Third tooth

I mentioned back in November that Isaac had lost his first baby tooth.  Somewhere in there he lost his second, and just this week he lost the third!  He is six and a half years old.

It was dramatically loose for several days, and on Monday night he woke me up at 3:00 a.m. to announce it had fallen out and he couldn't find it!  I shuffled into his bedroom with him, and after I turned on the light he discovered it under his pillow. 

It is the first top tooth he has lost, and it changes the look of his smile rather dramatically:

Good-bye, third baby tooth!

It is also the first tooth he has lost that didn't already have an adult tooth grown in behind it, "shark style" (as the dentist put it).  Maybe you can see that the two adult teeth on the bottom are pretty darn yellow, probably because he was unable to brush them properly for months because they came in before the baby teeth fell out, and were thus blocked by the baby teeth. I'm hoping the dentist can get them cleaned up.  (Note: the teeth are set back in the gum, but are gradually moving forward into their proper place; the left-hand tooth was once as far back as the right-hand tooth, so in time they should both correctly align themselves.)

There is no Tooth Fairy at our house, just like there is no Santa Claus, a tradition taken from Craig's side of the family.  I did write a note to Isaac, which I signed as being "from the Tooth Fairy Mama," and I put it next to his pillow in an envelope containing fifty cents (his suggested price).  I think he got a trip to the toy store to celebrate the loss of the first tooth, and perhaps a dollar for the second tooth.  Some of his classmates told me they get as much as $20 per tooth, but luckily Isaac found that extravagant.  Maybe he'll change his mind by the time he's a fifth-grader losing his last few molars.

Sister and brother

On time

One morning this week Isaac was playing a variety of pretend games while I was getting ready to take him to school. We are almost always on time for school, which doesn't start until 8:45 a.m., but it can be a bit of a rush.

As I was gathering up my things to dash out the door, he asked cheerfully, "What game should we play?"

I said somewhat bitterly that we should play the game of trying to get Isaac to school on time.

His face fell, and he said, "That isn't a game. That's a worrisome chore."

Sleep at one month

When Laurel was one month old, we began tracking her sleep on Trixie Tracker.  We had already been using it for Isaac, but we didn't start with Laurel right away -- infant sleep prior to four weeks of age is so random and fragmented that it just seemed like a waste of time to track Laurel before then.  Now I'm kind of curious, of course, but at the time we were in newborn survival mode.

Anyway, looking at her archived data I see that during that first month of tracking, when she was between four and eight weeks of age, Laurel was awake an average of 11 hours per 24-hour period.  This means she spent 13 hours sleeping.  The sleep was spread out over that 24-hour period, of course, but usually her first stretch of sleep for the "night" (which started at midnight for her!) lasted three to five hours.  At the time I found that uninterrupted stretch of sleep to be amazing and restful, but looking back now it looks a lot like torture.

Here is Laurel's sleep graph from four weeks to eight weeks of age, in descending date order, with blue blocks representing sleep and yellow wakefulness.  (Purple means I tried to get her to sleep, but failed!)  It is arranged from midnight to midnight.  As I mentioned, you can see the longest blue strips start around midnight or 1:00 a.m.

The grayscale graph at the top of the chart represents sleep probability: a pure black strip means she was always asleep during that time of day, while pure white means she was always awake.  She was dependably awake (and cluster-feeding) for hours every evening, starting at 8:00 p.m. and continuing on until she fell asleep around midnight.  You can also see that Laurel had a rudimentary nap schedule: 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., noon, and 2:30 p.m.  (As I recall, I used this information to decide to give Isaac his "quiet playtime" at 2:00, hoping that Laurel would fall asleep at 2:30 so I could grab a brief nap myself.  It was hard to balance the needs of three people.)

Laurel's one-month-old sleep graph displayed from midnight to midnight

I can also display the graph in "overnight" mode, so it shows the 24-hour period starting at 6:00 p.m., which really makes clear Laurel's evening wakeful and sleep periods!  (The "overnight time" in the right-hand column measures sleep between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.)

Laurel's one-month-old sleep graph displayed from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

I'm thinking about newborn sleep, of course, because of my new nephew Jesse.  He turns two weeks old today!  But I haven't seen him since he was three days old.  I wonder how he is sleeping these days.  I hope he is getting ready to follow Laurel's good example!

New (narrow) shoes

Well, I never know what topic is going to inspire my readers to make a comment, but it seems that narrow shoes is one of them, resulting in two comments.  Glad to hear from you guys!

So since there seems to be interest, I thought I would share the results of my search for narrow shoes for three-year-old Laurel.  Her feet are U.S. size toddler eight and a half, which is somewhere between European sizes 24 or 25. 

After failing to find shoes that fit her at Nordstrom and at a local independent children's shoe store, I ordered three pairs of sneakers from Zappos, one pair of sneakers from Piperlime, and three pairs of casual Mary Janes from Zappos.  Hey, free shipping, free returns! 

And we had success with two pairs of shoes!  Both are a U.S. size nine, European size 25, definitely running on the narrow side -- yeah, still a bit too wide, but still comfortable and wearable. 

So what did she get? 

Puma "Cabana Racer" sneakers in heliotrope/raspberry ($31, originally $40)

Twig "Lauren" Mary Janes in silver ($43, originally $56)

To extend value for money I've long been in the habit of buying Isaac's shoes a full size too big*, so it feels wasteful to spend a bunch of money on shoes that basically fit Laurel at the present moment. But I don't see any way around it -- the shoes that were too big for Laurel were also way too wide for her to wear. 

And considering the pair of Pumas she just stopped wearing was a size six, I think she'll be able to squeeze into the nines for a good long time.

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I'm a schizophrenic shopper.  Today Laurel wore a hand-me-down t-shirt (free), a thrift-store sweater ($1.99), thrift store jeans ($1.99), a thrift store coat (free, because my mother bought it for us!), and consignment store boots (but they were brand-new Naturino and cost 15 euros, or about $20).  I don't know why I'm willing to spend so much more money on the kids' shoes than on any other component of their wardrobe.  I always feel that really good shoes can elevate an outfit (said the woman wearing $30 knock-off UGG boots...).  In my mind, good shoes are second only to a good haircut.

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* When I search this blog for "new shoes," I see that I documented Isaac's new shoes for a long time.  I never did that for Laurel, poor second child.  And actually, I haven't blogged about Isaac's shoes for several years.  So shall I tell you that Isaac has two pairs of shoes, too?

Reebok, toddler size 13 and 1/2

Adidas, youth size 1

Puddles

January showers bring February flowers, but now it's March and I'm getting tired of rain.  Especially after we just enjoyed a week of sunny warm days, it's hard to look forward to the upcoming week of rain and highs in the mid-50s.

One nice thing about rain, I guess, is puddles. 

Laurel splashing away (in early February)

Outing

Laurel and I had our special outing today.  Last night my friend Monika suggested we take BART (our Bay Area subway-type-thing) to the Market Hall in Rockridge, a food emporium featuring a farmers' market / bakery / flower stall / butcher / fish market / and so forth.

I thought this was a great idea, more fun than yet another car trip to boring old Whole Foods where Laurel goes on a weekly basis, but when I suggested it to Laurel this morning she insisted upon our original plan.  So that's what we did.

We spent 30 minutes at the drugstore picking up a prescription and looking at toy cars; an hour at Whole Foods having a snack, looking at kids' shampoos, and examining cut flowers and mushrooms; and 30 minutes at Nordrstom shopping for shoes.  Laurel seemed happy with her special thing.

We didn't buy Laurel any shoes, however, because her feet were too narrow for all the sneakers.  She has always had narrow feet, but now they are problematic.  After bringing us all the shoes that tend to run narrow, and concluding that none of them fit properly, the saleswoman actually recommended that I keep Laurel in shoes that were slightly too small! Seriously, her feet measure in length as a size eight and a half, but in width she needs something more like a size six -- and a narrow size six, at that.

The shoes she has been wearing range from size six to size eight.  The skin on the tip of her big toes is finally getting a bit worn, so I know it is time to retire the size sixes, but otherwise the too-small shoes have been working.  Her feet are well-supported and her heels hold firm, which didn't happen with the size nines she tried on in the store.  She slipped so much from side to side that I seriously thought she was going to turn an ankle just walking around the shoe department.

Online I found one lone brand of shoe that manufactures an official "narrow" width for toddlers! So I ordered a pair of casual Mary Janes this afternoon, as well as a pair of Puma sneakers, which tend to run a bit narrow.  Hopefully these options will work.  Otherwise we may have to cut the toes out of her size six sneakers.  Or, at the other extreme, have all her shoes made to order!

Where's my Jesse?

Yesterday my sister Erica texted me an adorable picture of Jesse after his first bath at home.  He was wearing a hooded towel shaped like a shark! 

The day before that, her husband emailed me a photo of Erica pushing Jesse in the stroller, out for his first walk around the block.

But today? Nothing! Where's my Jesse?! He is a week old today, and I expect a picture.

Well, maybe it's more important for the new parents to get some rest. Maybe I will get a picture tomorrow.

Special thing

Laurel usually has preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9:10 to 11:50 a.m. (isn't that random?), but tomorrow her teachers have a staff development day.  So tonight I asked her what "special thing" she would like to do with me tomorrow. 

First she said she wanted to stay home and make another nest (we were pretending to be blue jays this morning), but I suggested we go out instead.  When we stay home together, it is impossible for me to stay focused on her for several hours -- naturally I end up working on a variety of projects simultaneously.  So I gave her a number of options that would take us out of the house: park, play space, museum, zoo, library, hike, store, cafe, and so forth.

She said she wanted to go to a store, and when I asked her what kind, she said, "I want to go to a store with lots of different kinds of food."

"Really?" I asked.  "You want to go to the grocery store?"

Yep.  As her "special thing," she wants to go to the grocery store.  If you know me in real life, you might know that I despise grocery shopping.  In our family, Craig does nearly all of the marketing.  In recent years he has taken both kids to Whole Foods every Saturday morning while I go to painting class, which works out great for everyone.

But it looks like tomorrow I am taking Laurel to Whole Foods.  Maybe we can try to keep it special rather than just buying a week's worth of groceries.  We can have a pastry in the cafe, try some samples in the produce department, check out the crazy variety of bulk goods, smell the scented candles, and stuff like that.

Then I asked her if she wanted to do more shopping while we were in town, and she said yes -- she wanted to shop for shoes.  Together we determined that we would go to Nordstrom and she would try on new sneakers.

"Hm," I said.  "Maybe I can try on a few things while we're there."  She seemed excited by the idea, but we'll see what develops.  Watching one's mother shop for jeans isn't a "special thing" for most three-year-olds.

- - - - -

If we had more time, we could take the ferry across the bay to San Francisco and go to the market at the Ferry Building.  But Isaac's kindergarten only lasts three hours, and I don't think we can get there and back in time.  Anyone have an East Bay suggestion for a fun food-filled shopping experience?  Berkeley Bowl, maybe?

Painting

Ever have a hobby you were crazy about, something that you just couldn't stop?  I have one.  It isn't blogging, although I do try to remain disciplined about this blog -- December marked the completion of six years of TCB, and I'm still going strong with my 12 to 15 posts per month.  (Not as frequent as my mother would like, perhaps, but still not bad.)

No, I'm talking about painting.  I started a painting of my Grandma R. the day after she died, and I am about to go work on it now. 

But my daughter paints, too.  One day at school last week Laurel refused to put down her brush when I came to pick her up.  I have the same experience, except that it's my own bedtime that I miss.

Laurel paints at school