Yarden and Grammy eating matzo ball soup at the 2010 Seder at Margie's and David's. 
Yarden chillin' while watching Red Sox v. Yankees March 6, 2010.
Yarden watching Red Sox v. Yankees March 4, 2010. She learned to say "Boo Yankees."
Mommy was going on a trip and Yarden said goodbye.
We bought and kept hiding about 4 Easter eggs. She didn't care. She can put on the "red shoes" all by herself. 
A rare time when she lets James ride on back.
Can you mourn a fictional character? A lot of people cried during the last episode of "M.A.S.H." and/or "Cheers" (cough-cough Grammy cough-cough). Does it matter if the actor playing the character is unaware that she is playing a part? Yarden has several alter egos: Upside-Down Baby, Naked Baby, Baby On-My-Head, Lumpy Couch, Snuggle Bunny, etc. But if she were a super hero her name would be Danger Baby - the Baby Without Fear. Ready to climb tall furniture in the turn of a back. Willing to leap off of changing tables whether or not the anyone is ready to catch her. Able to strip from the waist down and pee in the middle of Target in the time it takes to reach an item on the top shelf (true story).
I know fearlessness not an unusual trait in small children but it's one that really reminds me of my (younger) self and so I find it fascinating to the point that it doesn't occur to me until later "That could have turned out VERY differently." Then I think I must have the superpower of extra fast reflexes because I always manage to catch her. But if we are both super heroes then are we a team? Are we on opposite sides? Is she my sidekick, or am I hers? And how does Oso fit into all of this? And because I'm thinking this while cooking I usually drop a lemon or a knife on/near my foot and my fantasy disappears faster than The Flash.
But on to the point: I think Danger Baby has lost her supernatural powers. On Wednesday Yarden had managed to open the can of uncooked oatmeal and shoved a couple of handfuls in her mouth. I got the vacuum to clean her up she freaked out. I didn't think too much about it until the next morning. The street the daycare place is on can be a little busy and like every other parent with a two door car and I have to multitask getting my (fearless) child out along with her lunch and extra clothes while also keeping her from running away. Solution? Putting her on top of my car and that seemed like a good idea. It would keep her near me, away from speeding cars, and contained - right? Yes, but... when I came back out of the car with all of her stuff she was freaking out again. She didn't want to be up there, but she didn't want to jump off. She was panicked.
So what does a super hero do once she loses superpowers? Usually it's replaced with something new. In the running right now are yoga and gardening. Her after school caretaker has a roommate who will sometimes do yoga with her, but that may just be because she's offered bindi sticker dots to put on her forehead. Gardening is a natural fit since it involves playing with water and getting dirty. I just have to keep her from drinking from watering cans that contain fertilizer. I've heard that for small children it can cause them to mutate into half human, half plant creatures that don't eat bacon - essentially a Yankees' fan.
Yarden's language skills are continuing to grow. She is trying to learn the difference between "Daddy's beard" and "Daddy's beer." She has picked up a couple of things from the new daycare for better or worse. On the upside she is clearly making words plural intentionally, such as "dog" vs. "dogs," or "boob" vs. "boobs,"; and on the down side she has picked up a penchant for declarative sentences like "Daddy sit down!," (which usually includes a push); "Give me that!,"(which includes a pointing gesture); and "I want beard." (or "beer" - I'm not sure).
The outstanding highlight of the week was this morning. It started with the incomparable and delightful sound of Yarden singing to herself in her room. Aliyah and I quietly crept down the hall to peek in on her. She caught us and smiled that really awesome kind of smile that happens when she sees Aliyah or I and that lights up a room... and then she stood up. That was when we noticed she was not wearing her pajama bottoms. Or a diaper. And then we saw there was a lot of poop in places that poop should never be: on the sheets, on her hands, on Purple Monkey, and there was a vaguely cute poop-outline of her butt on the headboard.
We know this is not a very exclusive club. (My parents have a favorite story about me painting the walls by swinging a full diaper over my head like a lasso; I love the Delvecchio's story about Lina being very tidy about the way she soiled her own bed.) Somehow we have to get Yarden to understand not to do it again, and probably to agree to use the potty before going to bed. It’s not an insurmountable challenge but Sleepy Yarden is the wildcard version of Yarden, and because of her pedigree if she doesn’t want to do it then there is no amount of dog and monkey stickers will convince her otherwise. Maybe we’ll just get her some union-suit-style pajamas until we figure this out.
We didn’t need any coffee that morning; the thrill of cleaning it all up was enough. And the clean up lead to Yarden’s new favorite activity: washing hands. It is difficult to understate Yarden’s enthusiasm for washing hands. We have to lock her out of the bathroom. Yarden's obsessive hand washing would test a grandparent's patience. It's a problem most parents would like to have, but the other edge of that sword is it goes hand in hand with the new streak of not listening to direct instructions. I think she's been punished more for that than anything else recently, (and, interestingly, the more she is punished the more she is affectionate; this has been one of her most affectionate weeks and I'm not sure how I feel about how that bodes for her future but right now I can only roll with it) and by "punished" I mean she has to sit in a toddler-sized chair until I get bored of watching her sit or I have taken enough deep cleansing breaths that I remember she's not even two yet and she's not doing whatever it was too purposely make me angry (and by angry I mean makes me see bright red spots and get so tense it feels like my head is literally going to pop off of my neck).
It's really more of a time out for me.
The defiance has created an somewhat-but-not-really-irrational fear in me that she will somehow burn herself. Of course she could burn herself; that part's not irrational. In fact she has. She touched the ultra-modern built-in wall heater last week. (She's fine. It's the best technology the 1930s has to offer.)
My fear is more of a horrific "Tom and Jerry"/Vietnam napalm carpet-bombing charred-to-a-jet-black-cinder fear. I haven't gotten much sleep for a couple of weeks because of a reoccurring dream. In the dream I am sleeping and Yarden has her back to me. I smell smoke. I realize she has gotten a hold of matches and is lighting them one at a time. I yell at her to stop but she keeps lighting the matches. Usually I wake up when I'm walking across room trying to stop her.
What does this mean? It means that it only took 22 months of parenthood for me finally go crackers. I'd love to hear other parents' reoccurring nightmares so feel free to share in the comments section.
Yarden's language skills and hygiene skills happen to be developing at the same time, which often leads to one of two conversations.
Mommy: Yarden, are you ready to go to the the party?
[takes off pants]
Yarden: My pod-dee?
Mommy: No, Sofie's party. We're going to see Sofie.
[takes off diaper]
Yarden: My pod-dee!
Mommy: Yarden, put your clothes back on. We have to go.
[half naked toddler runs away]
Yarden: My pod-dee!
OR
Mommy: Yarden, do you have to go potty?
Yarden: (singing) Happy burt-day to you.
Mommy: Thank you, not it's not my birthday. Do you have to go potty?
Yarden: Happy burt-day mommy!
Mommy: It's not my birthday. Do you have to go potty?
Yarden: My burt-day pod-dee?
Mommy: Not a birthday party. Just potty. Do you have to go potty?
Yarden: My burt-day! My burt-day!
[Yarden blows out imaginary candles, then gets half naked and runs away]
Both conversations usually result in some kind of present. I'll spare everyone the sticky details, but Aliyah and I have come to understand that having a child who is marginally more independent requires both more and less supervision. Our favorite event so far is the time Yarden asked Aliyah for a sticker (we are bribing her with monkey and dog stickers for every time she uses the potty). Now Yarden still had her pants and diaper on (for once) so Aliyah was dubious that Yarden had earned a sticker, but she agreed to check anyway and mysteriously there was some golden fluid in the potty. It turned out Yarden had taken her apple juice poured some in there.
There's other hygiene-language comedy going on. We're trying to get her to understand that while she is technically correct "wipe your mouth" does not mean she should shove the napkin inside her mouth and scrub down her tongue. This is usually preceeded by Yarden asking for one of the lingering jars of baby food, which she calls "apple sauce." Old MacDonald apparently only has ducks on his farm. She finally outwitted us and peed on the couch. Actually that last one wasn't funny.
This year Aliyah’s brother and his wife, Josiah and Felicia, bought a house in Denver and to celebrate they offered to host Thanksgiving. Flying 3 hours with a 25 pound kicking baby is about five hundred times better than 6 hours of the same so we agreed, and because my parents and Aliyah’s parents will go wherever their grandchildren are we knew we’d see them too.
They day started off a little roughly - we missed our flight by about 4 minutes, briefly considered driving there (16 hours), and Yarden barfed up about a pound of string cheese into our cupped hands while we were waiting in line to re-book. But if you remain calm it turns out to be very easy to get on a standby flight, even on Thanksgiving, and showing handfuls of cheesy barf really seems to convince other people to hold your place in line, even on Thanksgiving. And on the upside our friend Elisabeth was on our new flight. On the downside someone had a cat on the flight, and my allergies made me nearly blind from breathing 3 hours of recycled cat air.
The flight itself was full but pretty uneventful other than a greater than usual amount of turbulence when landing, which made me think about Rosie Perez’s monologue in “Fearless” so I did my best to split the difference between holding Yarden tightly on my lap and squeezing her until she barfed another pound of cheese.
When we touched down I turned on my phone and surprisingly our house sitter Milwaukee Matt was calling at that exact moment. In the background I could hear the house alarm going off. I hadn’t given him the code, so I told it to him and thought that would be the end of it. Later we found out the following: (1) Aliyah’s phone was defective and needed to be replaced (2) The alarm company will try to call Aliyah if the alarm is triggered (3) If they don’t reach Aliyah, they call the police (4) Police response time on Thanksgiving is really good (5) Officers who have had their turkey dinners interrupted show up with guns drawn (6) Milwaukee Matt has a great sense of humor about being frisked (7) The City does not have a sense of humor about these things and will send you a bill for false alarms.
Felicia, Josiah and their son Jackson have a very nice place in suburban Denver , and they made a really great turkey dinner (and it’s not as easy as you might think find a kosher turkey in Denver ) and the night ended with Yarden and Jackson having a big splashing fight in the bath tub.
Next day we took a trip to Boulder . There is a promenade on Pearl Street . It was a little bit of a cat heard to try and get 8 adults and 2 toddlers all with various bladder strengths to all do the same thing. Eventually I just left everyone at a boulder-themed playground and found a specialty store offering a tasting of local wines. I did a flight of 4 for $3 and bought the last two bottles of chardonnay. We stopped for the world's smallest ice cream cones on the way back to Denver.
That night we left the kids with the grandparents and all the parents went out to bar called City Grill. They boast the best burgers in Denver , and they might be right but they were no Umami Burger. Josiah kicked ass in darts, I put some Def Leopard on the jukebox and discovered that my pool skills have not improved by not playing for 10 years, and Aliyah discovered she is a master table-top shuffleboard player.
The next morning my parents, Aliyah, Yarden and I met my cousin and godfather Mike Jr. for breakfast. He lives in the area, but he was in the middle of traveling around so he had to meet us on his way to the airport. It was really good to see him again. He has some work that may bring him to Pasadena next year, so hopefully we will also see him then.
All the men were going to get shaves and haircuts at a specialty barber’s, but they were booked so we went back to my parents’ hotel room to check them out. It was uneventful except for the opportunity to indulge one of Yarden’s constant wants: Ice.
I gave her a big hotel bucket full of ice in the middle of the floor and let her run amok. She’s mostly fascinated by how ice is cold, and her favorite game seemed to be freezing her hand and then warming it up in her mouth, or sometimes my mouth.
The rest of the day was spent preparing a large dinner. Aliyah had found a picture of tenderloin in GQ, and everyone agreed this would be a good plan. At the grocery store there was some confusion over the cut that we wanted so we showed them the picture from the magazine. That same page had the actual recipe on it, so it was kind of a problem later when we couldn’t find it again. Nobody knows where it went, but I suspect that Aliyah dropped it when she caught her hand in the car door. Josiah, being the great bother that he is, took off running for help and came back with about 2 pounds of crushed ice in a plastic shopping bag. Aliyah’s hand was okay, but we never saw the recipe page again and someone wound up buying another copy of the magazine later. Undeterred by possible further hand trauma, Aliyah got up the courage to use a food mandolin again (first time since she cut off the end of her finger 2+ years ago) and put together a sweet potato and leeks dish from memory.
Fortunately our old Simsbury friends the Feldcamps decided to come over and help us eat this enormous meal. They live a little west of Denver . My parents were staying with them that night so after dinner they gave Yarden a big hug and left. Yarden slept in the bed with Bubbie and Grandpa that night, which meant that Bubbie and Grandpa didn’t sleep much, but they still drove us to the airport. first thing in the morning. Yarden sang for us about “Apples and Bananas” and managed to get all the way to “G” in ”The Alphabet Song,” then we flew back to LA and got ready for Monday.
Shhhhh! Mama and Dada are going to be soooo surprised I can write. Don't tell. Now that I'm a big girl I have a few questions that need to be answered: 
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