Saturday, April 30, 2011

Maryland Day

We spent a gorgeous Saturday (our last weekend all at home until we move--ahhhh!!!) down at the University of Maryland for Maryland Day. We only scratched the surface of all the activities there were to do, but all had a great time.

We started with a quick tour of my little corner of campus, showing Joe and Nicholas my office and classrooms.
From 2011 April

Yes, we directed Nicholas to raise his hand for that picture.
From 2011 April

The crazy thing about this picture is it only captures about 1/3 of my lecture classroom.
After that we headed outside, where we did all sorts of activities involving turtles.
We fished them out of the fountain:
From 2011 April

We colored them:
From 2011 April

And we took pictures with them:
From 2011 April

Nicholas also had his first try at a bouncy castle. Once he crawled over to the edge where he could hold my hand, he started having fun. Until a girl fell on him. Then he decided he would prefer to be on solid ground. No tears, no panic, just all done.
We also hung out with Uncle Sam
From 2011 April

And Nicholas signed a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
From 2011 April

We also stumbled on a tumbling act, which we all enjoyed watching. Nicholas was amazed at how the people were flying.
From 2011 April

But Nicholas' favorite part was just running around on the open grass on the mall:
From 2011 April

Or maybe playing cornhole:
From 2011 April

All in all, a great impulse trip.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

ABCs and a call to Uncle Mike

Last weekend Nicholas and I spent one morning (seriously an entire hour and a half) playing at our local library. Yes, playing. We really don't need to bother with children's museums with the librayr system in our county. Nicholas' favorite part of the library is the mini play structure with slide, but since I let him stay longer than usual he also explored a lot of the other options. There were bins with all sorts of fun objects, which he mostly enjoyed taking out one by one, naming each, carefully walking them over to the other side of the room and lining them up, and then just as carefully and methodically bringing them back to put away.

And then there is the puppet show stage. He hadn't show much interest in this until a couple visits ago when there was a mom doing a puppet show with her kids that caught his attention. So this weekend he initiated it, walking over and picking up some puppets. I forget the exact order of how things unfolded, but it started with him ordering me to have the puppets sing (that is what the other mom had done) and somehow ended up with him singing the ABCs . . . BY HIMSELF!!! Last time we had sung them (admittedly months and months ago) I had been impressed that he could fill in letters when I paused, but I had no idea he could do the whole song on his own.

I didn't have the camera there at the time, but resolved to tape this feat soon. Well, last night as I was trying to finish my dinner he started singing the ABCs. Luckily the camera was on the table so I grabbed it. However, by the time it started taping, as you'll hear, he was already halfway done. So I asked him to do it again. And he started again, but got distracted a couple different times. So you can't hear it all the way through, but you get it all in pieces. He actually has recently added a few other songs ("Baa baa black sheep" is the one he surprised us with the other day), so I'll try to get those sometime as well.
From 2011 April

A few minutes after the ABCs he was sitting on my lap as I finished dinner and grabbed "his" cellphone and started pretending to have a conversation with his Uncle Mike. And it was so precise that I couldn't help laughing. So on went the camera again:
From 2011 April

Sorry to all his other relatives, but every single time Nicholas pretends to call someone this week it is Uncle Mike. And when he asks "How you doing?" Joe and I invariably burst out laughing.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Daddy Day Care

Nicholas's day care was closed today for Easter Monday, so he and I are having a fun day at home (so fun that he collapsed into his crib exhausted ... here's hoping for a long nap!). I'd initially planned to run a few errands, like going to Target and the grocery store, and maybe, just maybe, taking him to the zoo—a huge sacrifice for me, if you know how I feel about zoos.

But we ended up doing that one better: Alice came over to play for the morning! Her daycare was closed today too, but unexpectedly, so I agreed to watch her for the morning so Katie could get in some extra work. We had a very fun morning, but I realized about 10:00 that when you're accustomed just to one child, dealing with two is just exhausting.

On the bright side, we had a very good morning! Alice felt right at home immediately, though after about 10 minutes we had a little hint of possible trouble as she realized that her Mommy hadn't just gone out to the car, and was actually gone. But her mood brightened when I showed her one of Nicholas's puzzles (the one with animals), and after that it was almost entirely smooth sailing.  We played puzzles, we played basketball, we rode horsies, we read books, we watched 10 minutes of Thomas the Tank Engine (I just needed them to calm down!), we had grapes for a snack, we had cheese sticks for a snack, we sang songs, we read more books

They also posed for one picture because they had cutely decided to sit next to one another:

From 2011 April

There were some funny moments, which is great because they mostly developed out of Alice and Nicholas interacting with one another. My favorite was the two of them sitting on the couch as above. Nicholas started to rock in order to hit the back of the couch with his head. I looked at him and said, "crazy boy!" Alice got a look of glee in her eyes, started to rock herself, and announced, "I'm a crazy boy too!" Oh, those kids.

They both wolfed down lunch—macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, peas and carrots, pears, and milk, of course—which was great. Makes life much easier. I realized when Alice arrived that we'd forgotten to bring up the booster seat from the car, which made things a little trickier. But Alice gamely tried to eat while sitting just in a real chair while I scrambled to find something that could substitute for a booster seat (by the way, we've found one reason that it's bad they don't make phone books anymore). I eventually came up with something:

From 2011 April

Don't recognize that? It's a 6-pack of rolls of toilet paper.  Firm yet soft—perfect for a chair!

The morning wore me out, but in a good way. And it did Nicholas in: he's been napping peacefully for two hours, better than he has in several days.

NB: I only titled the post after the awful movie because it showed up in the TV listings while I was eating lunch. I chose not to watch it.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter

We had a very busy and very fun Easter weekend. Most of Saturday was spent getting ready for Easter. (Well, after Nicholas and I spent an hour and a half playing at the public library in the morning.) Nicholas helped me make the batter for the bunny cake and then learned the wonders of licking beaters.

From 2011 April

The prep was fun, but for some reason the cake completely fell apart when I tried to dump it out of the pans. I have neither the creativity nor the domestic ingenuity to be able to turn this mess into a bunny cake.

From 2011 April

So I did what any desperate woman would do . . . I baked another cake. And this one turned out much better:

From 2011 April

But since I couldn't waste a perfectly good cake, we had two Easter cakes:

From 2011 April

And then, because we are a little bit crazy, we let Nicholas help dye Easter eggs. Here is the video of the first couple minutes of the adventure.

From 2011 April

Nicholas did a really good job overall. There was one egg, however, where we got complacent and didn't remind him "gentle, gentle, gentle" the whole time as he put it in and he started to set it in nicely and then suddenly lifted it up and dropped it in, splashing green dye everywhere. Using the muffin tins instead of the mugs for him worked incredibly well because he could just roll the eggs around in the dye. His hands got pretty gross, but I was able to get all the color off before church this morning, so no harm.

From 2011 April

Today he woke up to discover that the Easter bunny had brought him a basket. And man did that boy dive after the chocolate. In this video I was trying to get him to talk about the Easter bunny and what he got, but as you can see, he only had interest in one thing:

From 2011 April

I never got around to buying Nicholas an Easter outfit and had come to accept that he was going to wear a polo shirt and khaki cargo pants. Then I remembered the box of hand-me-downs that we hadn't broken into yet because it was all 2T stuff and mostly summer wear (hand-me-downs from a cousin who lived in Texas). And sure enough, in that box was this snazzy suit, perfect for Easter:

From 2011 April

Doesn't he look cute? Here he is with his Daddy after church:

From 2011 April

Because we were in the hall for the family mass and Joe was cantoring, after everyone had left Nicholas was allowed to play the piano for a minute.

From 2011 April

Seriously, look at that form!

From 2011 April

Although I personally think it is the shoes that make this picture.

This afternoon Nicholas woke up to a delightful surprise--Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Andrew, and cousin Mary were here! We then went outside to have an Easter egg hunt. And Nicholas got really into it. Holidays are getting so much more fun as he gets older.

From 2011 April
From 2011 April
From 2011 April
From 2011 April

Mommy with her little boy:

From 2011 April

The Easter bunny brought Nicholas some balloons in his basket, so after everyone left we played with balloons for a bit.

From 2011 April

There are a couple videos of our balloon play, as well as a bunch more pictures of the weekend in the April Gallery.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Sippy Cup Humor

Nicholas' new sippy cups (we had to ditch a couple that got forgotten about full of milk in his backpack for a few days--yes, gross) are advertised as the "#1 Spill-Proof Cup." Inside one of the cups there is a sheet with washing instructions, diagrams illustrating how to do tricky things like put the lid on, as well as a list of the things you have to do to get this "100% spill-proof" guarantee they have on the packaging.

Number 4 on this list: "Cups should be kept upright to ensure 100% spill-proof performance."

So now the question is, are they really that dumb, were they trying to be funny, or is this their way of protecting themselves against a barrage of lawsuits over spilled milk?

Friday, April 22, 2011

A Couple Additions

Joe has already told the story of our ER trip and Nicholas' scarlet fever, but I wanted to throw in a few anecdotes about the event as well.

1) For once I was sad to be proven right. This mother's intuition thing is really nothing to sneeze at. I think I'm going to have to take it more seriously from now on. I just knew something was seriously wrong when I was trying to get Nicholas to bed, but fought to get him to sleep anyway. I was really tempted to call Joe home from choir or call the doctor, but there was nothing identifiably wrong to point to. Nicholas had no fever, he said nothing hurt, he looked perfectly normal. But something was wrong--he wasn't himself. And so I insisted on turning the monitor up last night because I was anxious. I feel guilty about forcing Nicholas to go to bed and going to sleep ourselves, but there really was nothing identifiable wrong.

2) The drive to the ER was the scariest 5 minutes of my life. Or, more accurately, the first 3 minutes of the drive were the scariest of my life. Nicholas' breathing seemed to instantly calm when we walked outside, which was good except that then it almost didn't sound like he was breathing. And for the first 3 minutes of the drive he was completely zoned out, with blank eyes and not responding to my questions. I was really afraid he was about to lose consciousness or something. But then something snapped in (right after Joe ran a red light--coincidence, maybe) and he suddenly started talking to us, commenting on the Sesame Street songs that were playing. I have never been so relieved!

3) Nicholas has never had a safety object (unless you count his thumb), but last night he apparently decided he needed one and grasped onto his sippy cup as an appropriate object to cling to. Absurd? Yes. But highly adorable. We couldn't help laughing at him as he slept snuggled into me in the hospital bed, his face covered in a combination of dried snot, dried tear lines, and medicine, gripping tightly onto the dinosaur sippy cup.

Overall, Nicholas proved yet again that he is quite the trooper. He only lost it a couple times in the course of all of the insanity and medicines and what not, and even at the very end of the long night we were able to strike a deal with him--he lie still to get a temperature taken and then swallow all of the last dose of medicine and we could go home. His response? "Deal." And then complete cooperation. Seriously, I don't know many adults (myself included) who handle illnesses so well.

Sarah Would Have Felt Better with George Clooney as Our Doctor

Nicholas is almost two years old, so the novel experiences are coming less frequently. But every once in a while we get a doozy. Last night, for instance, we got to do our first (of hopefully very few) middle-of-the-night trip to the ER. And I'll preface it for the worried that Nicholas is now feeling much better and is generally on the mend.

So we went back to the ENT specialist yesterday morning, and it's looking increasingly likely that Nicholas is headed for ear tubes. Fine. The doctor also put him back on antibiotics, which both Sarah and I were uncomfortable with, but unable to verbalize at the time. He got his first dose of the antibiotic (the one we thought he'd reacted to a few weeks ago when he ended up with fifth disease) last night, and we assumed everything would be fine.

Even before he took the medicine, though, we noticed that he was acting funny.  After school, he was very cranky, but he mostly seemed to be tired and sugared out. They'd had an "Easter Sundae" party with ice cream and apple juice, and he usually reacts pretty strongly especially to apple juice.

Anyway, I left for choir right after dinner, and Sarah had trouble getting him to bed, which is rare. He was breathing a little funny, he couldn't get comfortable, he wasn't happy with Sarah out of the room, he couldn't calm down when she lay down on the floor next to his crib. But eventually he collapsed and fell asleep after about an hour.

Come 12:30 am, we got woken up by Nicholas really struggling with his breath. Like an awful lot, sounding like he's wheezing or gasping, something. He was burning up, so we considered taking his temperature. But then Sarah noticed that his face was very puffy and red. Off to the ER, pronto.

I'll keep this part short, largely because most of the four hours we were at the hospital was just waiting around. The ER doctor thought it was an allergy, so gave him medicine for that, but the nurse also took a throat swab to check for strep (without telling us why, though it turned out that the doctor was suspicious about whether the rash was actually an allergy).

Good move, because it came back positive. So the end result is that Nicholas definitely has strep, and actually needs antibiotics. The rash, which most resembled a really bad sunburn all over his body, is likely scarlet fever, which strep causes.

And so Nicholas continues his tour of diseases that no one hears about anymore.

But since some of his symptoms were more consistent with an allergic reaction than scarlet fever, we're assuming he's allergic to the other antibiotic, so that's a no go from now on. And today was pretty difficult, since none of us slept (and by the way both Sarah and I have a cold, on top of everything else). Nicholas is feeling much better, and was like himself for periods throughout the day. But he was also cranky and irritable, an effect of both being sick and being exhausted.

In any event, we're very glad it's nothing more serious than it is, but we're all getting a little weary of the toddler illnesses for this season.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Sweetpea

We may need to work on the idea of nicknames. My almost-2-year-old son called me "sweetpea" the other night. Then again, it was pretty endearing to hear him sweetly lilt, "welcome, Sweetpea." Maybe this lesson can wait.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Ommy Sleep in Nicholas Room

Nicholas is normally a super easy little boy to put to bed--he goes down with no complaint and lies there listening to the music and sucking his thumb until he drifts off on his own. But tonight he started crying for me about 10 seconds after I left his room. He sounded really upset so I went to him.

He insisted we needed to do his ears (the safety Q-tip we do after his bath). He had grasped onto the word "ears" in his bedtime prayer and repeated it (I've been adding in a prayer for his ears to get all better--we will get the verdict on tubes on Thursday), so I figured that was what prompted his demand. He then told me the right one hurt. Oh brother. But he didn't flinch when I did the Q-tip so I guess it doesn't hurt that much. Although this is the little boy with the crazy pain threshold.

Back to bed. And crying again. I decided to leave him, but after a few minutes I could hear him calling plaintively to me and using words instead of just crying. And he was asking me to come sleep in his room. "Ommy sleep in Nicholas Room." "Ommmmmmy sleep in Nicholas Roommmmmmm." This was not going to end. So I went to talk to him.

After a few minutes of pretending to sleep on his floor I was done. My dinner was getting cold and I wanted to leave. So I took a shot in the dark. Maybe he was acting like this because he hasn't seen me much the past couple days. He has been sleeping in past 7 and I have to be out the door at 6:45 on days I go to College Park. And today I didn't make it home until 6:30. Maybe seeing me for just half an hour today had him clingy. Worth a shot. "Nicholas, I am going to leave now. But I will be here when you wake up in the morning. When you wake up, call, "Mommy, open the door," and I'll come get you. I am leaving now and you are going to sleep, but when you wake up I will be here." I could tell he was considering this, so I pushed a little further. "Okay?" He looked at me carefully and then hesitantly responded, "Okay." "Night night, buddy, I love you."

Close door and make escape.

And the crazy thing? It worked. He has been silent ever since.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Sleep Sack

Nicholas declared tonight when putting his doggy to bed that doggy absolutely had to wear a sleep sack to bed. So I helped him wrap his doggy in the sleep sack and he tucked him in.

From 2011 April
Night night.

The Toddler vs. 500 Years of Custom and Law

Poor Nicholas is having a tough time adjusting to being on the wrong end of Anglo-American conceptions of private property.

We went for a walk last week around our neighborhood (the nice part with houses), and got an earful of Nicholas's ability to identify playgrounds.  He desperately wanted to go, but we were trying just to take a quick walk (it was getting toward sunset), and we decided not to head in the direction of the park.  So Nicholas amused himself by asking to play on other people's slides.  And he's got a good eye too.  Not only did he pick out the ones where the play set is on the street side of a house, he was picking up some that we had trouble finding, 50-100 feet from where we were standing behind houses in people's backyards.

Sadly, we could not let him run loose in other people's yards, the 80% of them with fences notwithstanding.  Oh well. Someday, just maybe, you'll get to the other side, little boy.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Mommy Says Sit Down

Nicholas is rapidly getting more intelligent, more independent, more rambunctious, and developing myriad new skills.

This is a potent cocktail when it comes to bathtime.

In the past few weeks he's figured out how much fun it is make big splashes, how to wash himself with a washcloth, and how to stand himself up in the tub. The first one is messy but tolerable. The second is an important developmental step (at some point I'll have to let him use the soap rather than waiting for me to do it). The third, however, is a safety issue and a listening problem; he's not exactly steady on his feet yet, so it's not a very good idea, but Nicholas has also taken delight in ignoring my asking, then telling him that he has to sit down. His last bath a few days ago was a disaster. I was upset enough afterwards that Sarah had to take over getting him into his pajamas. So the situation was not sustainable.

Enter Mommy.

Tonight before his bath, Sarah very quietly had a talk with him. She told him that he's not allowed to stand up in the bathtub, and that he has to listen to Daddy. For some reason, this did the trick. When he got into the tub, he said, "No stand up. Mommy says sit down." Then—in true Nicholas fashion—he repeated it every minute or so for the duration of the bath. It made for a lot more fun in the bath.

But I still got splashed a lot. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Ommy's Car!

Nicholas has been very confused this week—Sarah and I have switched the cars we usually take to work.  So when I loaded him this morning into the Accord, he very carefully said, "Ommy's car."  He wasn't upset, but he seemed to want to note for the record that I was driving the wrong car.  And he's only going to get more confused.

We switched cars this week because last Friday, somehow without meriting mention in the blog at the time, we got into a fender-bender (or, more accurately, a "bumper-cracker") on the way to dinner.  Everyone was fine, of course; the accident was at a very low speed at a light rail crossing—we had to stop quickly as the gates came down, and the guy in the monster truck (i.e., a Ford Expedition) behind us didn't stop fast enough. His car may have gotten its paint nicked, ever so slightly, if at all. Totally cracked our rear bumper.  So it's going into the shop today for repairs, courtesy of his insurance.  But because it was a little broken, I decided (ironically, given my comment on the previous post, without much consultation with the boss) that we shouldn't put over 250 miles on the car, and so Sarah shouldn't take it to work each day.  So we switched.  It's been fine, I think. Sarah misses her books-on-tape, but it's just for a few days.

The ironic part as far as Nicholas's identification of the cars is that we don't really think that way, and the car he thinks is "Daddy's car" (the Civic) is "Katia," the very first car that Sarah purchased.  It's also, by the way, the car that was famously stolen and then found just two weeks before Peanut became Nicholas. But since Sarah's been doing a 110-mile round trip commute each day, she gets to drive the car with an automatic transmission and a CD player.  What's been funny to me this week has been using the Civic as the "family car," because we'd been planning for so long for it to serve that very purpose, and for the purple car  (now deceased) to be the peppy little commuting car.  But we've gotten so used to the Accord's size, newness, comfort, that all of a sudden the Civic seems so old and cramped.

Anyway, that probably didn't deserve such a long post, but I have to kill 90 minutes before taking the Accord to the body shop, and who wants to work?

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Serenity Now!

I read a piece this morning in which a man (it would have to be a man, wouldn't it?) described his philosophy of "Serenity Parenting," in which parents don't "overcharge" themselves for their children, dragging them to events, hobbies, lessons, and all manner of things that no one may be interested, in a futile (he argues) effort to mold their children into future productive adults.  His argument is to sit back, relax, pay less attention to each child, and to have more children (which would, I imagine, necessitate less attention to any one child).  All of this is based, he says on research about the development of twins.

And then there's this nugget nestled in the middle of a paragraph: "I can’t say that I completely convinced my wife on any of these points."

No kidding!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Hangin' with Uncle Andrew

Do you have to move to China, Uncle Andrew?
From 2011 April

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

When Daddy's Away

Nicholas and I had a really great weekend while Joe was away at his conference. We had a jam-packed weekend of fun and with the exception of Saturday morning, Nicholas was incredibly good, making it possible for us to do all these fun things. I already wrote about Thursday evening's "date" to the mall to get pictures and have dinner. Then Friday evening we had dinner with Katie and Alice. This picture gives you a glimpse of the kids' evening.
From 2011 March
Here they are running in and out of a blanket fort, screaming with glee. They spent a lot of time running and screaming, actually. It didn't seem to matter what they were running to or from because running and screaming in and of itself was apparently hilarious.

Saturday morning I had planned to take him to the zoo, but since we had a couple hours before the zoo opened I figured we'd run our Target errands first. But he was so difficult that it took us forever to get out the door (including 15 minutes and 2 timeouts to get his teeth brushed) and I decided that this was a sign that a major outing was a bad idea. I think he was just tired. Worn out from the week and then staying up late the night before. So on our errands we stopped by the new dollar store and picked up some fun new art supplies to play with at home. He took a real liking to painting with watercolors.

From 2011 March
He has asked to paint multiple times a day since, although about half the time his painting session lasts all of 3 minutes. But since it is an easy setup and cleanup, I don't mind.

Since he napped early we ended up squeezing in church before going to Allison's for her birthday party. And he did so much better at church! I'm wondering if 4pm is a better time for him than first thing in the morning. I still had to devote 3/4 of my attention to keeping him quiet and entertained, but I actually heard some of mass, which is an improvement.

Nicholas was the only kid at Allison's party, but he is used to that and certainly doesn't mind being at the center of a room full of adults. And they have two dogs, so he was a happy clam. He was a little scared of the bigger dog at first, but before too long was following the dogs around and trying to order them to do things. Now, ordering any dog around is a challenge, but a dog who is old, deaf, and has trouble walking really doesn't follow directions well. It was interesting to watch, though, because I've never seen Nicholas be that bossy.

Allison's mom had the brilliant idea of showing Nicholas how to scoop dog food from the big container into their bowls. And he took his job seriously.

From 2011 March
No one could believe how carefully he picked up each piece that fell or was on the edge of the bowls. What can I say, he is his father's son.

And when the cake came out, Nicholas recognized it immediately. Allison walked out with it, still in the cake keeper and he started clapping. Someone asked if he knew what it was so I asked him and he very clearly exclaimed, "chocolate!"

From 2011 March
He then stood there watching her cut pieces shouting "yay, chocolate!" and clapping. I guess he is my son as well.

He then went to sleep upstairs with no complaint, leaving me to play games and talk until after 1. Wow--I don't remember the last time I was up that late, and certainly not for fun. The funniest thing was when I woke him up to take him home. He looked at me, looked around and immediately asked for Simon (the dog) and wanted to say bye-bye to Simon. So I showed him that Simon was sleeping and we left. He then proceeded to talk the whole way home about how Simon was sleeping and was a big dog and how he said bye-bye to him. Seriously, it is a 30+ minute drive home and it was 1am--I had been certain he'd go back to sleep.

Sunday morning he woke up in a great mood and while he was happily eating breakfast I asked him what he wanted to do that morning. I hadn't mentioned the zoo as a possibility, but I was definitely entertaining the idea since we had already gone to church. And the little boy must have read my mind because he looked at me and asked for the zoo. And when I said yes his eyes lit up with excitement and he started yelling "yay zoo" and clapping. And then he ordered me to clap too. And no kidding, we clapped and yelled "yay zoo" for a few minutes before I was able to distract him with talking about what animals we'd see.

And we had a great time at the zoo.

He knows the zoo layout well enough at this point that he was able to make decisions about which animals we should go see next without leading us on a crazy adventure. And our conversations about the animals have gotten just a touch more complex. Okay, so when he generates the conversation it is really just a narration of what the animals are doing. Although his descriptions are getting more thorough.

For example, when we were watching the penguins his comment was "Penguins swimming in the water. Zoom--penguins." But when I prompt him to go further, he picks up on it eagerly now. So I responded that penguins like to swim and asked him if he likes to swim. Lightbulb on. He then kept talking about how penguins like to swim in the water and Nicholas likes to swim in the water. He was struggling with putting together that long of a sentence (or combination of sentences) so it often came out in explosions of words such as "Penguins swimming, like swimming water, Nicholas swimming water. Zoom--penguins swim in water, Nicholas swim in water. Nicholas swimming. Nicholas like swimming penguins." And sometimes he would pause, seeming to realize that he didn't have it quite right and start over and try again.

From 2011 March

It was really interesting listening to him tell Joe about the zoo later and seeing what stuck. In addition to telling him about the penguins and his own similarity to them, he told Joe about seeing the giraffes inside. It was really important to him that Joe know that the giraffes were inside that day (they are usually outside). And he described them repeatedly as "up high." I guess it is easier to see how tall they are in the inside rooms. It makes sense because outside they are in a pen that is partially below ground and they are often at a distance, so for someone who isn't great at perspective yet, I guess it would take seeing them a foot away at ground level to realize just how tall they really are. But he apparently doesn't understand the word "tall" yet because he kept describing them as "up high." Close enough.

And the monkeys. Oh, the monkeys. We're still talking about the monkeys. Usually it just involves Nicholas saying "Whoa, monkeys!" over and over and over again. (The monkeys were fighting and so I said "whoa" while we were there.) But if you prompt him, asking what the monkeys were doing, he'll tell you they were swinging and running and walking with paper. Then he sometimes adds "monkey trouble. Monkey time out." And it is true. One of the monkeys ended up in what looked like time out while we were there. No joke--some of the monkeys were fighting, the alpha male came down and set them straight, and one went over and sat in a bin in the corner. And I asked Nicholas at the time if he thought the monkey was in time out. And of course that stuck. He is just tickled when we talk about it. The idea of a monkey being in time out really resonates. Again, go figure.

There are some more pictures in the March album. Yes, I know it is April. I just forgot to change the upload settings and am too lazy to go back and fix them all.

So we had a great time and in the 4 days there were only a few hours where the thought of doing this alone all fall terrified me. But even just those 4 days was enough to send Nicholas back into mommy clingy mode, so I'm a little afraid of how he'll react to Joe being gone most of each week all fall. But I guess only time will tell.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Awesome Weekend

Nicholas and I had a wonderful fun-packed weekend. I am incredibly behind in prepping tomorrow's classes, so I'll have to write about the weekend later, but for now I absolutely had to share one picture:
From 2011 March
Think they were having any fun???

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Medical Update Umpteenth and One

Brief update: Nicholas' ear infection has cleared but the fluid (and mucus--ick) in his ears is not draining. The doctor is doing one more round of antibiotics, mostly I got the impression to buy time hoping the weather will turn and magically loosen things up, but he has started trying to prepare me for tubes. Whereas at the last appointment he was talking about avoiding tubes, suddenly today he was dropping in comments about them not being a big deal. Basically, I think, he looked in Nicholas' ears and knew where it was going and wanted to lay the groundwork. There is still a little hope. Since Nicholas had two separate viruses that cause congestion in the past 2 weeks, it could be that he was recongested rather than that his ears won't drain. Also, the nose spray he has been using sometimes takes a month to really work. But the hope is getting slim. And, of course, this evening he started having a runny nose, so I have the feeling another cold is coming. And as much as I don't want him to need tubes, I'd prefer that to keeping him on antibiotics permanently. At this point he has been on antibiotics (like 4 different kinds) for more of 2011 than not, and I'm worried about potential ramifications of that. Also, if he has to get tubes, better to get them over and done with before we start our process of moving, finding new doctors, the health insurance insanity that goes with a new job and new state, etc. In terms of health issues, this is such a minor one and I am so grateful for that, but I am sick of the cycle and just want Nicholas to be better.

Friday, April 1, 2011

April Fools' Meta-Post

Today, as you may know, is April Fools’ Day. And each year in this space I’ve come up with some gag post, which is often a lot of fun (for me, anyway). But this year we’ve been traveling a bunch—I’m in St. Louis right now, as it happens—and so your day is safe from bloggy hijinks, at least here.

So instead, I figured I’d simply relive the glory of days gone by.

Two years ago, while Sarah was pregnant, I announced that “Peanut” was actually two babies, not one (a boy and a girl!). One friend went for it hook, line, and sinker. She approached Sarah in the library that afternoon and earnestly said, “I thought you looked big, but I didn’t want to say anything.”
And of course I got in trouble for that.

Last year, as we were going through the process of applying for jobs the first time, it seemed appropriate to tell people about our “postdocs” at a research institute in Amsterdam. No one, it seemed, followed the link I provided for the “Grasmaand Dwaas Institute for the Humanities.” If one had, he would have discovered that “Grasmaand Dwaas” is a very rough and very literal translation of “April Fools’ Day” into Dutch. The implausibility of two American historians taking their infant son to do research in the Netherlands didn’t stop at least one person from offering to come with us to babysit.

So, I’m sorry to disappoint if you were hoping to click onto the Peanut Chronicle this morning and find out what I was going to get in trouble for this year. But the best I could come up with was that Nicholas was named after some famous Nicholas in history or literature. And it just wasn’t funny. French President Nicolas Sarkozy? I mean, French jokes are so clichéd, and then I’d have to explain the “h.” Nicholas Nickleby? Well, I’ve (rather famously) not read much Dickens, so that wouldn’t be a very good post. Nicholas Biddle, the President of the Bank of the United States? I’ve already made pretty certain with my long-winded self-referential posts. St. Nicholas? Well, Grandma Alice still may think that we named her grandson after Santa Claus, but no dice.

Maybe next year.  Happy April Fools’ Day!

Pictures . . . Cheese

As I think I mentioned earlier, we were supposed to get family pictures taken on Saturday but had to cancel because of Nicholas' bright red face. Since our giftcard expired at the end of the month, I took him yesterday evening. Joe was on a plane to St. Louis for a conference so instead of family pictures we just got pictures of Nicholas. And we got lots and lots of pictures because I couldn't decide which one I liked best.

Nicholas did such a great job! I was so impressed by him. He really worked at following the photographer's directions . He didn't always end up posed as she intended, but you could see him working to try to do what she was instructing. None of the pictures were jackpots, but because he was working so hard to cooperate, there were also no really bad ones. Out of the 20 shots they take, I ordered at least 1 copy of each of 10. These were the best ones:

From 2011 March
From 2011 March
And most of the ones I didn't order were either the requisite closeups of his eyelashes (I think they actually have requirements to take those because there has been one each time) or his smile looked pained because he was working so hard to listen to and follow the directions.
From 2011 March

From 2011 March
It was the first time we've taken pictures where it wasn't a struggle to get through the session. In fact, when I put him to bed he asked if we could do more pictures. And then, as if to prove he was serious, he exclaimed, "cheese!" As though you have to ask me twice!

We had a little bit of a struggle while I was trying to pick pictures because he kept trying to run off into the store or other people's photo shoots. Meanwhile the person working there was going through all of the cutesy options I wasn't going to get at a snail's pace and I wanted to snap at her. Did she not see the toddler running off every 3 seconds? But once I strapped him into the stroller and positioned it in front of Finding Nemo, he did pretty well and let me make my decisions. He has never actually seen a Disney movie before, but it had lots of fish, so he was mildly interested. Although he did turn around numerous times to ask me (very sweetly) if we were going on the horses.

And, yes, we did go on the carousel. Our appointment was at 5:10 and I was smart enough to know that it was not fair to stick him back in the car at dinnertime only to sit in rush hour traffic on the beltway, so I had planned to eat at the mall. That he had been so good and deserved a reward just worked out well.

We had dinner in the food court watching the horses go round and round and then he got to ride once. And he was perfectly okay with eating his whole dinner first and then one ride and going home. He is such an agreeable child most of the time. He definitely has his moments but on days like this I am left just shaking my head in wonderment at how we got so lucky.

Here he is trying to follow her directions to cross his arms. I think she was going for a tough guy pose, but instead got this:

From 2011 March
Another one that didn't quite work out as she intended. He did a very good job of following her instructions to lie on his belly and put his hands on his face. But instead of cute, she got Home Alone:
From 2011 March
The best real smiles we got have some awkward hand positions. Here he was performing "Itsy Bitsy Spider":
From 2011 March
And this one, well, I don't know what he was doing in this one:
From 2011 March

And if you have a preference for which ones of these we send you copies of, speak now or forever hold your peace.