The Zoo and other Weekend Events

Nicholas has had a great weekend! He loved having Joe's parents here. The week we spent on vacation with them has really payed off because Nicholas is so comfortable with them and was very excited to see them. In fact at one point when his grandma was holding him, we asked if he wanted to come to mommy and he shook his head vigorously. Wow!

From 2010 August

I think Nicholas' favorite part of the weekend was our trip to the zoo Saturday morning. We did the African section (which we haven't done in awhile) and just the farm part of the children's zoo (which is his favorite). He was really interested in the big animals this time, but did his normal process for new things: stared intently and seriously, trying to figure them out.

The farm section is where he really started having a blast.

Thanks to riding his rocking horse, he started "riding" as soon as he got on the saddle. (Click on the image below to get video):

From 2010 August

For the first time we went on the mini tractors they have, and Nicholas loved them. Especially crashing! (Click on the image below for a video of the hilarity.)

From 2010 August

And here is a snapshot of the laughter upon crashing:

From 2010 August

We then went to pet the goats. Nicholas likes brushing them more than petting them with his hands, although he invariably holds the brush upside down.

From 2010 August

And of course we had to take a ride on the train while we were there, because neither Joe nor his parents had been on it yet.

From 2010 August

All in all, a delightful weekend!

Dressed for (the Appearance of) Success

Being an academic has many positives and many drawbacks.  We are never away from our work, for example, but at the same time we don't have to dress professionally to go to work during the summer.  This means that for the last three months, when we drop off Nicholas at daycare we're wearing shorts, a polo shirt or t-shirt, and sneakers (or sandals, in Sarah's case).

Does the staff at the center judge us?  Probably not, and if they did, it wouldn't matter (not at these prices, anyway).  But I at least still felt a little pang of slacker-ness when I would drop Nicholas off during the summer, since it looked like I was leaving him at daycare to go spend they day sipping a latte and reading a novel.  I'veis been looking forward to the start of the semester because it means that I will be wearing real grown-up clothes (at least on teaching days).  It's a silly nothing, really, but for some reason I feel better if his teachers think that I'm going off to do Something Important.  Oh well.

What I did not expect was this: I mentioned all of this yesterday to Sarah (it was the first day of the semester), and her response was, "oh yeah, me too!"  Which I guess I should have expected, but it made me feel a little better.  At least I'm not the only one who's crazy (and perhaps a little self-absorbed to think that anyone cares how I dress).

Dr. Daddy

Joe defended his dissertation today, so is now officially known in our house as "Dr. Daddy." Okay, just for today . . . or maybe the weekend.

Nicholas is really excited about this development. Not because he has any understanding of Joe's accomplishment, but because Katie and Alice came up this evening to celebrate with us. And Nicholas really does adore "Allie," as he calls her.

Nicholas is also really excited that his grandparents are coming in for the weekend to help celebrate. Now that he knows they are coming he keeps wanting to go over to their picture on the bookcase.

See, Joe, all those years of work paid off--Nicholas gets fun visitors. ;)

15-month update

I haven't written a monthly update in a long time, but since I also haven't written much of any blog posts of late and today happens to be Nicholas' 15-month birthday, an update post seemed like the way to go.

Nicholas is all toddler now. All remnants of the baby are long gone.

Nicholas walks and runs like a pro. Okay, so he does still fall down, but the way little kids do rather than the way a baby learning to walk does.

He is talking up a storm. His instinct is to use a word to describe what he sees or ask for something. Sometimes we have no idea what the word is he is saying and some of the words he consistently uses bear only passing resemblance to the real word, but he has clearly crossed the line into verbal. I can't begin to list all of his words, but here are a few of the cutest ones:

• nie-nie (night-night)
• bye-bee (bye bye)
• uppy (I want up)
• ommy (Mommy)
• aye-cha (high chair=hungry)
• go-go (stroller)

Nicholas adores daycare, which is good since he spends most of his waking hours there these days. He has started getting up absurdly early and so it is not unusual to have conversations in the morning where Nicholas insists that he wants to go to school but it is still an hour before it opens. I never thought 7:30 would be too late of an opening.

We think he is going through a growth spurt. It hasn't been Invasion of the Body Snatchers like during some previous growth spurts, but he has been hungry constantly. As soon as I get to daycare to pick him up he walks over to the high chairs there. I promise him a snack when we get home. When we get home he insists on a snack while we make dinner, and is upset when I eventually cut him off. He then eats his dinner, we go for a walk, and then before bed he insists on "aye-cha" again, and has to have a snack. He has also been waking up way early (like 5:15) and immediately asks for "aye-cha." This morning he had eaten an adult size bowl of Kix before 6am. I am really hoping that after this spurt ends he'll go back to sleeping.

My one complaint about toddler Nicholas is that he is not very good at obeying rules. He understands what we say and will follow directions about 50% of the time, but he often decides it is a game to do the exact opposite. And he is still throwing food and his cup off his tray at the table, despite our constant efforts for what I think has been close to six months at this point. I know, I know, that will only get worse in the upcoming years.

Nicholas' checkup isn't for a couple weeks, so we'll post stats then.

Wordless Wednesday: Blue Eyes

From 2010 August

Shaking His Head is the New Black

You know how sometimes a trend catches on, and within about a month people are doing it but have no idea why, or what the original connotation of the trend was?  That's Nicholas with shaking his head "no."  He's figured it out in the last few weeks, to the point where it became, for a short time, an effective method of communication.

"Nicholas, do you want more milk?"

[ Vigorous head-shaking. ]

But then he got a little too impressed with his ability to do so, and we have ended up with several conversations like this:

"Nicholas, do you want another cracker?"

[ Vigorous head-shaking. ]

"Okay."

[ Whimpering and reaching for the cracker.]

He'll figure it out eventually, of course, but for the moment it's a little frustrating that he learned something so effectively that it's no longer effective.  Sarah thinks this is what the terrible twos are like.  I'm assuming it'll be worse because by the time he turns 2 he'll know that he's saying no and being difficult, where right now, I still get the sense from him that he's trying to communicate honestly (for the most part) and just having trouble expressing himself in ways that are mutually agreeable and comprehensible.

Broken Fever

Nicholas' fever broke (and we aren't going to try to fix it . . . sorry, I am channeling Joe) overnight. He is still a little off and cranky, but feeling much better.

The culprit of his fever and sore throat? The doctor said yesterday it was a virus. I, even with my 0 years of medical training, think he was wrong and the true culprit was the two teeth that this morning were visibly starting to come through.

Our pediatrician (and apparently his partners, since we saw a different doctor in the practice yesterday) vehemently insists that teething doesn't have any side effects other than pain. Having now watched Nicholas get 14 teeth, I think that is a load of bull. Normally Nicholas gets congested and a gagging cough. Once he got a rash. This time he got a fever and sore throat. Each time teeth were coming through he felt bad in some other way. And there have been only 2 or 3 times that he seemed sick when no teeth emerged within a couple days and each of those times he was very obviously sick, with a whole set of symptoms that go together or something diagnosable.

Anyway, Nicholas is feeling better, and that is the most important thing. He has traded his Motrin for some orajel and is now able to deal with the world. Well, at least mostly.

At least his timing is getting better

Nicholas is sick today. Nothing horrible, but a virus of some sort that has caused a fever and our little boy to just be a little off. The fever means no daycare, so we've been improvising a bit today. Joe took him to the doctor because he was pulling on his ears and we wondered if he had an ear infection. Nope, just some virus. The doctor was able to see that his throat is red and so probably bothering him. Between that and the fever we've been trying to get Nicholas to drink extra, with little success. The one thing we've been able to tempt him with is the very rare treat of chocolate milk. Nicholas looked skeptical at the first drink, but after the second sip proclaimed it "nummy nummy."

The upside to this is that at least his timing is getting better. Our new insurance cards arrived in the mail yesterday (all of about 2 hours before we first noticed the fever), ending our insurance limbo of the week and our fear that it might be a couple more weeks before the limbo was resolved. Whew! Also, it is Friday so hopefully he will only have to miss one day of daycare this time around. And although Joe and I each had commitments today, it was a day where they could be easily juggled and worked around. So while I'm by no means happy Nicholas isn't feeling well, it could be much worse.

Two cute (if touchingly pathetic) stories of sick Nicholas. Apparently this morning Nicholas spent half an hour just lying on the floor of the living room. Poor kid. He has had more energy this afternoon and even played quite a bit, but about half an hour ago he picked up a blanket, brought it over to where I was near the door to his nursery, and said "night night" and waved. So I helped him into his crib for a nap.

Fearless

Nicholas is, as of last night, officially more advanced in the water than his father.  (That is, if he wasn't already.)

He was taking his bath, and having a jolly good time playing with a plastic ship captain who has the magical ability to jump off the side of the tub and into the water, so long as you say "wheeeee!" when he does it.  So Nicholas was doing that, and for some reason I started tickling his neck, just a little, when he last splashed the captain into the water.  He scrunched his head up and tucked it into his chest, and then couldn't go any further because his head was on the side of the tub.  So I stopped.  He looked up at me with a big grin and water dripping from his nose, and then immediately started to fold himself over again to put his head back in the water.

Eureka!  Of course, I called Sarah over to watch, and she noted with glee what he was doing.  He really seemed to like it, and just wanted to keep doing it, as he usually does with a new skill that he discovers.  So I let him, until he got upset because he has not yet mastered keeping his mouth closed while dunking himself.  Maybe next week.  (There was, by the way, no soap yet in the tub.  I'm squeamish enough that I probably wouldn't have allowed him to do that if we'd already started the scrubbing portion of bath time, even though all the baby soaps claim to be tear-free.)

Irony Lives

Last night, Sarah and I went to Camden Yards to see an Orioles game, and left Nicholas with a sitter (two of them, in fact).  It was quite a bit of fun.  But, for the second time, we went on a "date" to an Orioles game only to arrive and discover that we were sitting next to a couple with a little boy just a few months older than Nicholas.  Sigh.

It was fun, though, because we don't really mind (at least, I didn't, and was sitting next to the people).  Their son was very cute, and it was his first baseball game.  Plus they were from Long Island, so we had a chat about the relative qualities of Camden Yards vs. Shea Stadium.  Okay, mostly we just agreed that Camden far surpassed Shea, but whatever.

Anyway, next time we go on a date, we probably will be very closely on the lookout for small children at the next table.

County Fair

From 2010 August

We took a trip to a nearby county fair on Saturday morning and had a wonderful time! Nicholas couldn't get enough of the animals and we learned that he knows the sounds lots of animals make. Who knew? They must be doing that at school. He seems to think those are the animals' names, but one step at a time.

Nicholas was obsessed with "moos." Seriously, he didn't want to let us leave the cows and kept reaching out to them with a face full of excitement and shouting "moo!" He was also really interested in the horses, especially when they ran near the edge of the fence we were standing at, and intrigued by the goats, sheep, and bunnies.

His favorite part, however, was the little petting zoo. He is really starting to get the hang of the whole petting thing. He reached right out to pet the animals and would then turn to me with a huge "Mommy, look what I'm doing. Can you believe it?" grin. The excitement and pride in his eyes melted my heart. He isn't great at being gentle, however, and sometimes was scratching as much as petting. This was fine with animals like the sheep, but with the baby rabbits and the chick I was afraid he might hurt them and pulled him back.

A volunteer offered to let us feed the goats and much to my surprise Nicholas was very excited about this. The only problem was that he kept trying to actually feed the goat--trying to put the piece of food in the goat's mouth rather than holding it in his palm for the goat to lick up. It was almost as though he understood the idea of "feeding" too well. I kept trying to turn his arm over to put his palm up, but he just kept going back to trying to put his fingers in the goat's mouth.

From 2010 August

But he kept working at it for a long time and would have been content to stay much longer if another group of kids hadn't come over and gotten the goat's attention with more food. And luckily the goat did not actually bite the fingers Nicholas had wrapped around the food.

Then when we got home Nicholas showed me a skill he had learned while I was gone--he now knows how to ride his own horsey:

From 2010 August

He loves making the horsey rock by himself. He can get off by himself about 50% of the time (in a feat that requires as much concentration and effort as rock climbing did for me), but can't get on by himself yet. But I have to admit, I love his pathetic pleas for "uppy."

Home Safe and Sound

I'm home from my adventures. And quite the adventures they were. I know this is Nicholas' blog, but I'm going to hijack it for a post to share a few pictures of what I did this past week.

I climbed this mountain:

From 2010 August

Seriously. Well, we hiked to the tree line and then climbed the rest of the way in 4 separate climbs. And then we got back down with two repels down this front face back to the tree line and hiked back down. (Honestly, the hikes were almost as physically challenging as the climbs, although less scary because more protected.)

Here is a picture of me on one of our practice/training climbs from Monday:

From 2010 August

And here I am on the shortest repel of the week:

From 2010 August

The climbs were the coolest and most impressive part of the trip for me, but we also spent two days exploring caves. Here is a picture of me coming out of one of the formations in the second cave:

From 2010 August

This section was narrow, but actually comparatively delightful because we could stand upright and the water was really low.

Overall I had a wonderful time. And I was perfectly safe the whole time. It was really great to have some away time and do cool things like CLIMB THIS MOUNTAIN:

From 2010 August

On a Nicholas note, I was sad that he didn't seem particularly excited to see me when we went to get him at daycare. He was mostly looking at me confused and smiling at Joe. He eventually came over and started snuggling in to me, but still without really smiling. I wish I knew what he was thinking.

Making Up for Peas All Week

Okay, so it seems like I'm posting exclusively about food this week, but the boy has been in daycare all week, which means I see him for breakfast (during which time I prepare his lunch) and dinner.  But today we had a big day, because he had his first grilled cheese!  Now, I usually try not to have him do new things while Sarah is away, but she left for a week, and frankly, I ran out of ideas.  Plus, I've felt guilty because his diet has not been that varied day-to-day.  And so, grilled cheese.  We've been meaning to do it for a while, because if he'll eat grilled cheese, he has another option on the kids' menu at restaurants when we go out.

Anyway, he seemed to like it, at least the first quarter or so.  It was not the grilled cheese he will get at restaurants, since I made it with our funky whole wheat bread and cheddar cheese (he likes it otherwise), rather than Kraft singles and Wonder bread.  He had a little trouble with the crust, so he didn't want to take a second piece.  Which means I had 3/4 of a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner.  May have to make him a half sandwich next time.

And here's the commemorative photo.  He has cottage cheese all over because I left him with it and a spoon while I was making the sandwich.  He gave up and used his hands.  Sigh.

From 2010 August

Food for Thought

Nicholas has some interesting tastes when it comes to food.  He likes some of the toddler "standards" -- chicken nuggets, french fries, graham crackers -- but also has exhibited a tendency to have a few grown-up tastes.  He prefers pasta with tomato sauce (homemade, usually) to mac-and-cheese, and loves exotic fruits likes peaches and mangoes.  Okay, peaches aren't that exotic, but to eat them fresh as a whole peach?

Anyway, I was thinking about this because last night Nicholas ate some of his macaroni and cheese out of apparent duty.  But he scarfed down in about ten seconds the zucchini I sauteed with oregano and thyme.  He also wolfed down a bunch of garden-fresh tomato (thank you, Grandpa Dan and Grandma Kathleen!).

I'm taking this as a good sign that he has a little bit more of my palate than Sarah's, but we'll have to see when we get to mushrooms, fish, and pork.

Not Who You Think She Is

Poor Nicholas misses Mommy, but he decided to let me know in a most unconventional way.  We were at a softball game this evening (I play in a grad student league).  Before the game started, people were standing around, and I was holding Nicholas.  All of a sudden he starts saying "ah-mee! ah-mee!" and pointing at the other team.  At first, I thought he was saying the name of one of his teachers (Miss Emily), but then I realized he was saying "mommy."  He was looking, at a distance of fifty feet, at a woman on the other team who bore a passing resemblance to Sarah.  Basically a twenty-something woman with red hair in a pony tail.

The poor thing was so excited, and didn't seem to understand why I didn't walk him over, or why "ah-mee" didn't come join us.

Of course, then he got distracted by Alice and her toy bus, so it worked out just fine.  But boy, was that odd.

Out of Practice

Well hello there!  Some of you may remember me.  I'm "Daddy," that guy who appeared on the blog only in the third person over the last few weeks.  [Wow: I checked our list of posts, and I have written anything since June 14.  Sheesh!]  But now I've submitted my dissertation to the committee (defense in a few weeks), and Sarah's gone out of town, which means that I now have the time to blog, and I'm required to blog lest we fail to chronicle even a minute of Nicholas's life so that Sarah can see what we've been up to this week.

Anyway, I was going to have a theme for this post, which was being out of practice and out of touch.  It's only been a few weeks, really, since I've immersed myself in the minutiae of revisions, but in that time Sarah took over almost completely in preparing Nicholas for his day.  This means that I haven't really paid attention to what he needs to go to daycare.  Now, I'd be totally able to take care of him at home, feed him what he needs, put him to sleep when he needs a nap, and so on.  But for some reason the idea of figuring out his whole day at 7am was just throwing me.  I guess what I'm saying is that it's funny how quickly you get out of practice.

And now I'm realizing that blogging is also something that I'm going to have to re-learn.  But for now, Nicholas is daycare, and I found a Monday afternoon baseball game on TV (thank you, MLB Network!).  So blogging more can wait.

Great Quote

"Mommy getting out of the house and going to work is exactly like recess."

I have the TV on while working on Joe's bibliography, and caught this line on Home Improvement.

Just Because

From 2010 August

An All-Too Exciting Sunday

Nicholas seems to have pulled a muscle in his right leg, or some other minor injury.


This in and of itself isn't so interesting, but I wanted to start with the conclusion of the forthcoming story to prevent any panic as you read.


Yesterday morning Nicholas was having a lot of trouble walking. When he first got up he tried to walk and fell after a couple feet. It looked like maybe he had tripped on his pants, so I pulled them up. He tried again and promptly fell down again. Loving mother that I am, I teased him. Then he stood up and tried again, fell again, and was looking at his feet with a look that can best be described as annoyance. Hmm, this is weird. He tried a couple more times, fell promptly each time, and was looking at his feet as though trying to figure out what was wrong.


Joe came up with the feasible theory that maybe Nicholas' foot had fallen asleep. So we put him up in his highchair and gave him breakfast.


After breakfast, we put him down, he set off excitedly, and promptly fell again. He kept trying with no success. And then he started not even being able to get himself up to standing on his own. He'd get into a tripod and then when he went to push off and shift all his weight to his feet he would fall to sitting.


At this point we were genuinely concerned. Not panicked, but definitely concerned. We felt his legs and feet. No bumps, no redness, no obvious splinters. He didn't seem in pain, either as we examined him or even when he was trying to walk. We tickled the bottoms of his feet to make sure he had feeling in them. Yep, he laughed and pulled them away. He was in good spirits and mostly just seemed annoyed that he wasn't able to run off and make trouble.


Joe had to cantor at church so I took Nicholas in to the doctor. (Yes, our doctor's office has hours on Sunday mornings. They are just that awesome. I called at 8:30 on a Sunday morning and was able to see a doctor at 9am, for the normal cost, no paperwork, and without dealing with the ER. See why we were excited not to have to move?) The doctor examined him, watched him try to walk, watched him crawl, and came up with the theory that the most likely possibility was that he had what is called a "toddler's fracture" low on his right leg. Given her description, this seemed entirely likely, especially with all his recent climbing and falling (not connected, almost all of his falls stem from walking/running rather than climbing). So off to the hospital we went for x-rays.

I will spare you the details, but x-rays was rather traumatic. I don't know if Nicholas was in pain from how the techs were holding his legs or just really disturbed that they were holding him tightly and not letting him move, but he was really upset. The only other time I've seen him that upset was when he had to get blood drawn. It was awful.

Anyway, the x-ray came up negative and I was actually disappointed because the way the doctor had been talking a fracture actually seemed like a better option than some of the others and I was forseeing a week of all sorts of different testings and doctors. Not to mention the sheer fear of knowing something was wrong but not knowing what it was or how to fix it.

But then we were at my parents' house that afternoon and Nicholas started walking better. First he was doing a couple steps. Wow, this is encouraging. Then he was doing quite a few steps. Then we were at the mall visiting Uncle Andrew and Nicholas saw an Elmo in a store window a couple stores away and tried to take off running and after a couple steps pulled up short.

There were two notable elements to this. First, he was able to run a couple steps and then switch to walking, whereas 3 hours earlier he couldn't walk 2 steps. Secondly, the way he pulled up short suddenly struck me as the way I pull up short when I pull a muscle or am trying to run on a pulled or sore muscle. Hmmm.

We don't actually know anything more, but he is continuing to do well. He is walking mostly fine again (although with a weird Charlie Chaplin half-march thing to his step sometimes) and doesn't seem to be in any pain. The doctor is fine to just wait and see as long as it doesn't get worse. And given all the crazy climbing and twisting and falling he has been doing it wouldn't surprise me at all if he tweaked something, so for now I'm willing to assume that is what it was and just be happy he is walking again.

And, the kicker? He did this a grand total of 7 hours after our secondary insurance expired. Always the king of good timing.