I and J are for Ivy Jane - what else!
Even though I missed posting yesterday, I feel like I can combine I and J easily by offering up a few photos of Little Miss Ivy Jane and still be up to date. I realize it's cheating a little, but since I missed the first four days of April and already failed at the NaBloMoPo monthly assignment, I'm kind of making my own rules as I go along!
When it comes to baby reporting, I'm at a severe disadvantage. I live on one side of the country and Ivy lives on the other. I haven't been close enough to monitor her inch by inch growth, but I have a feeling she is into full baby mode. I'd bet she's smiling at her mom and dad, and slowly, but surely, wrapping them around her itsy bitsy tiny finger.
It's funny how babies have a way of doing that and parent's don't even know they are being manipulated. They don't begin to get a clue until the day when their sweet angel child who has turned two and a half, begins to turn demonic right before their eyes. One minute the little cutesy wootsy is coyly batting her eyelashes at mom (or dad), sending telepathic suggestions that she wants the cherry flavored lollipop wrapped in Cinderella paper. As soon as mom sends back a hint of negativity - perhaps a shake of her head or a no-it's almost-lunchtime look in her eye - the devil begins to emerge. Like a werewolf as the full moon begins to rise, just when clueless mom thinks she has made it out of the store safely, the feet start kicking, the hands start flailing, and the scream that sounds like it was birthed somewhere near the big toe, comes to a full crescendo. How and where the precious little baby learned to scream like that is a mystery to every parent who has ever said no to a toddler.
The good news is Ivy Jane is still only 3 months old. What seems to me to be time moving at mach speed, probably feels somewhat akin to eternity for the sweet baby's mom and dad. Getting a newborn on some kind of a feeding and sleeping schedule can make for some long days and nights for new parents. The first adrenaline and hormone induced euphoria of having produced a masterpiece (and what baby isn't?) wears off soon after the threesome gets home and tries to live a "normal" life that in all actuality will never be "normal" again. Every day ... for what eighteen years?... will have it's own share of giggles, booboos, hissy fits, and miracles. This is the sole purpose of a baby book. Write it down now, MJ, because reconstructing it after Ivy's wedding is going to be kind of hard!!!!!
When I was the mother of a small girl child, places like GAP Kids didn't exist. Little girls wore pink dresses, lace topped socks and, yes, dare I say it, pink bonnets! To her grave distress as I admit this, my Baby Wendy wore these sorts of things, for two reasons. One, she was a girl, and, two, we got a lot of hand-me-downs from people who wouldn't have considered buying denim overalls for their daughters. As soon as Wendy was able to voice her objections, she stopped wearing dresses, and, try as I might, the color pink was never again allowed in her wardrobe.
I was a little dismayed when I voiced my pink predilections to MJ and Aunt Wendy, and got some pretty negative feedback. Feeling sure that Ivy Jane would be a perfect candidate for smocked dresses and eyelet diaper covers, I offered to buy her first dress.
"Ha!" said Aunt Wendy.
"I don't think so," said MJ.
Apparently, they breed 'em different in the NW. Baby girls wear striped onesies made of organic cotton. Going green does not just refer to the environment. Lumberjack plaids, camouflage greens, autumn leaf orange are the colors of choice that appeal to the urban chic girls I know in Seattle. There's nothing wrong with this. They are grown women each with their own sense of style. But, I'm going to reserve judgement about Ivy Jane. I happen to know, that even outdoor loving girls go through a Princess/Barbie/TuTu wearing stage. It's unavoidable. It's genetic.
Discuss
ing this phenomenon in growing girls the mother of all adventures, one of my favorite authors, Jeanne Marie Laskas says: "Like so many little girls her age, she has embraced dance. She's a twirler, a slider, a leaper. Recently she learned that, somewhere in this world, there are tap shoes. She saw a girl in a movie going clickety clack with her feet, and understood it as destiny." I smile inside just thinking about a baby, whom I've never even met, someday clickety clacking down a Seattle sidewalk. Of course, that might be her pink, rhinestone hiking boots making all the noise!
Some "I" words:
icicle
igloo
isotope
inky dinky doo
iguana
imagination
inspiration
icky
incandescent
isthmus
Wishing I was sitting in a rocking chair holding a green clad cutie patootie and singing "you are my sunshine,"
Merry ME
*Bantam Books, 2006, pg. 78
Comments
xoxo!
mj