In Which Our 9-Mile-Long Hallway Finally Serves A Purpose

Rosemary's behind the curve when it comes to walking (which is fine by us, no complaints!) but she does love to roam around with her little wagon, which was a fab birthday present from her Grandma and Granddad.

 

A Light Obsession

Like most other 14-month-old kids, Rosie has become can't-keep-her-mitts-off-it fascinated by most things grown-ups use. She went on the internets for 10 minutes today using my cell phone and I had to call Verizon and ask them to remove the charge. (They obliged, since I've never used it to go on the web before, and then helpfully locked that feature.) The only way I can get my cell phone away from her is to offer her my wallet instead. She loves the volume control on the stereo, remote controls, the refrigerator, and...(yes, this video is supposed to be dark, and yes, that is our microwave beeping in the background for posterity)...

 

...the dimmer switch in her bedroom. She greets it like an old, dear friend every time we go in there and by now has learned how to lean far to the left to get at it without nearly tumbling off the changing table into the diaper pail. This was between bath and bedtime tonight.

Baby on Beach

Well, THAT was nice! We spent a terrific week down in the Yucatan Peninsula, near Tulum, with Jason's family and, wow, is it gorgeous down there. Most mornings we relaxed at our beach house, which was on pretty Soliman Bay about 20 minutes north of Tulum, and then ventured out and about in the afternoons when the babies were up from their naps. We spent a lot of time relaxing on Tulum's long, pretty beach and visited the Mayan ruins that are right there overlooking the ocean. Rosemary (aka "Osie" as Dash calls her) had a lot of personal highlights, including guacamole with every meal, salsa music, beach doggies, climbing the stairs in the house (and pausing to look at the peacock stained glass hanging in the stairwell window), the very warm swimming pool, and most of all, of course, hanging out with her cousins Elijah and Dash. Oh, and she also liked pointing out the crescent moon design in a hanging lamp and the real thing outside (the "booo" - she doesn't quite say her m's and n's yet, really, though she does like to hum).

There are many more pix on picasa, including some really pretty ones of Jason's and my snorkel trip to Gran Cenote, one of the most beautiful of the area's many, many limestone freshwater caves. Or so I'm told - we kept it simple and didn't do any diving or other kidless adventures this trip, so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I think we chose well. It was breathtaking and tranquil - a pond in the middle of the jungle with a big, dark cave with bats and birds flying around, tiny fishies swimming near the water's surface of the water, and sunbeams shining down through the trees.

Stopping to smell the Valentine's Day flowers

We came home from a fun afternoon out at MoMA to a beautiful surprise -- Granddad (my dad) had sent us flowers for Valentine's Day. Rosemary got her very own bouquet, which she was totally jazzed about, as you can see from this video. She kept smelling them and was surprisingly content with just that - she didn't try try to pull at them or stick them in her mouth. Wonder of wonders! They really are beautiful and they do smell lovely.

At MoMA we saw our friend Lana, who works there, and wandered around chatting and not focusing too much on all that nice art. Rosie was a squirmy wormy so Lana wisely suggested going up to an open, mostly empty gallery in the 4th Floor where there was a gorgeous wall work by Sol Lewitt. I didn't have my camera with me, which was a crying shame because one of the highlights was watching Rosemary crawl right up to the glass balcony and stand up against it. I fear for her sense of self-preservation (isn't there supposed to be something innate about not doing that?) but hey, at least she's not scared of heights. 

One!

We had a ball celebrating Rosemary's first birthday with family, most of whom came in just to be there for the weekend. For more pix click this link. Rosemary happily tucked into her beautiful and tasty choco-choc birthday cake but the cake had some stiff competition.

Face Check

Everything seems to be in working order here (except the disastrously messy living room).

Fair Thee Well, Sweet Jumparoo

Rosemary is a consummate bouncer so she was mad for that Jumparoo. At the height of its popularity, she would rock out in it for 10 or even 15 minutes, but lately she'd only put up with a minute or two so we ditched it to reclaim the few precious square feet of space. I have to say that this video doesn't really fully illustrate her usual toe-pointing poise (she had a weird posture that a ballet teacher might have approved of), but it's a nice memento anyhow.