Laowai

Here’s Bea reading her Happy Halloween cards from Aunt Jennifer and Grandma J.

I love to hear Brian making Bea laugh. He often comes home and goes right to her. She’ll look up with a big smile and I say “Daddy’s home”. He goes right to her and snuggles his face in her belly and smells her sweet little neck and she does her sputtery sounding giggle. And she’ll grab a big fist full of his hair or she’ll grab his ear and he’ll cry out in pain while laughing at the same time. Sometimes the days are long and when daddy comes home from work it gives us a bit of energy and she can have some fun before bedtime. She often gets really goofy right before she gets suddenly tired and then I know it’s time to take her to her crib. She likes to stand up holding on to the back of the couch and she’ll bend her little knees (yes, we call them the Bea’s knees) like she’s dancing. And she’ll start babbling – there’s lots of babbling these days. She makes us all laugh and it feels really good.

On Friday we went to Brian’s office at the end of the day so we could walk home together. Brian was checking some phone messages and Bea was helping.

Then she tried on Brian’s ZS cap.

Here she is bundled up at the park. She really like to swing.

It finally felt like Fall this weekend when we drove up to Wisconsin to a pumpkin farm. Every weekend I find myself saying – dang, this is our last warm sunny weekend – and then we have another. It was a beautiful day. We picked out a pumpkin for Bea’s first Halloween. And we looked at the pigs and goats and sheep and geese and turkeys.

Now I’m thinking about the holidays and all the things I want to do like make Bea a stocking and decorate the house (toddler-friendly style) and make some homemade gifts. And after two years without one – I think it’s time we get some sort of Christmas Tree. The stocking project has me worried. It’s such a big deal to me and I want it to turn out really nice. I’m going to have to get over my fear and just choose a direction and dive in. I think it feels so big because I always loved my stocking and I knew my mom made it specially for me and I was always (still am) so happy to see it hanging on the mantle every Christmas. So Bea’s stocking has to be good like the one mom made for me and it has to last for years and years. It has to be sturdy because just like me I’m sure she won’t be able to resist putting it on her foot every year after she empties it of its goodies.

Before I go I have to give a shout out to cousin Christine – she leaves the most uplifting comments on my blog and I love reading them. Thanks Christine… from your twerp.

Also, I’ve posted a few new photos of Bea in the Album #5.

So that’s what it feels like to get six and a half hours of sleep at once. I had forgotten. I think we are finally making progress on the sleep issue. Yippeeeee!

We’re off to the pool now.

It’s fun to make Bea laugh. Fun because she makes this sputtering laugh that sounds like the backfiring of an old car. Fun because she shrieks in that way that says I don’t really have any concerns in the world in a way that only children can ever really do. Fun because laughing is not crying and everyone knows that my current focus is the suppression of baby grief at all costs. Fun because when these sounds aren’t escaping, she does a silent, gap-mouthed grin that looks like she can’t imagine anything more fun than you burying your face in her stomach as she pulls your hair. Fun because she has tre denti.

Tre denti is my baby’s three teeth. It’s hard to see these teeth unless you’re working pretty hard and get a big fat smile. And not any kind of smile; not the I-see-you-across-the-room-daddy-and-you-look-funny smile and certainly not the smile that greets the familiar squeak of her favorite toy. This smile is more of a treasure, fleeting, hard to find, and certainly not possible to conjure at will. It is a quest reminiscent of the prepubescent hunt for the elusive girl to hold hands with in the halls of Central Intermediate. In fact, when Kathy told me they were there (Kathy has other sensory methods of detecting such sharp little daggers), I still hadn’t confirmed it for a while. But now I’ve seen them and she is my little Signora Tre Denti (this is an opera reference so obscure that even I won’t get it a year from now).

Bea and I went out for a couple hours on a really long walk through beautiful downtown Evanston on Saturday. We enjoyed the incredible weather while Kathy got what I realized was probably the longest stretch of alone time she has had in eight months. I go to work everyday or head out on my bike and take for granted that Bea is a part of my life but not all of it. This is probably about as long as Kathy has ever been apart from Bea. Incredible to think about. Exhausting to think about. When I travel for work, my nights are often short but they are uninterrupted. Yet another reason I am thankful that I was born without breasts.

Last thought on Tre Denti is that we are really hopeful that she will treat Grandma and Grandpa C well when they visit. After a steady diet of season tickets to the Lyric, we have not been since the Signora joined us. Next weekend will be our triumphant return to the Lyric while the oldsters watch our youngster. (To celebrate, I bought an equally indulgent set of expensive tickets for Dad and I to go the next night). Should be a good weekend.

I had a really nice weekend thanks to Brian. On Saturday morning he gave me a much needed break from the munchkin. They went for a nice long walk and I think to the bookstore too. I was able to get out some art supplies have some creative time to myself. I started on a project I’ve been contemplating for a long time – making calendars for Christmas gifts. On Sunday we went to an interesting exhibit about Alfred Hitchcock at a nearby museum. There were lots of great sketches by set designers. We walked along the lake on our way back and it felt like the most beautiful quiet August day.

Do you love Target like I love Target? Here’s an interesting tidbit I read about sale items (via curbly.com)

“The story goes that, at Target, full prices end in 9. You know the drill, $19.99, $14.99. Every time Target discounts an item, the final digit of the price drops. For instance, that candle you’ve been coveting has dropped to $8.48. The lowest the final digit will go is 4. So, if you see something you want and the price ends in 4, buy it. You won’t get it for less.”

I haven’t been posting many Bea related items lately so here are a couple photos for her fans.

Lately she will sit in a laundry basket and play by herself while I do things around the house. I don’t think this will last too long but I’ve been taking advantage of it while I can and she is so cute in the baskets.

Here she is brushing her three teeth:

Did you happen to watch any of the Ken Burns documentary on World War II? It was really interesting. I am always fascinated with photos and stories of the war – it makes me think about my Grandpa and Grandma and what they went through.

The documentary was done from the perspective of four home towns in the US and how the war changed life for soldiers and everyone back home. It was very educational and interesting. The explanation of the war in the Pacific was particularly educational because I felt like I didn’t really know how that all progressed. I was struck by a few things: First it was amazing how everyone back home got so involved in the war. What a contrast to what is going on now. Regardless of what I think of this war I can’t think of a single sacrifice I’ve made or a single thing I’ve done to support a soldier. Also, throughout the program the numbers that they quoted were unbelievable. They described battle after battle and it was hard to believe how many soldiers and civilians were wounded and killed. More than 16 million Americans served and over 400,00 died! Last, they would occasionally show a mother with her child among the ruins of a village, or a child killed during bombing, or a child in a prisoner camp. Now that I’m a mom there is a new depth to the feelings and sympathy I have when I see pictures like that and try to imagine the horror of surviving such conditions with your child.

If you want to see The War there are several programs to the series and they are still being shown I think.

On a similar note, I was happy to hear that Grandpa Dice will be participating in the Honor Flight program. It’s a program where veterans are flown out to Washington DC to visit the WWII memorial. The organization’s web site says: “it’s our way of paying a small tribute to those that gave so much; to take a memorable, safe, and rewarding flight with honor!” I think the trip that grandpa is taking is being sponsored by Dow Chemical.

Here are a few photos of the memorial:

Hey check it out my husband is a published author. He wrote an article about the pharmaceutical market in China for Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine. It’s a very interesting article (uh… that is if reading about growth rates, market potentials, hospital target strategy and sales force structure is your cup of tea).

Back from Quebec City and re-entering the real world (sitting in a middle seat on a flight to San Antonio to be exact, praying the guy in front of me doesn’t decide to lean back). We’ve had some really nice vacations and this one was no exception, doing what I love best – wandering around, seeing beautiful places, eating great food and seeing how other people live. It was different having Bea with us because suddenly we had to make sure we modified our rhythms and our plans to fit hers. We had to try to eat when we thought she would sleep or be happy in her stroller for a while. We had to think about what to pack when, when she would eat solid food, diaper changes, whatever. Kathy did most of this worrying and planning. Another big one was that stairs suddenly became things of fear, impassable obstacles and curbs or broken sidewalks our enemies. Anyone who has been to Quebec knows that there are many stairs and many obstacles but it is also a city very friendly to walking. These things may sound daunting but they actually were not bad at all. After accepting that it will take a little longer and a little more planning, we did pretty much what we would have done on any other trip.

I also think the trip also cured us of the need to go to France any time soon. The French have been bestowed some beautiful landscape and developed buildings, cultural heritage and cooking that is second to none but there is something to be said about wanting to visit where you are welcome. In many places in Quebec, we felt plenty welcome and everyone there spoke English. However, some were not so thrilled to be doing so. We had two experiences in restaurants in particular which left a lasting impression, including one very rude waiter who spoke as little as possible. He had a handlebar moustache and I dreamed many a time of ripping it out at its roots as he ignored as and delivered our food with as little interaction as possible. The sad part was that this was the best dinner and probably the cheapest we had the entire time we were there. There was another restaurant we wanted to go to but it was full. The maitre’d there, spiffy in his three piece (further reinforcing that we were under-dressed and probably unwelcome with our sometimes not-so-silent offspring), seemed pleasant enough so we asked him for recommendations in a similar style to what they offer. “Well,” he says, making that distinctly French and Belgian sound of air puffed quickly through pursed lips, a pompous sound, dripping with sarcasm and embodying exactly how the French feel about their culture, “here in Quebec, we are alone.”

Bea has this way of pushing up her eyebrows to a point and giving a full, open-mouthed smile with plenty of tongue that looks like she is contemplating some evil plot to take over the world or at least do something profoundly destructive to mankind. Conceived in Beijing, this might very well reflect the sentiments of our hosts toward their manifest destiny.

No…

No…

Yes!

My name is Bea and these are some of my toys.

Here’s my most recent acquisition, I call him Sheepish.

A note to all my adoring fans: I have a new album on the left of the screen (Bea’s Photo Album #5).