Dutchess of Poodles

The dogs are starting to adjust to their fearless leader. And though we maintain a zero tolerance policy for dogs fighting back, I really do feel for them. From the moment she wakes up, Edie is all about the dogs. I have caught her patty-caking Sugar's face, and plonking plastic nesting cups, one after the other, atop Billy's head, laughing hysterically while saying "hat!!".

But the best aspect of Edie's reign of canine terror has to be her marching with determination at the dogs, right arm raised just above shoulder height and index finger jutting out of her clenched fist, yelling "BOW!" She didn't come up with this on her own. Billy actually can bow. Awhile back, pre-baby and pre-JD + PhD - shall we say The Era of Timeonourhands - I taught Billy to bow by giving him a treat and saying the command whenever he slid his front paws out and shined that butt to the sky in order to stretch out from a long afternoon of napping. Food motivated fatty that he is, he learned it quickly. An exhaustive list of his other tricks includes high fives, rolling over, and sitting. He will also run through a tunnel if you ask, and he performs a vigorous erotic dance with his pillow, but I can't take credit for these tricks. They are all Billy. Back to the point, though, Edie has really taken to this "bow" command.

So much does the little lady enjoy telling her dogs to bow (optimistic toddler does try to get Sugar to bow too, even though the tiny dog's brain may actually be a dried apricot thus rendering her incapable of such complex tasks) that she also commands others to bow. Strangers on the subway. Friends over for a visit. And I've oft caught her warming up her vocal cords by herself in her bed upon waking up from a nap yelling out "Bow!!" "High Five!" "BoooooW!!!" to an imaginary, and obedient, friend.

We are finding Germans difficult to train in this regard, but hopefully the gentile Southerners of Nashville will be a bit more agreeable to Her Highness's wishes. Until then, Edie will have to focus on getting her poodle minions in line.

Getting down to business

Edie loves to help her Dad empty the dishwasher. If he tries to open it without her by his side, you hear "nein nein nein!" and a lot of pitter-pattering as she rushes to get there in time for the unloading. The other day he began the process just as she was in the middle of trying on some hats. So she had to cut her losses and therefore arrived with a bunny-head (she fully put this on herself - strap and all. no babies were intentionally given rabbit ears for the sake of a photo.)

About in the World

Well, Ms. Edie is finally walking like a champ. She waited until she was good and ready; no mad dashes, not too many stumbles. Our little one was 15 or 16 months when she really got going, so I never had the "I can't believe she's walking!" experience. It was more like "Hallelujah, I can go back out in public without the baby dragging her palms through filth." For a couple months there, we existed in some pretty rough limbo where her energy level demanded freedom but social norms demanded that I keep my child from worming about at ankle level in cafes and grocery stores. Some days Edie won, others society. I am pretty certain that I never won, and I'm sure that the knees of her pants didn't either.

But we're up and running now! One of the first time I let her loose in a non-playground / park environment was on a shopping trip to pick up some work shirts for her dad. I thought she'd run amok but not so much. Edie was overwhelmed to say the least and mostly clung to me, but her apprehension didn't last long. Since then, she's torn through aisles, dribbling apple pulp on tiled floors (and *maybe* a tiny bit of merchandise), ransacking racks of bibs and toys, and goosing the occasional stranger - (it's unfortunate that baby-tickling height is butt-level on most adults). Drunken monkey that any toddler is and Edie being no exception, she doesn't do straight lines so well and has never, ever looked to see where her feet are about to land.

I've had less time to blog or breathe of late, but we're all happily bipedal in Munich! Except the dogs, that is. They are still lazing about on all fours.

And the academy award will one day go to...

It's not clear where she gets her air of drama. Probably her Dad. He's well known in the biomedical engineering world for his histrionics. In any case, here's a video of world's silliest toddler giving her best faces during a dinner. (Note: baby spoon privileges were temporarily suspended due to extreme bananas-ness leading to dogs wearing much of her dinner.)

Homeschool for Mom

Motherhood is a relentless teacher. One of it's biggest lessons is that you have no right to the world as you'd like it to be. Not dissimilar to the "life's not fair" mantra we learned as kids, but I don't like saying that so much because it seems to set up fair and unfair as good versus bad. But, really, it is just about the absence of fairness as a universal rule. It's not bad that life's not fair. It just is. Edie has been showing me from day one that my comfy little bubble is not real. Nevertheless, I still react strongly to life's nuisances - loud neighbors, people not minding my Midwestern personal space - as if they were personal affronts and not just the benign states that they are. My shrieking pee-pants Zen master still has a lot of work to do. Here's our syllabus for this term.

Lesson One: Diapers Are An Illusion. In the Western world, diapers are synonymous with babies. Not so everywhere, and actually we have done some "potty-whispering" with Edie since she was about 4 months old. Diapers, however, have been a constant presence as well. We've turned a corner lately wherein Edie (A) does not want to use the potty. Ok, that helps me rid myself of any involuntary smugness I may have become tainted with from having a baby who does her biz in the toilet at such a young age. Except that (B), she now hates diapers. Hates. Yells about it. Attempts frightening changing table dives to avoid them. And when she gets a chance, she up and takes them off. Now I respect this opinion. I mean, consider what diapers are. Gross and not that comfy. But am I ready to give up the sanctity of not living in a biohazardous zone? E's Answer: Take a deep breath, because it will all change soon enough and furthermore it's not up to me anyways. Now, get to cleaning up the poopy diaper I just removed and hurled on your yoga mat, mother. [Note: this happened.]

Lesson Two: You Are Not What You Eat. If you were what you ate, my daughter would be a potato. With tofu appendages. And lentil soup for brains. Besides the too hot, too salty, or excessively sugary, Edie has been given all manner of food since she started solids. And she was blessed(/cursed) with teeth from an early age, so she's a bit of a chewing prodigy. Yet these days, with 14 chompers present and accounted for and 2 more on the horizon, she has become very picky. Particularly about vegetables. Broccoli now must not only be avoided in food, but it must be plucked out, floret by floret, and then taken away by me as she makes urgent eye contact, and exclaims "uh!?!? eh?!?" That's toddler for "fix this now." I have learned from this new mealtime ritual of making me remove food from her sight line - food that I lovingly planned, cooked, and served - that pleading, reasoning, and burying my head in my hands do not help. The last one feels sort of good though; like a power nap. This will pass, either because she starts eating everything or because she'll get too old for it to be my problem (this is what I did to my own mom, after all). Until then, I'll try to accept it - but in the meantime I will also continue to make green smoothies for her to drink.

Lesson Three: When Life Gives You a Toddler, It also Opens the Washing Machine. My house is now mostly a series of traps to entertain a toddler so that I can get two hours of productive time in while she is awake. That's two hours total over the 10+ hours she is out and about. While two hours is my goal, I try hard not to knock myself when I don't get there, which is fairly often. Baby traps involve creating a world of activities that she thinks she came up with on her own. So leaving the front-loading washing machine ajar so that Edie loads it up with bags of pasta and containers of dried beans. Putting all of her shoes, past future & present, in a box in the hall so she can try on each and every one. Setting out my little basket of nail polish, all schellacked shut from many months of neglect. Knowing how to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider while sauteeing. And that's just some of my bag of tricks. Moreover, I try to remember to drop my cleaning/cooking/web surfing whenever I can and just get down on the floor to play with her.

Happy Mother's Day.... to me...

My second ever Mother's Day as a mother has passed. It included a sparkling kitchen, baked goods, cleaning and feng shui-ing the baby's room, and a picnic dinner at the beer garden. But there was a catch. I had to do all of that myself. You see, Will is in Montreal for an "MRI conference," which is, apparently, what they call secret second families these days. Will "Is that your real name?" Grissom did, however, send me a magnificent bouquet.

Edie and I spent the afternoon with our friends Lara and Linnea, since their husband/dad left this morning for a work trip as well. And if you are thinking this all sounds fishy, then you are paying good attention. But no need to focus on whatever bigamist/money-laundering/cat burglaring schemes the menfolk are up to. It is, after all, Mother's Day. I made the child wear a semi-matching outfit (matching me, that is, not itself). So we both donned Detroit shirts and floral-patterned bottoms and trucked to the local trails to catch some rays, feed some ducks, and yell "woof! woof!" at every dog we saw.

Highlights of the day also include being able to do a full hour of yoga, as after having had the energy flow freed up in her room, Edie took a 2.5 hour nap. This gave me so much time that I even painted my toe nails. Of course, I promptly stubbed 8 of my 10 toes within minutes of finishing this. Still a win, especially if you squint when looking at my feet.

So Happy Mother's Day to me. And Herr Doktor Husband, (who/)whereever you are, we missed you!
Edie giving a kiss to her best buddy, Linnea. These two adore each other.
Standing! And matching mom!

The advantage of having dogs with baby

As I've said, there aren't a lot of advantages to dog + baby, especially when you are minus yard. The ticks, the grooming, the occasional vomit, but mostly the additional responsibility to animate creatures when your human creature already keeps you on a very demanding schedule can become the straws that break your back. I'm sure it's my change in perspective, but Billy and Sugar seem even more onerous lately. First, there is a man who lives in a tent in an adjacent park. Well, he lives there sometimes. That's why we call him the Drifter. Billy runs up and inspects the tent regularly, much to my horror, but I suppose the day he gets Drifter-punched, he'll learn. Sugar recently happened upon the Drifter's toilet. Hint: no indoor plumbing ... or doors. I am not going to go into any further details but know that she didn't only take notes. Then Billy, besides irking tent-dwellers, has long been known to get amorous with a pillow now and again. Five years into his life, however, he's gotten ... skilled at this particular forbidden love. I did not realize what a prude I was until Rondoodle Jeremy (as we now call him) put on his last performance.

I love dogs. I even love my dogs. But they are taking a lot and not giving much. You see, we'd had dreams of dogs that were baby-tolerant. But they run away at every turn, hardly submitting to a pet. It's frustrating but there's not much to be done. Obviously running away is allowed, but is it so much to ask that they put up with a little baby abuse in exchange for cleaning up their biohazard selves, paying muchos euros to keep their furs trimmed, and even access to the occasional batter bowl? To that end, here is Billy, earning his keep for once, getting jousted by a happy baby and her Swiffer stick.