¡Viva La Diddle Poca!

Back in the fall we took NJ to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Halfway through our meal her face turned a little red and she started crying, and things escalated to the point I had to get her out of there and rock her on the sidewalk in her car seat. Well, that was weird, we thought.

A couple of weeks after that, The Wife was cooking up some chicken verde enchiladas and NJ was next door to the kitchen in the dining room. Suddenly, she freaked out and started crying violently, and couldn't be placated for what seemed like hours. Hmmm, Mexican food again? I thought. She doesn't like it? This is not my child! ("Take a look at her -- of course she's yours," The Wife replied, rolling her eyes.)

So imagine my relief today when we went to lunch at an excellent Mexican place in Madison Park -- on NJ's 9-month birthday, no less -- and she was an utter delight. Smiling, waving and clapping, and generally charming the dickens out of the waitstaff, fellow patrons and anyone else who ventured within a ten-foot radius of her. She even downed a couple of spoonfuls of guacamole. I was so stunned I barely touched my chorizo chimichanga. (That's a lie. I inhaled it as if I hadn't eaten in weeks.)

¡Sí se puede!

Each of the three excellent Mexican places in town we know of are kid-friendly. (Trivia note: We ate at this one the night before NJ was born, and we're sure the spicy food helped convince the kid to make her debut.) So hopefully there will be plenty of tamales, enchiladas, Spanish rice, migas and Tums in our future.

Movement On Movement

NJ turns 9 months old this weekend, and she's marking the occasion with a multi-day Wrigglepalooza leading up to the big day. Until recently she hadn't shown any interest in crawling, something that's both perplexed me ("Crawl to the toy! You'll never make the Supreme Court at age 30 if you don't step it up!") and relieved me ("Let's avoid childproofing and chasing her around as long as possible.").

Her peers are figuratively all over the place -- one 10-month-old we know has been crawling for months now, and a couple of other 10-month-olds still haven't bothered with it. The crawler can really book, too; she's crawled rings around NJ a couple of times, leaving NJ grabbing air as she moves past.

Over the past few days, though, NJ has become a lot more mobile. And a lot more interested in being mobile, which may be a distinction without a difference, but still. Three weeks ago, let's say, when NJ found herself on her belly she'd fuss for a moment, then look around, then decide to lay there with her thumb in her mouth before rolling over onto her back. Two weeks ago, for some reason she decided that rolling over immediately was the way to go. A week ago, there some leg action and, instead of immediate thumb-sucking, she's lift her torso up off the floor for a few seconds with her chubby baby arms. And the last couple of days, there's been an obvious escalation in the progression. Now the legs are churning, she lifts herself higher, and when she's laying flat she turns herself around using her arms. She does 360s on her tummy, basically, and occasionally inches forward a little bit before sliding back to her original position. It's fun to watch.

Pretty soon, that knee is going to dig into the carpet and she will pull herself forward until the other knee sticks. Then, Katie had better bar that door we're always hearing about. Or, maybe tomorrow she'll just crawl across the basement floor and stand up at the washing machine, out of the blue. Her most recent milestone is clapping, which she did for the first time yesterday. And it came completely out of nowhere. We clap with her a lot, and she had held our hands when we clapped, but she never showed an interest. Then, yesterday morning The Wife came to drag my butt out of bed and she sat NJ down next to me. NJ sat up and slowly, surely, and very happily clapped her hands together several times. Ever since, we've clapped our hands red trying to get her to do it some more (because it's beyond adorable to watch), but she does it on her own time, when she feels like it. Which is as it should be. (I hate it when the "CLAP!" message comes up on the baseball park scoreboard.) This evening when The Wife walked into the house, NJ smiled big and clapped and, well, it was so sweet and touching it should be an insurance commercial.

Now, even when I sit her at her play tunnel (photo above), she's interested in the toys that are far away from her, not the ones within arm's reach. And sleeping? I have no idea what this kid is doing when she sleeps. We put her smack in the middle of her crib, and for a long time we'd find her in the morning or after a nap in almost exactly the same position. For the past couple of weeks, though, when we go in for her we see a lot of this sideways stuff:

Seriously, who's that cheery when they wake up? Don't worry, kid, life will beat that happiness and childlike wonder out of you eventually.

And yesterday, I went to get her after an afternoon nap and came upon this:

I thought I saw a quarter over here.

Now, she obviously rolled over onto her stomach, and then rolled over again up against the railing there. But how did she get from the middle of the mattress to the corner? If it was a trick -- sorry, NJ, an illusion -- surely I would have heard The Final Countdown.

The Reluctant Carnivore

Yesterday marked NJ's first real foray into the order of Carnivora. In the only bit of work she performed on her first Mother's Day, The Wife made a lamb-and-lentils recipe, and the resulting dish was actually quite tasty. NJ will need some more convincing, though.

Great Odin's raven!

You know, mixing this vile concoction with the plain yogurt, which I love, doesn't make it any better.

Admit it: You're flat-0ut torturing me so Dad Solo will have another excuse to post one of those dumb photo sequences of me making funny faces on the Internet. That's just lazy blogging right there. I'm so disappointed in you. And on Mother's Day even!

Eventually we moved on to plain yogurt, but there's lamb and lentils in the fridge and I'll be making another go of it later today.

UPDATE: NJ ate the lamb and lentils for lunch today, but only when it was slathered in yogurt. In fact, only yogurt could be visible on the spoon before she'd take it. Then there'd be a head shake and a stream of what sounded like Polish swearing. But: She ate it. So there, kid! So there.

NJ's Ever-Evolving Social Skills: A Case Study

How She Gets What She Wants
Something I learned this week: If you go into your favorite sports replica clothing store wearing a cute baby who's happy and joyfully smiling at everyone she comes into contact with, the charmed storekeepers are likely to give her a free Seattle Angels t-shirt that she'll be big enough to wear in about three years.

How She Ignores What She Doesn't Want
NJ quite obviously and wantonly humored her father yesterday, something I'm sure I'll see again and again for the rest of my days. We were sitting on the couch playing with one of her ring toss games, and I started talking about something I'd just seen on the Internet. I'm doing my best to ix-nay the baby talk, lest she grow up thinking "boo-pa-doo-ba-doo" is an actual greeting to be used in all of society. So after I talked about what I was talking about I poked her in the tummy lightly and said "Know what I mean, kid?" She'd been watching the dog, who was by the end of the sofa, and when I poked her she turned toward me and widened her eyes a bit -- as if she'd been busted in class for not paying attention. Then she nodded her head, uttered a sound that was about ninety percent of "Uh-huh" and flashed the fakest, most last-minute, half-hearted, half-smile I've ever seen. I was actually a little taken aback at how cavalierly she'd treated me as she went back to watching the dog. Then, to add insult to injury, she darted her eyes back toward me -- to see if I was still looking at her -- and, upon seeing that I was, she quickly turned away again and began playing with toys and uttering noises that sounded suspiciously like the "duh-ta-da-ta-da" humming people do in movies when they're being conspicuously inconspicuous. It was a little soul-crushing, but a few minutes later she'd forgotten that I'd bored her silly with info on that night's starting pitchers. Hooray for short baby attention spans. I'm dreading the day she learns how to roll her eyes dismissively, though.

Otherwise, it's been a pretty uneventful week here at Dad Solo HQ. We're gearing up for The Wife's first Mother's Day as an honoree, something I need to think about this afternoon. I told The Wife my original plans a couple of evenings ago, and her response was about as enthusiastic as NJ's reaction to Felix Hernandez's ERA.

Slide, NJ, Slide!

Remember Mike 'King' Kelly, the great baseball player in the late 19th century with the Chicago White Stockings and the Boston Beaneaters who popularized the hook slide? And the poem 'Slide, Kelly, Slide' that made him a household name?

Yeah, NJ doesn't either.

This man enjoyed sliding.

This girl doesn't.