The Life and Times of Baby Gordon

The first potty

Tonight, Maddie peed in the potty for the first time!

She's been sitting on the potty for longer and longer periods lately. This weekend she hunkered down with a pile of books, but nothing happened. We bought her a Karen Katz flap book about going in the potty, and she's been concentrating on it really hard whenever I read it to her. She definitely got the idea ... but nothing was happening yet.

Tonight after she got out of the tub she went straight for the potty, lifted the lid and sat down. "Book!" she demanded, so I left her there to go to the living room to get a pile of books for her. A few seconds later she came running down the hall, naked and flapping her arms, visibly worked up.

We went back into the bathroom and checked it out. Sure enough, there was some pee-pee in the potty! She was very proud. We hugged her and made a big deal out of it. Then she got to participate in the aftermath routine ... the wiping, dumping, flushing, rinsing.

I guess I'm going to need to read up on potty training -- I didn't think it was going to happen so fast!

Three tales of Maddie

Maddie is doing so many cute things these days that I simply need to be more on top of updating the blog. A couple of priceless moments from the past couple of days:

Let's do lunch
Last night was a cool, windy evening (typical of the Bay Area in summer), so we went for Chinese food and then took a long walk to this new ice cream place Andrew's been reading about. We decided to forgo the stroller and let Maddie walk/run the several blocks to the ice cream place.

It was getting pretty dark (Maddie took a late nap yesterday and was up way past her bedtime) on the way back from ice cream, and Maddie was having fun looking in all the windows as we walked. At one point we passed a restaurant where a lot of people were still dining. Maddie exclaimed loudly: "People eating lunch!"

"Hey Stacey!"
Also during the walk, we stopped at a busy street corner with a long light and stood waiting to cross. A restaurant I really like is on the same corner, and I wandered away from Maddie and Andrew to peek at the menu in the window. I heard Maddie calling me -- "Mama! Mama look!" -- and admittedly was ignoring her ... so she shouted "STACEY!" When we tested her later, we found out she also knows to point to Daddy when asked where "Andrew" is.

An elephant never forgets
About four weeks ago, Maddie and I joined Caroline and Eli (Maddie's buddy from Italy) for lunch at Rick & Ann's in Berkeley. The Savages were visiting California for a few weeks and Maddie had been clamoring to see Eli again. After lunch, as we walked back to our cars, a man walking behind us on the street spotted Eli's beloved blue bear that Caroline was carrying in her arms. "I see you have a Gund bear there," he said.

Caroline nodded and commented how it's hard to find similar bears like that these days. The man replied, "I could refresh that for you if you want to follow me to my car."

It was a strange comment (a little "Want some candy little girl?"), and we hesitated as the man walked past us. "Uh. Why?" Caroline asked.

"Because I'm the local Gund rep," the man said.

Sure enough, his car was parked around the corner, and in the back was an entire box of Gund stuffed animals and dolls. He got out a stuffed monkey for Eli, and a beautiful doll wearing a purple corduroy jacket and pink stockings, which matched Maddie's purple and pink outfit to a tee.

We were so grateful -- it was such a kind gesture, even if it had been a little suspicious as first. But after the man drove away and Caroline and Eli walked to their car, Maddie watched Eli depart with his new toy and complained: "Monkey? Monkey?" She wasn't interested in the doll much; she was aware that Eli had a monkey that was much cooler.

The doll, like many of Maddie's toys, took a little hiatus for a few weeks (I think she was inside the tent). This morning, when Maddie was starting to get tired and whiny, I noticed that the purple and pink doll baby was sitting in Maddie's doll stroller, so I grabbed her and handed her to Maddie to hold on the changing table.

Maddie took one look at the doll and said, "Eli: monkey! Mannie: doll!" She got one glimpse of that Gund monkey four weeks ago and still remembers it whenever she sees the doll. We returned home after being out for a few hours this afternoon, and again when she saw the doll she said, "Eli. Monkey!"

I wonder if this is going to be one of those things that comes out in therapy one day when she's an adult.

Guitar hero

Before Andrew and I knew each other, he was trying to learn guitar. He owns both an acoustic and an electric guitar and used to take lessons. Then I came along and he got a little distracted, to say the least.

After we got a little water in our basement over the winter, we moved the guitars upstairs and under the bed in our bedroom. A couple of months ago, trying to keep Maddie entertained one afternoon, Andrew pulled them out and started showing them to her. They're horribly out of tune, and all the sheet music is stored away someplace so he can't play any songs. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, Maddie was 100% fascinated.

Now whenever she remembers them, she demands that Andrew pull out the "tar." Yesterday, about a half hour before bedtime, Maddie and I were reading a Dora the Explorer book called When I Grow Up, featuring scenes of different things Dora and her friends want to be (firefighters, teachers, archaeologists). In one scene, Dora was on a dude ranch. We looked at the horses, the cows, the cacti, the turtles. Then Maddie noticed that Dora was sitting by the campfire playing a guitar.

She immediately leaped off the couch and headed into the bedroom (where Andrew was resting), chanting "Daddy. Tar. Daddy! Tar! Tar!" With this kid, there's no putting her off; once her mind is made up, that's it. So Daddy dragged out the "tar." I recently found his electric tuner and replaced the battery, and he began to tune it while Maddie helped. In the meantime, Maddie discovered the pitch pipe in the guitar case and learned how to blow into it.

I always wonder if we'll look back someday, when Maddie chooses her calling in life, and remember moments like these -- her early fascination with the guitar that led her to choose music as a career, maybe. Of course, I also believe she's going to have a future in gymnastics: the other day I laid out a bunch of tiny wooden blocks all in a row, and she grabbed my hand, hoisted herself up on them with one foot, and put one foot in front of the other as she walked across them like a balance beam!