New Year's Eve

We had a good day today, although not a very typical New Year's Eve. Joe and Nicholas ran some errands this morning and let me do some work on my syllabi for the classes I'm teaching this spring. The plan was for me to then take Nicholas to the zoo after he napped. Well, the little boy's nap schedule has been thrown all out of whack with travelling and holidays and excitement and he would not nap. After the second time we tried putting him down with no success, I told him about the zoo and explained that he had to nap first. It seemed to work at first--he asked to nap and went down without a peep. But he was up again in a few minutes, proclaiming, "No nap. Zoo. Animals."

After a couple more of these I gave up and we left for the zoo. Knowing full well that he would probably fall asleep in the car, I took my journal along for something to do. And sure enough he was out within 5 minutes. And he stayed asleep when I parked and turned the car off.

A good 45 minutes later he woke up with a start, proclaiming, "No nap. No nap. Zoo. Animals. No nap." And I just broke out laughing and tried to explain to him through my laughter that we were in fact at the zoo and he could stop acting all indignant.

We had a really great time at the zoo. Because of all his antics it was already 2:30 and had gotten cloudy and a little cold, but it was still in the upper 40s and so tolerable (as long as you kept gloves on). Only about half of the animals were out, but Nicholas seemed to be in the mood for intensive viewing today anyway, so I let him spend 20 minutes on a single animal at a couple points. Today's animals of interest--the cheetah, the giraffes, and the monkeys. With each of these he would watch for a bit, start to walk away, and then after getting a few steps away he would suddenly turn around and run back, yelling "more more [insert name of animal]!"

Here Nicholas is trying to touch a frog:

From 2010 December

After I explained that the frog was walking when it moved, Nicholas started going to each frog that was moving and explaining, "frog walking."

We then had friends over for dinner, which was wonderful for me and Joe, and Nicholas loved having an audience again. Spoiled.

Wishing you all the best for a very happy New Year!

Or, in Nicholas-ese:

From 2010 December

Wordless Wednesday: Texting While Driving

From 2010 December

Christmas 2010

Nicholas had a wonderful Christmas! In many senses this was his first real Christmas, since last year he was completely unaware of what was going on.

His favorite part by far was all the time with his aunts, uncles, grandparents, family friends, etc.

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

Although he certainly loved his presents and will continue to love playing with them for months and months to come.

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

He also enjoyed the Christmas lights and other decorations, as well as baking and eating Christmas treats.

Hampden Miracle on 34th Street before we left:

From 2010 December

Making brownies:

From 2010 December

The little boy just ate up the entire experience of Christmas:

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

And then there was the Boxing Day blizzard:

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

From 2010 December

And, finally, what might be my favorite picture from the trip:

From 2010 December

It took us 15 hours to drive the roundtrip (it should be 8-9), which was painful, but the trip itself was wonderful. Nicholas was spoiled with love and attention--the perfect Christmas. Tomorrow may be a rough transition back into the real world--just Mommy and Daddy.

There are a ton more pictures in The Gallery.

Merry Christmas!

From 2010 December

Christmas Eve

It doesn't seem real that it could possibly be Christmas Eve already. I'm hoping that in a couple hours when we all get dressed up and head out to church it will start to seem real.

Nicholas is having a great time with all of his relatives here, as well as the friends of ours who came over to visit today. We've taken some pictures, but I haven't gotten around to loading them, so you'll just have to wait. He has been pretty good about not touching all the beautiful breakable Christmas decorations and has only hit his head twice running around. Per usual for our trips up here, however, he is not napping well. I eventually got him to nap by lying in a grown up bed with him. He is now sleeping up there by himself and I am jumping at every peep so I can get to him before he can fall out.

Have a very Merry Christmas. I'll try to post photos soon.

Wordless Wednesday: Laundry Dive

From 2010 December

Nicholas Glasses

From 2010 December

Why is Nicholas wearing sunglasses in the house and in the middle of winter at that? I'm glad you asked.

The other night at dinner Nicholas started pointing to his eyes saying "Nicholas glasses." (He hasn't yet figured out possessives.) Now, his pronunciation isn't always great so since his words didn't obviously correlate to any visible object, it took us a couple minutes to figure out.

"Nicholas glasses?" Huge grin letting us know we had correctly interpreted.
"Mommy glasses. (pointing at me) Daddy glasses (pointing at Joe). Nicholas glasses (pointing to his own eye)."
"No, bud, you don't wear glasses."
"Mommy glasses. Daddy glasses. Nicholas no glasses."

He repeated this last line at least 3 times, pointing to each of us in turn. And since he seemed upset to not have glasses like Mommy and Daddy, we pulled out his sunglasses. And it did the trick--he was happy as a clam. He also thought that looking at the Advent candles with sunglasses on was pretty fun. I'm sort of curious what they looked like.

Children's Museum

On Saturday morning we took Nicholas downtown to the children's museum. We had pondered getting a membership and had a buy one-get one free coupon, so figured we'd try it out first. Nicholas had a lot of fun, but we decided against the membership. The coolest features of the museum are things for the 5-10 age set. If he was home with one of us all winter, then it would be a different story, but with only 1 day a week for outings, it just didn't seem like it would be in the rotation enough to be worth it.

Anyway, so what did he do with his morning?

He played soccer with Mom.

From 2010 December

Actually, first he played with a little girl who was there, although she wasn't big on sharing and was older and so could beat him to the ball each time. She'd kick it, he'd get all excited and chase after it and she'd get there first and kick it away again. Luckily just as he was starting to get discouraged that family moved on and he and I were able to play. (And I'm at least a little better at sharing.) The "soccer ball" was inflatable, making it lighter and easier to kick, and Nicholas actually did a surprisingly good job. (There is a really short video here.)

He also played in a train, which had a button to push to get it to whistle.

From 2010 December

But his favorite part of the train was that the front was a tunnel. He would have been happy just going back and forth through the tunnel the whole morning.

From 2010 December

And once again he absolutely stunned us with his problem solving skills when he figured out that he needed to pull his legs in front of him, sit down, and scoot out on his butt at the end rather than just reaching out for help getting off the ledge.

He also worked on decorating a gingerbread square, although he mostly found it torture because we wouldn't let him eat the candy. When we looked at our watches we realized not only had he missed his morning snack but it was already the time he eats lunch at school. No wonder he was upset.

From 2010 December

But Nicholas' favorite part of all (despite the expression in this picture) was the room with water play and a big bubble you could pull up around you. He wasn't so sure about being inside the bubble the first couple times, but then he decided it was awesome. Of course, about a minute after he had this realization, a bunch of other kids came over who hadn't had a turn yet and so we had to stop.

From 2010 December

All in all, a fun time, but except for the water play area, I don't know that it offers him much more than Storyville does. If we didn't have such an amazing public library system, it would be more worth going to the museum.
There are more new pictures in the Gallery, including some random videos from the last couple weeks that we may or may not get around to individually blogging about.

On the Choo-Choo!

Today was Nicholas's first train ride!

Nicholas is quite the mass transit aficionado, as you may know from earlier posts—trains, planes, buses, pretty much anything captures his attention, regardless of what he might have been doing just before he noticed it. And trains have been especially fun because we pass the light rail tracks several times on the way to the day care center.  In fact, Nicholas and I have been known to detour on occasion to the parking lot of the light rail stop between our apartment and daycare to watch trains for a few minutes on the way there or back.

We've also been talking with Nicholas about riding the train, so he's been a bit prepared, but we still weren't sure what to expect.  In many areas, he's apprehensive at the first attempt, or even a little frightened.  On the other hand, he never gets to like it the second time if he doesn't go the first time.

So Sarah and I made a plan: one Saturday when we needed to go to Wegman's, I would take Nicholas from our stop north to the end of the line (which is in the Wegman's parking lot) and she would meet us there and we'd run our errands.  And today was the day.

We ended up spending far more time than we meant waiting for the train because we just missed one, and the one that followed it was delayed by about 10-15 minutes.  Nicholas spent the time looking up and down the tracks scouting out trains (two came by in the other direction during our wait on the platform), each time calling out "choo choo!" excitedly.

Finally, our train arrived, we boarded, and were off!

From 2010 December

Nicholas liked it! He wasn't exuberant, but he had his eyes in "maximum information absorption" mode, and would occasionally state, as if surprised to discover it anew each time, "on the choo-choo!" He did this about every 30 seconds for ten minutes. I would have found it annoying if I wasn't so darn happy that he was enjoying it. I tried to point things out, like railroad crossings and the one time we went under a bridge, but of course a rail trip is rather underwhelming, for the simple reason that almost all buildings face away from the tracks. Oh well. Every few minutes I asked him if he was having fun, and he would smile and giggle—a clear sign of success.

Towards the end, I think he began to feel the monotony a bit.  At one stop I pointed out that people were going through the door to get off the train, and his new refrain became "off the train."  At each stop he asked again, and I recounted how much longer to go, and tried to point out the front of the train when a corner was sharp enough that you could see it (that part he didn't get so well).

So, the train experiment was a success.  Now I can't wait to find a reason to get him on Amtrak, or maybe MARC or Metro-North, so he can see what it's like to be on a "real" train.

Bye Bye Christmas

Nicholas does not really understand the concept of Christmas. Case in point: he calls the Christmas Tree just plain "Christmas." This leads to some pretty hilarious phrases being heard in our house on a regular basis these days. Most common among them:
"Bye bye Christmas" on his way to bed or leaving the house
References to turning "Christmas on" when he wants the lights on

This little boy has no idea what excitement is coming.

Wordless Wednesday: Meeting Santa

From 2010 December

Elmo is a Four-Letter Word

We've mentioned in a number of posts, I think, that Nicholas has become obsessed with Sesame Street, but it's really amazing each time we discover just how deeply embedded those furry Muppets have gotten into his brain.

For example, when he was an infant, he would wake up in the morning cooing, maybe crying a little bit, and that eventually morphed into calling for us.  Each morning Sarah and I would wake up and listen very carefully to whether Nicholas was calling out "ommy" or "dada" to find out who was getting up to get him, and who got an extra half-hour of sleep.  Then he woke up too early one morning (meaning before 5:30), and to soothe him when all else failed, we (probably me) put on Sesame Street, at a moment when it was clear he wasn't going back to sleep, but before I was capable of enough cognitive function to chase him around.  Since then, his body clock has mysteriously adjusted, and he's been waking up between 5:15 and 5:30, not calling out "ommy" or "dada," but "Elmo!"

The first time, I will admit, it was funny.  But it really seems the last few weeks like he's decided that he needs to get up at 5:30 in order to watch Sesame Street.  I'd say it was a phantom of our imaginations, but the boy is too much like me in so many ways that it seems totally reasonable that he wakes up on a clock (even though there is none in his room) rather than to the sun or to when his body is fully rested.

He also can be a bit manipulative about Elmo.  Just this morning while we were getting ready, he was jumping around and fell, landing on his butt but hitting his head against the molding of a door frame, enough that it looked like it actually hurt.  So I picked him and told him he'd be alright, and asked if he wanted his "boo-boo buddy" (a Cookie Monster-shaped ice pack), and he said no.  Through the tears, though, he managed an "Elmo!" as if that would solve the pain in his head.  You should know that in this case I stood firm, since it was obviously so totally unnecessary.

I think part of the problem is that Sesame Street, deservedly or not, is in our parenting heads as "safe" TV.  It's rarely flashy, it has good lessons, the characters are obviously likable (just as Nicholas, he'll name all of them!), and so on.  And it's easy to give into the temptation of TV-as-babysitter, though we do try our best to avoid that, even if it doesn't always seem like it.  On the other hand, we're not supposed to be showing him any TV whatsoever until he's 2, but I get the feeling the people who came up with that recommendation have never had a sick child or one who woke up in the middle of the night.

Of course, they probably also didn't have free episodes on demand, which makes it easier to relent.  Which brings it all back to being my fault, since I was the proponent of cable TV.  Oh well.  Too late now.  There's no stuffing that genie back in the bottle (though it does bring to mind a mini-episode of "Abby's Flying Fairy School" that I've seen too many times ... oh dear).

Nicholas Logic

J: Nicholas, are you a baby?
N: Noooo.
J: Are you a big boy?
N: No.
J: Are you a little boy?
N: No.
J: Then what are you?
N: Nicholas!

Holiday Parties

The holiday season is in full force. Yesterday evening was the holiday party at Nicholas' school and this evening was Joe's department holiday party. Nicholas' party was cute and it was nice to meet his friends' parents. The older kids sang some songs, Santa was there--overall cuteness. Nicholas liked the idea of Santa being there, but if I took him within 2 feet of Santa, he would start with "no no Santa."

Tonight we had a lot of fun at Joe's department party. I got to talk with a bunch of people I rarely see anymore, and Nicholas got to see Alice and played with an older girl who created lots of fun games.

And, as has become our tradition, we took pictures in front of our tree while we were all dressed up for the department party.

Here are the argyle twins:

From 2010 December

And a family portrait:

From 2010 December

And the little boy:

From 2010 December

New Template

After two years and now over 500 posts, it seemed like the time to update the template of the blog.  So behold! Here's what we've come up with based on Blogger's templates and a desire not to have anything too busy.  Let us know what you think!

Tattoo

Sometimes we are all bad parents (if you're a parent and you read this blog, it's okay, you can admit it).  This post will prove both that I'm a bad parent and that I was parented poorly ... or quite well, depending on your opinion of useless cultural trivia.

As we've mentioned at various times, Nicholas has become obsessed with any form of mass transit, including planes.  Fortunately, one of the initial approaches to the Baltimore airport from the north runs almost directly over our house.  It's nice actually—the planes are low enough to really see them, but high enough that they don't make a whole lot of noise.  And Nicholas loves it.  In fact, we frequently get him out of the car when we arrive home and he'll immediately start yelling, "airplane! airplane!" and pointing to the sky.

Which brings me to the bad parent portion of the post.  He was doing it last week while standing on the sidewalk, and I couldn't help but think of this video clip:



Yes, thanks to Nicholas's grandparents (okay, Grandpa Richard, so that I can let Grandma Alice off the hook on this one), I look at my son and see Hervé Villechaize.  And now that I think about it, does that make me Ricardo Montalban?  Oh dear.  The questions could go on forever; this blog post, however, must end.

High Chairs are for Babies

I'm pretty certain that at dinner tonight Nicholas told me that high chairs are for babies and he wants to sit in a booster seat instead.

Here is the conversation, transcribed to the best of my memory:
N (sitting in his high chair eating dinner): high chair Nicholas
S: Yes, Nicholas is sitting in a high chair.
N: No high chair.
S: Yes, you sit in a high chair to eat.
N: No high chair Nicholas. Baby.
S: Babies sit in high chairs?
N: No high chair. Alice chair. (Points to the chair next to him, which yesterday had a booster seat on it for Alice to sit in.)

Translating these broken English conversations seriously taxes my mental strength, but I'm pretty certain he was saying he is ready to give up the high chair. I've never ever heard him say anything was for babies before. I wonder if someone at school said something. They are transitioning him from Toddler 1 (where they eat in high chairs) to Toddler 2 (where they eat at a table in little kid chairs).

Joe and I had already discussed ditching the high chair soon, but planned to wait until after the Christmas and early January extended trips to NY, since being in the high chair while there will greatly simplify life. We'll see if he lets us wait another month.

St. Nick's Day and Hanukkah

Nicholas has had an exciting couple days. Monday morning he woke up to find that St. Nick had left him some presents.

From 2010 December

Ever since this discovery Nicholas has been going over to his stocking multiple times a day looking inside to see if anything has appeared.

And St. Nick managed to find the wooden peg toy that I've been looking for. However does he do it?

From 2010 December

Since Joe and Nicholas had to miss Katie, Wes, and Alice's Hanukkah party this weekend due to the stomach bug, Katie and Alice brought Hanukkah over last night. (Well, brought presents and a menorah. I guess you can't actually bring a holiday.)

From 2010 December

The kids had a blast riding horsies. Yes, our little boy is now the proud owner of two ponies thanks to the generous gift of Joe's officemate. But it comes in handy when a friend comes over.

From 2010 December

Here is a video of the kids riding the horsies:

From 2010 December

(Nicholas has been watching me put these pictures and videos up this morning and keeps asking for "more more weeeee" incessantly, making me continually replay the videos. He also came out this morning and went right over to the horsies and labelled which one was for Nicholas and which was for Alice (even though they both rode each last night).)

There are more pictures in the Gallery, as well as a video of the kids giving each other high fives (Joe was very proud of himself for teaching them that).

The kids had a great time together. It is fun watching them play together now that they are older. And it was great to see Katie. Even worth giving up the late evening at the office grading that I had planned. And that's saying something. Speaking of which, it is now 6:30 and Joe is up so I should go get to work on real work instead of blogging.

NO MORE SHOTS!!!

How's that for a banner headline!  Nicholas had his eighteen-month check-up this morning, and the doctor let us know (just before piercing Nicholas's leg with the needle) that he was getting his last baby immunizations.  After today, no more shots until he's four (except for the flu shot).  Nicholas was less than impressed with the news, however, since he was mostly concerned with this mean man who keeps sticking him with needles.

In addition to the vaccination news, he also doesn't have to go back for his next well visit for six months (age 2!), which means we're off the once-a-quarter treadmill.  In other words, a nice way to finish out what has turned into "I'm not a baby anymore" week here at the Peanut Chronicle.

In total, he got a clean bill of health, and the doctor is very happy with his language development, so there's not much to report.  And at this age, so says the doctor, we mostly need to pay attention to safety (no walkers at the top of the stairs, for example) and discipline.  Apparently he has this strange idea that toddlers are belligerent about their independence and throw tantrums when you try to hold the line.  In other words, if the discipline tactics we come up with work on Nicholas, Sarah may use them on me.

Oh, and finally, the vital stats: he's now 33 inches tall (almost three feet!), and weighs 26 pounds.  That puts him in the 50-75 percentile range for height and right at 50 for weight.  Makes me wonder if the milk gut is just a mirage . . .

I can do it myself!

He doesn't actually say that yet, but boy can he convey its meaning. Continuing our adventures this week in asserting independence, Nicholas now insists on brushing his own teeth.

Sarah was helping him this morning and mentioned that he'd taken the toothbrush, and this evening as we were getting ready for bed, I put the toothpaste on the brush and he reached out to take it. Okay, I figured, this will last a few seconds and then I can take over. But no, he did the whole thing himself.

Now he doesn't quite have it all down, but he's actually pretty good.  He's been paying attention.  He carefully moved the brush around his mouth, carefully ensuring that he got everywhere.  He chewed on the bristles rather than really "brushing" per se, but I let that go because it got the bristles to go over his teeth nearly as well as when I hold the brush.  And during all of this he managed not to gag himself, stab the roof of his mouth, or otherwise injure himself in any way.

Not a baby anymore, indeed.

Independent Decorator

We are doing a slow roll-out of our Christmas decorations this year because our Thanksgiving weekend was so busy, and on weekdays we really only have from about 5:30 to 7pm (and some of that time has to include making dinner and bedtime). The tree has been up a few days, but only this past evening did we have the chance to start decorating it.

Nicholas enjoyed every second of it. Well almost—he wasn't too keen on our attempts to supervise and control the process.  But in a sense that was okay, because he picked up on what to do really quickly.  By the third or fourth ornament, he could do it himself, at least for ornaments with string loops.  We're kind of avoiding ornament hooks this year.

Anyway, here is a photo of Nicholas working very hard to get an ornament put up:

From 2010 December

His joy at succeeding:

From 2010 December

And of course, the end result. Guess how tall he is!

From 2010 December

Wordless Wednesday: Not a Baby Anymore

From 2010 November