We had a very dramatic “First” tonight: our first projectile puke! (My heartstrings!) Sources close to the victim (aside from Ronin, Nigel and I–not to mention the entire bathroom–were thoroughly doused) disagree as to what might have caused this evening’s mishap but we do agree that the volume of puke was truly fantastic for such a small being. I say it was the bizarre (though inventive) combination of dinner items Joshua fed her that proved to be her undoing. He maintains that the sheer volume of sippy contents + dinner compounded with nursing immediately afterward did her in. We both fervently hope it is not a stomach bug. Poor Ronin had such a surprised look on her face when it happened, then she started to cry pitifully. We chucked Nigel into the tub and peeled off her clothes, then I climbed in with her for a colossal hose-down. I had puke in my ear. Weirdly, she was very quiet and calm after we washed her off and she fell asleep with a mostly empty stomach clutching a stuffed dog (Nigel was out of commission for the evening). I hope she’s okay.

Of course, she puked all over her last pair of clean wintry (yes, we’re back to “wintry” again here in Portland) pajamas and so we had to put her in summer pajamas with sweaters and sweatpants over them. In the end we had a confused (possibly sick) baby with a roiling belly, an hour overdue for bedtime, a wet head, the wrong teddy bear, and a seriously messed up pajama situation. The whole scene was truly pathetic.

So, the plus side of all this is that she is obviously eating enough to puke it up afterward. Who are we to complain, right? (Also, the bathroom is spotless!) Some current–and I hesitate to call them “wins”–are waffles with maple syrup, and a little something Joshua likes to call “Prunerice,” which is (drumroll) Prunes Mixed With Rice. Some day Ronin will bring a guy home with her that she really likes and we’ll all be sitting around talking and I just know something like this will pop into my head and I’ll be unable to control myself. “Guess what Ronin used to eat when she was a little baby?” I’ll say.

And ignoring the eye-daggers continue, “Yup, she even puked it into my ear once.”

Joshua’s dad Jeff finally made it up here to visit; he has been at work (at sea in the Persian Gulf) for the past several months and hadn’t seen Ronin since she was just a little blob.

I wish the weather could have cooperated a little more. We had either bleeding cold with a mean evil wind or rain and dreariness. Every outing we could squeeze in took two tries because we had to retreat back to the house and pile on more clothes.

Jeff took the following photos; this one is of Ronin right after a post-dinner bath.

Ronin usually wakes up from her naps happy and rested. It’s such a stark difference from how it used to be and I love it.

Ronin is getting close to walking. It’s very exciting. Unfortunately (and ironically), this makes actually going out for a walk incredibly difficult. She wants to “walk” herself and we end up holding her fingers all hunched over at an awkward angle, covering only about 1/10th the ground we might normally cover. In her exuberance to go forth, the number of face-plant related injuries have increased. The other day she let go of our hands at a curb and went down, scratched her chin, and split her lip open with those two protruding bottom teeth. It was really sad—she was crying and slobbering bloody slobber all over herself and me and by the time we got to the grocery store, we had to make straight for the water and napkins lest someone call CPS on us and our bloody child.

She also sort of made it through the night without nursing for the first time ever. She normally nurses 2-3 times per night and I was beginning to fear night weaning would never happen. We gingerly try to push the first feeding back if possible in hopes that she would get used to sleeping longer and longer stretches. Of course, in practice, what this means is when she wakes up to eat, instead of nursing her immediately and then all of us going right back to sleep afterward, Joshua goes in and tries to quiet her back to sleep. Almost never has this worked; usually he bounces and rocks a shrieking child until we give up and I nurse her. The other night he went in when she woke to eat and after two solid hours of fussing (but not hysterics) and laying down, crying and bouncing, shushing, singing, rocking, she finally stayed down for good. And then she slept solid until 6:30am! CRAZY. Of course, we didn’t get to sleep until she did (at 1) so we still only got 5ish hours of sleep. But those five hours were all in a row. That makes a huge difference and I woke up actually feeling sort of refreshed. And also like my boobs had been replaced by a couple of leaky rocks.

No repeats so far though. Oh well.

Ronin drives the radio flyer.

Hans and I were eating burgers at The Kennedy School last week and Ronin discovered a delicacy. She would eat bits of my bun and Hans’ fries but refused my tator tots (huh?). Of course, my tater tots were served with ranch dressing but I prefer ketchup. I already know that Ronin doesn’t really like ketchup though so I gave the ranch a try instead. She went nuts and kept jumping up and down screaming “Nana.” After banana, her word for any food she likes. I’m not sure what she calls food which she doesn’t like but she makes herself understood by shaking her head vigorously and trying to smack it out of your hand. She ended up eating the entire ramekin of ranch dressing, minus what she rubbed into her hair of course. Our plan is to trick her into eating veggies by covering them in the stuff. Our first attempt wasn’t entirely successful because she simply licked the dressing off and threw the veggies on the floor.

The other new food breakthrough is soyrizo. She was happily eating applesauce this morning when we started cooking soyrizo and eggs for breakfast burritos. Ronin immediately threw her spoon on the floor and started yelling Nana. I gave her an actual banana but that went on the floor as well. I was ready to give up on breakfast but we decided to try her on the soyrizo anyway. That’s what she wanted! and she ended up eating handfuls of the stuff.

A unnecessarily long video in which Ronin plays with refrigerator magnets (pronounced yoda). We try to discourage her from eating them (with mixed results). You can see that she’s can briefly balance on 2 feet without support. She hasn’t tried to take a step yet, but I expect it to happen soon.

Ronin builds up charge and shows off Roswell (pronounced Bubba). Unfortunately, this is the last we’ll see of Roswell. He crash landed somewhere on the upper floor of IKEA and could not be located. His EPIRB failed to deploy and even the professionals at lost and found were unable help.

Occasionally, Ronin looks around hopefully and asks “bubba?… Bubba?” We are all very sad and just don’t know how to break the news. Mostly we avoid the subject and try to direct her attention to another member of her entourage. Batbear seems kind of lonely too since he and Roswell went hand in hand.

Hopefully he hitched a ride on an outbound EKTORP and is on his way to his home planet.