Heh heh.

So says Miss Baby, whose vocabulary evolves from one key "happy sound" to another from day to day. I think Greg and I are both suprised to find ourselves already missing the demonic, gutteral growl she used for many weeks to express delight. It's gone! Before that it was a cough. A real sounding, hacking cough -- I'd sprint over to see if she'd inhaled a feather or had been stricken with a sudden illness, but no -- she's smiling, and in fact this is her version of what could only be called a chortle. That, too, is now rarely heard. In it's place is an oddly mature sounding: "HUH." or, "Heh Heh." She does in constantly, but specificly when we've done something to attempt to amuse her. Let's say I've sung a little song, clapping along with myself, smiling maniacly at her. She'll smile quizically, say "Heh," and go back to concentrating on whatever tag she's into at the moment. It makes one feel rather humored.



Oh yes, tags. My advice to new mothers is: NEVER cut a tag off of any toy, blanket, washcloth, or anything. Don't you know that this is the BEST PART? From what I understand, Sonja is not alone in her interest in them. Hand this baby any object, and she will intently turn it around and around until she finds its most special, sacred, awesome feature -- its silky while tag with its mysterious encrypted message printed on it. The bug-eyed look of concentration she gets as she examines a tag, engrossed for minutes at a time, KILLS me. And when I laugh, she laughs back -- Heh! Perhaps her first word will be "Whatevs."

But no, she's already said her first word, we think: "Blue." Or...something with a B, an L, and a vowel in it, whenever she sees a predominantly blue image on the tv. She gets ecstatic over Jeapordy, exclaiming repeatedly and gesticulating -- or maybe she knows the answers? Hmmm! I'll have to watch for category preferences.

A Vile Pilgrimage

As a gift once we recieved this set of bookends -- they are heavy statues of Buddha, about 10 inches high. I use one of them as a doorstop, and position it so that it sits directly across from the door to the bathroom. If you are on the toilet and the door is open, the Buddha is framed in the doorway; it may sound weird, but it's nice to have him sort of sitting quietly with you in a meditative pose, hopefully setting the tone for your day. Knowledge of the Bathroom Buddha is necessary for context when I relay the following tale...

The spurned apartment continues its wrathful attack on it's mutinous inhabitants, spewing its hidden horrors out into the light! This morning before dawn I woke up and sensed that Sonja would stir soon for her feeding. Having decided to express some milk for a later time first, I got up and wandered out into the kitchen. As I groggily assembled the pumping gear I could hear the familiar nighttime rustling of the mice who live under the stove. My skin crawled a bit, but I was able to shake it off and get on with it. But then a change in the fidgety scratching caused me to turn and look -- a mouse had emerged from behind the trash can. It walked slowly, strangely across the kitchen floor toward the carpeted area by our bathroom. It was not a cute mouse -- it was long, black, and greasy looking. Certain I was having a nightmare, I continued working the hand pump and stared. It exited the kitchen and changed direction, moseying sideways across the carpet. I flicked the lights on briefly -- no reaction. I stamped at it, banged a broomstick on the floor near it, to no avail -- it staggered with spooky determination. At last it came to a stop, resting in a pool of moonlight at the foot of the Buddha, and died!

purple love grass/baby hair

Here's is photographic evidence of the comparison I made between the two a few posts ago...

Last night I had a baby anxiety dream. In it I had two daughters: Sonja and her (nonexistant) older sister, who was blond and about 4 years old. At a large open marketplace the two of them somehow wandered off together alone. Terrified, I started calling "Sonja! Sonja!" And then I realized that I could not remember the name of the older daughter -- all the people around me stopped and stared in the ensuing silence, disgusted that I was such an irresponsible mother as to forget my own child's name, let alone lose them both. Yikes. Greg will have some spot-on interpretation for me, as always...

dudes are always trying to show me their chi

Everybody's getting out their lawyers -- the inspection turned up some major house problems and now it's on. I have the feeling that the grouchy homeowner will not want to play ball and we won't be moving any time soon. I've begun sorting and packing, but nothing that would be missed in the household, just in case things fall through. (Let's face it, I'm just putting my 12,000,000 records in boxes -- I think I can safely say I'm taking this entire year off from dj-ing.) We've noticed that since we've begun this process, our current apartment has been turning on us, showing its various infestations and flaws -- mice rattle under the stove at night, a snake waits by the dumpster out back, and the air conditioning randomly throws its own switch over to heat and we wake in the middle of the night in an oven. A few black ants, when we gave the perimiters a light dousing of Raid, came back stronger in the form of freakish, super-fast zombie ants. The gorgeous view of Round Lake comes with constant clouds of mosquitos, making it impossible to enjoy anything outdoors here. The water is either rank with sulfur or is so overtreated with hydrogen peroxide that it sears the mouth. Get us out of here!

Baby Sonja is suddenly wildly active and willful, flinging herself around in our arms and pinching and pulling at our faces or any exposed skin. She's reeeeally LOUD now, too, as if she's been trained to emote from a stage in a huge theater. She makes me laugh.