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.

Ronin often refuses the spoon. Last weekend, I just gave up and let her do it herself. Maybe that’s all she wanted. Unfortunately, it’s pretty messy.

Ronin inherits her mother’s obsession with Star Wars characters. It has occurred to us that it will relatively easy to arrange for it to be her first movie as well.

Sometimes, when Ronin is extra fussy I like get all Micheal Jackson on her and dangle her out the window. She calms right down. Hopefully she’s thinking “Ahhh, fresh air…. Ooooh look at the trees” and not simply comatose with fear. The tracks are from touching her feet in the snow while trying to teach her “cold.” It’s not working. Maybe because she can’t make any of those sounds and it’s impossible to do the sign while I’m holding her over the ledge.

“Hot” she has down, or at least she knows that it has something to do with the things on the stove. This might be her first verbal word where it’s clear that she is attaching the right meaning to it. Probably due to lots of repetition during the making of the morning coffee.

Her other word is dog which comes out with only a hint of the g. She has always liked to watch the dogs in the park, but it was bumped up a notch after her encounter with Charlotte. Who introduced herself with an enthusiastic lick to the face. Ronin was stunned into silence. The second kiss made her cry and Charlotte was banished to the bedroom.

It must have stuck in her mind though because she took it more or less in stride when Cody did the same thing a few days later. We expected Cody to stay well clear of Ronin but they turned out to be friends. The only tension occurred around the table when Cody seemed to think she might be competition for table scraps. And she might be. Even though she’s usually indifferent to food, put her in a room with a dog dish and she goes right for it and stuffs her mouth with little greasy nuggets.

I think we’re staying in for Christmas. We’d need chains (and a shovel) to even leave our parking spot. We haven’t tried too hard to buy any but I suspect that every place in Portland is sold out of chains anyway.

Ro poses with a neighbor’s snowman. We have around six inches of snow with a hard frozen crust on the top. It started snowing again about an hour ago and is coming down pretty steadily and piling up again. I don’t think we could move our car if we tried. Mostly because if we were to manage to get past the frozen-shut doors, we would discover that the emergency brake is frozen in place (oops).

We walked to Laurelhurst park and watched the kids sledding down the hills. Ronin was pretty fascinated with the kids and dogs but was very suddenly done with the cold and we beat a hasty retreat. It’s hard to play with her in the snow because she doesn’t have the presence of mind to keep her clothes in place and would get cold way too fast.

* WARNING! * Grandparents: NOT a video of Ronin.