Whew! Nina is keeping us busy. When not asleep, she is moving moving moving. She’s always been this way - never been a child that likes to sit and snuggle into someone’s lap - but these days, she seems ever more active than ever. She’s walking, and has taken at least 20 steps at once (her record walk was this weekend at Grandma’s, where there is a lot more open space for toddling about and doggie Suzy Q to terrorize). But now walking isn’t enough for her and she’s started trying to RUN. She’ll start toddling around and then see something exciting up ahead (Grandma’s little white dog, for instance), and then the panting starts and the little legs try to move  a little bit faster…and boom! She’s on the ground. Usually it’s butt-first — safe enough — but with the running sometimes she tumbles forward, which gives me a real fright. I try to watch her as closely as I can, but Nina’s “noggin’ knocks” are becoming a regular part of life, and she’s typically got one or two small bruises on her forehead at any time and the occasional cheek-scrape. None of this seems to bother her too much. She’ll cry a bit after a spill but then pretty quickly get over it. I’m amazed, as the kind of falls she takes would leave me sore for a week. We’re trying to baby-proof — we put foam around the fireplace hearth today — but there’s only so much we can do in a small apartment like ours.

In other Nina news, she’s sleeping straight through the night, every night. She goes to be at 7:30 and wakes up at 6. It’s amazing to get a full night’s sleep again! My next goal is to get her to sleep in a bit on the weekends.

And Nina’s favorite toy is the Streetwise Manhattan laminated map. These things are great for babies! It will keep her occupied for 20 minutes or so. Seriously!

Nina took her first steps this weekend. She was holding onto the refrigerator, playing with her magnetic letters, when she suddenly started taking steps away from it. They were teeny, tiny steps. She took about four and then fell on her bottom. She did this several more times that day. Today she seemed a little less inclined to walk without support, but was doing lots of cruising between the coffee table, the chair and the sofa. Dad and Grandma have both seen her walking, so I’m not the only witness.

I don’t have it documented on video, since we’d left our recorder at a friend’s house and just got it back this afternoon. I tried to get her to take some steps for the camera, but she was more interested in trying to open the kitchen cabinets. Nina has also learned how to open drawers, if they’re low enough for her. We MUST babyproof. Although we keep a very close eye on her, so I don’t think she’ll get into anything. We’ve been putting it off, thinking that we will move soon. Although that looks like it may still be a few months away.

I’ll try to capture video of Nina walking soon!

Here’s Nina at almost nine months, rooting for the Hoyas in DC. We visited there over the past weekend, and Nina got to see her first basketball game. She liked it, finding the cheering the most exciting. Nina likes a lot of noise!

Her new trick is waving. She waves in all kinds of ways - with one hand, with two hands, at friends, at herself, the Royal Wave, a full-arm-flapping wave…she has gotten very good at it. I think she’s starting to understand English, as she seems to be able to wave when I ask her to. She’s getting close to walking, and tonight she took several steps using her push-able lion from Jim and Liz. She likes to eat Cheerios but can’t put them in her mouth by herself, yet. She’s also eating spinach, avocado (of course), sweet potato, tofu, flaxseed, yogurt, oatmeal, asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, pears, and a few other foods. Soon I will start her on some meat. At her nine-month doctor visit, I learned that she weighs nearly 22 pounds. I also learned that she can take a shot and not cry. She sat on my lap, flinched a bit when the needle went in, and then seemed perfectly fine once it was done.

One other new development: for the first time, she’s a wee bit wary when she meets strangers. She doesn’t recoil or cry, but she just looks at them very seriously and quizzically. I noticed this first at the doctor, and then again today when a few of John’s comics friends came over. After a few minutes, she gets used to the new folks and starts waving.

I’ve been obsessed with New York City real estate on-and-off for the past few years, as we’ve been shopping for apartments around Brooklyn. As we now struggle with the question of whether to buy or rent in this market - more and more I am thinking we rent until this whole thing shakes out in a year or two - I’ve discovered this guy Jonathan Miller. He’s very clear and insightful. Here he is speaking to some Fox news people on one of their shows. I thought this was an excellent bit, and I like that he addresses what I suspect is going to happen in the Spring: a brief uptick in Manhattan (and I assume also Brooklyn) home sales stats that will make people think this whole thing is over but will really just be seasonality. I think the downturn in home prices in this area will last much longer. I also wonder if there won’t be a reversal or at least a slowing of the gentrification that has boosted prices in the parts of Brooklyn where we’ve been looking. I’m frustrated that, nearly 3 years after moving to New York, we remain in the same lovely but overpriced one-bedroom rental. Sharing a bedroom with a nine-month-old is getting difficult. Just now, at 4 AM, I woke up Nina when I got out of bed to get water and pump, and now I’m waiting for her to stop crying and go back to sleep so that I can get back to bed myself. Can’t we just buy a bigger place already?! Jonathan’s Miller’s insights are helpful as I try to exercise patience. His insights…and the idea that a year or two from now, that Cobble Hill or at least Fort Greene townhouse may actually fall within our price range.

I’m hurtling forward in space and time, alone, and things are out of my control and cold and gray. And my eyes are bulging out of my head, and I’m wearing a bolo tie. And there’s a weird conductor guy interrupting my reverie. And the babysitter is telling me my daughter’s PJ’s are dirty. And someone at work is calling to excoriate me about not being “truly collaborative.”  And a bottle of breastmilk spilled on the floor. And my coffee spilled on the computer. And hyperinflation looms.

Tomorrow surely will be an improvement. Nina is turning nine months. Happy Birthday! She said her first word over the weekend in Washington DC, and it is CAT. And attended her first Georgetown basketball game.

I wish that I had made this for you!

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

In a very odd coincidence, I have stumbled upon this quotation from Henry David Thoreau three times in the past two weeks. A trite phrase, but true. I am working on removing the quiet desperation from my life, little by little. My child helps me with that. Not checking my Blackberry helps (I use it mainly as a watch). Some things I’ve been reading about the Catholic church also help. Drinking helps.

Just kidding re the drinking.

For an incredibly moving depiction of some not-so-quiet desperation, please refer to the movie Snow Angels. Wow…how did this one slip under the radar? Apparently the reviews aren’t that great, which probably explains why it’s such a great movie. It’s directed by David Gordon Green. Nothing like the other movie he put out this year, the so-so Pineapple Express.

It’s an excellent, excellent new Darren Aronofsky movie. We saw it over a week ago and I’m still thinking about it. It doesn’t try to be too much, and it’s quite touching, but not in a corny way. Mickey Rourke is amazing. See it, everybody!

…and we’ve got a crawling, cruising, teeth-cutting spunky lil’ gal! Actually, the teeth cutting is quite new, having started just a couple of days ago. It’s one tooth, on her bottom gum, that feels like it’s coming in, although we can’t really see it. Nina doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, although she’s often feeling the gum with her tongue, which makes her look very cute.

Nina moves constantly. It’s amazing how she can just go and go and go. She follows us around the house on all fours, and then pulls herself to standing on just about everything. She apparently has no fear of falling. Over and over and over she tries, and gradually her balance and coordination is improving. She’s a very headstrong little girl — in more ways than one. She has recently taken to banging her head against the crib in anger when she doesn’t want to go down for a nap, resulting in a few bruises. I discovered this one day when I hid under the covers of our bed to watch her try to put herself to sleep. It was rather shocking, but Nina’s doctor says it’s nothing to worry about. We just have to ignore it, and help her lie down when she’s standing up in the crib, and eventually she’ll stop. Nina is already showing us her strong will. She’s going to be a very feisty little lass, I suspect.

And, she’s sleeping clean through the night! John and I, meanwhile, are not. The slightest peep or rustle from the vicinity of Nina’s crib, and we wake up. I suppose we will outgrow this.

…but I’ve kind of become bored with blogging exclusively about her. She’s healthy and growing (probably weighs over 20 pounds now), doing new, cute stuff everyday and charming most everyone she meets. It’s best followed in pictures, and we have loads of these on our Flickr site. The latest is a video of her standing up in her crib. New developments include clapping, some crawling (although she still prefers the army crawl and — when she really wants to cover a lot of territory — rolling) and trying to pull herself to standing whenever possible.

So, as a new year begins, on to new topics! Such as Cool Stuff I Find on the Web. I was hunting around Google to figure out if the New York Times had written anything about the new Kramers Ergot. I thought maybe they had, given all the attention that’s being paid to graphic novels and comics these days. I didn’t find an article, but I did stumble across the website of an artist named Stef Lenk who does some really beautiful, haunting work (see below). Pretty cool how you can set out looking for one thing and discover something totally different, and better. Oh how I love the Internet! And my new red Dell laptop that I received for Christmas. This is the first time in years that I’ve had my very own computer. It doesn’t belong to a corporation and I don’t share it with anyone else in the family. So I can fix it up and use it in absolutely any way I like. Hooray!