Children's Museum Japan Exhibit, with Grandma and Grandpa

Where Did My Baby Go?

She has been replaced by this little girl.


This little girl is an acrobat. The other day, we heard her squawking from down the hall. When we went to get her, we discovered her sitting in the middle of the dining room table. This evening, I was sitting on the floor with Clio in front of an armchair, when I saw a blur of motion. I turned just in time to catch Eleri as she leaped--yes, leaped--from the seat of the chair. We think she may have been inspired by some leaf-jumping action from the weekend:




Here she is climbing into an "experimental" chicken coop at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.




And here she is, riding a sled through the leaves, though really she prefers to ride her sister's scooter or tricycle. I'll have to get pictures of that.



Moe than her baby evil kenevil daredevilry, I think it's the onslaught of language that really makes her seem like she's leaving the baby days behind. She has been talking for a while now, but we're finally starting to understand what she is saying: mostly "this," "that," "what's this," and, a favorite, pointing and saying "ah ah ah ah" which roughly translates to "oh my gosh, look, look what I see! I can barely control my excitement." This is usually used in reference to squirrels, dogs, and Clio. In fact, it is the sound that Clio often wakes to in the morning.

Additionally, we got a fully enunciated "mommy" and "daddy" recently, as well as "in," "down," and "out." Even her vocab is made up primarily of action words.

Like her language, her walk is not all that well enunciated, and while she can walk from one end of the house to the other, she prefers the speed that comes with the hand of an adult, and I wonder if she will ever decide that it is just as fun, if not as efficient, to get around on her own. The kid grasps your finger so tightly when walking that the tip turns purple. Have I ever mentioned that this girl is strong?

It's funny how much more you notice when you're away all day. Each day contains leaps and bounds that are nearly imperceptible if you stand too close. (Although, those flying leaps onto or off of furniture are pretty unmistakable no matter your working status.)

I'm not sure how to end this post except to say: I guess here I am posting a normal post after all that sturm und drang. We have all these great new pictures from the past week or so, and it seems a shame to let them stand on their own when I can tell you all about them. Have I ever mentioned that I'm a control freak? No? Hmmmm.... perhaps I should add a "control freak" tag and see whether I mention the phrase more or less than the word "Target."

Eugene "PaPa" Wood

Dave's grandfather passed away last night.

I had the pleasure of meeting him just three times, for Christmas in 2005, 2006, and this past year; on this visit, he was struggling to recover from a fall and his passing should not have been a shock, yet I felt a deep despair when I heard the news. A number of people have been lost this year who I knew better or encountered more in my life, but PaPa was the first in a direct line to my daughters to pass in their short lifetimes. Perhaps that explains this unexpected grief.

PaPa was a big man with a touch of a southern drawl and a warm sense of humor. He had a collection of baseball bats that covered all the walls of his garage. He got himself a 4-wheeler in his seventh or eighth decade, and used it to peruse his property. He took loving care of his wife Ruth. At the end, he charmed the pants off everyone at the hospital where he was enduring physical therapy and thinking about taking his leave.


Last week when we were at the hospital for Eleri, a man bearing a striking resemblance to PaPa was wheeled through the xray waiting area on a stretcher. Clio looked at me and said, "Mommy, where is Grandma's Daddy going?"

At the time, I found this remarkable- that she remembered PaPa from her brief encounter over Christmas, that she had simply grasped the great-grandather concept I found it so difficult to explain- but now, I find it profound.

He will be missed.

The Meaning of Christmas

On the 8-hour Drive from Morrison to Carbondale on Christmas Day, Dave and I took a vote, which was unanimous: Worst Christmas Ever. This, of course, had to do with Eleri's double pneumonia, with Pete's stomach flu, with the power outages, ice storms, and driving weather that generally looked like this, or worse:


All of which, in hind sight, makes me feel like a complainer, and makes me wonder if we've all kind of forgotten what Christmas is about. My friend Statia was saying at our last Mom's night how much there actually is to Christmas, and how difficult she found it to explain all the elements of this holiday to a kid: flying reindeer, a fat man coming down the chimney, a tree covered with lights, and who is this Jesus character, anyway?

When we were leaving the hospital on Christmas Eve, the staff gathered around Eleri's car seat to coo over her one last time, and to see her off.

Earlier in the day, one of the nurses had presented us with a wrapped present, topped with a bow, which turned out to be a little pink stocking with a tiny teddy bear tucked into a pocket, and the words Baby's First Christmas across the top. "I was at the store last night," she said; "I saw this and thought, 'oh she just has to have it, especially if she's in the hospital for Christmas.'" The gesture was very kind, and as we left the hospital with our baby who had touched everyone in the Morrison Community Hospital, I realized that the first Christmas was, in fact, a baby's, and for many people it is still about a baby who changed the world.

On the pagan side of the holiday, I also found myself thinking about the trope of the Tree. When he was little, Dave nixed the idea of a Christmas Tree (I guess he was an early adopter of the Green movement). This year, when it looked like we would stay in Morrison for Christmas, apart from Barb's parents and brother, with whom she has never, as far as I know, missed a Christmas, Barb and I both had the same idea: we needed a tree. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Peterson house would have its very own honest to goodness Christmas tree, and we would buck up and throw ourselves a tree trimming party.

In New York, you can buy a tree on the sidewalk outside just about any grocery store or CVS (once when Clio and I passed a lot after school, I told her how good the pines smelled; she threw her whole body into the pile of trees and emerged with the declaration: "YUCKY!"); in Morrison, you either cut down a tree on your own property (Barb's preferred method) or you drive on over to the nearest tree farm. When Dave came home with a tiny little tree in a pot, so it could be planted after the holiday, I was instantly reminded of A Charlie Brown Christmas, where Charlie Brown is sent out, much like Dave, to bring home the holiday centerpiece and, much like Dave, he comes back with a dinky little evergreen.


In the cartoon, Charlie Brown is lambasted for his choice: it is the 1950s or 60s, and brightly colored tinsel trees are all the rage. But of course Charlie Brown's choice is more about love than it is about aesthetics or commercialism, and when his friends all band together to decorate it, the little tree transforms into the largest, most beautiful tree around (at least, this is my memory of the story.) I would say that our tree, hung with the plastic-cow lights that Dave had back in college and photo-ornaments that Clio and Barb made together, was transformed by this same Christmas magic. I don't have an "after" shot, but I'm not so sure the spirit of the tree can be captured.

Of course, the holidays are mainly about connecting with loved ones, and we did manage to get Clio and Eleri some quality time with 4 grandparents, 4 great-grandparents, 1 step-great grandmother, 2 great-aunts, 2 great-uncles, 2 aunts, 2 uncles, a first cousin once removed, and her two cousins. Grandma Barb has retained many of Dave and Derek's original toys and gear over the years, and when she pulled out Memory, the Mommy and Baby animal matching game, I was brought right back to Christmas Eve, circa 1979 or so, when my cousin Christine and I received matching white rabbit fur hats and muffs from our own Nonny and wore them all night with our pajamas while playing the newly minted Memory in the long hallway connecting one end of the house to the other, and I realize that for me, Christmas has always been about cousins.

When I arrived in Minnesota from Illinois, my brothers and their families came to my parents' house for another round of Christmas celebration, and I had the fur-hat flashback again when I took these pictures of Clio and Lucia in their matching tutus in front of our-yes-vintage silver tinsel tree, just like the ones Sally really wanted in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
And while I couldn't find the picture that I know exists of Christine and I playing Memory, I did find these, which tell the story equally well.



And I know that we will remember this holiday in many ways (not the least of which will be a plaque that Pete might have carved for the tree once it is planted, which will read The 2008 Christmas Memorial Tree: It's Always Something), but you would be hard pressed to match the happy photos from the last two weeks with the list of things that went wrong, and I know we will not remember this as the Worst Christmas Ever. In fact, I no longer believe there could be such a thing.

Merry christmas, everyone.

Two Ruths

We went to Carbondale.

Despite a list of hurdles so long that Dave's Dad said it would take "weeks just to write this in my diary," it was, without question, the right decision.

Among other moments that we Petersons will keep and cherish for ourselves, Ruth Wood met her great-granddaughter, Eleri Ruth Peterson, for the first time.

On Making Decisions

Saturday morning, Eleri took a return trip to the Doctor to see whether the nebulizing treatments had worked. The on-call Doctor theorized that she had Bronchiolitis a second time (it's caused by two separate viruses, and while it's not common to get them both, a child with an older sibling and exposure through day care is the most likely supect), and he cleared her for travel.

Sunday morning, she woke up less than an hour before we were scheduled to leave for the airport, and in the scramble of getting our family of four out the door, we noticed that she was "in bad shape" (as I said to Dave), but could attribute it to any number of things: grogginess, the albuterol treatments, etc. At the airport, just before boarding the plane, she had one of those poops that completely blows out the diaper, and we discovered that we had packed spare clothes in the carry on for everyone BUT Eleri. As I stood in the airport holding a feverish baby in a "dress" made from her sister's shirt, and they called us over the intercom, "Petersons, please board your plane," we had to make a decision: should we stay or should be go. It makes me think of that song: "If I stay there will be trouble; if I go it will be double." Or maybe it's the other way around? The point is the same: if we stayed and it was a false alram, we would regret missing Christmas; if we went and Eleri was truly sick, we would regret traveling with a sick baby (and possibly making her worse). In those instants when there is no time to seek help, and no help available (Sunday morning at 10am is not a time to get a quick response from the pediatrician), you simply weigh expert advice against your instincts, and take a gamble.

We got on the plane.

We didn't have seats together (we were booked in 3 seats, and the gate agent said there was "no guarantee" that we would get any together, even when I held the girls in his face, even when I pointed at Clio and said "Really? She's TWO."), and while I sat next to a claustrophobic passanger trying to keep my limp baby out of her way, my little baby who seemed to grow more unlike herself with every degree her body temp raised, I was calculating my plans to find an emergency room immediately on landing in Chicago. Somehow, though, while waiting for the baggage, she seemed to perk up, and Clio even got a few laughs out of her. At the car rental, we labored over the decision to upgrade to 4-wheel drive (total cost: $100) for more time than we'd had to decide abuot flying here inthe first plance, and then, in a white-out blizzard, we proceeded to drive to Morrison, where, it turned out, the power had gone out. Over candlelight in Dave's grandpa's house (his power had gone out more recently and was therefore still warm) we made the decision to call urgent care as soon as the phone lines came back up.

The clinic nurse sent us straight to Emergency, where the attending took one look at her and rendered his diagnosis: pneumonia. The Xray tech was called in and a service in Minneapolis confirmed: pneumonia in both lungs.

After 2 aggressive rounds of antibitoics and ongoing breathing treatments and oxygen, she's doing much better, and is scheduled to me discharged tomorrow morning. While sitting with her in the Morrison Community Hospital, I've had plenty of time to think whether we made the right choice, and whether we would have been better of staying in New York. This thinking is unproductive, and the question is unanswerable, yet I find it impossible to accept that and put it all aside. What would have been different if I had followed my gut and not gotten on the plane? My assumptions were challenged when our regular big City Doctor missed this while the small-town ER diagnosed quickly and confidently; here, Clio has the undivided attention and loving care of her grandparents while Dave and I switch off shifts at the hospital. The hospital itself, while not set up for infants, is full of a kind and attentive staff that has been as creative and flexible as you can imagine. At home, we would have had the ease and comfort of home, but a long commute to a likely crowded hospital, and no one to stay with Clio. Retrieving our luggage would have ben a nightmare, and, of course, we would have missed Christmas.

Although, that's a decision that still needs to be made. Tomorrow, we will need to decide whether to play it safe and keep Eleri home, or drive 6 hours South to meet her great grandmother, Ruth, from who she takes her middle name. Ruth is 90-something and there is the sad but inevitable question of whether she will be here to meet Eleri when we are scheduled to come back for Christmas is two years. When you are trading in emotional capital, how do you measure risk and reward? At work, we sometimes use a "quadrant evaluation" to measure impact against resource- it is a tool that takes you out of your preconceived notions and helps you see a decision from a different angle. But anyway I look at this one, I can't see the right way through.

We make hundreds of little decisions every single day, without even recognizing that we're constantly making choices. The big ones often seem more labored. Sometimes, a big decision is about opportunity; as the saying goes, when I quit my job, I closed one door to open another. But more often, it seems like big decisions are made when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, and you have no choice but to take stock of the options and do the best you can.

Family Ties

Of course, our vacation was also really about the people.

For me, it was great to introduce the eldest member of our clan to the youngest,

To introduce Liz, a friend since we were babies, and Rebecca, a friend since we had babies, and to have all those babies interact.

For my kids, it was fabulous to hang out with aunts and uncles,

Play and explore with cousins,


Share many meals with grandparents,

And have some down time with Mommy and Daddy.

We also celebrated my second cousin Amy, who recently got married, had a baby, and moved in to her Uncle Brian's old hous; saw the progress on my Aunt Eileen's gorgeous house; checked out my aunt Molly's newly completed Montessori training center and school, a vision 5 years in the making; hosted my mom's cousin Jamie for an afternoon pool party and figured out that his kids and my kids are second cousins once removed; and took a tour of my elementary school, which lasted an hour and a half because I was stopped and hugged in every classroom by teachers who are still there and remember me, though I graduated from the Junior High there 20 years ago.

While there is much to be said for the independence of building your own life in a place like New York City, there are times when nothing beats being surrounded by your own history. For me, this is one such time.

Grandparents Galore

The day after my mom headed home, Dave's parents arrived, giving us a solid 10 days of Grandparent time. With a house now quite empty, and a return to day care, Clio is having a little trouble adjusting. She came downstairs on Wednesday and said, "Where's Grandma and Grandpa? Where's Nonny?" and we had to try to explain again the complicated concept that they live too far away to just stop by. She has definitely been cranky, and frankly, who can blame her? After 10 days of the world revolving around her (an infinite time frame for a 2 year old), suddenly she's back to being just one of a pack of kids at day care.

Plus, grandparents are awesome.

They read you as many books as you want
(To combat Clio's again-icitis, Grandma did put a limit of 3-reads per book per sitting, but that seems reasonable)


They turn regular routine activities, like the bath, into creative play time


And play along with your invented games, like Beauty Parlor.


They let you eat their food when it looks better than your own


And pick you up when you get shy or scared (not to mention prompting a return trip to the Aquarium!)


And sometimes, when Grandparents are visiting, rules get bent. Clio doesn't drink juice, but somehow this Sunday we let her help herself to lemonade on the boardwalk at Coney Island (when in Rome?). Okay, a LOT of lemonade.


Little Eleri got in on the Grandparental action, too, enjoying lots and lots and lots of snuggle time. (And I enjoyed being hands free for a much larger percentage of my day)

Young at Heart

One of the great things about having young parents is that your kids have young grandparents, still able to play pretty darn hard. I was thinking about this yesterday while Grandpa/ Pete was busy inventing "partner soccer," an excellent game where a grandparent holds a toddler in the air and swings her legs to kick the ball. (Clio fell over herself with delight, and demanded to be swung around "again!" and "again!").

Then, uploading some pictures from the last week, I remembered this great little clip of Clio and Nonny. I must say, I didn't realize Nonny was quite this fearless. As Dave said watching the video, there's a lot of room for error. But as you can see, Clio was also delighted to be an airplane and also demanded to do this over and over "again!!"

(as an aside, and in keeping with my musings on second children, take a look at Eleri, hanging out on the couch "by all herself," as Clio would say.)

Nonny Cam

My Mom, aka Nonny, arrived last Friday to help with the kids, and we enjoyed her company for a lovely five days. We ended up having a really busy time, with the usual weekend activities plus several special excursions for Clio. It was fabulous to have an extra set of hands, and especially wonderful to have so much Clio-doting going on (not to mention, Clio was thrilled with all the presents.) Another great thing? Well, for some reason one of the biggest casualties of the 2-kid thing seems to be my camera: among the double diaper bags and double car seats and sippie cups and burp cloths, I can't seem to remember to bring my camera. Luckily, Nonny remembered hers, so I made a little photo essay of a selection of her snapshots.

Right off the bat on Saturday morning, Nonny got to experience Clio's high energy at the Y for her Gym 'n' Swim class.



We also headed to the brand new Brooklyn Ikea to get Clio interested in "Big Girl Beds," but as always, she had her own ideas.



And as usual, there was some focus on food. Above, that's Clio waiting for her lunch in the Ikea cafeteria (she fell in love with this "tiny little mouse," and Nonny wisely suggested she tuck it away so as not to get the white fur dirty. Clio proceeded to snub the mac and cheese she ordered in favor of half my meatball plate.)
There was peanut butter toast at home, and special snacks at the grocery store. She would have eaten the whole bag, and there was no way she was sharing.


Fairway also has a little cafe with great seating right on the water, so we enjoyed some lunch and boats. Oh look, Eleri was with us too, sleeping in the front pack. (She came along for, and slept through, all of these activities.)


On Sunday, we went out to CT to visit Jim and Missy and Patrick and Lauren. Clio did a great job of entertaining us all. Here she is yucking it up in the high chair during dinner. Earlier in the day, the adults had been discussing gandparent names, and Jim said he would never want to me "Grandpa." So needless to say, Clio had us all cracking up when she looked at him and said, "you don't want your food... Grandpa?" (She really did pause like that, I'm not adding it in here for dramatic effect. The girl's got excellent comic timing.) I guess anyone with a little grey hair is "Grandma" or "Grandpa" now.


Clio also enjoyed many, many trips to the various playgrounds in our neighborhood, where she re-discovered the water features. Yesterday, Nonny took Clio on her own while I tried to get a little sleep (Eleri did not cooperate.) When they came home, Clio was completely drenched. This is the first time this summer that she has shown interest in the fountains- usually she thinks water is a great idea until she gets it on herself- so I guess I'll have to start traveling with a bathing suit on top of everything else!


Clio obviously had a fantastic time.
This morning, she came downstairs and said "I want Nonny back."
I feel the same way.