[The toothbrush is one of her favorite things and we can’t make it out of the bathroom with her without letting her have it to chew on.]

Ronin’s personality continues to emerge like a some kind of 5-ton backloader trashing its way through a brick wall. She is very verbal and all sign language she had picked up initially has been abandoned in favor of words. Loud words. She has a large vocabulary of nouns but still lacks the muscular development to actually pronounce them. The three of us are the only living scholars of Roninese on the entire planet. We go to the park and she’s all about the DZEE (tree) and HOU (house) and DA (dog) and DU (duck) and in the past couple of days, she’s started to say “HI” to people we pass in the street. They are always like, “Did… did that baby just say ‘hi’ to me?” I was pretty shocked the first time she did it too. We can ask her things like, “What does the kitty-cat say?” and she’ll answer, “maw maw,” or “What does the chicken do?” and she’ll say, “bok bok.” “What does the mama say when she stubs her toe?” …

Also, she has started screaming at last. It’s not fun. I don’t know whether to ignore it and hope it’ll go away or what.

[I built up quite a freezer supply of expressed milk just in case. Turns out Ronin refused to drink it unless straight from the source. I held onto it until it was way past expired and then finally dumped it down the drain. Ronin had a field day with all the little iceblock-baggies.]

She is a very picky eater. I have no idea how we managed to spawn a picky eater but there you have it. We always assumed it was something the parents did that made the kid reject perfectly tasty food but now I’m convinced it’s a born genetic trait. Mealtimes are a study in patience and perseverance. Textures must be just so and in the right combinations, she will happily eat one thing for a day and then refuse to eat it forever after, she will often not eat more than a single bite all day long until we are sure we’ll go crazy (dropping everything we give her onto the floor instead) then eat fine the next day like nothing was wrong. I’ve gone to great lengths to make her elaborate dishes trying to find something she will eat (she hates quesadillas; what child hates quesadillas? I ask you) and I am dismayed to discover that one of the few things that do it for her are prepared baby foods in a jar, ‘turkey and vegetable’ and ‘winter squash’ flavors only. She won’t touch freshly prepared and pureed squash that I’ve made but she’ll eat this stuff out of a jar. Tragic.

We’ve taken to sneaking foods into her mouth, for example piggy-backing some yogurt (iffy) onto the spoon with applesause (usually a go) or pulling the Ol’ Bait and Switch (waiting until she opens for one thing and then quickly shoveling in a spoonful of food). While it worked the first few times we did it, now she carefully inspects each spoonful of food we try to feed her looking for tricks. She has a unfortunately good memory for such things and presenting her a spoonful of something white, even though we haven’t tried to feed her yogurt in DAYS, results in inspection, rejection, and often the entire meal from there on out is a bust.

She is very particular about her snacks, which she calls ‘nana’ (after banana); we feed her freeze-dried bananas, mangoes, blueberries, and cheerio-like things between “meals.” (The term is used loosely because basically “meals” are one big fat whine-fest where she grouses about everything we put in front of her before rubbing it into her hair or tossing it onto the floor.) However, she’ll eat them in descending order of preference only: bananas first, then blueberries and mango (she likes these the same), and lastly, the cheerios, which she often refuses to eat at all depending upon what day of the week it is.

We went nuts a few weeks ago and bought her a bunch of toys: a wooden shape sorter, a push wagon walker thing that we’ve loaded up with all her stuffed toys, a little bead maze that suction-cups down to our coffee table, and a stuffed polar bear puppet. She has always been extra obsessed with the polar bears in her Baby Beluga book and she totally loves the puppet. I think she thinks he is alive (we named him Nigel). She hugs and hugs him and sleeps cuddled up with him. It’s crazy adorable.

While she pulls up on things and will walk if you hold her hands, she doesn’t really show much desire to set forth on her own. We discovered that if we let go of her hands, she’ll stand there for a few seconds before realizing her predicament and slowly sinking back to a safer sitting stance. I wouldn’t be surprised if she gives it another couple of months before really trying to walk on her own. But then you never know, these things seem to sneak up on you that way.

Someone sent me these pictures anonymously in response to my older posts on trimaran rudder design (1, 2). They show Jim Brown’s skeg rudder design for the Searunner 31. This is the best design for offshore. It allows the boat to navigate at it’s shallowest draft and the rudder is always protected by the minikeel. Also, the unbalanced design will improve tracking, especially when surfing down steep waves at high speed (at the cost of reduced maneuverability at low speed).

We had a couple of white knuckle rides during which I was wishing for a rudder like this. Once when we sledding down 30 foot swells north of Punta Baja (often approaching 16 kts). I also blame the broach we experienced entering Bahia del Sol on our rudder.

Also, note the trim tab on the trailing edge. This is part of a self steering wind vane system. A small force applied to the trim tab by a wind vane or tiller master is amplified (by the passing water) into the larger force needed to deflect the main rudder (in the opposite deflection).

Persons unknown were brave enough (or stupid enough) to step out onto the thin ice of Lauralhurst pond.

Ronin was feeling better the next day (at least, when she was doped up on baby acetaminophen) so I decided to make birthday cupcakes while letting her ransack the plastic container drawer.

She has been in a food-throwing mood lately and so getting her to actually calm and taste the thing before automatically sweeping it onto the floor was complicated. We managed to get a little swipe of frosting on her lips while she was thrashing back and forth and eventually a few teeny bits managed to work their way into her mouth for her to taste. She promptly dropped the tantrum and focused her attentions on the cupcake in front of her.

Basically she ate the frosting off of it, gave the muffin below a few pokes with her index finger and then fell apart.

There you have it folks: A child who will not even eat cake.

We’re just back from the pediatrician. She got a bunch of vaccinations and it was horrible. By far the worst round of vaccines yet. Ronin was sobbing convulsively and I’m still a mess although Ro is now sacked out and hopefully will sleep well tonight. I’m trying to recover with wine.

ANYWAY. I had a post prepared this morning, when times were more innocent and carefree.

My mom always calls me on my birthday and tells me the story of my birth (“Then you came out and you were LAVENDER!”) so perhaps I should continue the tradition.

This time last year I was a total mess after staying awake all night long counting out contractions and attempting to go to the bathroom. And THEN, I couldn’t pee at all and it hurt SO BAD! So we went to the hospital and an hour later you were born! HOORAY! You were covered with slime and screaming your misshapen head off and yet you were SO CUTE. Your dad got to hold you and you immediately peed all over him. A couple hours later you finally cracked an eye and gave him a look that said, “I will cut you.” We were pretty sure we had chosen the perfect name for you, little baby Ronin.

She’s been blowing through the milestones and I’ve been neglecting my duties cataloging them here. She moves like lightning and babbles nonstop. Some of the things she says are REAL WORDS. Confusingly, there are a lot of words in our little world that start with the letter B. Book bird block ball bunny Batbear box big blue butterfly bowl bug bead… Ronin refers to the majority of these as “ba,” with the exception of Batbear, who she calls “Dat-da.”

She shows preferences for certain toys. Her favorites are a tiny little bear in a purple superbat outfit (“Batbear;” thanks Jeff!), a neon green alien being (“Roswell;” thanks Chris & Kevin!), and Throttle the turtle (handmade by Ilana!), who we’re all familiar with. She calls them Dat-da, Bubba, and DAY (said in a high pitched sing-song voice).

The learning words thing is pretty far out. She gets very intense and singularly focused when you mention one of the words she is big on (see Yoda) and when she’s pitching a fit over something or another, I can usually say something like, “Ronin, go get a BOOK!” She shuts right up, her eyes get huge, her mouth goes into a little O shape, and she starts shouting, “Bu! Bu!” charging across the room to pull them all off the shelf. Another fun game is to recite one of her books and watch the gears crank. She’ll go over to the shelf, get the right book and bring it to you, crab-crawling across the floor with the book in one hand.

Stat-wise, she’s right in line with length (29.5in), head circ. (17in), but her weight has dropped sharply as far as percentages go. She’s 18lbs 9oz, which is only about a pound and a half more than what she weighed at six months. She’s so much taller but she’s stretched out of her baby fat stores. Next up: peanut butter and butter sandwiches with a hearty whipped cream chaser.

We continue to offer her the hated solid foods. The only foods Ronin likes lately are cheerio-like cereal pieces, cheese, dried banana chips, Turkey Vegetable puree (a jarred baby food flavor and in my opinion, totally vile), and anything sweet and sugary, like marshmallows. Joshua discovered the marshmallow at Whole Foods the other day, much to my dismay. We are not feeding her marshmallows (yes, I am the un-fun mother).

[Ronin, by the way, LOVES dogs. If “hot” was her first word, “dog” was definitely her second. Cody, Michelle’s dog, was surprisingly lax about having a shrieking monkey underfoot.]

She has about a hundred teeth coming in. Ghostly white lumps moving at a glacial pace. She has one finally about to break the surface and she’s been quite beside herself these past couple of days with the pain and irritation, sleeping fitfully and biting everything in front of her. Not only bites it but assaults it with her face. Sometimes things are soft (the edge of the bed) and sometimes they are hard (the edge of the coffee table). Not surprisingly, she has a cut and a fat lip from botched attacks on various furniture in the apartment. We’ve been giving her chunks of raw carrot to gnaw on. She teethes on the carrot chunk and we like to think that she manages to ingest a carrot molecule here and there but mostly she just spits the bits out onto your shirt.

We’re pretty much obsessed with her. I’m emotional already so I’ll just stop here before I get all mucousy and can’t taste my wine anymore. We love you little monkey. I hope you feel better tomorrow and we’ll all eat cake. With marshmallows.