties are the best study in opposites: Mr. Finch is the husky, stoic sort. Girl is a skinny minny meower who loves a good pet. 

First R spent some time with Mr. Finch: 

  

Then she turned her attention to Girl:
And they really got along. Girl was really a good sport about all the baby love:

On the Town

An overstatement...it is hard to fully live it up when you have to break for a nap every two or three hours. But Rosemary did have a ball yesterday in Trader Joe's, her personal highlights being her first ride in a shopping cart (she is blurry in the photo because she is bouncing madly) and her first in-store free sample. Lentil soup. Mmm...salty. She devoured it and was frankly very glum when we told her it was all gone:

After an afternoon siesta we went into Manhattan to meet up with our dear friend Paco, who we haven't seen since early summer. (As you can tell by the jukebox we are in a bar. Lucky for us you can't smoke in bars in NYC, since they are pretty much like second living rooms for carless people with small apartments.)

Goings On

Standing (only when put that way but she can stay put for awhile):

Winterizing:
Thumbing through Richard Scarry:

Close to You

Mamas and Babes

Rosie and I met up with our mama friends today - it's such fun to see the babies from our birthing class as they get more mobile and their personalities come out in full. I don't know how we lucked out so much by landing in class with this group of mellow, hilarious people. Left to right are Kai (in red) and his mom Kim; Dara and her son Leo; Amy, whose daughter Sadie is out in front; and Pia, whose son Uriel is just behind Sadie. We were missing Danielle and Maggie, Annie and Henry, and of course Kim and Maple, though happily we got a fix of those two yesterday. 

Uriel checking out Sadie in one of the rare moments when she wasn't zipping across the room to hang out with kids 6 times her age:

Kai demonstrates proper usage of the toy thingy:

Row of babies, Uri, Kai, and Rosemary out in front:

Rosie was really, really focused on this box of blocks:

Guest Starring Maple Munk

Yesterday was a rainy wash-out -- just the kind of NYC day that Oregonian transplants secretly love. So we pulled on galoshes and went to run some errands in Park Slope, and then, lucky us!, met up with our friends Kim and Maple in a dark, dark cafe with slouchy couches where you can lose a baby boot or practically a baby between the seat cushions.  

Here's a old picture of the girls in warmer days - I think this was from a day in the park in June:

Games People Play

You can get the gist of this video from the first couple of seconds--there's really no dramatic buildup here.  

Rosie's been a peekaboo fan for awhile, but just this past week she started playing it herself. Basic, sure, but it feels like a real breakthrough! You can tell she takes it seriously.

Do 9-Month-Olds Dream of Flashdance?

This is how her PJs were when I got her out of her crib this morning. She seemed pretty happy about it. What a feeling! 

Hairdo

Rosemary's look gets a little more outrageous each day. Are we supposed to do something about it?

A closer look:

That's No Way to Read a Book

Digesting Today's Exciting Headlines

No selling this copy for 100 bucks on ebay.

Amazon's overpackaging has new appeal around here

And yes, I am having a hard time recycling Rosemary's cherished new toy. 

Happy All Franks Day!

Sorry, I know, stop it with the hot dog puns. I couldn't help it. Here are a couple of pix of our Halloween activities yesterday. The first is taken in front of a house down the street from us. The second is at Cobble Hill Park, where there was a Halloween Jamboree of sorts. Rosemary is with her friend Kai (whose mom Kim is a friend from our mama's group). The last is a young fireman inspecting the remains of our Halloween candy supply, which was decimated in about 6 minutes by cute, unbelievably efficient neighborhood kids.

 

HAPPY HALLOWIENER!

A Handful of Recent Pix

Rosemary celebrated her 9 months birthday last Saturday on a beautiful ranch in Northern California where our friends Allyson and Eric were getting married. Friends and fellow wedding guests Ian and Laura also had important milestone birthdays. Ian turned 408 months (which is divisible by 12) and Laura turned 457 months.

Showing a little leg at home (props to Heidi Johnson, who embroidered the froggerific onesie!).

Jason and Rosemary, who's wearing a dress that was her Aunt Samantha's when she was a baby. 

Happy Birthday Cousin Dash! 

The Three Cousins - Dash, Elijah, and Rosemary

Cousins always stick together

We went to Chicago two weekends ago to celebrate cousin Dashiell's first birthday. Here's a video of Rosemary with cousins Elijah and Dash at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Interpretive Dance at Home

Some fancy moves

So far Rosemary's tastes in music are broad but as the footage shows her moves are limited.

Duckie and Sea Monster

Here's a video of Rosemary at seven months, spending a little downtime with the Seamonster and Duckie. Actually it's uptime, since she's just gotten so she can sit up for reasonably long stretches.