Portrait

With the artist's permission, I have an image I want to share with you all:

From 2011 June

Isn't that a wonderful portrait of Nicholas? It just captures him so well--I can see the familiar gleam in his eyes and smile.

And the artist is none other than Nicholas' great-grandma Claire:

From 2011 June

I am so in awe of her talent!

Nicholas and Alice

We had to say a lot of goodbyes before we left Maryland. But the person Nicholas will miss the most I think is Alice. Alice's parents threw us a goodbye party and Nicholas and Alice had a blast.

They played a bunch of "Ring Around the Rosie," played ball, and went outside for a little bit to play t-ball.

From 2011 June

It was tons of fun:

From 2011 June

Alice was concentrating really hard:

From 2011 June

And Nicholas kept hitting the tee, which is pretty effective at making the ball move, but not exactly proper form:

From 2011 June

And I almost got a great shot of the two of them, but the camera tends to act up exactly when the kids cooperate:

From 2011 June

But this one is pretty good:

From 2011 June

This picture is getting printed and going in Nicholas' new room. And we already have plans to go visit Joe at least once when he is in Philly in the fall after Alice and her family move there. We are all going to miss Alice and her parents.

Halfway There

We have officially moved out of the Maryland apartment and have made it as far as New York. I am too exhausted to be sentimental right now, but so far so good. If everything goes according to plan we'll get into our new apartment tomorrow and the truck will arrive Thursday morning. If I can find the camera, we'll post pictures. I really hope I find it soon because I finally got a great picture of Nicholas and Alice and I want to put it up in his room.

M-Day

The apartment is packed. Nicholas is at my parents' house, probably begging to go outside to look for Sam and Sadie (the neighbor's dogs) every 5 minutes. The movers are late. I already cried once, when I opened the bare fridge.

Midwest 2011 Ottoville

Sorry for the delay in posting about the last leg of our Midwest adventure. I have been busy packing and taking a quick trip to NY to present at a conference. In fact, I am on the train home now and the physical inability to pack has created a bubble of free time.

Anyway, we had a great time in Ottoville. Stacy and Paul's wedding was the capstone, but Nicholas enjoyed the whole trip. He made lots of fast friends with members of Stacy's extended family and formed an immediate bond with Paul's godson who is close to him in age. When you ask Nicholas about the trip, he gives a list of names, talks about playing basketball (and the too many cars that were in the way), begs to go back to "Aunt Melissa's" to ride the tractor, and gets excited about "Aunt Stacy's party."

I think the second to last of those is the only one that needs any explanation. Nicholas alternated between calling Stacy's older sister "Miss Melissa" and "Aunt Melissa," even though I was only using her first name with him. I guess all women of that age in his life have one of those titles. He and I went down to her house one morning and she let Nicholas sit in her husband's tractor since he didn't have it out in the fields that day. Andy offered later to take Nicholas out in it, but the rest of our stay was so busy that we never got a chance. Nicholas was absolutely in love with that tractor and pretending to drive it. I was in awe of how huge it was. Unfortunately, the only pictures are on my phone and I am not tech savvy enough to get them off. However, I do have a picture of Melissa pulling Nicholas around in the toy tractor in their basement.

From 2011 June

It was a little tricky to navigate helping with wedding prep and a 2-year-old and I feel like I shortchanged Stacy some on my matron of honor duties. Thankfully one of our friends volunteered to watch Nicholas during the rehearsal and Saturday morning until Joe arrived, so I was able to be fully present at the most important parts. I am so grateful for that.

By the Ottoville leg of our trip Nicholas was running on fumes. So while he had fun, he also had points where the exhaustion and over-loaded weeks of activity caught up with him. The first night he had a couple accidents due to playing while exhausted, resulting in what I'm sure is the first of many scraped knees. He did such a number on it that it is still healing. Then the second night he had the worst meltdown of his young life. He got himself so upset at the idea of going to bed that he could hardly breathe. And the screaming was so out of control that if there had been neighbors instead of cornfields all around us we might have had problems.

But, in typical Nicholas fashion, he pulled himself together for the wedding.

From 2011 June

Aided by a long nap between the ceremony and reception, he partied hard, having a blast dancing with the other kids.

From 2011 June

From 2011 June

From 2011 June

Joe and I didn't get to dance much, though, because apparently a week alone with me made Nicholas a little jealous. Every time Joe and I tried to sneak in a dance during a slow song, Nicholas would abruptly stop whatever he was doing, demand to be picked up, and then push Joe away, saying, "no, Daddy!" It was hurtful to Joe, I'm sure, but I do understand where the little guy was coming from. The whole week the two of us had been a team, taking on all sorts of crazy adventures together. And here was someone trying to butt in. Joe and I did get 2 swing dances, I think mostly because Nicholas was too busy trying to figure out what we were doing to interfere.

But, really, how handsome is this little guy?

From 2011 June

Because we were so anxious about getting the packing done, we pushed and made the drive home in one day. By the end Nicholas was going a little stir crazy. Joe took this video of him playing rock, paper, scissors with himself:

From 2011 June

This is a little boy who is very sick of long car trips.

Nicholas is still trying to recoup from the last few weeks. He has been taking 3-hour long naps, something he hasn't done in probably close to a year. I am so grateful that he has been spending most of his days in the calm normalcy of my parents' house. This gives him a brief respite before we head out on our next adventure next week. But as much fun as we have all had this month, I think we will all be happy come July 11th, when Nicholas starts his new school and we can establish a routine and begin to develop a new normal.

Owning the Move

Though Nicholas is a very bright two-year-old, he is not anywhere near ready to grasp the full implications of moving yet.  However, he's very observant, which means he's started to notice that something is not right (and not just the obvious, such as the high and deep stack of boxes in our living room and his bedroom).

Given all of that, we're trying to do at least some preparation to get him ready for the idea of living somewhere else.  Oddly for us—and a sign of how busy and stressed out both Sarah and I are—we have not consulted any writings on the topic from child psychologists, experts in travel, etc. Basically, we've tried to do what we always do with Nicholas: we explain things so that he can exert ownership over a situation.  It's proven to be the only way that he really calms down and accepts newness.

So today Nicholas and I had a little conversation on our way to Home Depot for more boxes about our new house (NB: it's really an apartment, but saying "house" seems more natural).  That he would get to have his same toys, and the same furniture, etc.  All of them are coming with us!  It also helps that he finds Boston a very cool place, since last time we went on an airplane.  Though we have had to explain that we're driving this time.  I'm not entirely sure it's the "right" thing to do with a two-year-old to emphasize that we're leaving and that we'll be someplace new, but my gut tells me it's right for this two-year-old.

And just in case he gets a little nervous about being in a new space, Sarah and I are already scheming for a few gimmicks to make him feel more comfortable and/or to distract him until he's had time to settle in.  First, Sarah's parents are making the trip with us [ed.: THANK YOU!], which will help at least functionally so he doesn't get run over by furniture and its movers. Second, we tried to pack in accessible places some of the things he uses as safety cues, such as the wall quilt that hangs in his room, some of his favorite toys, etc. And if those fail, there's always distraction: we'll live across the street from a small airfield, where we may make a few visits early in July, and getting a library card is very high on our to-do list.

We'll see how it all works, and of course as we have time will blog about it in order to share and/or bore the living daylights out of you. [ed.: also pictures!]  Whatever happens, it will be interesting, and since Nicholas is pretty resilient, I'm confident he'll be fine.

Home

We're home. After 1800 miles of driving, most of it just me and the little guy, we are definitely glad to be out of the car. Nicholas was a little disturbed that his room was mostly dismantled and kept walking around the house saying "too many mess," but when I put him in bed he stretched out (the pack n' play is getting really tight), smiled, and closed his eyes.

Hopefully I'll write about the last leg of the trip later. But for now, time to make a plan for tomorrow and get some sleep. I missed my own bed too. And not sharing a room with a 2-year-old.

The Pros and Cons of Gaining Experience

I'm in the airport in Albany waiting for a delayed flight to Baltimore head to Stacy & Paul's wedding tomorrow. (My connection from Baltimore to Columbus is also delayed, so right now it looks like I'll be okay. You'll have to check back to see if I actually appear in photos from the wedding.)  That means a bonus post!

I know you've all missed me, but it's seemed silly to post while I wasn't actually with Nicholas.  But I have had some phone conversations with him this week, so I can report that he's getting much better at having conversations, with a few conditions.  He now actually responds to questions and will say things other than "hello," "how you doing?" and "good bye!" (followed by hanging up). He told me about the ice cream he ate, and riding on a tractor, and playing in the pool.

The kicker is that he still needs a lot of prompting (no open-ended questions!) so it helps tremendously to have a pre-briefing from Sarah about their activities.  Ask him, "what did you do today?" and you'll get a response of "hello!" or just silence.  But ask "Did you ride a tractor?" gets back "rode the tractor" and then happy babbling about going on the tractor.

It's great that he's getting better on the phone. He needs to, not least for his grandparents, aunts, and uncles, all of whom pine to talk to him on the phone or on Skype but feel disappointed when he actually gets on and doesn't say anything. But it's a little bittersweet to know that he's gaining this experience because of the geographic separation this week. I'm a little less excited about the fall to know that the phone (and Skype) are going to have to sustain a father-son relationship, especially when he's still a little guy (our posts about how grown-up he is notwithstanding).

We'll manage of course and it makes things much easier to know that I can have a phone chat with him.  I just wish it didn't have to come at the expense of being in the same place as him.

Midwest 2011 Day 6

Today was mostly another travel day.

We spent the morning in Louisville and Nicholas and Grandpa O. had a great time as I worked to get us packed up and out the door. Whatever the game is they were playing at lunch, it was apparently hilarious.

From 2011 June

The plan was to drive as far as Dayton, spend a couple hours at the Children's Museum there, then drive the rest of the way to Ottoville. Between leaving a half hour late, lots and lots of construction and blinding rain, we didn't make it to Dayton until an hour before the museum closed. I debated even stopping at that point, but I'm glad we did. We were rushed and Nicholas would have liked more time, but it was a good hour.

After our experience in Wheeling, I walked in and immediately thought, "Now this is a children's museum." The substance of most of the sections went over Nicholas' head because it was aimed at older kids (and with a very strong environmentalist bent), but he could do probably 90% of the things, even if he got something completely different out of the activity.

The water table is a go-to favorite:

From 2011 June

He loved the slide and each time he started down he proclaimed, "Here he comes!" I must have said that some other time.

From 2011 June

But by far his favorite section (even above the meerkats) was the recycling> section which had a large truck, which he proclaimed to be a garbage truck. He kept going back to play with all the different buttons and levers.

From 2011 June

Nicholas was upset to leave, but was soon pacified by the knowledge that we were going to see Aunt Stacy. We made it the rest of the way no problem, and Nicholas quickly warmed up to anyone who was willing to play basketball with him. He did have a couple incidents (such as falling off a short brick wall and tripping down a cement step) because he was so tired, but in the end the only damage was two scrapes. And now he is sleeping peacefully, where hopefully he will stay.

Nicholas has had so much fun with everyone on this trip and spent the drive today happily proclaiming that we were going to different people's houses. He would yell out that we were going to Emily's house, then Aunt Mary's house, then Grandpa O.'s, then Grandma and Grandpa M.'s. I am glad he is having such positive experiences with everyone, but it does make me feel bad that he develops these relationships and then doesn't see them again for 6 months. He has also started asking plaintively to go home, although he is quickly distracted from this by reference to any of the people he has spent time with this week.

But for now we are pretty stationery for at least a couple days.

Midwest 2011 Day 5

We had a pretty mellow but very fun day with my grandparents today. Two short anecdotes:
When we got to the restaurant for lunch Nicholas walked right up to the counter and ordered chicken nuggets and french fries. The only problem? We were at Taco Bell.

We had yummy ice cream treats this afternoon. Nicholas wasn't so sure about it at first and never really warmed up to the orange part. But he did go at the ice cream visible at the bottom with gusto.

From 2011 June

From 2011 June

And despite the bib, he did make a pretty big mess.

Midwest 2011 Day 4

Today was a little calmer than the previous few, but we were still on the go most of the day and tired Nicholas was sound asleep by 7:30. But he did nap in a crib today for the firs time in a week and a half. And would have probably napped for hours if I hadn't had to wake him to get to the zoo.

We spent the morning with my dad's parents and Nicholas apparently had fun since he kept asking to go back. He was not on great behavior, I think mostly because he is just plumb worn out, and it took him awhile to warm up, but he his moments of being delightful. He also had his moments of shrieking at the top of his lungs in the grocery store. Yeah, totally out of character and not okay.

We spent the late afternoon at the zoo with family, which was a lot of fun, although hot and tiring. The grizzly bears were in fine form and Nicholas was enjoying watching them so much that when I finally asked him if we could be all done he said, "no, keep watching brown bear." Well, okay then.

We were all so hot and tired that I made no effort to get pictures with any of the cool statues they have throughout the zoo for photo ops. We did try to get one picture outside the zoo as we left, with no success as we stared directly into bright sunlight.

From 2011 June

I had only slightly more luck getting one of Nicholas, Amy, and Rachel. No sun, but a little boy who was hard to keep still.

From 2011 June

The only other interesting things from today are that Nicholas' pronounciation of names is getting astoundingly good, even after only a couple tries, and that his description of feeding the horse yesterday stunned me with the level of detail in his description. Last night I thought the pool was the hit of the day, but the horse stuck.

Midwest 2011 Day 3

I drove home with my parents from Louisville a couple weeks ago in 10 hours. This time it took me 47. Yes, almost 2 complete days. In part because I planned in a bunch of stops. (In case you're wondering, the Wheeling children's museum is more like a garage sale of random toys than anything that can properly be called a museum. And guide dogs train for 2 years and can do your grocery shopping for you and make a bed!) And there were some detours for construction and closed freeways.

And then there was the 16 hours delay due to a flat tire.

Luckily we did not spend 16 hours on the side of the road. We had stopped to spend a few hours with friends in Cincinnati and noticed the flat when we tried to leave. Since no tire place is open at 7pm on a Saturday night, we spent the night and got the tire fixed this morning.

Nicholas actually really enjoyed the delay because he got bonus time with our Cincinnati friends. They have 3 young kids, a swingset, and a trampoline. Happy little boy.

Apparently Nicholas has been watching people use real swings because yesterday in what was to my knowledge his first time on a real swing, he began pumping his legs and leaning back, as you can see in this video.

From 2011 June

He wasn't able to effectively get much height, but I was impressed that he even knew about this. And he was really persistent. By the time I took this video he had been trying for 3 or 4 minutes.

And he didn't take any time at all to warm up to the trampoline. He jumped (literally) right in and had a blast. I didn't video yesterday because all 4 kids were on and so it took all 3 adults to keep them safe, but today he was on by himself for a few minutes. The falling on his butt he picked up from the 5-year-old.

From 2011 June

But that kid was getting some serious height!

From 2011 June

Nicholas stayed and played while I got the tire fixed and then we began the final leg of our journey (well, or phase 1 of our journey). The normally 2-hour drive to Lousiville took 3 hours, but since Nicholas didn't fall asleep until over an hour and a half in, it gave him the chance to nap. Quick lunch with my grandpa and we were off to my aunt's house to go swimming. And, as I'm sure doesn't surprise you at this point, Nicholas was thrilled!

From 2011 June

We were out by the pool for over 3 hours and I think Nicholas was in the pool for about 2 1/2. He was able to get tons of pool time because my aunt and one of my cousins each took a long shift playing with him. I also played with him for awhile, but there is only so long I can do it and he absolutely cannot be in the water without an adult.

He did all of his normal pool things, but also played with this torpedo thing he called an airplane for a long time, played water basketball, and mimicked everything anyone else did. Amy went under the water and about 5 seconds later Nicholas carefully began lowering himself off the step he was sitting on. He made it up to his nose before I realized what he was doing. He tried a second time a minute later and we had to have a talk about how only Amy could do that. Then when Amy blew water out the noodle, Nicholas absolutely had to try.

From 2011 June

He was not successful, but he was pretty hilarious.

We also instituted a modification to the jumping in game. He hasn't been getting any distance when he jumps in and it makes me anxious that he'll hit his head. And I've tried asking him to jump further or lean forward, but he doesn't seem to understand. But today we brought the noodle over and created a game of jump over the noodle.

From 2011 June

And he finally started getting some distance!

We then went out to visit Aunt Mary's horse in the field. It took Nicholas a bit to warm up to Cody. I think he was scared by how big and strong the horse is. I know it caught me off guard and I've ridden horses before. But after we all pet Cody a bunch and said a lot of "nice horsey," Nicholas was willing to try. Then the problem was getting the horse to come close enough Nicholas could reach--that kid's arms are short. He was able to pet him quite a bit when Aunt Mary lured Cody to the edge with grass:

From 2011 June

And then Nicholas was able to help feed Cody, with very careful supervision from Aunt Mary, the vet:

From 2011 June

And after all that excitement, the little boy who hasn't gone to bed before 8:30 in over a week was so tired that he fell asleep in the car on the way back to grandpa's at 6:30 and was perfectly happy to be carried in straight to bed. But I should probably get to bed soon since this may have readjusted his internal clock so much that he'll be up at 4am. Also, I'm almost exhausted as he is with all the drama and driving and sun.

Ears Update

Yesterday, while Sarah was busy packing up for the trip to the Midwest, I took Nicholas for his post-op follow-up appointment with the ENT specialist for his ear tubes.  His ears look fine, which is great. Plus, the doctor let me look through the scope to see the tube—very cool.

For some reason that didn't make sense to me, Nicholas was much more apprehensive about this visit. He seemed normal heading in, chirping from the car seat that we were going to the "special doctor" even before we'd gotten past the traffic circle outside our complex. Then he talked about the doctor (by name!) in the exam room, like always.  But he tightened up when the doctor actually came in. He wouldn't sit in the exam chair like he normally did, so I had to sit with him (which is how I got the peek at his tubes). Very odd.

After the quick check-up, Nicholas had to go for a hearing test, standard after a tube insertion. Hilarity ensued. He immediately got shy when the audiologist started asking him questions (though she saw it for that). She tried to test his hearing with headphones, but he was so confused that he wouldn't respond to her requests. She tried using speakers attached to TV screens, on which she played cartoons, but he very quickly got bored.  Then she tried a game where Nicholas would hold a toy and then put it in a stack when he heard a "beep."  She carefully explained that he should wait for the "beep," and then demonstrated by making the sound herself.  Nicholas, ever the independent child, decided that she was taking too long, said, "beep beep!" and stacked the toy.

Oh well.

She apparently got far enough to know that he's hearing at pretty low decibel levels, and just on spec obviously there's nothing wrong with his hearing. So he's fine.  But it was kind of a hilarious ten-minute expedition.

So now we're set on the ears, for a while anyway. We'll need to look someone up when we get to Boston to check up on them in the fall, but other than that, we just need to keep water out of his ears.

Cruise 2011 In Review

Nicholas had a great time on "the big boat."

From 2011 Cruise

He was definitely more interested in and appreciative of a wider range of experiences than last year, but he also had a shorter tolerance for long dinners and was more forceful about needing to do Nicholas activities rather than just chilling while everyone else played trivia or sat and talked.

Between all of our cameras we took over 1,000 pictures. Of those I narrowed it down to around 180 that are in the album here. I'm going to try to now pick a couple dozen to use to narrate the trip. For all of the pictures, check out the Gallery. I will also probably put some others in posts over the next week.

Nicholas' favorite part of the ship was the "Nicholas size pool" hands down. We took him twice over the course of the trip (once on each of the at sea days) and only managed to limit it to that by convincing him that it was closed the other 5 times a day he asked. I felt pretty guilty as he walked around reciting "Nicholas size pool closed. No open. Closed." There are multiple pools but the one we let him in was 1 foot deep and had a sprinkler and a slide. His favorite things to do were jump in, kick his feet in the water to splash, and go down the slide.

From 2011 Cruise

The first day he kept falling backwards on the slide (hitting his head once, which he mentions everytime he talks about the slide in the pool) and having to be caught at the bottom so he didn't submerge (problematic with the ear tubes).

From 2011 Cruise

But the second day he was doing it all by himself, as long as we reminded him at the top to lean forward. He absolutely loved the pool, so much so that the first day he was livid when I made him stop even though his entire body was turning blue and he had smacked his head.

Nicholas also constantly wanted to go outside. This year we had a balcony and he wanted to go outside whenever we were in the room.

From 2011 Cruise

There is no real harm in this, although he did make us pretty nervous with constantly talking about wanting to jump in. We had to keep reminding him that only boats go in that water, not people.

In Bermuda itself, we created a jam-packed schedule. The first day we went on a walk from the smallest drawbridge in the world (there is a 2-ft or so section that opens up so a sailboat mast can pass through)

From 2011 Cruise

along part of an old railway trail

From 2011 Cruise

and saw a cool old fort with an amazing view.

From 2011 Cruise

Then after a quick lunch we went on a glass-bottom boat. Nicholas was lukewarm about the boat ride

From 2011 Cruise

but LOVED watching the fish through the bottom when we got to the reef

From 2011 Cruise

and thought feeding the fish bread and watching them swarm it was one of the coolest things ever.

From 2011 Cruise

He had such a busy day that he didn't have a chance to nap until 3:30 and of course at that point he was so overtired and overstimulated that he refused every attempt we made at a nap. Only to fall asleep at dinner and sleep through the entire almost 2-hour long meal in my arms.

From 2011 Cruise

Since Nicholas napped until 8pm and it was our only night in port, we seized the chance to go off the ship that evening. We took pictures with a moongate

From 2011 Cruise

From 2011 Cruise

walked around some, and watched part of a retreat ceremony (military music and dancing performance done at sunset).

The next day we spent the morning at the aquarium/zoo. Nicholas was so excited that he literally jumped around the aquarium part chattering (or more accurately chanting, since he was talking in time to his jumping) about the fish. We saw some pretty cool animals, but our favorite section from last year was closed for renovations. Luckily by then Nicholas had forgotten my promises about a white alligator and had gotten distracted by the playground.

From 2011 Cruise

He has never done an enclosed slide before and was too scared to go in. So I climbed up from the bottom until he could see me and then inched my way down as he came down slowly so he could see me the whole way. It took just the once to show him there was a way out and it was safe and then he did it on his own probably 3 dozen times, laughing and grinning each time down.

From 2011 Cruise

I'm glad I only had to go up once because man did that hurt.

And that afternoon we managed to squeeze in a quick (as in 20 minutes) trip to the beach. Since we had so little time, we just went to the little cove by the ship, so it wasn't nearly as pretty as the other beaches, but for Nicholas' purposes it was fine.

From 2011 Cruise

As usual with new experiences (because he doesn't remember it from last summer), it took him a few minutes to warm up to the idea but then he got braver and braver. Pretty soon he was walking in up to his chest and would have kept going if I would have let him. But even holding onto him, I wasn't comfortable letting him getting any deeper.

He was so comfortable that he plopped down into the water to "swim" like he does in the pool

From 2011 Cruise

and kicked

From 2011 Cruise

Much to his father's surprise, Nicholas really is a water child

From 2011 Cruise

The last sea day most people sleep in, but Nicholas will have none of that so we tried to go play mini-golf before it got crowded. It was way too windy, but since noone was using the basketball court, that became our backup and I think Nicholas had more fun there anyway. We ended up with most of the family out kicking soccer balls and shooting baskets. And with the rolling of the ship and the insane wind, hilarity was a given. Nicholas was working really hard on dribbling. He never got more than 2 touches, I don't think, but his focus was intense.

From 2011 Cruise

And then he kept trying to shoot, which of course didn't work very well.

From 2011 Cruise

The ball was too heavy and the basket too high. But he had such a great time!

From 2011 Cruise

Nicholas completely idolizes his uncles. He loves his aunts and grandparents (and whenever we went anywhere, Nicholas insisted on holding Aunt Shayna's hand, no one else would do), but he looks up to his uncles in a unique way. This gives them incredible power because he imitates them in everything and they can teach him something in about 3 seconds. Luckily they used their power for good. Or at least in neutral ways. One of these ways was teaching Nicholas the fist bump, which has now become his go-to.

From 2011 Cruise

So much so that at one point Brian asked Nicholas to shake hands and Nicholas said, "No, let's fist bump!" They also sort of taught him rock, paper, scissors.

From 2011 Cruise

I don't think Nicholas ever got the hang of doing any other than rock, but he sure had fun.

And of course there was formal night, which really is just a big photo-op, but since I love pictures, I am happy for it. We got a couple good family formal shots:

From 2011 Cruise

From 2011 Cruise

But I like these at least as much:

Nicholas with his Uncle Mike on the balcony (can you believe that water???) waiting for the rest of us to be ready:

From 2011 Cruise

Sleeves still rolled up from dinner:

From 2011 Cruise

Hanging with Daddy:

From 2011 Cruise

Posing with Mommy:

From 2011 Cruise

We had a great time and all things considered, Nicholas did really well. He definitely gave us trouble with napping and had difficulty making it through all of dinner in peace. And there were a few major meltdowns. But given what we were asking of him, that really isn't too bad. And we felt much better when we happened to run into both the family that was next to us at dinner and the family in the room that adjoined ours and they each spontaneously commented on how amazing well-behaved he was. Since they are the people he was most likely to have annoyed, it was a huge relief to hear that.