Just about one month ago, Eliana took her first few tentative steps without holding on to anything. I think she made it three steps before plopping over. As the following video shows (taken this morning), it didn’t take her long to figure out the concept once she got used to the idea. She also demonstrates a) her disdain for having her hair tied up out of her eyes, b) her constant desire to go into the bathroom to play, c) her equal desire to grab at the camera.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated on our nearly-14-month-old. Here’s a quick bullet list.

In no particular order, Eliana can now:

• Feed herself anything we eat (although she’s starting to reject orange vegetables)
• Let us know when she’s done eating by dropping food to the floor with a very delicate flick of the hand
• Crawl throughout the house
• Open cabinets and drawers
• Push open half-open doors and barge in
• Stand and walk while holding onto surfaces (such as the couch)
• Shoot out like a bullet to the front door, screaming and laughing, when Daddy comes home
• Splash her way from one end of the bathtub to the other
• Chase after the Roomba (sometimes turning it off)
• Eat anything on the floor (hence the need for more frequent vacuuming)
• Recognize which brand of pacifiers she likes, and reject others with an incredulous laugh
• Take pens and paper out of Daddy’s shirt pocket
• Play by herself for periods of time (without crying)
• Climb up and down stairs
• Climb off the couch
• Almost climb onto the couch
• Play with her best friend in day care (yes, she’s 14 months old and has a best friend)
• Entertain Mommy in the car with her singing and cooing
• Recognize her own name when called
• Babble a lot, but not quite “Mama” and “Dada” yet
• Rub her eyes furiously when it’s nearly bedtime
• Fall asleep in Daddy’s arms while he reads her a bedtime story
• Giggle, laugh, play, amuse, entertain, and just generally be the happiest baby on the whole planet.

Eliana’s first birthday was last week! I haven’t had a chance to write anything since then, though. So, some quick updates.

Food
Eliana’s becomming such a good little eater. It took her a while to figure out the complex motions of “chewing” and “swallowing,” but now she seems to have the hang of it. At least, we don’t have to break up Cheerios into 3 pieces for her anymore. But now for dinner, she’ll eat whatever we’re eating, as long as Mommy breaks it up for her first. She particularly loves chicken, though; if she even sees it on the counter, she starts lunging for it and screaming if she can’t get it right away.

Last week she had all sorts of first foods for her birthday week. The night before her birthday, she had her first Shwarma from our local Israeli-style restaurant. If you didn’t click the link, Shwarma is basically seasoned pulled lamb and/or turkey in pita bread with tomatoes and cucumbers. We gave her little bits and pieces of the sandwich, and she really liked it. Seth, if you’re reading: Yes, I was thinking of you the whole time, and the shwarma guy at Max’s gave her TWO falafel balls when I mentioned it was her first birthday (one for Mommy, of course).

On her birthday itself, she had her first cupcake. We don’t give her pastries normally, since she couldn’t really swallow real food anyway, so let’s just say she enjoyed the cupcake. And bouncing off the walls for a while afterwards. Pictures are in the photo album. The day after, we had a party for her at her daycare; I picked up pizzas from a kosher restaurant, and Eliana had her first pizza, too. Being my daughter, she enjoyed it. She then had a second cupcake. Now she’s done with sweets for a little while, though.

Play
Eliana’s not quite walking yet, but she wants to. She still holds on to anything she can to stand, and sometimes walks from one end of the couch to the other while leaning on it. She’s also learning how to clean up; for a while, her method of play involving stuff in a box was “toss everything out of the box, then play with the box.” This week, she’s adjusted her method of play to do the opposite: she’ll find a box, and gather up whatever she can, and toss it inside. Then she’ll empty the box and repeat. Then she’ll get distracted and go do something else, like hover near the stairs or try to eat dirt.

Just tonight, I was starting to get dinner ready, and she crawled into the kitchen, carrying some leg warmers in one little fist. She crawled over to a picnic cooler we had on the floor, tossed in the leg warmers, then crawled over and looked up at me.

Movies
I created a new section on the photo album website for home movies. I’ve been recording for a while now, and finally copied the movies off the tape onto Rina’s Macintosh. Then I figured out how to upload them to YouTube and link them from the photo album. Email me if you need the link again.

That’s all I can think of for now!

I had a rather unusual drive in to work this morning. Everything was fine until I was one exit away from my workplace. Suddenly, three lanes of traffic ground to a halt. Sighing, I made sure to stay in the far right lane, so I could take the next exit and wind my way in through the backroads, not having any idea how far up the traffic jam started.

Much to my annoyance, some ignorant drivers decided they were more in a hurry, and started driving up on the right shoulder of the road, thus shooting past me. But then confusingly, the third car that did this suddenly braked to a real quick stop next to me, then put on her blinker to come over. The driver pulled in behind me. I found this odd, as the exit wasn’t for another quarter of a mile or so.

Much to my surprise, I then saw what was causing the tie-up in the shoulder. Walking in the shoulder of the road came a man, leading what looked like two miniature horses on leashes or reins, one in each hand. He was just casually walking along, the horses (half the man’s height) trotting along beside him. As soon as I passed him, traffic immediately opened up in front of me.

Thinking about it after the fact, I was reminded of our trips to Scotland, where out in the Highlands you can be driving along and suddenly hit a “traffic jam” as a herd of sheep are being led up the road from one farm to another. At least this incident wasn’t quite that bad, but it’s still quite an usual sight to see in this area.

Today, I’m home with a sick baby. Yesterday morning at 9:30, she had a doctor’s appointment. Just her usual well-baby checkup. Doctor said she was fine, blah blah blah.

At about 12:30, Rina got a phone call from the day care, asking her to come over and pick the baby up, as she had a fever of 101.6 degrees. So much for Rina getting any work done that day….

Last night, she was kinda blah, less playful, more clingy. I stayed home with her today since I can more easily work from home when the baby isn’t being distracting. She’s at an age now where she can play with her toys, but we have to sit inside the baby jail with her (a fenced off area around the couch). So I was even able to listen in on a telecon this morning while she played, and occasionally crawled over me. She seems much better today, and when I took her temperature, it was around 99.5 degrees; so, slightly elevated, but nothing to worry about.

She got her appetite back, too. Last night she barely ate any of the chicken we gave her (and since I probably forgot to mention, yes, she’s started eating real food now that she actually knows she’s supposed to chew it, and she can even put it into her own mouth some of the time; at least, what doesn’t end up down her front or on the floor). But for lunch, she ate an entire jar of food, plus a yogurt. Normally for me she’ll eat one or the other, and then be full, but after I scooped out the last spoonful from the jar, she realized it was empty and started crying that she wanted more.

After she ate, I changed her diaper, and while doing so, I saw her rub her eyes. This, for those who forget, is a prime indicator that the baby’s tired. She only did it one time, and had let out no yawns and wasn’t fussy or anything. She just rubbed her eyes one time.

To see if she really was tired, I put her down in the crib with her afghan, tucked her in, and closed the door. Did nothing else; no rocking, no reading, nothing. I peeked back in no more than five minutes later, and she was fast asleep.

That’s what I call “the sweet spot,” in case you were wondering where the title of this post came from. It’s when I manage to time exactly when she’s ready for a nap, such that when I put her down, there’s no fussing, no playing, no whining. She just passes out immediately, and then usually stays out for an hour or so (I hope I didn’t just jinx myself). I wish I could do it every time, but I’ll relish the times it does work.

Her primary teacher in her daycare called a little while ago, to see how she was feeling. That was very nice of her. It’s incredible how EVERY employee in the daycare, to teachers of older kids to the janitors, love Eliana so much. I think the teachers for the older kids might fight amongst themselves to see whose classroom she gets to go to later.

Tonight (January 25th) is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland. Traditional Burns night dinners consist of bagpipes, haggis, merriment, and other traditional Scottish foods. We, however, celebrated slightly differently. Today, in amongst other activities, I made bagels for the first time since we had our new kitchen built. I’ve made them a couple of times before, but not since construction started, and that was more than 6 months ago, so this was kind of a big deal for me.

Tonight, we had a completely non-traditional Burns Supper. Haggis is, by kosher default, fairly hard to do due to the inavailability of ingredients (finding lamb stomach in the grocery store is hard to do anyway). So, as mentioned above, I made homemade bagels today, and we topped them with Scottish smoked salmon, to make a blend of Scottish and Jewish cultures: lox and bagels with cream cheese for dinner. I topped it off with a couple of readings from Robbie Burns’ poetry from a book I bought one time when I was in Scotland, and a dram or two (or maybe more, I lost track until I finished the bottle) of single malt from Scotland, and that was our celebration. One of these years, I’ll be organized enough to invite friends over to partake, but this year it was just Rina and me (Eliana had gone to sleep an hour before). Maybe someday I’ll also be organized enough to make more than salmon and bagels; I wanted to make shortbread this year, but got distracted enough that it didn’t happen. Ah well.

In baby news, we had formal pictures of Eliana taken today, as a) she’s as cute as a button, b) her 11 month birthday is tomorrow(!), and c) she can sit up, stand up propped against an object, and can laugh or smile practically on cue. Such a happy baby, thank God; the only times she gets cranky are when she’s tired or hungry. I’m certainly not one to blame her, as I get cranky for the same reasons….

A few quick updates, since it’s been a while.

Over the Christmas/Hanukkah holidays, Eliana achieved real crawling. Not the wiggly shuffle she’d been doing, but up on hands and knees and heading across the room. It’s almost time to put up the baby gate by the stairs now.

Then, our New Years weekend was an interesting one. Not only did Eliana have a cold that made her keep waking up sounding rattly, but she decided that, after a 4 month break, this would be a good time to get some more teeth. Four of them, to be precise. In one two-day span. Needless to say, none of us got much sleep that weekend.

This past weekend, we hit yet another milestone: standing in earnest. Anything she could lean against (furniture, boxes, people), she’d try to lean on to stand up. Unfortunately, this also means that cribs are apparently now for standing, not for sleeping. Or, as was the case this evening, standing followed by falling over, making a “thump,” and screaming. She’s been put down to sleep yet again, maybe now she’s sufficiently motivated to stay in position and let sleep overtake her. One can hope….

No time recently to process and upload more movies. Hopefully sometime soon.

I finally got around to transferring off the movies from the camcorder I bought about a week before Eliana was born. We’ve been taking random movies here and there, about a minute or two each in length. So now I get to start uploading Web-capable versions of them to share. The quality isn’t the best, but I’m told it’s about the best I’ll be able to do.

I’ve currently uploaded the first two to Google Video. If you’re reading this via email, you’ll have to go to the blog website itself to see them.

The first two videos I’ve uploaded are from shortly after Eliana was born. The first is when she’s four days old.

The second is a montage of various sleeping and half-sleeping clips and span the first month. Since all she really did in that time frame was eat and sleep, and I didn’t take any eating videos, this is all that’s available.

I doubt I’ll put every video we have up here in the blog, since there’s like 30 more videos to publish. I’ll put a few more up when I get around to creating them, though.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this previously here, but I’ve been a long-time member of the UMBC Symphony Orchestra. I counted a week or two ago, and I realized I’ve been with them for 17 years now. Since I started in high school, that means I’m pretty sure I’ve been a member longer than my life before I was a member. It’s funny how it’s the little things that make you feel old….

Anyway, our conductor heavily promoted our concert this past Sunday at UMBC (and it worked, we probably had our largest attendance ever), and several of us “community members” were contacted for interviews leading up to the performance. I’m quoted on an article on UMBC’s main homepage (here). And an article’s coming out in the Catonsville Times this week, too; they also interviewed me, so I might appear there as well. (UPDATE: Article can be seen here)

Another thing I stumbled upon last week. I was looking for a flyer regarding our concert so I could hang it from my office door at work to advertise it, and so I just googled generically for the orchestra. To my shock, on the first Google page was a link to Youtube. Someone apparently filmed a short excerpt of one of our rehersals last year and posted it to the popular video site. Scary….

Today we have a special guest author: Rina shares what happened yesterday as she took Eliana off to daycare.

This morning as I was driving to work, I heard some cute little noises from the backseat. I turned off the radio so I could hear these adorable sounds. Soon as I turn off the radio, Eliana gets quiet. Then I realize — she was “singing” to the music! I turned the radio right back on and the little sounds started again. What a great way to start the day. But it gets better . . .

After I dropped Eliana off at Day Care, I ran into the Center’s cleaning lady. I gave her a big smile and wave. She stopped me to ask, “How is Hallelujah doing?” I was a little surprised that she knew who my daughter was. I told her that Eliana was great — real smiley this morning. So the cleaning lady tells me that Eliana ALWAYS smiles. She visits her every day during her lunch hour just to see her smile. I’m crying just writing this. How unbelievable lucky am I?