Allow me to recount to you the most blah day in Olive Jame's short life thus far, a day I found markedly pleasant, enjoyable, and gratifying. Judging by her demeanor, she did not.
Olive awoke as usual at 8am on the dot. We climbed out of bed and shuffled to the stove to prepare my first cup of Dynamite Daymaker Coffee, but before I could even get the drippy thing onto the mug she was already rubbing her eyes and ready for her morning nap. We shuffled back into bed and she was back asleep before I could even read my favorite book to her, the one that anthropomorphises the edamame bean. So I got to lie there with her and drink my coffee and read my novel, which is a great start to any morning.
I won't go on in such detail, because there is really no need. Olive had very little zest or enthusiasm for our agenda today, no zeal. She slumped in the swing at the park, traveling back and forth and back and forth, the very picture of passivity. She endured her time in the grass and grudgingly reached out to touch a purple blossoming branch. When the applesauce arrived, hovering in front of her mouth on its special wooden spoon, she appeared downright offended.
No, today was not a day for revelry. Only once did she really perk up, when a box from her honorary uncle Andrew and honorary aunt Jillian arrived from Seattle, filled with surprises for her upcoming 0.5 year birthday. She was captivated and delighted by the wobbly musical penguin, content to lie on her nursery floor and bat it this way and that for over twenty minutes. "Spheniscidae!" I told her, after ten minutes was up and I decided it was time to enrich. It's important to always be teaching. "Of the order Sphenisciformes!
"Can you say Sphenisciformes?"
Either she couldn't, or she just wouldn't. It was that kind of day.
Olive did not enjoy the sunny walk around downtown in her Mei Tei Carrier, nor was she thrilled by the bookstore (that old place) when we ducked in to pick up a cookbook I'd recently ordered. When a windstorm swirled up around us and lifted my dress practically to my shoulder blades, she didn't bother to react.
My daughter ate with gusto today, as she always does. Not the applesauce or the proffered avocado blob, although I did manage to drip a drop of sour kraut juice into her mouth- what a victory for mom! - but she ate at the breast as she always does, a ravenous and dear little piglet, fascinating and endearing. At this moment in history, even though I went out and found her the world's most special wooden spoon, Olive does not do solids.
She napped like a champ with her Peter Rabbit clamped under one fin, and woke up with a sweaty head. Olive is A and O x4, as they might say in the world of emergency medicine. She just wasn't super into any of our activities today. I honestly get the feeling she'd rather have stayed home, parked herself on the couch and watched the entire series of Three Wives, One Husband, and hey- I can't fault her for that.
