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Ronan and Freya's mom
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July 22, 2002 Finally added to the pictures now that we have this new great digital camera (Sony CyberShot 4.1 with the inimitable Carl Zeiss lens). Ronan was taking his first steps at Freya's exact age, and while she is a pro stander and cruiser, Ronan looks like he's going to pull out ahead on the walking front. Freya does do an incredible "Bye-Bye" repleat with hand waving, arm waving and hand scrunching. You can also see her famous nose scrunch on the latest picture page. We are preparing for our trip to Cape Cod which will undoubtedly be our next page here, but it's going to take me a full week to pack, I'm sure. Freya hasn't started daycare yet--I'm waiting until September to get her started--so my computer time is totally random. Enough with the excuses. Freya will be 10 months in a couple of days and says Mama, Dada and Nan-Nan (for Ro-Nan). One of her favorite things is to pull books off of shelves. She has the loudest cry we've ever heard, but she reserves it for really important things like I-don't-want-to-go-to-bed and such. She's just added two teeth, totalling four in the last month. She's very smiley and loves to laugh. It's the easiest thing to get her to laugh (unless she doesn't want to go to bed, in which case you can tickle her, but that means she's not in bed, doesn't it...Good game.) Ronan, almost 3 1/2 now, speaks like a professional, says things like "Actually" and "Similar" and "Conversation" All used correctly I might add. Hope this keeps up. He's fun to talk to, though he is definitely in that challengingly smart category. We're focussing on teaching him how to be gracious when he's right. (That sounds awful, but this diary is meant for the consumption of his grandparents and Mallory, and Mallory's kids are just as brainy so it's okay...:)) Of course I have twelve hundred little things to report here but now that I am stealing a moment to write them down they are nowhere in my addled grey matter.... We're still working on the more crucial half of diaper training, but seem to finally have Ronan on board the effort. He was back into pull-ups for a while there, but has finally decided they are beneath him. Let's see if he can put his money where the potty is, to be blunt. (I was going to say money/mouth, but you don't want anybody's mouth near this subject.) I'll write some more when I can actually think. Ten years from now maybe? Thanks for reading. February 14, 2002 So Freya has joined the family! She's 4 1/2 months old now, almost five months and so, so cute. We just feel so lucky that we got another fantastic kid. Ronan has been amazingly happy about her arrival. I keep expecting some jealousy, but he is just enthusiastic and loving toward her. Even gentle and patient. He's done the occasional don't-feed-Freya-I-want-to-sit-on-your-lap thing, but I think it's a credit to his Daddy that he never really feels put out. He is genuniely psyched to have her around. This morning, Valentine's Day, he was downstairs with his Dad while Mom got a little bit of sleep (Freya has been up a lot lately). Seth told him not to eat the two chocolates he had left in the box he'd gotten from Grandma, and then left the room. When he returned not only had Ronan not eaten them, he'd decided to give one to his Mama when she woke up (Seth was getting the roses ready). So I woke up to a beautiful vase of flowers, a gift-certificate to a local italian pottery shop, cards and a single chocolate from Ronan. If that's not sweet, I certainly am a monkey's Mommy. Freya laughs a lot, loves toys, is beginning to sit up, makes extremely good eye-contact like her brother used to, and generally displays her unique humanity in ways that elude description. I wish all of you (my good friends and close family if you're bothering to read this, I'm sure...) could spend the hours that I do with her. It really is a priviledge. Feeling very thankful today. Much love to everybody! July 7, 2001 [quick notes on R., stolen from an email to my Mom] Seth recently got Ronan a tee-ball thing (a pole over a base and a ball on an elastic rope) and a REAL aluminum bat (little league size). Ronan LOOOOOOVEs these. His other obsession lately is Rockets. We watch the Wallace and Gromit video where they build a rocket and go to the moon, and another one called There Goes a Space Ship, with lots of Nasa Rockets and the Space Shuttle taking off over and over again. Yesterday, Ronan and I went to the Bronx Zoo!! We have such a full summer that I decided I should just grab this day (not TOO too hot) and go for it. So I decided that morning and just took off. Ronan had a GREAT time. He loved the Monkey House with the tiny playful monkeys in display cases and the Butterfly House, which looked like a giant caterpiller made out of netting. He paid more attention to the magnifying glasses and little rope fences than the butterflies flying all around him, but we stamped his hands with big butterflies afterward and he was flapping them around very enthusiastically as we strolled away "butte-fwais!". He also liked the seals. When I told him his name meant "little seal" he thought he should be allowed to go in and swim with them. It's quite a zoo. There was a great children's zoo where there was a very good desert section and a petting zoo where he got to feed the goats like he did at Mom-mom Stine's house. Terry (my step-grandmother--adopted to REAL status) gave me the Bill King sculpture of my maternal grandfather Pops and I told Ronan that this was James Read, my grandfather, Pops, and that it's how he got his middle name. So now when he sees it he says "HI JAMES!" really cheerfully, and "Hi Pops!" The other day he started laughing and pointed to the sculpture and then looked at me and stuck out his tongue. I said "Did the sculpture stick out it's tongue at you?" "Yes!" more laughing. I looked at it, "is it doing it now?" "No... Pops!" Sooooo... I don't know. We may have a haunted sculpture on our hands. I think Pops was playing with him. more soon, I hope.... February 16, 2001 I can't believe my last entry was JULY!! Ronan has changed quite a lot since then. He says a LOT, though we only understand some of it. Sometimes the poor guy really tries and says something over and over and it when we finally get it, it's a big palm to forehead. He was saying something like "tatch" over and over with a lot of concern and it turned out to be "catch" which is what he wanted to do. Play catch with a balloon. Balloons are his all time favorite toy right now, along with his play protective eye-wear and bike helmet. He puts those on and rides on his radio flyer mobile. It's extremely cute. Progressive jazz seems to be Ronan's music of choice these days. I notice a particular wiggle when we hear Weather Report or when that sort of music comes on between news items on NPR. The wiggle is his new thing. When he's feeling particularly groovy, he gives a nice full-bodied wiggle. Needs to be seen. Maybe I'll have streaming video on here pretty soon. July 23, 2000 We went to Cape Cod for a week, our first vacation with a capital V in a long time, and certainly Ronan's first experience with beaches. He loved the water and you'll find a picture of him eating an entire ear of corn (he cleaned it down to the stubble). He also ate clam chowder with clams hand dug by his grandma (also the chowder was made by grandma) and broiled swordfish and lobster. What a guy. He's talking all the time now, allowing some real words in there now and then, but mostly speaking his own version of baby-ese. We've shamelessly coached him to answer correctly the question "What does Daddy make?" (he says "bagpie", which may be what one of them is correctly termed in the latinate...) He got a desk from his older cousin Aidan and is totally obsessed with sitting at it and drawing with his "washable" crayons. When eaten, those washable crayons turn to watercolors... His other big thing is climbing up on chairs. So far he hasn't met a chair he didn't like to climb up on. I try to counter with "Sit down on your bottom!" once he's achieved the summit of a given chair, and it works about three quarters of the time, which isn't bad, actually. June 20, 2000 Ronan DID get the Chicken Pox, and how. I'll have to put the one picture we managed to get of the "horror show". Mysteriously, I couldn't find the camera the whole two weeks he had it. Makaria did take a picture of some of the aftermath. (And I found the camera again). Ronan's school pictures, which I was quite doubtful about (note his non-fancy outfit and the piece of pretzel on his shirt) turned out so great it makes me realize it must be a your-own-child thing. The pictures of your own child seem just HUGELY charming and wonderful, and that's why they do these set-up things. I put really huge images of them (the 8x10s) on the website and anybody who wants a wallet or framable size is welcomed to email me and get one! Ronan has gotten extremely kissy lately. It is the most wonderful thing. He actually makes the right sort of kissing noise, too. And since he's not a drooler, it is a fairly unconflictedly nice thing to get. His other latest "thing" is to be obsessed with the nook in the kitchen. He likes to stand on the bench and play on the table, and he'll stay there with fairly modest toys for great lengths of time. That thing about preferring cardboard boxes to the toys that came in them is pretty much undeniably true with Ronan. Speaking of undeniable: since Seth was out last night, we had pizza (which Ronan loves). I guess he was pretty hungry when we went into the pizza place because he was yelling at the pizza man and pointing to the pizza in the case. We got our slices un-re-heated so the pizza man lopped off a hunk of crust with cheese (rather huge, actually) and handed it to Ronan who fell upon it like a Roman lion on a Christian... Very cute, believe it or not. June 7, 2000 Ronan seems to have developed Chicken Pox!! I say "seems" because he doesn't seem sick and he doesn't seem bothered by the few spots he's got. But there are enough of them, and they are distinctive enough that it seems he's going through a rite of childhood. This guy, by the way, is huge now. He's always been healthy-looking but he's getting much longer now, and more kid-like than baby-like. There's a lot more hair, too, though it's concentrated in the back, so it hides in photos. Sticks are Ronan's favorite toy. He likes the paint-mixing sticks he's found around the house (and so does Mommy, their being relatively sanitary, sanded and round-cornered...) It seems like such a distinctively "boy" characteristic to be obsessed with sticks and whacking things. Luckily, it's not out-of-control whacking, just periodic episodes with loads of glee at the sound and the reverb. New favorite past-time: the "I'm gonna gitchoo" game. Ronan let's out what could be a squeal in any other kid, but with him is a distinctive throat sound, a sucking-in of breath that is the large part of his laugh--and runs to the other side of the room. When he runs out of places to flee, he sometimes just stands there laughingly awaiting his "torture" or he'll turn and, arms out, come "git" Mommy instead... April 26, 2000 Ronan is putting up with the shoes now, which is nice, but of course it means that he's running around outside now, which contributes to misadventures such as the great nose caper providing heart-attack potential to his mother... Ronan is developing non-essential needs and a will to go along with it, which is a beautiful thing once the ringing in your ears subsides... Which is a nice way to say that the frustration of being unable to articulate your needs may frequently result in an irresistible compulsion to empty your lungs while... uhm... engaging your vocal chords at top volume.... Uhm... So it's just a really beautiful thing to watch Ronan develop this, ears non-withstanding... All kidding aside, it's been really fun since Ronan turned one on April 10, 2000. He developed physically so quickly, that it seemed that was the main focus for so long, I'm now noticing more and more that his brain, his will, his understanding of things is developing just as dramatically. We may be more focussed on that now. I think while he was learning to walk, that sort of exploring became the most important, and other, more sitting-still type of learning was in the back seat. Just yesterday he learned to put this little toy egg-person into the chimney of his toy-house, which rings a bell and the little guy is then retrievable through another door. He really learned it from watching me, and having me tell him and point stuff out. Sounds like nothing, but it was blowing my mind yesterday. One more little thing: Ronan has fallen hopelessly in love with his "Three Little Kittens" book. He was sick last week, and it was during that period of being a little weakened, sleepy and lap-sitting that he discovered the pleasures of this board book. I think there is some kind of mighty revelation in the progression from crying, to the sobriety of being scolded, rising to the joy in finding the mittens, finally through the praising and to the perfect finish: PIE. After about the 85th reading in a day, I began to see the zen-truth of it all... March 9, 2000 Quick update: you would think I was applying nail-lined, hot-tar filled, toe-screw, geeky, high-heeled, child-finisher shackles to this little boy's feet!! He is not a shoe-boy, let's put it that way. And the shoes are SO NICE!! Wish me luck. March 8, 2000 Ronan hit the ground for the first time yesterday. Earth, dirt, grass, that is. Because he absolutely refuses to wear shoes or shoe-like things (socks are a grudging exception), I haven't had him down outside. It's been so snowy and icy anyway. In the last week, however, we've been struck with distinctly spring-like weather, and it was so sad to see Ronan sitting in the stroller at his day-care while the other kids walked around in the playground--so I sprang into action. I ordered Ronan's first shoes--birkenstock like sandals that I think I can strap to him more convincingly, and yesterday I double-socked him and we headed to the playground. So Ronan had a couple more firsts there. Sand-eating, which I thought would be a onetime thing, seemed to occur repeatedly. Wood-chip eating was a little easier to deal with. But he climbed on the play-structure, and enjoyed the slide very much. He would sit on the top, Mommy holding both hands, and push off himself. Other favorites were the giant-spring mounted motorcycle, the baby-swing, and the giant plastic tic-tac-toe. Another first. Ice-eating. That was during the impromptu pic-nic after the playground. Ronan has developed a woods-mans apetite lately. He recovered from his long-dragging-on cold/flu during which he'd been eating little, and he's MR. hungry-man. He eats heaping bowls of stew, enough for hungry grownups. We'll see. I think he's in for a major growth spurt. return to the latest ronan picture page March 1, 2000-- New section. If you're reading this, clearly you care about those little things Ronan is doing, so I won't apologize for being a baby-obsessed parent. I just wanted to remember some of those little things one doesn't usually remark upon, since he's changing so fast.
return to the latest ronan picture page
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