Auntie KT came to visit the other weekend. We packed up our goods and headed over for an old-fashioned sleep over at le chateau Schoene up the hill. Luckily, there was enough space (just barely), and we settled in comfortably up there. Ms Kira thrilled us with her rendition of that favorite singsong "I'm a cat, you're a dog, and you're a mouse. meow meow meow." In turn, sienna thrilled us with her gasps of jubilation. Above, she is celebrating the catching of the mouse by the cat, who in turn got caught by the dog. True to sienna form, the dog got caught by the tiger (daddy was the dog).
Over dinner, sienna discovered that she can get what she wants faster if she walks, rather than crawls. She was hanging out with mommy on the floor when KT snuck up behind her. Sienna has a sense for these things and thwarted KT's approach by detaching from mommy and walking the five or six steps, unsupported, to KT. Actually, I don't think squeek realized what happened nor figured why we were cheering. She repeated the endeavor later that night, and has since withheld her acrobatics. We can get her to walk the few steps between us (again and again), but only right before bed. It turns out that KT is a baby whisperer, and that she should really focus her professional efforts not on college-level athletics, but rather knee level athletics. Way to go squeek!
On a related note, our pictures from this batch are not nearly as cute because her face is covered in bruises and wounds. It turns out that even carpeted floors can do some damage (Laura is not here, but I'm pretty sure that she would want me to clarify that squeek is as cute as ever, which she is, despite her bruises. I would counter-clarify that being cute isn't everything. She would offer a reconciliatory counter-clarification that both agreed with my point but asserted her own, affirming that the world is neither black, nor white, but rather green and brown).
On this one you can see her teeth. The configuration is the two front
bottom ones, and then the next out upper ones (if the internet is to be
trusted, that's the lower central incisors and the upper lateral incisors).
She looks like a staple remover, though when I put her to the task
she only complained.
I'm not sure which one is Adam and which one is God.
It turns out that squeek loves the bling, perhaps more than auntie...
I've seen that look before, and it's not to be trusted.
Another fine spring day in Montana. Looking forward to a
superb morning ride to my last class before summer vacation.
I've got a bunch of posts to do, but let's start with easter. Laura went up to boulder to help get the summer beds ready and then played cello at the easter services in Butte.
Using the new backpack to get some hoing done. Sienna
loves the backpack. she's up higher so she can see much
better than in the other carriers. and it's probably more comfortable
on her groin. Hey, I know she's flexible, but it seems a little
sadistic to fit her into some of these things.
squeek was a hit with the ladies. she's like a magnet for
grandmas across the building.
pretty ladies. enjoying some brunch at the hot springs.
I can't quite tell what squeek got served, but it looks
a little under cooked.
the spawn of peter cottontail
Unfortunately, daddy couldn't join because he was feeling a little sick...
Incidentally, this was the first cow tongue experience since the
accident. I was proud that it could inspire one of my favorite
quotes, from susannah: "Are you tasting me or am I tasting you?"
Once again, I'll apologize for my overly frugal posting of late. To me credit, it's not my fault. The blogspot server wasn't letting me post. However, I did some stats research, and it turns out you all love it when I don't post. In the month of february, we got 572 hits. In march we had 557. yikes! I think I only posted, like, three times in that period. August was third at 470, and December had 464. Total, at this point, is 3,689 posts. That's way more than I could expect. However, I've just made it so that it doesn't track when I look, so I expect that the monthly hits will be cut by at least two thirds, since anytime squeek goes to bed I log on and look at pictures of her...if only I were kidding.
Out of the Archives. We were gunna send this to lakeside,
until we noticed that it makes it look like we live in the projects.
The most interesting stat, however, is when one looks by post. In second place is the opening post, "Let's do this." With three times more hits is the absolute clear winner, "Auntie KT comes to town." For all of you that know KT, this should be absolutely no surprise, as not only is she incredibly popular, she also loves looking at pictures of herself holding a baby.
Imagine this: there is a creature that is quadruple your weight, twice your height, furry, with sharp teeth and claws. Now imagine that it is making loud agressive sounds at you. What do you do? If it were me, I'd be happy that I were wearing that diaper. If you were sienna, however, you'd bark right back, and then chase this beast around the kitchen. Sienna has met a half dozen dogs in her day. At first, she showed no interest, probably because she was too young to recognize anything out of the ordinary about a dog. Over the last month, however, she has met three dogs, and has pushed the envelope on how we define "squeels of delight." Now she crawls around the house pretending to be a dog (which is fitting since her dad crawls around the house pretending to be a human). Anyway, some more pics from seattle:
Sienna loved it when loonie babysat. After all,
we don't let her stay up late watching john wayne.
Really Marcus? Are you that unstoppable. watch out kelly...
There's the puppy! Laura's teaching sienna to be
gentle. apparently that's not inate.
You lions will recognize this... Aside from Squeek being almost
offensively cute, my second favorite thing about this picture
is that you can see skinny Matty J in the background. see him?
next to nathan.
I had a video that I was going to upload, but it's been long enough since the last post that it's not even relevent anymore. Squeek was crawling across the kitchen floor chasing a little wind-up bug that was speeding away from her. She is such a good crawler now that the footage feels like ages ago. It's sorta like if you watchstar wars. the cinematic technology is so progressed now that the story almost feels irrelevent. It's not so much the special effects, but just how the special effects inform the storyline. Jurassic Park, on the other hand, has aged surprisingly well. I remember when I first saw that in the theater, with Oma, and the opening sequence was so loud that I knew I was in for a show. Then all night in the Golf house I envisioned velociraptors stealthily coming up the stairs to the kids room. Yikes, but Awesome!!! I'm off topic...
So squeek is crawling very well and speedily. yesterday she crawled from the far end of the living room to the office, where she knew she'd find me. That's like 25 feet, with 3 turns. Pretty impressive. Also, she chased me around the house as I was crawling (and hiding behind corners to scare her)(she doesn't scare all that easily. she startles, certainly, which is hilarious, but not scare. It's more like surprises, which she loves, and is a bonified way to get a smile out of her).
More impressively, though, is that she is pulling up on everything to come to a standing. she even passed the blank wall test, the most feared rubric of baby agility this side of mount desert island. (It's where you use a blank wall to come to standing. super hard, requiring punishing core strength. try it). She still isn't super at cruising around the room using furniture as a hand rail, but does it every once in a while all the same. She also does the one-handed assisted walk. quite stable.
Oh! and how could I forget? Sienna said her first word! She was nursing before bed, and I kissed her goodnight and went to leave the room and she pulled off and reached out to me and said, "Da-Da." Laura assures me that this was really cute (I don't remember because I passed out, hitting my head on the wall). Then, out of respect to me, she proceeded the next day to call the fridge Dada, and the lamp dada, and the chair dada, and mama dada. Some might suggest that this doesn't really count as a first word, since it's apparent that she wasn't actually refering to her dada by saying dada. This, however, is BS. As parents, we have the right to pick and choose these things as we see fit. It's our right. I'm already anticipating when she first walks. She'll be on the floor playing with mama, and then I'll be headed out the door to go to class. Sienna will reach over, pull herself up on the sofa, and then strike a strut in my direction, arms outstretched and smile glaring. It's gunna be great. And, it fits into my neatly constructed worldview that she loves her dada more than anything, except mom. It's too bad I can't do a future-blog-post, cuz I'd put it up.
She also responded to her name. It was in the airport on the way to seattle, and a very friendly lady (too friendly?) followed us around saying, hi sienna. Surely enough, sienna whipped around to see who it was. She has since responded somewhat predictably, which is surprising since we never call her sienna, but instead refer to her as squeek, or squeekalicious, or ms squeek, or squeektastic, or squeekathon, or squeeker, or squeekie two shoes, or sir squeeks a lot.
at the pike place market. we paid the fish guys ten bucks to throw
her like she was a fish, and they did. they had such a good time
they gave us twenty back.
so yeah, went to seattle. interviewed at UW, and got some omie/loonie baba time. Fun stuff. laura had strep, so she was tired and achy, but rallied for: zoo, sounders game, strolls, dentist visit, filling (dada), birthday party, visits with friends (marcus/kelly, cody/meredith/hans, alex/eric/adam/kassia, ty/patience/katie/graeme, saradel/mike, harry/kelly/marsh, chris, and probably more but can't remember because I've never been that social in my life), shopping downtown. Good times, and of course seattle was fantastic.
To stop beating round the bush, we heard back from UW, and we got in, and after mulling it over, we have accepted!!!! so it's official, there's another dr schoene on the way, though this one will be meaner and more spiteful, and more prone to prescribing meds to family. so we'll be in bozeman next year, then move to seattle to be there for the next three years. hot diggity. we are very excited. they called on the phone and I had the lady repeat it on speaker phone so that laura could hear her say "you have been accepted to UW medical school." then we hung up and started balling like little children. no, more like adults that were really happy. Sienna thought we were super wierd. then we drank champagne and started trying on UW SOM memoribilia. omie found me an appropriate zip-up hooded muscle shirt. Go Dawgs. can't wait to take laura to a football game.
she likes the bubbly
so that's about it. we've been partying ever since. talk about a cheap date...
had to include this. so this trip was kinda a trip...
here she is in the high chair that I used, and we
bathed her in the tub that I bathed in, and read books
and played with toys that I grew up with. kinda wierd, and
kinda awesome. also really really dusty.
Oh boy, so much to report. First off, to get your appetites appropriately wetted:
so much has happened in the last few weeks... where to start. We left off with sienna crawling and me getting back from oregon. Well, the week before that she was congested and feverish and diarrhea-ey and rashy/eczyma-ey. Poor girl. so she wasn't exactly sleeping the best (since she couldn't breath), which gave her 12+ extra hrs to exercise her lungs and vocal cords. This means we weren't sleeping, and by the time I got back from oregon, we realized why she was crawling. Sienna was distraught to be away from us, so anytime we'd pur her down she'd double over to crawl back to us. How cute, but also kinda sad. Well, then this last week we noticed her bottom two teeth coming in. so finally, she's officially teething, and it explains all of this. poor girl. but wait, yesterday we noticed that her left eye was red and green mucus was coming out. bummer. When I was in belize, I got the conjunct-a-junk, so I could recognize it well. yup, she has pink eyes, so we took her in to the ped doc, and she had a look at her ears and sienna flipped out. yup, ear infection too. Aaahhhh, so that explains it. well, along with everything else. She has managed to have everything that could make her go off, within reason, all happen at once. poor girl. but now she's on antibioticas, and feeling much better. back to her usual self because she actually wants to play with things. We've also learned just how fearless she is. when she pulls herself up to standing (second position), she often immediately launches into walking without help. Despite some bonks, she is unperturbed and continues on with her antics. crazy girl.
Ah, but here's the real news that I couldn't wait to tell. Laura fed her pizza. A couple weeks ago on the blog I was joking about feeding her pizza...joking. well, laura had an epiphany saturday night and said "hey peter, what if we order some pizza" (you have to understand, this is the first time this has happened in 9+ years of being together. needless to say, I laid an egg, and out sprouted a monkey with cymbals. While laura was being distracted by the banging monkey now circulating around the room, I dialed up the pizza co., whose number I had memorized just for this moment. I also went to the secret stash of cash that I had been saving for about 7 years in order to pay the pizza guy at just this moment. needless to say). Anyway, we were enjoying our pies and sienna was on laura's lap and of course sienna was trying to grab her pizza. To my amazement, laura sez "you want some pizza? okay sweetie," and proceeded to give her pizza. sienna sunk her little fingers into the velvety cheese, watching tomato sauce squirt up between her nails. The look of joy on her face was unmistakable. My mouth dropped wide open, and as the monkey marched over my pink tongue which had unrolled onto the floor, laura looks up and says, "wait a minute..." It was at that moment that i came to know heartbreak for the first time. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and all the stars and moon went dark and all the crickets stopped chirping, and suddenly you were only aware of the overwhelming loneliness emitted by the nothingness of empty space-that was sienna's expression. people talk about not wanting to traumatize their children. I guess my question is, what if the child is already traumatized. what then? I guess we'll find out.
Finally, she put all the pieces together. She has even one-upped the rest of us by yelling as she locomotes. As it turns out, she has never crawled without screaming. I am fairly sure that this means that she'll have a future in tennis. She first made the jump on monday, and has motored around a number of times since then. i was in portland for an interview, and laura calls with the news, also saying that she stood up by herself on the same day (and promptly toppled over). I have yet to see this, so I'm skeptical, but luckily laura shot this superb video. Surely a youtube classic.
cool, laura has plans for more videos, including the wiggling butt as she runs to the bathtub. Cute! that's it. waitlist at reno. lame.
Here we see two of my favorite things about Sienna. The first is that anytime that you give something, it goes immediately to the mouth. Laura interprets this as sienna giving "Bises" to the object, which is certainly endearing, but I disagree. I think that her spirit animal is a tiger (like tigger), and that she is ferocious, stalking her prey in the midst of the moonlight. The jury is out, for now. Secondly, she also lowes flapping those arms. It's a little different than the duck dance, as it's more violent and directed. More of a baby bird learning to fly. I'm pretty sure that her future occupation will involve these movements. For example, she may be a judge, and thrill in banging her gavel. "Order!" Or perhaps a carpentress, who shuns the use of those newfangled nailguns. Or, obviously, a boxer. This would make particular sense since all her clothes are pulled up high, sorta like how boxers wear their shorts. (if you can think of any other appropriate vocations for such actions, please "comment"). Regardless, if you get the chance to hold the squeek, BE CAREFUL. she's been giving momma black eyes, and I've been getting calls from social services. not good.
All I can say is, future boyfriends, watch out. your destiny may well be written in this video, complete with her throwing you aside and going for your fancy car keys.
So we're gunna try something a little different. Rather than uploading the videos directly, we're going through youtube. Is that a bad idea? anyone? If you would like to subscribe to my video service, my user name is "buttsniffer1000." (apparently all my usual usernames were taken). okay here we go:
so here are some rapturous moments in the life of ms sienna
While yale loved the rice cereal, sienna has not, though it may be more of a texture thing than anything else. we're making all the food with a little handheld grinder thing (thanks mama suze!), which leaves the texture of most everything a little grainier than you would get in the store. that may be why avocado is such a hit:
I'm not entirely convinced that she is eating it all, given how much comes out. but, we look down and the bowl is gone and her face isn't too bad, so it must get in there somehow. Either that, or her "feeding the dog under the table" skills are way beyond advanced. I could see it going either way.
As a christmas gift, opa helped us get a ski set-up for the stroller. While everyone else in MT resigns to the bitter winter reality of observing the holiday poundage grow and grow, Laura has been out and about teaching sienna how to ski. as with strolling, she enjoys it, so much so that it puts her to sleep. I have a hard time empathizing with this reaction, but apparently it's normal. I only wonder if it will continue as she gets older, and anytime the movie is just starting to get good, or checkers is just get interesting, or right before she makes a catch... she falls asleep. Hope not. That'd be a bummer.
follow me
we keep her pretty bundled, and she usually gets too hot.
apparently, she has her daddy's body heat.
it works like this. it's a lot lighter than sleds that
I am used to pulling:
Apparently, I've been training a lifetime for these moments
We have some excellent videos, but blogspot is being a brat and won't let me post them. sorry.
what else? she is army crawling. she can get across teh room, though only very slowly. it's only a matter of time before she realizes that she can keep her upper body off the ground with only one arm. once she's realized that, we're screwed. I have a feeling that she will not be one to sit still. Laura is baby-proofing the house as we speak. First on the list is this creeping plant we have, which we love, and its shoots creep along the floor, but now she is going over to it and trying to rip the leaves off and eat them. not good. this is also right next to the basket of choking-sized rocks/shells that laura insists on keeping around. that'll have to go too. our biggest problem is that many of our bookshelves have things on them, and I know that she will try to pull herself up on them (by the way, she is pulling herself into a standing position from sitting if you set her up right), and then the question is whether or not the things on the shelves will stay put. frankly, I don't know, and unfortunately we just don't have a place for these things because our apartment is full. hrmmmmm. also, the wedding statue is going into the closet. sorry dad. speaking of which, went to watch the super bowl at papa brownie's, and at first sienna loved the football game, but quickly found out that watching 6 yo kira do wind sprints across the tv room was far more entertaining. particularly the barking like a puppy part. what else? tufts put me on deferred decision, whatever that means. they emphatically said that it's not the wait-list. my guess is that they would take me, but since i'm not from maine they need to see if there are any mainers that they think are as good as me from future interviews. so more waiting. no word from anyone else.
I'll work on trying to get some videos up. we've got some good ones.
Oh, here's an amended post item...a ski video. waren miler, eat your heart out!
Laura won't let me feed sienna pizza, even though we got the official go-ahead from our pediatrician. Supposedly the recentest studies are indicating that withholding certain foods do not decrease rates of allergies, and in fact may increase them (too soon to tell for sure). Therefore, if sienna is going to be a schoene, it is imperitive that she not be allergic to pizza. therefore, I'm needing to sneak it to her. She loves it. We also passed the carrots, apple, squash barriers.
this one was sent from the wilson from when
we were in seattle before christmas.
Though she didn't like sweet potato much, or mango, she has embraced carrots and...
you guessed it, Avocado! loves it!
So, come back from east and have dropped into survival mode. turns out I signed up for a class in billings. I don't know how that is even possible, but I did, so needed to figure that, and many other things out. But, back in the swing. more importantly, sienna is also back in the swing. all the usual stuff mentioned: eatin, rollin, 'most crawlin, and otherwise causing a stir. also went to the pediatrician, and she is over 15 lbs. that means she's gained eight lbs, which puts her and I neck-to-neck, as I've gained about nine. I think I'm gunna pull ahead this next week, too. I mean, with the super bowl coming up. She does, however, definitely have me beat in the height and head department. I can't raise a candle on her there.
Do note sienna's overwhelming joy, and my sweatpants. oh, and thanks bryan for the shirt. it's a keeper!
What else? that's about it. for those of you keeping score, got waitlisted at UVM. no other word.
Here are some pics from the rest of the fam. Definitely some good ones: Thanks!
sienna with omie. cute!
feeding the fish. sienna was entranced
sienna's new beau, graeme
auntie kt et al
no, kt is not naked. But yes, sienna is missing her pants.
opening stocking on xmas. Thanks mama suze!
sleepin babes.
sienna's first white sand christmas
I've got the department of fish and game on the line. They seemed
unconcerned about my fears of this lobster attacking my baby!
Holler if you've heard this one: What's orange, and sounds like a parrot?
A carrot!
The traditional hawaii picture. Thanks graeme for shooting it, and thanks
Ty for smiling. oh wait, you're not...
(I found one, just one tyson smile amongst all the hawaii pictures. classic)
daddy likes the fish too. this was around
when we started calling sienna shark-bait.
Hello. Just got back from a hectic east coast tour. As I suspected, it turns out that squeek grew a lot during those ten days. We noticed over the two weeks in hawaii that she had developed a bit, and we wondered if anyone else noticed those changes. This was jsut repeated for me. For example, she's rolling at will and with consistency. She had rolled months ago, but it was surely more accidental as she didn't do it for a while. Now, she's doing it and she knows it. Typical progression: sit her on her bum (she's sitting on her own now, so you can leave her and she hangs out looking around in a surprised fashion and is still there when you get back), and after 5 minutes she falls over and bonks her head (don't worry, we've got a changing pad over a quilt over a rug over carpet, so that her helmeted head (we make her wear a football helmet now) comes to a soft gentle massaging landing on the floor) and then rolls around for a while, squeeking all the way. Actually, we have renamed her. She is no longer squeeker. Now, she is squeeler. Her voice has totally changed while I was gone. now it's definite sqeels, high-pitched, staccato, and annoying. Yup, much more annoying, though we saw this coming and bought ourselves earplugs and we wear those anytime we're in the house. This is also a nice glimpse of what it will be like when we're "old" and lose our hearing. Laura said that she enjoys my company much more now with the earplugs, so I think it bodes well for our future. Anyway, luckily, squeel is sleeping better than she had been. The first couple nights in hawaii she slept great, which is surprising since we were partying a lot upstairs and making a huge ruckus. Also, during that time, we taught saylor to play the "pot and pan cymbals." but, by christmas she went into a very weird and unwelcome sleep pattern. She would wake up between 12 and 1 and be ready for a fun-filled day of playing. this meant cooing and rolling and scratching at the crip. this kept laura and I up until she decided to go back to sleep at 4 or 5. lame. a few nights of this are fine, but she did this for a week and a half, and continued when we got back for another week. At one point, Laura proclaimed that she no longer loved sienna, which I thought was harsh, until I submitted the next night and agreed (laura isn't here, but I'm pretty sure she would want me to clarify that this is a joke for the more dense in the crowd). I figured out that if we brought her into bed, then I could lay my head on her left arm (pinning it), and then reach under her and hold her other arm down. This she tolerated better than her swaddle (which she no longer enjoys), and would often add an hour or two to their sleep (I can't sleep like that). But, she's back on schedule and perky as ever.
Food. so in hawaii she honed her use of "the force." she would stare us down as we ate, willing the food to fly into her mouth. So, when we got home, we tried feeding her. she mawed on some sweet potato (mixed with milk), but didn't really seem to get it, and by it I mean how to eat like a human. after a few times of this, laura tried avocado, and this time she did get it and actually swallowed the food. cute. not doing it every day, but often enough. likewise, she really likes drinking water out of a glass, which is pretty cute to watch too. We thought she just liked the texture as she was teething, but we noticed she used her tongue to try to get water, and then got it and tried more. we were wrong on two counts, in that no, she wasn't just interested in the texture of the glass, and two, I don't even know what teething is anymore. everything was pointing towards her sprouting her chomping bits over the last month, but here we are and still no pearlies. who knows?
When I got back, I noted that she's definitely getting bigger. bigger head, longer, and heavier. more than anything I noticed that she is much denser. she's not as pudgy as when I left, and is a little ball of muscle. when you hold her she doesn't "give" as much as she used to. makes sense since she's much more in control of her movements, particularly in her core. Have you ever held a big snake? that's sorta what's she's like, minus the scales. Actually, for a while she really was scaly with cradle cap (in hawaii), which was what then led to her losing all her hair. She's always been fairly focused, but now that focus is present in her whole body rather than just her eyes. It's fun because we continue to learn her personality as we can now tell better what she wants and what her interests are (e.g. long walks on the beach). this, of course, is an ongoing process until she turns 18 and we have her completely figured out.
oh yes, she hit her six month mark last week.
okay, more later. interviews out east at tufts, uvm, and dartmouth went very well. very very well, actually, and they all have fantastic programs that I'd be excited at. likewise, could easily see the schoene clan in all those places, which is exciting. But, now just more waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
