As I mentioned in the previous post, Elisabeth is getting pretty good with animal sounds and can do a lot of them, but her favourite animal sound is definitely “quack, quack”. She loves ducks. She pointed out that there was a picture of a duck on her toothbrush – something that had escaped James’ and my attention. She even says, “Quack, quack” when she sees pigeons. I’ve tried to teach her that pigeons say “coo”, but as far as she is concerned, they are ducks and she loves chasing them.

This past weekend we ventured over to the Brick Lane Sunday markets and, having done some market browsing and eaten a rather late lunch, were waiting at the end of Commercial Street to get a bus home. Elisabeth was looking down the road and said, “Quack, quack!” We thought that she was looking at some birds flying in the sky and pointed out that they weren’t actually ducks. But she continued to periodically say, “Quack, quack!” even when they were no birds visible in the sky.

Finally James spotted that an LED billboard down the street was showing an O2 advert which featured several very large rubber ducks! It was one of about 5 or 6 adverts that were cycling through fairly quickly. But every time the advert with the ducks came around, Elisabeth piped up, “Quack, quack!” She had spotted it long before either of us did. Leave it to her to notice the ducks!

A friend of mine recently reminded me of the saying, when it comes to babies, “you either have a walker or a talker.” She and I both have talkers! Elisabeth is quite comfortable toddling around as long as she has a finger to hold on to but isn’t yet willing to try walking on her own. And she has been trying to crawl more lately but is far from mastering that. Her vocabulary, however, is over 40 words now and she is picking up new words at a rate of about 4-5 per week.

Elisabeth can tell you what sounds these animals make: cow, horse, sheep, duck, chicken, monkey, elephant, wolf, tiger, penguin and rabbit. (The rabbit and penguin aren’t so much sounds as actions, but she sure knows them.) She understands “up” and “down” and says both words. She talks a LOT and is constantly trying to copy the words that we say.

Body parts that Elisabeth can point to on herself (and, most of them, on others) include: nose, mouth, ears, hair, head, tummy and feet. When she’s in the bath I give her a sponge and ask her if she can scrub her feet. She lifts a foot way out of the water and does her best to scrub it!

She has pretty much mastered feeding herself with a spoon. She eats her whole bowl of porridge at breakfast and bowl of yogurt at lunch or supper all by herself with almost no help from us. The range of foods that she will eat is still pretty tiny: besides porridge and yogurt, she eats banana, mango, bread, cheese, crackers, rice cakes and sometimes pear. That’s about it. Oh, and she drinks grape juice. The range of foods that she will eat – or at least try – at nursery is a bit broader, but even there she’s a very picky eater. Her nursery asked me to write down a list of foods that she will eat so on the days that she is at nursery all day they can ensure that she will eat something. That’s important since as of the beginning of March she’ll be in nursery two full days a week plus a half day.

Nursery is working out brilliantly for Elisabeth and for us. She really likes it there and they love her. The nursery manager said to me one day, “I wish I had a lot more Elisabeths.” The only thing that’s not working so well is naps. At home when I can tell Elisabeth is tired, I put her down to sleep in her cot and, in the quiet of her room, she sleeps as long as she needs to. At nursery the cots are on one end of the baby room, not in a separate quiet room. So when she does go to sleep, she doesn’t sleep very long, and sometimes they can’t even get her to sleep at all because she doesn’t want to miss what’s going on. The last two Tuesdays after she has spent all day at nursery, she has slept badly at night (one night she was awake from 3:15 to 6:00 am!) and I’m quite certain it’s because she didn’t get enough sleep during the day. So as she moves to two full days a week at nursery, I think we’re going to have to have a chat with the nursery staff about what can be done to facilitate better napping.

In the teething department, Elisabeth is now up to seven teeth (I think – it’s hard to get a good look at that top gum) and the seventh – which was a third bottom tooth – came in with absolutely no fanfare, thank goodness. In fact, we haven’t seen crabby teething Elisabeth since the middle of December, which has been wonderful.

For the most part (other than the full days she’s at nursery) sleeping is in a good pattern too. Most nights Elisabeth is sleeping 12+ hours straight without needing any attention from us. We put her down around 7 pm and she wakes up sometime between 7:00 and 7:30. Hooray! She wakes up happy, too, and will usually just lie in her cot chatting or sucking her dummy and playing with her stuffed animals until one of us eventually looks in on her. She’s still doing a long morning nap although there are more and more days when she doesn’t take an afternoon nap at all.

She’s been going through a “I want my mummy” phase for the past few months which can be a little frustrating for James especially when she cries when I leave her with him. In the last week she’s been a little more affectionate toward him, though, and he also figured out that often when she’s running away from him it’s actually because she wants him to chase her. “I’m gonna get you” is a fun new game.

Favourite things: books, eating, bath time, ducks, shape sorters, buckles, singing (fav songs are “Little Green Frog” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”), playing on the bed with Daddy before bedtime, and her beloved dummies (American: pacifiers).

So kid. You are a year old. Amazing. The last year has been quite an adventure! It’s certainly had it’s ups and downs, but I can say unequivocally that getting you as a daughter is definitely one of the best things that has ever happened in my life.

First of all, I apologise for missing the 11 month update. Between illness and teething, you’ve been a lot of work for the last month and a half and I’ve not been up to doing much besides the basics of parenting. I’ll try to cover the last month and a half in this one…

Your vocabulary is growing. After “dada” your next words were “Hi!” and “crocodile”. Yes, crocodile. You have quite a few books with crocodiles in them including your beloved bath book about Conrad the Crocodile. You also say “Gada” for Grandad and “cat” or “caga” after having spent a couple of days at your Nana & Grandad’s house where you joyfully chased the cats around. You frequently try to imitate words that we say. You’ve said “Buppa” a few times when we look at the photo of Oma & Opa on the fridge and you have pronounced perfectly clearly words like “cow” and “Leah”  but they aren’t yet part of your regular vocabulary. You also make a little throat growly sound which seems to be your attempt at making animal sounds.

You still don’t crawl, stand unsupported for more than a few seconds or pull yourself up very much, but you are getting awfully good at walking. Three weeks ago you still needed us to hold both of your hands when you walked. Now you cruise along with only one hand holding on to someone. You still prefer to have something in both hands when you walk around, and while clothes pegs remain your top preference just about anything will do including the remote controls.

Sleep has been much more of a problem for the last month. You had about 3 1/2 months straight of reliably taking a 2-3 hour nap every morning but then illness and teething came along and now you are as likely to only sleep for 1/2 hour in the morning as you are to sleep for 2-3 hours. When you don’t get a long morning nap you are tired and cranky all through the rest of the day and it can be awfully trying. During the last month you’ve been waking up more in the middle of the night too. The combination of sleep-deprived baby, sleep-deprived mummy and sleep-deprived daddy is not really desirable, to say the least.

Eating isn’t any better than it was a month and a half ago. You’ll still eat banana fairly reliably. Anything is up for grabs. You eat a lot less than you used to too, although I guess that’s fairly normal at this age. You’ve been known to skip meals entirely – just absolutely refuse to eat. A couple of times we’ve given you your supper in the bath because you would eat it there but not in your high chair. The lengths we go to… At least clean up is easy when you eat in the bath!

You LOVE having songs sung to you and it’s so fun to see how fast you’re learning motions to go with songs. You wave your arms around appropriately for “The Wheels on the Bus” and you stick your tongue in and out along with “Little Green Frog”. One night when getting you ready for bed I started singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and your daddy noticed you moving your fingers. For a minute we weren’t sure what you were doing since it was a very similar motion to your attempt to do a crocodile “Snap!”.  Then we realised that you were doing the motion for “Twinkle, Twinkle” – something you had apparently learned in nursery! You also use the motions to request particular songs – including bobbing up and down on our laps to ask for “Pony Girl” and “This is the way the gentlemen ride” and “Horsey, Horsey”.

I taught you how to point to other people’s noses, and you take great delight in pointing out the nose on dolls, stuffed animals, pictures in books and especially mummy & daddy. One night when you were in the bath I made a comment about cleaning your dirty nose and you pointed right to your nose. When we said, “Yes! That’s your nose. Very good!” you pointed to your mouth and looked at us expectantly. When we named that your pointed to your ear. Apparently you had learned all of this just that day in nursery. What an impressive little girl!

I am so looking forward to this next year and witnessing you discover more and more of your world and learning how to respond to it and express yourself. You are our precious, beloved baby girl. I can hardly imagine my life without you in it. I love you so much, Elisabeth Soraya Clare!

Now that Elisabeth is nearly five months old, we’re starting to think about when she’ll start eating solid foods and what those will be. Will we do things the most common way today: spoon feeding her pureed foods, eventually transitioning to lumpy foods and then finger foods? Or will we do it what is probably the more traditional way if you go back far enough is now known as baby-led weaning: let her start eating what she wants when she wants when she is ready? At this point we’re not eliminating any possibilities, and I think we still have at least another month before we really need to decide, especially given that guidelines today recommend breast milk only for the first six months.

In any case, this past week, Elisabeth had her first teaser of “grown-up” food. On Tuesday afternoon, we were at a baby play group and pieces of melon and banana were passed around for the mums and babies (most of whom were older than six months). I picked out a piece of melon and held it by Elisabeth’s mouth to see if she would lick it. She did and seemed to like it. I let her lick it one more time before I ate it.

Then on Thursday afternoon we were in Priory Park picnicking with the other mums & babies from our NCT antenatal group and I was eating a rather sour Braeburn apple. I had eaten about half of it when I held it to Elisabeth’s mouth. She clearly enjoyed licking that as well and sucked on it quite a bit before I finished it (after trying to wipe some of the baby drool off of it).

The next day I was eating a rather mushy pear and held that up for Elisabeth to lick. It was soft enough that she could actually suck bits off of it – which she continued to do with gusto until I took it away from her. She wasn’t very happy about that. She wanted to keep eating that pear!

It was really fun seeing her enjoy new foods, and while neither of us are quite ready for Elisabeth to launch more fully into the world of solids, I’m looking forward to introducing her to more new foods – and hopefully watching her delight in them – when the time seems right.

Since Helen from Cheeky Wipes was so kind as to drop by my blog and leave a tip about warming up the wipes, I thought I would put up a little advertisement here.

About a month ago one of my friends from our NCT class sent around a link about Cheeky Wipes – re-usable wipes that you wash rather than using disposable ones that end up in landfills. Being a person who tries to live a conscientious and eco-friendly lifestyle, I thought this sounded like a good idea, so I ordered a starter pack.

I have to say I’ve been very impressed. Helen has put together a great product! The starter pack includes a pile of cloth wipes, two tubs – one for clean wipes and one for mucky ones, two different types of essential oil – one for each tub, a mesh bag to line the mucky wipes tub that can then be lifted right out and put in the wash, and two bags to take wipes on the go – one for clean wipes and one for mucky ones.

Everything is of a high quality and incredibly convenient to use. Also, part of Helen’s philosophy of business is to treat the customer as she would want to be treated, and she certainly succeeds in providing excellent customer service. Plus her website is very nice and easy to use. If saving the planet is this easy and this nice – not to mention much more cost effective over the long term – why wouldn’t you do it?

Two thumbs up for Cheeky Wipes. Highly recommended.

The previous entry is a fairly detailed and lengthy description of Elisabeth’s birth. I’m happy for family and friends to read it, but because of the personal nature, have made it only viewable with a password. If you would like to read it, please contact me for the password via email, Twitter dm, mobile, Facebook… or leave a comment here (with your email address) and I will send it to you. Thanks!

We’ve had so much going on in our lives lately and so much to pre-occupy us that it didn’t even occur to me to blog before today about the fact that we had an offer accepted on a house a week and a half ago. While this is happy news, it means something quite different than having an offer accepted on a house in US. In England, an accepted offer is not legally binding, and it’s only the beginning of a long, drawn-out, complicated process. The house survey was done on Friday (another thing different from the US – this is primarily for the bank’s benefit, not the buyer’s) and we’re just waiting to find out dates for exchange (exchanging contracts and paying the downpayment – at which point the agreement to purchase becomes legally binding) and completion (taking possession). It could take two or three months to get to the point where we can actually move in.

The house is South Tottenham, and is about 3/4 mile northeast of where we’re currently living. It has a lounge, dining room and kitchen downstairs and two bedrooms and a large bathroom upstairs. The garden (i.e. backyard) is fantastic – it’s the feature I’m most excited about. It’s not huge, but it has a little patio, veg and flower beds on either side, and a shed and tree at the end. I hope we get in the house early enough to be able to enjoy most of the summer in the garden.

The other big news is that I am an aunt! My sister Dana gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl, Leah Marnae, on Saturday, May 3. About a week before she was born, my siblings and parents and I all gave our predictions for what day the baby would be born and whether it would be a boy or girl. I was the only one to predict May 3, but I said it would be a boy. So I was half right. (And I think picking the right day gets more credit than picking the right gender because with gender, you get a 50/50 chance!) I won’t get to meet Leah until our trip to the US at the beginning of August (for my brother’s wedding) and am counting on getting lots and lots of pictures in the meantime (hint, hint).

Reading last week’s Observer Magazine, a climate change-themed issue edited by Thom Yorke, I was finally convinced to make a commitment that I’ve been pondering for a while: for the rest of 2008, I’m only going to buy a brand new item if a) I can’t get it used or b) I am buying it directly from the person who made it. That includes clothes, shoes, furniture, kitchen stuff, etc. Given that we’re planning to move house in 2008, that could end up being quite a challenge, but I’m going to do my best.

I didn’t have to work last Friday so I decided to use the day to explore some London charity shops and vintage clothing stores. Helpfully, the issue of Time Out that had arrived on our doorstop three days previous had a feature on where to shopping for used clothing bargains in London. I picked out six of them, plotted my route, grabbed my A to Z, and headed out on my thrift shop adventure.

I started at the Salvation Army store in Princes Street just behind Oxford Street. They pack a lot of clothes into a smallish space! The selection was decent and prices were dirt cheap. Most items I looked at fell in the £3-7 range. I had the delight of overhearing an older gentleman ask the clerk why a particular men’s suit was priced quite a bit higher than the others on the rack. She pointed out that it was Christian Dior. That didn’t seem to mean much to him! I didn’t buy anything at the Salvation Army this trip, but it’s definitely one that I will be returning to.

From there, I walked up to Marylebone where I stopped at Barnardo’s in George Street and Cancer Research UK in Marylebone High Street. Both of them were — as you would expect in Marylebone — quite posh and a good bit higher priced than the Salvation Army. Cancer Research UK in particular seemed to mostly be stocked with designer duds. I wasn’t really looking to spend more than £10 on any single item, but if I had wanted to get a pair of Carolina Herrera pumps for £30, that would have been the place to go! Most of the clothes were small and medium sizes, so not that much there for me anyway. It was fun to explore, but unless I’m specifically looking for designer frocks on the cheap, I’m unlikely to go back.

I walked up to Baker Street and jumped on the tube, exiting at Bayswater from which I walked up Queensway to Westbourne Grove, my destination being the Westbourne Grove branch of Traid (an acronym for Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development). Here, I hit the jackpot! They had a sale on: every item in the store was £2, the exception being coats and jackets which were all £6. This was another store that was absolutely packed with clothes and shoes — high street fashions, designer wear, and a good selection of vintage. I had a great time sifting through the racks and ended up taking quite a stack into the fitting room. I left the store with a couple of bags of clothes including: a short-sleeved heather grey cable knit jumper, a black cowl neck sleeveless jumper, chocolate brown corduroy jeans (Miss Selfridges label), a blue striped v-neck empire waist long t-shirt (also Miss Selfridges), a wooly rust-coloured scarf, navy blue yoga trousers, a bright pink knee-length lightweight coat with gorgeous floral lining, and a vintage sleeveless dress with a pleated skirt in a coral and white floral pattern. (I’m hoping to add to the dress a short-sleeved lightweight black cardigan, a wide black patent leather belt, black patent leather flats, and a black bead necklace — all second-hand of course — and wear it at my brother’s wedding in August.) The total bill at Traid? £20. Rock.

After a brief stop for lunch at a little Italian cafe, I walked down Pembridge Road to Retro Woman, part of a cluster of renowned Notting Hill second-hand stores. This is another store packed to the gills. I enjoyed perusing the masses of designer label shoes and accessories in locked cabinets, mostly priced around £20-£50. Tucked between Retro Woman and Retro Man is a store where everything is £2. If I wasn’t carrying two bags of clothes, I might have spent a little longer digging through the racks and would surely have been rewarded with some great finds. I will definitely be going back to those stores as well as Retro Home.

By the time I left the Retro group of stores, it was late afternoon. I took a quick look around Dolly Diamond vintage shop in Pembridge Road and Trinity Hospice in Notting Hill Gate before heading home, very satisfied with my day of shopping. I had been planning to stop at Marie Curie in Highbury but that will have to wait for another day.

A couple of weeks earlier, I had spent an afternoon sniffing around some great East End vintage shops including Absolutely Vintage, Beyond Retro, and Rokit Vintage. Absolutely Vintage is a treasure trove of vintage shoes and bags. And Beyond Retro is just enormous. Rokit Vintage has shelves and shelves of cowboy boots, and lots of seventies fashions. All of them are definitely worth future return visits. I’m also looking forward to checking out the East End Thrift Store.

Shopping for vintage and second-hand goods requires a lot more patience and persistence than shopping at high street and big box stores. But the thrill of landing a great bargain makes it worthwhile. And while only buying used goods isn’t going to save the planet, it’s a step in the right direction.

So I started an entry about our trip to the States just after Christmas but, frankly, it was boring. So rather than go into much detail, I’ll do a quick summary.

Spending time with my family in DeMotte was wonderful and weird and difficult and all those things that family are. It was treasured time together as “just us adults” before the first grandchild arrives in April. We’re still navigating the dynamics of having added brothers-in-law (and a sister-in-law to be) to the family, though. And one thing the time with them made me realise is that especially now that we live in London, I can be such a snob – I live in the big city and I’m so sophisticated and cosmopolitan. I need to watch out for that.

The three and a half days in Nashville were as wonderful as they could have been. Arriving at Trevor and Jenna’s felt like coming home. And being loved and cared for by the Hendersons and Darks was just what I needed. We had a totally rockin’ New Year’s Eve party at the Hendersons’ and a wonderfully chilled New Year’s Day at the Darks’. And adding Steve to the number of dear friends that we so eagerly anticipate seeing on visits to Nashville was a joy beyond words.

I could have stayed in Nashville much longer, but other friends in Grand Rapids were awaiting our arrival there. It was wonderful to see those friends, but being in Grand Rapids was weirder than weird. Even though we had been gone for seven months, it didn’t feel like it had been that long, but in the meantime, people’s lives had moved on and so much had changed. I’m glad that we got to see as many people as we did while we were there even if all the running around to see them got a bit mad. I hope that future visits will be more comfortable, when we’ve been away longer and we feel more like visitors than people who have just been away from home for longer than usual.

The last two and a half days of our trip to the States was spent in Chicago where we had the great delight of meeting up with our dear friends Kate and Nathan for lunch. They moved from Grand Rapids to Philadelphia in August of 2006, and we had debated whether to try to fit in a stop in Philly on this trip in order to visit them. In the end we decided that it was too much to squeeze in, so imagine our delight when we discovered that they were going to be in Chicago that weekend for a wedding. We rearranged our plans a bit in order to get to Chicago in time to meet up with them before their flight out. It was just a treat to see them. It was also delightful to spend a bit more time with my sister Dana (5 1/2 months pregnant at the time!) and her husband Pete. We’ve imposed on them frequently over the years since they live in the fabulous Chicago neighbourhood of Lincoln Square, and we’ve always appreciated their hospitality.

Perhaps the best part about the trip was coming home to London. I realised how much I have totally fallen in love with this city. I love living here, I love working here, I love being surrounded by tall buildings and big green parks and people – always so many people! – so many of whom don’t look like me or talk like me. The energy and the rich diversity and the incredibly history – all of it has completely captured my heart and imagination. My life in Grand Rapids was great and my time at Calvin shaped much of who I am today. But I’m so glad to be a London girl now.

My photos from our time in Nashville on Flickr.

James’ photos from our trip on Flickr.

What am I looking forward to most this Christmas? Two words:

The Doctor

Oh yeah, and spending time with family and stuff…