Mornings with Chunky

The mornings are really starting to fall into a routine. Mariana starts rolling around, googooing and gaagaaing around 6 - 6:30 am. I often wake up and hear her through the monitor. Normally I've got tissue stuffed up my nose to stop the whistling that Dr. Mehta gave me when he "corrected" my deviated septum. Thanks Jackass. My ears are plugged because the neurotic pit bull in the yard just outside our bedroom windows has been squealing and wailing all night. Probably I gave up trying to ignore the noise at around 1am and resorted to the ear plugs. So when I awake at 6 to the muffled sounds of my daughter I feel like I'm in a sensory deprivation chamber, albeit a lousy one. Once I've dispensed with the plugs and nose tampon, I try to go back to sleep with mixed results often lying awake until 715 when I have to actually get up and start our day. I go downstairs, feed the cat, make Mariana's bottles for the day, put away the coffee table, lay out the blanket, prepare my cereal bowl and head back upstairs to get my lil' girl. Sometimes awake already, sometimes face down and drooling she wakes up with a big smile every day. Within 10 seconds she sits up and utters her first word "Cat!". Does she just love the cat or is she just happy to use the only word she knows how to say? Since our cat is completely anti-social and prone to hissing at our new bundle of joy I'm inclined to think the latter. Either way she is always smiley and heart burstingly cute. We go to the bathroom for a diaper a change and then downstairs for a little Daddy/daughter time. I feed her her first bottle which she usually takes and drinks on her own now. It's sort of the calm before the storm. I can stare at her and talk to her and play with her hair and she's occupied with the bottle so she sits still. If the cat should happen to walk by she'll start saying cat with a mouthful of bottle. "grgrcagrat!" he he She's funny.

Next

Mariana likes to play with tupperware, toilet paper rolls, socks, and remote controls. Regular toys? Eh, not as interesting. (Though she does dig the hamburger Aunt Maria gave her) She's starting to learn that when we say no that we mean it. We'll let her play with a cell phone but we won't let her put it in her mouth This doesn't stop her from trying over and over and over. She's just starting to show that it's very frustrating to play with some things but not be able to lick them. Sorry, them's the breaks kid. 
Work has been all consuming at times in the past month. This is very difficult to deal with. It means Hilary has to work overtime too. She has been doing a fantastic job but it's not easy. Yeah the economy sucks, yeah people are getting laid off left and right. I can't help but feel like those days and nights spent at work away from my family are lost. I'll never get back that time with them. The work that I do has so little socially redeeming value that it adds to that feeling. I'm giving up my life and time to help Northface sell more crap? I traded a weekend with my wife and baby for Tropicana? What a waste. 
Mariana is learning little things every day. Sometimes we forget that there are so many things that she has never seen before. Everything is new. I guess that's why she's so curious about anything new; the vacuum, flip flops, the cat's bowl, tissues- and you know that all that stuff makes great kids toys. 
My Spanish still sucks. I try to speak to her as much as I can but I'm afraid if she picks up anything it will be with all my errors. It still hasn't sunk in that someone else is going to have to teach her Spanish.

Also check out these videos when you get a chance. Mariana caught on tape babbling in the park and also her first time climbing 2 stairs. pretty exciting stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDTEzlWcf5I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHKxFzIzZk

Father's Day

Today was Father's Day. My first as a Dad. It's been a long time coming and it was worth the wait. I have THE most wonderful daughter a man could ask for. 

It's been a while since I wrote and I've traded writing posts for sleep. I'm going to try to start writing on the subway. We'll see how that goes. It's summertime and I've been riding my bike to work when the weather is decent so my plan may be scuttled quickly.

Mariana continues to be the dream baby. The occasional cold leads to a few broken nights sleep but nothing too bad. She continues to make my heart swell. The talking/babbling is in full force now. We try to decipher things she's saying because they often sound close to being right. The only word that's clear that she knows is cat- although it sounds more like "dat". She points at the cat and smiles and says "DAT!" She also points at dogs, animals in the zoo and a gray stuffed squirrel and says "DAT!" She's learning still ok?!

She is crawling a lot and starting to pull herself up on the couch and on the drawer handles. Scary. We still need to do much baby proofing. I came into her room this afternoon after she was supposed to be napping and found her up on her knees, hands on the bars like she was down for her crimes. Very cute but it illustrates how soon she'll be trying to climb out of there.

Last weekend was the double whammy of Hilary's birthday and Mother's Day. I wasn't going to make time to write a new post with all that action going on. We bought her a casting kit so we can make a plaster cast of Marianas foot or hand as a keepsake. Pictures are nice but it would be cool to have a handful of that chunkiness preserved in 3-D. We had a visit today from Dina, the amiable social worker we worked with to do our home study for the adoption. 

She had to do the 3 month follow up to make sure Mariana wasn't living in squalor with festering wounds since being brought to Brooklyn. She found the child as happy as ever, making her parents proud by playing comfortably and eating all her food without a fuss. Afterwards we went to my office where she was received like rock star. We holed up in my workshop and my colleagues filed in to kiss her feet. Actually that's what my boss did. Who wouldn't?! They're irresistible. 

Then we went to lunch as a family. It brought back memories of the Halifax Hotel, us sitting together and eating lunch - albeit with tastier burgers this time. We don't do that now. We're lucky if 2 of us at a time are together for a meal. I hope some day we figure out all that. 

Below is a picture of Morgan and Mariana at Hilary's b-day gathering. Mariana is sporting the awesome outfit that Talia made especially for her. She rocks any outfit but this is just over the top.

adjustments

Did I mention that I was busy? Having a kid leaves precious little time for personal hobbies, not to mention doing all the little things around the house like cleaning, sleeping etc. We can't just lounge around all day on the weekend anymore. This is not news to anyone with kids, or to us for that matter, just sort of the way it is right now. I have not yet learned how to manage my time to fit in stuff like exercise, writing, or house projects, not to mention thank you cards. Hilary has been working on them but as of yet we have not sent any yet. 

My work is driving me nuts. Just having to work at all kind of sucks, especially after 6 weeks off. Adjusting to this new schedule of seeing Mariana only 2 hrs a day and on the weekends has been much more difficult 

than I anticipated.

 Staying an hour late was no big deal before, the norm even. Now it means I don't see her at all before her bedtime. It's torturous to be there any longer than necessary and we have not even been all that busy yet. 

Just look at how damn cute Mariana is and you'll realize how she can make the stress melt away. She is such a good baby. We are incredibly lucky. We find ourselves saying this a lot and wondering how we would handle having a baby that was very fussy. Would it matter? Would you love them just the same and just deal with it? yeah, of course...

This video is from Hilary's afternoon in the park with our friends Rachel, Malchus and their twin daughters. I think Hilary is adjusting very well to her new (and temporary?) role as stay at home Mom. It helps that the weather has been so nice and that she has been able to hook up with friends a lot. 

The picture at he top shows Mariana enjoying her first taste of chocolate sorbet. Hilary drew a Van Dyke moustache on her face in chocolate. Nice Mom, nice.              

Latest accomplishments for Mariana: peekaboo, crawling (backwards a few steps today) saying Dada (ok, maybe a stretch but I heard what I heard ok?!) eating more and more solids - this week: avocados, bananas with yogurt, cheerios, and sweet potatoes. She also seems to know the word kiki for cat. 

MJV being cute

Thanks to my Mom for this dress. The warm weather has arrived in NYC, sweet! I'm not used to seeing her in such a girly outfit. It was pretty awesome to see. We spent chunks of the weekend sitting on the stoop enjoying the sun and catching up with friends. All our buddies from the block stopped by to meet Mariana and offer their well wishes. She has a tendency to draw a lot of attention. She just seems to make people happy (starting of course with us).

Also thanks for the Tigger jumpy swing Mom. You can see that she doesn't quite get it yet but is trying.  We've been trying to prop her up on her legs to get those thunder thighs working. She also displays her newfound clapping skills. 

My sister in law posted the following videos on youtube that are much longer, enjoy:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX1CE9qMdx8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbFkGbs9RwE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwpaajq2zvs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88JYTiCv1wA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYvUTHvz8ys

Family

I need to take a moment to thank everyone in my family, especially my 

brother Carlo and his family. They made THE MOST fantastic set of blocks for Mariana that all of her cousins contributed to. For those who are unfamiliar with this story, Hilary and I made a set of blocks for each of of my siblings families over the years. If anyone can relate to how much work and love goes into them it's us. When they put that box in front of us I thought it was a toy chest- in and of itself awesome. But when I

 opened it and realized what it was I had all could do not to lose it. As we inspected each block they explained how each of Mariana's 17 cousins painted their own number block for her. How cool is that? What better statement of acceptance into our family than that? I think that when Mariana's birth parents thought about how her life would be better with us they hoped for a moment like this. We did too. Any subconscious worries about how she'll fit into the family were permanently put to rest I hope. So again to all of my si

blings and nieces and nephews, I love you, and thank you.

There are 100 things I want to write about Mariana. I wish there were more hours in the day so I could try to capture all the things I want to share with everyone like: how she's learned to schooch forward on her elbows like a commando going under barbed wire, how she's discovered her wrist and how she can rotate objects back and forth like a window display, how well our house plan is working that we hatched years ago when adoption seemed like a remote possibility, and about how Mariana's new favorite toy is the lid to a baby food jar (coined a "ghetto toy" by our friend Diana). Each one of these things is cause for reflection and more in-depth narration but unfortunately time will not allow it at this point. Will I remember all these details without recording them? Will I remember enough of them? All the little things from the first 2 weeks home... Will I remember what it felt like to put my old journal through the shredder in the midst of a clean-up? As I flipped through it, I saw how it was filled with anger and angst and thoughts of "how will I ever come to accept the thought of adoption"? That thought seems almost comical now that I know Mariana but it was very real then. How my family could come to accept it was even more remote at the time. Ha! Ya nevah know, ya nevah evah know...