city child experiences nature

Reunion

We were girls together. And now look! Three beautiful bald babies - Amy's Jack from L.A., Libby's Anya from Phoenix, and you know who representing the East Coast city of Brooklyn, NYC - all meeting up in the middle under the vast Minnesota sky.

She'll Miss Daddy when We're in Minnesota!

Blooming

We three ladies took our three girls, making six happy chicas at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens last week. After all that rain, after all that cold, our winter babies stretched out in the bright green new grass and we all breathed sighs of relief. Spring, spring, spring!

One Day When it Was Warm Out, She Wore a Sunsuit

Maybe one day it will be warm again.

Five Months Old!

Anna Holds Forth, Take Two

First Swings

Sun

The sky's split only by the fine white stripe left by a passing plane (or planes, we're part of the flight pattern here) and not, today, by rain. I like rain, usually. I like warm lamp-light and tea and the clatter on the skylight. I even like going out in it. One can't go play in the rain, though, with a not-quite-five-month-old, whether she comes from hardy midwestern stock or not. We've been mooning around the windows, Anna and I, both of us somewhat fractious. She's chewed on every movable thing in the house. I've read and reread whatever's in reach of wherever I happen to sit down to feed her. She's played on her tummy, on her back, in her rainforest mat, in the yellow rubber seat with the tray for toys that unfortunately slants away from her and quickly shoots everything just out of arms' reach, we've played airplane and read books and chewed on books and she's chewed on me and I've chewed on her. We've wandered from room to room. We've built obstacle courses with pillows. She's scooted herself in semicircles around the rug. She's sucked her thumb and stared fiercely around. I've worked very hard to make her laugh and discovered that she won't laugh at the same joke twice, so I find myself in increasingly ridiculous positions making increasingly ridiculous noises and faces, while she gazes bemusedly at me and kicks her legs. Today though, today the sky is mostly (besides the plane stripe which is smudging out as I type) blue, blue, blue. A good day to go try the swings in the playground. She's sleeping now, and I (almost) can't wait until she wakes up.

Baby Atlas

dress

The dress is over half a century old, made the way they used to make 'em, to last and last. Anna's Granny wore it, or Anna's Great Auntie, one of the two identicals, though they were probably a little older than her then since she's such a gigantic girl and they are so petite. When I was little I had a beloved life-size baby doll with thick lashes that batted sweetly when you tilted her up and down. She wore this dress, as did an assortment of stuffed bears and monkeys and probably the elephant too. I hope I didn't secretly dress my brother up in it, but I can't make any promises. This morning Anna woke up smiling as she always does and seemed delighted to be inside this piece of history. The little girl I was would've been in ecstasy - oh the dimpled elbows and the little fat thighs. If it's true that all moments exist simultaneously in a heap of something like snapshots, maybe that little girl was peering into the frame of this morning, delighted. Every little girl should have an Easter dress, don't you think, of cream colored muslin with cunning little embroidered roses and hand-gathered pleats. . .

ready to roll

teeth

The little predator has her first two pearly whites. Now that they're here she sticks her tongue in and out and in and out over their ridges and looks mystified. While they were coming, they hurt sometimes. She drooled in cascades. She gnawed on dad's thumbnail. Such jaws on her, such sharp white teeth. The wee beastie takes her first toothy bites.