Hello, Pushkin

Mae's new nickname is banana-nana-nana face. It's just one of many though. Sometimes I worry that she'll start kindergarden and the teacher will ask her her name and she won't know it - because we barely use it - and instead she'll say, "Ducky" or "Bunnymuffin" or "Boo", or else "Banana-nana-nana face". But then I figure, oh well. Worse things could happen.

The reason for the new nickname is that she started eating bananas this past week. I know that the current recommendation is six months for starting solids, and she's not quite five... but we were just so bored. It went down to 20 below with the windchill, so we couldn't exactly run errands in the stroller, or even make it as far as the coffee shop to hang out. Really, bananas were our only option. Also, more importantly, she just seems ready. For a few weeks now, she's been watching every bite of food my husband and I take with big, awe-struck eyes - like we were eating rainbows or something. She'd even started reaching for the food on our plates.

So now she's a rolling over, banana-eating kind of girl. And, also, I'm pretty sure she's teething. She's not whining as much as she was last week (thank God), but she's drooling rivers, and pulling at her ears, and putting absolutely everything on earth into her mouth.

She's also decided that the kitties are worth paying attention to. Until a week or two ago, they may as well have been big, furry houseplants for all the attention she paid them. Now she laughs when one walks by, and sometimes grabs a big handful of tail or back-fur. All things considered, the kitties are taking the change in stride.

And, yeah, we've been busy, despite how cold it is outside, and despite how I say we've been bored to bananas. I've got an excercise class on Tuesday mornings (with childcare for Mae), and then we see our momfriends on Thursdays for lunch and go to a program at the community centre on Fridays. And, in between, Mae breastfeeds, and rolls, and naps, and takes baths, and swings in the swing o-matic, and sits on my lap... and we watch Oprah, and read stories and I try, somewhat unsucessfully, to stay on top of the chores, like laundry and groceries and making sure there are enough diapers and doing general tidying up.

The days are so completely full, actually, that I can't imagine how going back to work is ever going to fit into the mix. Also, I can't imagine how I'm going to stand being apart from Mae for that many hours a day.

I'm trying to tell myself that I have another seven months of mat leave and not to worry about it yet, but it isn't really working. Every time one of the momfriends talks about this or that daycare she's visited, I feel queasy. I haven't made a single phone call, or visited a single centre, or gotten Mae on a single list because, the truth is, I don't want to. What would be ideal, really, would be if a magical mortgage fairy could float down from the sky and erase our mortgage with her magic wand while sprinkling money-tree seeds in our backyard. And I know, I know... it's kind of unlikely to happen, but that doesn't mean I can't still hope.

Mae started napping in a regular kind of way this past week. It's fantastic. She sleeps for an hour, starting at 9:30 or 10:30ish. Then we go out (as per our busy social calendar) to storytime at the library, or play group at the community centre, or for coffee. And then she has a second nap later in the day at 2:30 or 3:30ish. And while she naps, I can write, or clean, or else just walk around the house marvelling at the fact that I'm walking around the house without a baby.

The only real downside to naps is that I'm hooked. This afternoon, she fell asleep in the stroller when we were out, and then didn't want to sleep at her regularly scheduled time, and I felt so cheated. I spent about 45 minutes feeding her, and then my husband spent a good 30 minutes walking with her, and then I fed her for another ten minutes. We did get her to sleep in the end. For 30 minutes. Hardly much of a return on our investment.

Still, I'm not really complaining. Most days, she sleeps. And it couldn't have come at a better time because - and this, I AM complaining about - she's also learned how to whine.

It's this awful, groany, grating noise. If I had to spell it phonetically, it'd be something like "Unnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhggggggg." And, if the mood strikes her, or if she's overtired enough, she can keep it up for ages, until she's wearing so badly on my last nerve that I say things like "You are testing mommy's patience. Stop it. There is none left!! Oh my God. None." And she just blinks her big grey eyes at me and goes "Unnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhggggggg. Unnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhggggggg," until I'm almost driven to the brink of insanity.

But then she has a nap and wakes up cooing like a little dove so as to make me forget her whiny ways and fall madly in love with her again. It's a nasty little trick, really. It's just lucky for her that it works.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy for Mae and her new rolling over thing. It's just that it's awfully inconvenient for me.

Now that she's had a taste of mobility, she's hooked. She refuses to lie passively on her back and play anymore. And she's not even happy to stop at rolling over. Once she's over, she wants to move forward, except she can't (yet), and so she gets mad at the universe and everyone in it. She makes these loud, irritating grunting noises. And if I flip her over onto her back again, she gets even angrier and cries in frustration.

The only time she's really content lately is when she's sitting up. Except that she can't sit up on her own (yet), so one of us has to hold her. Which'd be fine (I love holding her), but it makes it so much harder to, say, wash the dishes, or clean up, or make lunch, or have a quick shower or read a bit of a book - all of which I used to be able to do while she played nearby.

I'm tempted to say that I can't wait until she can sit up on her own, or crawl... except I can see already that these things will bring their own set of complications. Since we got back from Sudbury, I keep looking around in wonder and thinking "How have I never noticed before that our house is a giant death trap??"

Like, just this morning, I put her down on some blankets on the bathroom floor with her toys while I showered (which is what I always do). And she rolled over (which I expected her to do) and came about three inches from banging her perfect head on the trecherously point corner at the bottom of the vanity (which, I swear, wasn't there last week).

Just when I was really starting to get the hang of looking after her, too. Thing have definitely taken a turn around here...

Mae is a rolling expert now. As of today, there's just no stopping her. She could roll all the way to China if she decided to. Half the time I've been cheering her on saying, "Look at you go!" and the other half of the time I almost plead with her, "Don't roll too far away, ducky. I'll miss you."

We're in Sudbury this week, visiting my dad and stepmom. They're head over heels in love with Mae. My dad lies right down on the playmat with her so she can pull his hair and my stepmother takes her for walks around the house and tells her which magazines are good to read and about how they'll go shopping together one day. They both love listening to her babble away in baby language and bragging to anybody who will listen about what a good baby she is.

The only problem is that Mae and I are really missing her dad/my husband. It's deeply weird being away from him for so long. I've been sending him photos and updates about what we've been up to, but I know it's totally inadequate. And, actually, it might somehow be worse than no updates at all. I keep thinking how I'd feel if he were with Mae and I was alone, reading about how she was rolling over. I know I'd cry and cry.

When Mae was first born, our neighbour asked us both what the most unexpected thing about her birth was. I think I said something at the time about how I already couldn't picture life without her, but I've been thinking about it since then, and I've finally got my real and final answer.

I was fully expecting to adore her... but what I didn't know was how her arrival would make me fall even more in love with my husband. It's so insanely attractive watching him play drums on a pie plate because it makes her smile, or reading her Mister Brown Can Moo. Those first nights, he camped out in our hospital room on the world's dodgiest looking cot, coming straight from work and wearing the same clothes three days in a row, barely sleeping, hardly eating. Thankfully, he changes his clothes and eats now, but what hasn't changed is that he's still taking care of us any way he can. His devotion to us, but especially to his daughter, makes me feel all melty. I'm not saying I had any doubts before... but just that now I'm about a million percent certain that I married the right guy.

So, even though it's nice to spend a week at home, I don't think Mae and I will be planning any more trips without her daddy for awhile. He's already missed way too many rolls over, and it just makes all three of us feel lonely.

Or - at least - it's the best age yet . Mae is so much sturdier than she used to be. She can sit on your lap now for half an hour at a time, and her neck control is awesome. You can lift her right up in the air - 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blastoff - when singing the song about going to the moon.

She even rolled over (back to front this time)on New Year's day. And then there's also the fact that she's lovely and babbly, and, when she finds something hillarious (like her mobile, or her daddy)she laughs, bobbing her whole body back and forth; the same motion as a seal clapping its flippers.

Our best friend, Jum, who took care of us in the hospital, is here for the week. It's so great. At first, Mae was a bit shy with her, but within a few hours, she had clearly remembered Jum and the time they spent together, rocking in the chair and talking about philosophy, food, fashion and celebrity gossip while I slept.

Officially, Jum is Mae's legal guardian in the event that anything ever happens to me and my husband... but I like to think of her more as a godmother, only without the God part. So more like a fairy godmother, really, but without the puffy dress or preachy morals. Really, more like a bad-assed fairy godmother with good fashion.

She's been coaching Mae on how to misbehave all week. "When you get a bit older, and your mother isn't looking," I'll hear her say, leaning over Mae on the playmat "you can eat jellybeans for breakfast." Mae and I don't want her to go back to New York. We're considering hiding her suitcase.

This is the first time Jum's seen Mae since she was a few days old, and she's amazed at the changes, too. Really, she just seems so grown up compared to those days in the hospital. It feels like millenniums ago to me. I keep catching myself saying things like "When Mae was little, she used to have so much hair," or "When Mae was little, she used to sleep at restaurants so well," or "When Mae was little... fill in the blank." And then the person I'm talking to will laugh at me, and it'll take me a second to figure out why.

Not that it wasn't joyous and magical and full of chocolate, because it was. But it was also kind of exhausting, and I'll be glad to have real life back starting tomorrow.

Mae took her first road trip (to see her Grandma in Ottawa - normally a 5 hour drive, which turned into 7 with all the stops for feeding, etc.); met about a gillion relatives and family friends who wanted to hold her, and coo at her and have their photo taken with her; and received more board books and rattly toys than our house can comfortably hold. All in all, it was a success. She was chatty and lovely and even put up with being dressed in this dumb, itchy santa dress and feathery "baby's first Christmas" hat my mother in law bought her (at least for the 15 minutes it took to have her photo taken).

If I had to choose a favourite first-Christmas moment though, it'd definitely be watching my father in law hold Mae at the dinner table.

To put it in context, exactly a year to the day, we were sitting at that same dinner table when I said I'd pass on dessert (a nauseating rum-soaked triffle) and my mother in law asked me, point blank, if I was pregnant. We'd just found out ourselves two days earlier, and we weren't exactly ready to have her alert the network, but I couldn't lie to her face either.

While everybody else squealed and congratulated us, my father in law turned bright red and rested his head in his hands like the weight of the news was too much for him. Then he made some comments to the effect that being a grandfather would make him officially old. Then he dissapeared into his basement office for a long time. It wasn't exactly the reaction we'd been hoping for.

But this year, he came over and lifted Mae off my lap, then sat, bouncing her on his knee and talking to her while he finished his turkey. "She's a smart one," he said, and told some family friends how they'd watched a hockey game together and she'd tracked the puck with her eyes the entire time. "So alert. Good kid." And then he talked to her in a voice like a duck, which made her smile, which made him smile, which made me feel all Christmassy inside.