He split his chin open at school three weeks ago when he missed a step going up a concrete staircase into the building. The school secretary called me and asked if I wanted to take him to get a stitch put in, but I thought the trauma of having to sit in an ER for gods know how many hours before having a couple of needles to anesthetise it and then have it sewn up would be worse than the scar it might leave, so we didn’t. We used a combo of butterfly strips and plain bandages to cover it at various times, and it has healed rather well.

He got his new bike last month, an early birthday gift from his local grandparents, and he has taken to it much better than the last one. He went out for a ride here with Grandma last weekend and HRH said he was flying along. He’s finally clued in to the fact that speed helps you balance on a bike. Now of course he needs to slow down a bit to work on the finesse and subtle parts of balancing, but it looks like he’s well on his way. We passed three of the kids who are on his school bus this morning, riding their bikes to school instead of bussing, so that little seed has been planted in his head. It would be great if we could walk/bike the kilometer to the new school next year on nice days instead of driving every day.

The first weekend in May I picked up a toy archery set for him at the dollar store while buying crepe paper streamers to use for the maypole. He asked if I would teach him how to shoot it properly (as properly as suction cup arrows and a plastic bow strung with elastic can be shot), so I got my bow and arrows up out of the storage room and showed him the basic stance and such. (The next-door neighbour was very interested.) He stuck one of my arrows in the ground to serve as a measure for distance, I held back a lot, and we each shot a few times. By the third shot or so he’d clued in to the fact that you have to actually aim above where you want your projectile to land, was actually listening to me when I showed him the way to hold things and stand so that his draw was more efficient, and was getting decent distance for non-aerodynamic arrows. He was terribly excited. And then he asked me to really draw my bow, and I banged an arrow across the yard into the window of the shed. Um, oops. (Both arrow and window survived the ordeal, but it did make a very sharp bang.) He just loved it. The only disappointment for him was that the targets that came on the cardboard backing were too small to use, and that he couldn’t get his arrows anywhere near them. He wouldn’t listen when I told him there was no way even I could hit those targets; they were about six inches across.

He’s terribly into playing Pokemon Pearl, and is suddenly a fount of information about Pokemons and their evolved forms, and what type best beat other types. Blade lent him a strategy/guidebook and he studies it very seriously. We have to watch how emotionally invested he gets with it, but he’s learning a lot about managing his time, making choices that will affect his playing experience later on, and understanding that there’s a loose storyline with certain events that has to be followed in a rough order; he can’t just jump to the parts he wants to do.

Sparky brought home a card in his agenda the other week advertising a day camp run by the local fine arts centre for kids, and at first we were really excited about the idea, until we saw the cost for a two-week session. He cried when I told him we wouldn’t be able to do it (and also tossed out the dramatic “I’m going to be the only one not going to camp!” statement, which we know perfectly well isn’t true, even without other parental confirmation). But last week I looked at the school’s website, and holy cats, this is a fabulous program. And coincidentally, the mum of his best friend from preschool (who is still very much in his heart, and came over for a playdate this weekend) is working with the centre, helping with registration for the camp. I asked her for her opinion about the centre and the camp program, and she gave it all a glowing review. I talked to HRH about it, and now knowing that we can break the payment into two parts (one at registration, one a week before camp begins) and also knowing that our tax refund will arrive at the right time, I think we’re going to go for it. It’s just under thirty dollars a day, and the quality of programming will be more than worth it. And the great thing is it’s not only arts like music, painting, and choir; he’ll get to do physical stuff too, like karate (or fencing, if he chooses it, but he’ll be in the 7-14 age bracket, and I’m not sure giving him even a bated épée is a good idea), and things like science or languages. We haven’t mentioned anything to him yet, but I know I’m excited. We’ve never been in a position to give him a camp experience. (And since I wrote that, Nana has offered to handle one of the payments as a birthday present, so he is definitely going.)

We’re working on pitch and rhythm in his cello lessons, and he’s surprisingly good at being able to sing a note name at the right pitch. It’s not an easy thing to do at any age. Last lesson his teacher turned the page of his workbook and said, “Oh, this is a new note to add into the ones you already know, this will be a bit harder.” “I can do it,” he said confidently, and sang the line correctly. He’s such a contradiction. When we ask him to focus or practice (or even just sit still, dear gods), he resists, but then he tosses things like this off and makes us all blink. Ask him to play a descending D scale and he can’t, but he’ll throw one off with an arpeggio while you’re sorting through sheet music and say, “I just wrote that. It’s called ‘Ducks Hopping Home in the Rain, Quacking’.” So he’s internalizing things; he just can’t pull them up on demand yet.

Speaking of making us blink, I finally looked up his current reading level. His school uses a popular system of readers that are sorted into various levels. By the end of grade one, I found out, they’re supposed to be able to read and understand books at level twelve. Well, Sparky’s been bringing home level 26 chapter readers; that’s equivalent to late grade four. He goes up a level every couple of weeks — his reading teacher is being thorough, so she’s not leapfrogging him, just making sure he can handle each level before she assigns the next one — so it will be interesting to see where he’s at by the end of the year. I knew he was reading way beyond his grade level, but finally having the data in front of me brought it home in a very different way. I was a bit dazed.

The problem with these more advanced readers is that they take about half an hour for him to read because they’re more sophisticated, which means he’s got an hour of homework every day. This is partly because they’re more involved, partly because half of them are non-fiction (on topics like the solar system, volcanoes, geysers, trees, that sort of thing) and we spend a lot of time talking about the information in it… or dealing with fallout from more emotionally advanced information, like learning that the sun will eventually go out in five billion years and all life here will cease, which really freaked him out. He knew we’d be long gone, but — “What about all the people here when it happens?” he cried out through his tears. “And all the animals? And plants, and trees?” Sometimes empathy can suck. We’re past it now, after discussing the Big Bang reversing and the changes that the solar system will undergo in the next couple of billion years. We forget sometimes that he’s only six, going on seven.

In other school news, I love that he’s bringing home spelling tests that he has practiced for, and they’re all at 110%, but what I love most is that he’s brilliantly proud of himself. (There’s a short sentence the teacher reads at the end of the test for them to try if they want to — “I like my cat,” that sort of thing — and he has gotten them all correct… although he lost half a bonus point for using a capital P instead of a lowercase P on one of them, which devastated him.) I love that I have to rein him in when he gets a new math worksheet, because he’s supposed to work some of the sums every day and hand the completed sheet in on Thursday or Friday, and he wants to do them all right now.

It’s not all sunshine and roses. He’s having a hard time with keeping his mind on what’s he’s supposed to be doing, and doing what he’s asked or told to do when he’s asked or told to do it. He goes off on tangents and forgets what his initial task was. He perpetually says “I’ll just do this first” and ends losing himself in it, then has to rush or deal with not having completed what he’s been set to do, both of which upset him… just not enough to learn to stop doing it.

I enjoy watching him play with Owlet, who, now that she is mobile, loves to pull herself up on the chair where he’s sitting and grab his feet, pockets, legs, and so forth. He has fun trying to help her walk, although he hasn’t gotten the ‘let her walk a step or two and then rebalance yourself’ idea yet; he takes off walking backwards and she kind of drags along after him if we don’t slow him down. He loves to push her stroller, and read books to her in bed at night. He is the coolest thing in the world to her. She kicks her feet and claps when she sees his bus coming, and if she can’t see him while we walk home she fusses. The best is when he walks next to her and holds her hand; she’s in absolute wriggly heaven when he does that, and tries to grab his arm with both hands and practically pull him into the stroller with her. He’s a wonderful big brother to her, and I’m proud of him for being the person he is.

She can do so much. She can play peek-a-boo anytime, anywhere. She can hold her own bottle (although we don’t encourage it, because she tends to bash it around). She can pick very small things up in a pincer grip. She can just about manage a sippy cup, although chewing on it is more interesting right now. She can turn pages in a board book, although she is impatient with books in general when we try to read them to her. She would rather turn handfuls of pages at once, or grab the book to chew it. Her favourite book is a body book showing babies and toddlers doing different activities, with body parts and clothes labelled. She loves to look at babies in any book. But really, the best thing about books is chewing them.

Owlet is developing socially, too. She has started feeding others, for example. We felt special when she offered us Cheerios or bites of her rice rusks… until we discovered that she was also pushing rice rusks at the furniture, her toys, and pictures of people in books. She has figured out the piano/xylophone that once was Sparky’s, after a brief period of just looking at it or watching us demonstrate it, and now bangs away at it both with her hands and the sticks that are attached to it. She is working on clapping; I noticed her making the motion with her hands last week, but with fists instead of open hands. Like knocking coconuts together, heh. Mostly she bangs her fists together a couple of times, then clasps her hands, then bangs the clasped hands on her legs or the table or whatever is in front of her.

Suddenly she’s everywhere. No longer can we put her down and expect her to stay where she is. She wriggles around quite well, despite not formally crawling. The other day she squirmed under my spinning wheel and managed to get herself on top of a treadle, and checked it all out for me like a little mechanic. To occupy her while I’m in the kitchen I give her a plastic mixing bowl of Fisher Price Roll-a-Rounds (I don’t think they make them any more, which makes me sad because I love them) and she digs them out, rolls them back and forth either with me or from hand to hand, and sometimes dumps them all out and watches them roll all over the place with great delight (and then puts the bowl on her head).

The biggest leap forward this month is the standing and cruising. Owlet pulls herself up on everything and everyone. She cruises along the chesterfield and along the coffee table, although the corners of the table continue to defeat her. She can’t get herself up into a sitting position on her own from lying down on her front or back, but if she starts off sitting she’ll get herself over to something upright (like the aforementioned table, chesterfield, chairs, bookcases, adult legs, my hair) and pulls herself up to her feet. I left her sitting on the floor of the living room a couple of days ago, with some toys around her to keep her busy, and went to work in the kitchen for five minutes. The kitchen and living room are essentially one big room, and she was quiet, so I didn’t think to check on her. But then I walked back in and found her standing on the other side of the room, leaning against the chesterfield where Gryff was lying. She was chewing on the tip of his tail and touching the pads of his feet.

Her favourite activity is walking around the house holding on to someone’s hands, which is great for her, not so great on the person whose fingers she is holding and whose back is about to break. Will she skip crawling? Who knows? I am told there are children who walk first and then retroactively apply the self-mobility thing to the crawling.

When we last left her teeth, she had two incisors on the bottom and her top two were taunting us. Well, the top two came in, followed shortly after by her right second incisor (three new teeth within five days, ack). The left second incisor is still tormenting her, but it should be any day now, too.

Just before the teeth came through she was running a high fever, which broke just as the teeth started cutting. I figured it was teething related. Except a day or so later a rash started breaking out, so surprise! Roseola! Sparky never had it, but the timing of the high fever and the rash was textbook. (I mentioned this to our doctor and said I didn’t bother bringing her in because if it was roseola there wasn’t anything anyone could do other than say, ‘Yup, roseola,’ and she said, “I wish more parents were like you!”)

Sleep is undergoing a weird overhaul. When developmental stuff starts happening like crawling, walking, acquiring new social skills and things like that, sleep can often be disturbed because there’s a lot going on in the brain as new neural pathways are established. So naps are all over the place, and night wakings are ranging from one to six per night. Teething and the roseola didn’t help, either. And on top of it all we’re trying to teach her to self-soothe and go back to sleep if she wakes up after a sleep cycle (hers seems to range from twenty to forty minutes), so I nurse her once at night around two when she wakes up after her initial long stretch of sleep, then if she wakes up after that I leave her in her crib while I pat or stroke her back and give her the soother, instead of picking her up to cuddle or nurse her back to sleep. She has let me know in no uncertain terms that she is not a fan of this, but she gets back to sleep within about ten to fifteen minutes.

We’re hearing the beginnings of real words, too. She has deliberately used Mama, Dada, and cat, although not consistently. She also says baba (or bababababa) now and then, usually when looking at one of her bottles. In fact, one night she looked at me after nursing and said, “Dada? Baba?” And I said, “No, kid; Dad is not coming upstairs to give you a bottle. You are stuck with me, and with what you just drank. Now go back to sleep.”

In the glorious world of food, she now eats just about everything except berries, milk, and nuts. She’s pretty much off cereal and mashes (not that we really did them much at all); we only mix up a bowl of cereal if we need to get something into her fast, and we pile diced veggies or meat in it to make a kind of potage or porridge. New foods this month include grapes, peppers, hamburger, turkey, scrambled eggs, Cheddar and Swiss cheese, mushrooms (raw and fried), celery, watermelon, and rice vermicelli. Overall so far, the only things she has really not pounced on and stuffed into her mouth are carrots and avocado, although I can grate carrots and add them to stir fries for her without a problem. We’ve started eating the same thing for lunch: I make macaroni, for example, and fry up mushrooms and a diced chicken thigh, then grate cheese all over it and toss it. Then we each have some. There’s something so very thrilling about your baby eating the exact same thing you’re eating. And now we have to defend our food again, because if you’re eating something and she is not, there is a great fuss made until she too has something, be it a rice rusk of her own or part of what you’re eating.

Nursing has been a bit of a challenge, and I can’t blame her, what with having to get used to three new teeth in such a brief period of time. Her latch is all wonky and she’s slipping down to nurse shallowly again, which is not optimal and is, quite frankly, cumulatively painful. We’re working on it. She’s has also developed a tendency to bite when she is really frustrated and at the end of her rope, which is not fun at all.

Also not fun: Getting one’s legs firmly wedged in the crib when one turns oneself crosswise, lifts the legs, and slots them in between the spindles. That’s what you get for having legs like turkey drumsticks, child! At her 9-month appointment, he doctor wrote down with great glee that Owlet now weighs 10 kg 38 gr (or 22 pounds and 2 ounces) at 28” tall, tracing her leap from ‘oh no, this baby isn’t gaining enough weight’ to ‘holy smokes, this child is plump and chunky and I love it’. She’s in the 96th percentile for weight (no kidding), and the 75th for height. I went back through Sparky’s records and discovered that he didn’t hit 22 lbs till he was a year old. No wonder Owlet has blown past all her 9-12 month clothes. She’s firmly in 18-month size territory right now, although her shape is changing all the time, because her diapers fit differently each week — not too large or too small, just fitting differently as her body changes shape. That plus the mobility thing mean I’m turning to dresses a lot now, to leave her legs and feet bare so she can get a better grip on the floor to pull up or get around, and because then we don’t have to sort through the drawer to find pants that fit her that day.

In general, it feels like someone switched the baby to eleven. She’s slightly manic, quick to push and push and push and suddenly start crying if things go wrong or not according to her plans, or she just overwhelms herself. Gone are the days where she’d watch and think about things. Now she throws herself in, and damn the torpedoes. It’s exhausting for everyone. I’m looking forward to things settling down a bit when this round of developmental overdrive is, well, over.

So in no particular order, here’s what I remember reading, off the top of my head:

With Fate Conspire by Marie Brennan
Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
Folly du Jour by Barbara Cleverly
Blood Royal by Barbara Cleverly
All Wound Up by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan
Death Comes to Pemberly by P.D. James
I am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley
The Revenant by Sonia Gensler
Jane and the Canterbury Tale by Stephanie Barron

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron by Stephanie Barron
How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche
Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd
One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear
The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear
A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear
Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear
A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny
The Murder Stone by Louise Penny
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
The Adventures of Sally by P.G. Wodehouse

I reread:
Grand Obsession by Perri Knize
Haunted by Kelley Armstrong
Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong
Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong

On my current TBR pile:

Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
Red Glove by Holly Black
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
Kingdoms of Dust by Amanda Downum

I have no doubt I’ve forgotten a dozen books, but this is better than nothing.

I should save some of these for the nine months old post, but hey, let’s live dangerously and assume we’re going to have more fun pictures to use then. Half of these are from our Easter visit, and half are the last couple of weeks here at home.

Owlet got a classic board book in her Easter basket. You can see how into it she is already:

Last summer Sparky climbed to the bottom branch and hung out there. This spring, he was halfway up the tree:

Sparky and his cousins were making pirate hats and taping them onto their heads while playing before Easter dinner. So they made one for Owlet and taped it on her. It’s certainly the most… unique Easter bonnet I’ve encountered. Very Queen Mum:

Last week we had crazy warm weather, so out came the new summer clothes, and Owlet snacked on half an “ah-full”:

Owlet’s new party trick, as of yesterday: pulling up on people, using their fingers to balance herself as she walks to the nearest chesterfield or table, and cruising along the furniture (eek!):

And finally, Owlet today, just sitting and looking lovely:

1. I got my first royalty statement yesterday. It freaked me out a bit because I wasn’t expecting it. It came in two parts and was essentially a bunch of numbers and terms I didn’t understand, and I tried to read it while juggling a fussy baby, and no one should ever do anything that requires attention and rational thought while juggling a baby. Eventually I figured out that it was for two different editions of the book. One said I’d made back 1/5th of my advance (in just one month!) and the other said I’d made almost an entire mortgage payment, but it was being applied to more of my advance payment. So I’m about 2/5 of the way in to paying back my advance, after which any money made goes into my pocket. I’m a bit boggled by this. In a good way, of course.

Yes, it’s my first royalty statement. It’s an interesting sensation, because previously I’ve done all my book writing on contract. I like it. I’m looking forward to my next one.

2. Owlet had roseola. We thought the fever, crying a lot, refusing solids and nursing constantly was due to her upper teeth (more on that below) but no; the fever broke, and a day and a half later she developed the rash. I thought it was a teething-related diaper rash, because she’s essentially been a waterfall this past week and the rash started on her bum, but then it spread to her legs, and the next day it was on her arms and face. It wasn’t itchy and there were no other symptoms. It’s pretty much gone now. I didn’t bother with the doctor because it happened on the weekend, her receptionist isn’t in on Mondays, and by the time I got an appointment it would be over (as it is). Also, it’s a virus, so there’s not much we could have done anyway. This is the second time Owlet has come down with something five to seven days after we drive home from visiting my parents; I think she’s picking stuff up at the rest stops, probably from the changing tables. I’m going to carry antibacterial wipes or spray to wipe them down before we use them from now on. Even better, with the weather warmer, we can change her in the car or on a picnic blanket outside.

Sparky had the sudden fever last night, and a couple of hours later I started with the body aches, sore throat, and hot/cold thing. He woke up this morning with his temperature just about normal again, so off he went to school. HRH handled him this morning and took him to the bus stop, for which I was deeply grateful because I could barely move. I napped with Owlet this morning, and woke up feeling much better. I don’t know if what we have is connected to the roseola or if it’s something else, but I am so tired of everyone being sick.

3. The teeth. Urg, the teeth. All four up top are swollen and descending. Now those two centre upper incisors are so close to being through. We can see the actual teeth through a very thin layer of skin.

4. The concert was wonderful. We had just about a full house. There was birthday cake at the intermission, and the audience sang happy birthday to us at the end, and the music went really well. The end of the Wagner was particularly magical, and the Beethoven felt like a train that just wasn’t going to stop or slow down for anyone. (I suppose the term for that would be ‘inexorable,’ wouldn’t it. Which is particularly appropriate for the Fifth.) As usual, there was easy stuff I flubbed that I’d never missed before, and hard stuff that I didn’t expect to get that I managed on the fly. Sitting in the back is hard; I can’t clearly see the conductor, or the principal’s bowing, so I end up listening to the orchestra for a lot of my cues. (I’m good at using aural cues for my entrances; in fact, I trust my aural cues more than my counting.) I mentioned that to my teacher this past weekend and she said, “Sitting at the front of the section is easy; you need to be a really good cellist to sit at the back,” which was really nice to hear. And the second half of the concert was a challenge because I couldn’t get my endpin to a comfortable height; I was slightly off all the time, and that played havoc with my intonation. But all in all I’m happy with how I did, considering that I missed just under half the rehearsals and have had no more than a hour or so a week to practice. Our next concert is July 1, of course, and it will have a Northern theme: Finlandia, Peer Gynt, the Ruslan & Ludmila overture, and so forth.

5. Sparky outgrew his bike before learning to ride it properly. He’s a perfectionist, so if he doesn’t think he can do it right or if he’s afraid of falling or failing or whatever, he just won’t do it; he says there’s something else he’d like to do instead, or says he’s tired, that sort of thing. We got the bike out the other week, put the seat and handlebars up, and no go; he’s just way too tall. HRH’s parents will be buying him a new one as an early birthday gift.

6. Sparky has also become a Pokemon fan. The kids at school know all about it and they’ve been playing Pokemon on the playground at recess and lunch, so he kept coming home with all sorts of facts and exciting information. So for the trip down to see my parents at Easter I dug out my DS and the sole Pokemon game I ever played, and he was thrilled. He is taking very good care of it, is having lots of fun, and learning valuable lessons about not hitting buttons when you don’t understand what they do (he accidentally released his starting Pokemon instead of putting it a storage box and was devastated, so we restarted the game from his last saved point), and saving often so you don’t lose a whole day’s activity.

7. We have daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths in the garden. The crocuses are over. And we already have tiny buds that will be flowers on the crabapple tree we planted last year in front of Sparky’s window. We’re getting another tree for this year’s Earth Day tree giveaway that our city does, and we’ll plant it in front of Owlet’s window.

Baby’s awake. That’s all for now.