one arm cranking around in a giant circle

 

Today was Gaby's birthday party. There were about 20 children and 30 to 40 grownups. We had it at Rochambeau Playground here in the city. Roughly half of the kids were Annabel's friends or classmates and the other half were Gaby's age.

Gaby spent the first 20 minutes playing by herself on the playground, apparently a warm up period of some sort. She is getting to be a good climber. She is way more aggressive and confident than Annabel was at her age. She's developing balance very quickly and she has come a long way even in the last few weeks. She practically walked up one of those infamous curved jungle gym ladders that I remember as being particularly tricky.



Then she started socializing. She moved between the younger kids and the older kids with ease and probably spent more time with the older kids who seemed to accept her as a peer despite her much less developed verbal skills.

She does find the most amazing ways of communicating non-verbally. She would walk, or sometimes skip from person to person out on the playground saying hello and encouraging them to come join her out on the playground. At one point she hopped past me with one arm cranking around in a giant circle and loudly saying "Yay! Yay! Yay!"

Kristin and I got her a Fisher Price Digital Camera for kids. It's a great product. Both kids were snapping pictures in no time. I downloaded the results just now. They shot 78 pictures. Mixed in with about 60 blurry shots of tables, chairs, car interiors, shoes, and other unidentifiable objects were about 18 pretty good pictures. Here's a link to the good ones:

GabyCam

Here are the ones that I took They aren't much better. :)

Happy Birthday Gaby!

 

Gaby turned two years old today. Her official party is on Sunday, but we had a big cake and small party for her tonight with the family.

She loved every minute of it.

An Experiment In Mainlining Sugar

 

Gaby has really turned a corner recently in her ability to communicate and interact with other kids. Now she plays with Annabel and Annabel's 3-4 year old friends whenever they are around. Although she is younger and smaller, she makes up in enthusiasm everything that she lacks in maturity.

She woke up on Sunday morning in s grumpy mood. When Kristin suggested an egg hunt, she had no interest in the idea. She needed to be carried unwillingly into the hunting grounds before she started to get the thrilling gist of it. Within seconds, she was racing around the living room giggling and trying to get to the eggs before her sister.

As much fun as the hunt turned out to be, it was nothing compared to the discovery a few minutes later that the eggs contained chocolate!

I would put Gaby's candy consumption over the next few hours somewhere between impressive and astonishing. In fact at times it seemed like the holiday was an experiment in the effects of mainlining sugar. Legend would have it that a terrible stomach ache should ensue. I actually hoped that there would be some consequences for that kind of candy intake that could be used as a teachable moment. But no. All that happened is that both girls fell in a sugar coma half-asleep in a daze on the couch at about 6:00pm.

The Abstract Brushwork of Gaby Goldman

Gaby Goldman	Cy Twombly
(Our Refrigerator)	(Musée National d´Art Moderne)

Gaby has started to enjoy painting and she sometimes demands it with a hearty "Paint!" command issued to Kristin or I.

The above is a good example of her recent work. I'm sure this will later be referred to as her scribble period, but even at this early stage, the art critic in me has to commend her on her bold color choice, confident brushwork and excellent use of white space.

Just to prove my point, how different is her work from this Cy Twombly painting which is hanging in the National Gallery in Paris? I think you see what I'm saying.

Here are a few other recent works.