She wakes up at five, and this is so much better than four, I take pity on her and bring her into bed for a crack-of-dawn snack and a little nap. She nurses on one side, looks up at me and says, "Mo!" as if I might forget, and then nurses on the other side. She sleeps between us until six-ish, when she rolls over, stands up, and says either "Dada!" or "Cheese!" depending on how hungry she is, I suppose. Her version of cheese sounds like "deezh!" or "jeezh!" or sometimes just "deee!" She loves cheese, and gets excited and asks for it whenever she hears a similar word: jeez, she's, peas, please, Jesus, etc.
Her dear Dada gets up with her at six and they do the dishes and clean the kitchen while I sleep in until the luxurious hour of 7:30-ish. Then we all eat breakfast together, and she waves and says "Ba-ba" to her dad. I check my email, she plays, and eventually she realizes that we are inside when we could be outside, and she reminds me that it's time to go "Outh!" She gets her hat, and we head into the back yard, where I rake leaves into piles and she helps me by spreading them around again. I work slightly faster than she does, so it's a net benefit to the yard, and keeps us both happy.
Naptime's around ten, and lasts for a precious thirty minutes. She wakes up and goes instantly from half-asleep and bleary to bright eyed and grinning and asking to see Dada. So we go upstairs to the office and say hi. Once she's changed, we go see friends or go to the park or the market. She loves her friend Ari, and asks to see him at least twice a day: "Ar-ruh? Ar-ruh?" We have lunch, and she eats either almost nothing or an astonishing volume. According to the parenting books, I'm supposed to cultivate an air of detachment about this. It is hard. But her average diet is varied and plentiful, and she gets bigger and heavier all the time, so it's all going well. She loves noodles, apples, rice, bananas, cheese, crackers, carrots, oranges and peas. If nothing else is available, she'll eat green beans, white beans, tomato, bread, egg yolk, vegetable fritters, chicken, and fish. She will spit out avocado every time, along with anything that's too big or too tough for a kid with only two teeth.
The afternoon nap is similarly brief, and at three o'clock is the changing of the guard. I go to my studio, and Dada takes over, and there's generally a trip to the park. At the park, or, in Cleo-ese, "guck! guck!" she climbs up and slides down the slide feet first, on her belly. Her ability to do this all by herself is directly related to the Dada school of park/kid management, i.e.: let 'er alone, she can do it. I admire this approach, but I find myself having to jam my hands into my armpits and hold myself back from hovering when it's my turn at the park.
At six, I come home and it's time for a wash and bed for Cleo. Our current baby-bathing technique is for one parent to shower, the other to hand in a naked, grubby baby, wait five minutes, and then remove and wrap in a towel a wet, clean baby, and bundle her off to be pajama-ed. Inexplicably, she loves this whole process, including being held right under the shower for a good rinse. Well, she tolerates that part. She loves everything else, especially the towel.
The current bedtime story list has grown: we're now up to (in strict order) Miss Mary Mack, Mr Brown Can Moo, The Little Book of Hugs, Yummy Yucky, and Goodnight Moon. Each of these has its own favorite phrase or page or illustration, and there is a lot of pointing and conversation and turning back and forth of pages.
Once sleep is firmly established (I've Been Working on the Railroad), it's time for grown-up dinner. This meal has been drifting downwards in quality recently, and hopefully we hit bottom the other night with frozen fish, frozen peas and carrots, and rice. But that's another story.
