The Number Field

I got a message last Friday with an invitation to a Jeremy's company picnic at the Schlitterbahn Waterpark. Elena loves water and slides, so we suspected that she would enjoy the combination of the two.

After lunch, which included the rare treats of Cheetos and part of an ice cream bar, we were ready for the water. The first area had a maximum depth of about a foot, and several little slides around its perimeter. We found the most tame of them, I helped Elena climb the stairs, and Jenny stood at the bottom to catch her. The first time down, she needed a little push, and Jenny reported that she had a somewhat startled look on her face. As soon as she splashed into Jenny's arms, she got a big smile and wanted to do it again.

We did that one a couple of times, but there was more to explore. Elena waded through the pool to the next slides, which were a little bit bigger and scarier. She adapted quickly, and before long she was smiling and giggling at the top of the slide, not just at the bottom. Usually, when she got to the bottom she was turning immediately to do it again, so she didn't have much time for mirth. She did slip a few times, but she was wearing a life jacket and after the first few times she stopped swallowing quite as much water.

Our next stop was the lazy river. We each got an inner tube, including a small one for Elena, and held onto each other as we circled around. After a couple of times around the loop, we wanted to get out. At our chosen exit point the river wasn't very lazy and I had an exciting moment bailing out of my tube while simultaneously keeping Elena from drifting away.

The park had three different sections, and after we reapplied our sunscreen, we took the shuttle over to the original part of the park, where they use water directly from the Comal river . As we walked around, I regretted that I couldn't go on any of the grown-up slides, but it was worth it to see how much fun Elena was having.

We found another kid area, and Elena picked up right where she left off with the slides. She even took things one step further by deciding to go on the slide all by herself: she climbed up the stairs, got into position, scooted forward, and pushed herself down the slide. A few times, she forgot to sit down when she got to the top of the slide, so I had to help her.

The tour wouldn't have been complete without a visit to the third section of the park. The kids' area there featured a pirate ship with slides coming out of it. When I took Elena up, there was one boy who was too scared, even though his mother was encouraging him at the bottom. After Elena went down, she said to him "come on, even that baby did it!" We decided that Elena should try the bigger slide on the pirate ship, but in order to do so she had to experience another staple of water parks: the waiting line. It was only about four kids long, and she wasn't fazed at all by the taller, longer slide.

Elena was having such a good time and didn't want to leave, but it was time for us to go. We thanked them again and said our goodbyes to Jeremy and Amy. They and their kids stayed until closing time, but Elena needed a nap and we had a dinner appointment, so we got in the car, blasted the air conditioning, and headed home.

For us, Memorial Day weekend meant spending lots of time with Elena's cousins. We may not be living here for much longer, so we're trying to soak up all the good cousin time that we can. On Saturday they came to our apartment and we all went swimming, then on Monday we went down to their house for a Memorial Day cookout.

The pool at our apartment complex is perfect for little ones. It isn't very deep, so older kids don't like it very much. Because of that, it's never too crowded. On Saturday afternoon, we only had to share it with one other family. While her older cousins worried about how cold the water was, Elena plowed right in. Ainsley didn't mind the water either, kicking around in her little inner tube contraption. After she got tired, she graciously allowed Elena to borrow it.

On Monday, I took special notice of how nice the cousins' yard is. They just finished putting in some beautiful flower beds in front of their house, but I was more struck by the soft green grass, which is a rarity around here, because it requires more care than the standard turf. Elena enjoyed the grass, too. In the backyard they have lots of fun outside toys, including a playscape with two different slides on it. The big one was a little bit fast for Elena, but she enjoyed taking the risk.

In both locations, the highlight is seeing how much fun Elena has with her cousins. Without fail, Gavin can make Elena erupt in peals of laughter. Now that Ainsley is crawling, we have to do our best to prevent conflict between these two rough-and-tumble girls. When they're older and more aware, I'm sure they'll be good friends. Warren does his best to be a good example and watch out for his little cousin, even if that sometimes means that I can't bounce very high on the trampoline because I have Elena with me.

In a recent post , I mentioned Elena's expoits on the slide at the park. Here's a video of her climbing up and sliding down.

This week Jenny made her most complicated cake yet, partly because she had to make the roses in advance. Perfecting the roses turned into a challenge, but they all look beautiful, and the cake that she put them on looks very elegant. Since that was the last class, Jenny asked me which of the cakes was my favorite. I had a hard time picking, because they were all so different, but I eventually chose the second one. I might have been influenced by non-frosting factors: I made that cake, and it was the only one that we ate. I fully support Jenny if she wants to continue perfecting her cake decorating skills, especially if we get to enjoy the results once in a while. A whole cake is too much for us, so Jenny's trying to figure out the best way to make a smaller cake. She might try single layer cakes, or possibly find some smaller cake pans. Suggestions are welcome.

In other news, Elena's has started to give unsolicited hugs. Yesterday morning she woke up before I left. When I put on my backpack to head out the door, she walked over to me and held her arms out wide to give me a hug. I hadn't even said goodbye yet! After she was done hugging me, she headed over to give Jenny a hug too.

When I get home in the afternoon, I usually give Jenny a big hug. If it lasts longer than a second or two, Elena will come over to us and wrap up our legs. In the evenings, the penultimate part of her bedtime routine is giving hugs. We've just finished saying our nighttime prayers, so Jenny and I are still kneeling down and Elena can go back and forth between us for nighttime hugs. When her attention wanders and she heads towards the bookcase or mirror, we know that hug time is over and it's time to get her blankets, sing her a song, and put her down. Writing that all down makes it seem like an elaborate ritual, but Elena seems to like the pattern and she's still a champion sleeper, so we're going to stick with it.

We've had mild weather so far this year, but in the run up to Memorial Day, it seems like the Texas heat has started to come out. Jenny is trying to find fun activities that she can do with Elena, so any suggestions are welcome. For now, we're relying on old standbys, like parks and popsicles.

Yesterday evening we had a cookout with some friends at the local park. It has a pretty extensive playground area, and as soon as we exited the car and walked towards it Elena started to shriek with excitement. She wanted to go on the swings first--mostly the baby swing, but we also did some practice in the big kid swing, where I still have to help her remember to hold on to the chains before I start to push her.

The park also has a water feature: it's a big stone dolphin sculpture that squirts water out of its snout when someone pushes a button. We didn't want Elena to get wet, but she really wanted to play in it. At first, she would just walk up close to the water but retreat before it squirted her. I think that this is the first time that I've ever seen her run. I only call it running because of the change in her gait and attitude, because she's not moving much faster than she does when she walks. After doing this a few times, she became more bold and wanted to go right into the splash zone, but at that point I moved her away and distracted her with something else.

We spent a lot of time on a piece of equipment that had several slides. Elena gets frustrated when she can't walk up the slides, so I sometimes lift her up to the top. Yesterday, she decided that she could handle going down by herself. One of the other adults had asked me a question, and I looked away from Elena for just a second, and all of a sudden she was at the bottom of the slide. She had gone down feet first, tummy down. But that fueled her desire to do it more. She quickly realized that she could climb the broad steps up to the top of the slide, and then slide down on her own. I was impressed. She's much more comfortable than she was just a month ago, when we took this video:

Not long ago, Jenny found some popsicle molds at the dollar store. The problem with popsicles is that they're so gooey and messy, even for adults, that some parents only let kids have them while they're in the bathtub. Jenny had a smarter idea--she made icicles. They feel good on Elena's gums, and she doesn't expect any sugary tastes, so she's happy. If she drips, it's just water, so Jenny's happy. My only worry is that someday Elena will read this story and lament her deprived childhood.

While Jenny was at cake decorating class this week, Elena and I went for a run. She fell asleep in the stroller, and when we got back I had to move quick to get her ready for and into bed before she woke up all the way.

At the class, they worked on a different kind of flower. Afterwards, Jenny had a good time catching up with her friend Vivian. Vivian's currently single and dating, so Jenny enjoyed the chance to remember that fun period of life. When she got home, she wanted to reminisce about when we were dating, but I was caught off guard and disappointed her with my lack of response.

The cake, though, didn't disappoint in the slightest. This evening, we had friends over for dinner and shared the cake with them. They're still newlyweds, so I'm collecting my thoughts about when we were just married, so I can be ready for Jenny tonight.

Sometimes I worry that I'm bragging too much about Elena. I don't want to turn into one of those parents who go on and on about supposed accomplishments and milestones. After all, I do blog about her; that's a clear symptom of BPS (Bragging Parent Syndrome). On the other hand, I get good feedback from Elena's grandparents, and I don't spam the blog to facebook too much, so I just have to trust my instincts. It would be easy for me to get carried away describing this particular event, so I needed that sobering preface.

The other day we took Elena swimming before dinner. She must have been hungry when we told her it was time to leave, because she got out without fussing and walked calmly with us back towards our apartment. Elena reached up to take each of us by the hand with one of hers, as she frequently does when we go walking together. Jenny and I decided to take a firmer grip on her hands and swing her up in the air. It's been a while since we last did this.

I started counting "one, two, three" and then we lifted and swung her forward and back. She loved it. A few steps later, we did it again. Before we could do it a third time, we heard Elena talking. At first it seemed like just regular baby babble, but when we listened closer, we heard a distinct pattern: "unh, ooh, ee, oh, eye, ih." I don't expect anyone just reading to catch on * , but it was clear to us that she was counting. Even more, we had only said "one, two, three," and she kept going with the higher numbers without a prompt. We counted lots of other things that evening, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

We have worried about Elena's language development. She's so alert and interactive in every other way, but it seems that this one thing might be lagging. Hearing her express herself vocally was music to our ears. As a mathematician, it was doubly sweet that she was using number words! Jenny quickly realized that she must have picked this up from watching Barney and Friends . So maybe not all TV is bad after all.

* It looks different on the screen--try saying the syllables out loud.

At church, babies aren't supposed to go to the nursery until they're eighteen months old. Until that time, parents are supposed to look after them during the Sunday school and Relief Society/Priesthood hours. For us, that has meant letting Elena play on the podium during Sunday School, because she's already had to sit quietly for an hour during Sacrament meeting. Then she goes with Jenny to Relief Society and roams around their room, some of women in there have taken to calling her their unofficial mascot.

Last Sunday, Sacrament meeting was more difficult than usual. Elena was being fussy and demanding. It might have been a lack of sleep, or it could have been that her top teeth were finally breaking through, but we were already worn out at the end, and we had two hours still remaining. I took Elena out into the hallway before the next class so that we could walk around and burn some of her energy. She began walking with purpose down the long hallway. When she got to the end, she walked right into the nursery and started to play with the toys and the other kids.

Jenny and I had talked a little bit about taking Elena to the nursery sometime, to start getting her used to the people and place. I didn't expect that she would take the initiative. I had planned to stay with her and take her out after a little while. But she was playing on her own, and I ended up talking to some of the other kids instead, about the color of our shoes. After fifteen minutes, the nursery leader told me she thought that Elena wouldn't notice or mind if I left, so I did. I waited outside the door for a minute, just to make sure that she didn't miss me immediately, but I didn't hear any cries from inside the room, so I went back to Sunday school.

I checked back a little later--the nursery door has a little window so that parents can look in without being disruptive. When I looked in all the children, including Elena, were sitting at a little table and coloring. I don't think that she really understood what she was doing, but she wanted to imitate the older children, so she went along with it. She was also petting the hair of the girl next to her.

When I picked her up at the end of the meetings, she was happy to see me, and not too sad to leave her new friends. Two mothers of older children saw us and both said "at fifteen months they love to go to nursery. By the time they get to eighteen months, when they're supposed to start, they have more separation anxiety and don't want to go." Now we're forewarned, and will see what happens.

Even though Elena's teeth are causing her discomfort now, we know that it's all for the best in the long run. For example, new realms of food texture are already opening up to her. Watermelon is the perfect food right now--it's cold, sweet, messy, and makes a satisfying crunchy-slurpy sound when she bites down on it. After being such a good girl at church, Elena ate several slices of it at dinner.

For a long time, Jenny wanted to take a cake decorating class. This month she and two of her friends managed to find time in their schedules, and they're all taking the class together. In preparation for the class, Jenny had the chance to discover some new gadgets, including Bake Even Strips , which are pretty cool--they keep the cake level while it bakes.

The introductory class was last week, but last night was the first day that they made and decorated cakes. Jenny chose flowers for her cake's theme:

There was one small hitch: last Sunday we noticed that we had been eating too many sweets and resolved not to eat any desserts this week. I don't think that we thought that plan all the way through. The cake was very tempting, but instead of eating it ourselves, Jenny brought it to the math building and I sent out an email titled "Free Cake" to my fellow graduate students. The cake disappeared in minutes, and I got some nice thank-yous that mentioned how beautiful and tasty it was. I guess that's almost as good as having some myself.

Sometimes Elena doesn't like the idea of having her diaper changed, and puts up some resistance when we put her on the changing table. If we can just distract her for a moment, she calms down and cheers up. When both Jenny and I are available, sometimes we'll team up--one will work on the diaper while the other distracts her.

While doing this a few days ago, I picked up three little toys that were lying around and started to juggle them. I'm not a great juggler, so I dropped them pretty quickly, but Elena loved it. Last night Jenny went to a meeting and left us alone for some daddy-baby time. While we were playing, she handed me a few of her toys then started shaking her hands up and down. It took me a minute, but I realized she was asking me to juggle. She repeated her request several times over the course of the evening. One inconsistency was the number of things she wanted me to juggle--sometimes she handed me just one toy, other times it would be six or seven.

Whenever Jenny and Elena go somewhere in the car, on their way out the door Jenny tells Elena to pick out a toy to play with in her car seat. Jenny says that she picks out something different every time, often a toy that she doesn't play with at home. The other day I got to observe this interaction for the first time. Elena grabbed her floppy hat, something that, like Jenny said, she rarely wears around the house.

I've written before about how much Elena likes necklaces. She also likes to wear other things as if they were necklaces. We'll probably have more pictures to add to this series in the future.