Happy Halloween

Trick or treating has been postponed until Thursday due to weather and power situations in our town, but Nicholas still had Halloween at school today:

From 2011 October

"We Have Power! Yay!"

Always nice to get a phone call with that as the opening sentence.

Sometime this afternoon, the power came back on. That is, when I checked our online account at 3pm, our neighborhood was still out, but by 5pm when Sarah and Nicholas got home, the lights were back on in the complex.

Sarah's been busy all evening catching up on household errands (laundry, etc.) and prepping for classes, so she couldn't post this herself, but I thought you all would want the update.

It's For You

Sarah and Nicholas have been without power since sometime yesterday evening (after Sarah went to sleep), so they've had a bit of a rough day. Here in Philadelphia we had about two hours of slush at lunchtime and otherwise just rain, so my conference went off without a hitch (though with a slightly smaller audience). And it means I can write a brief update on Nicholas's Developmental Breakthrough of the Week™:

Carrying a conversation on the phone.

He's been able to respond on the phone for a while, and has progressively gotten better. But for some reason this week he's figured out how to sustain a conversation on the phone for several minutes, which is very enjoyable on my end. It started early this week when Sarah called and reported that during his bath, Nicholas had plaintively announced, "I want Daddy." (Getting shampoo suds in his eyes may have been involved at the time.) Anyway, they called me and we were actually able to talk in sentences, like we do in person! Fun!

Then I got another call on Tuesday night, and a chat just this morning, when we talked about the snow: how much there was, what they'd done with it, and so on.

It's always fun to see him figure something out, and I'm sometimes a little disappointed that I miss things here in Philadelphia. But this one is especially pleasing because it's depends on my being at a distance. Or, rather, I am the beneficiary of being at a distance, because he learned how this particular skill with me.

Playing Catch-up

The problem with this blog is that when we actually have something worth blogging about, I am too busy to blog. I couldn't blog last weekend because I didn't have a free moment and then I spent all week this week just trying to get caught up after losing most of my Friday prep time and all of my weekend errand/housework time. And now I have the time, but the moment has passed.

I will post a couple more pictures from the wedding that arrived in my inbox. These were taken by Grandpa Richard's friend Rob, who is an amazing photographer and has captured great shots at each of our weddings. He also has some stunning shots of other family members, but this is a Nicholas blog, so Nicholas is what you get.

From 2011 October

From 2011 October

From 2011 October

Nicholas and I ran an insane number of errands this morning. Insane. Walmart, gas, grocery store, home to put away groceries, Target, hair cut for Nicholas, post office, library. All before lunch. We then stopped for pizza on our way home because Nicholas was making it very clear that I had pushed him too far. But all of those errands absolutely needed to happen this weekend and we were rushing to beat the snow. And I have now gotten all the trash out, the fridge cleaned out, way more loads of dishes done than I care to admit, and everything put away. If I had laundry going I would feel completely on top of things (domestically at least). But given the wet snow that is falling and the fact that most of the trees still have their leaves, I'm anticipating potential power outages and so am fearful of starting the washer. Particularly with a pay communal machine.

The snow is actually gorgeous. I was so annoyed with the early snowfall until it started falling. And then I was swept up in the enchantment of watching it. And Nicholas is so excited about it! And since it is a Saturday and so I don't have the anxiety about whether or not classes will be cancelled and all that goes along with that, I am free to relax. Tomorrow when I have to shovel out two cars while entertaining a 2-year-old I have the feeling I will change my mind again, but for tonight I am enjoying it.

Nicholas wanted to go out and play in the snow this evening, but it was already getting dark at that point and there was only an inch (I'm estimating that we're at about 3 inches now), so it really didn't make sense. Also, I'm lazy and didn't feel like bundling him all up. So I opened the sliding door to the patio and let him stick his arm out a couple times. Then I put a tupperware out on the balcony for 20 minutes to collect some snow and brought it inside for him to play with. That actually kept him entertained for quite awhile.

From 2011 October

Always the little scientist, he was really interested in the chance to experiment with it.

From 2011 October

His conclusion was that snow "is like sand." I'm not sure what traits this conclusion was based on, but he came up with it entirely on his own, not even in response to any questions from me, so I'll take it. My response was to ask if that meant he could build a snowcastle, and he promptly started making a snow pile.

From 2011 October

He tasted it after I encouraged him to try and while he made a face at the first couple bites, he quickly declared it "yummy."

From 2011 October

I think I am going to go grab a novel and a mug of hot chocolate and enjoy the snow. I am declaring a "snow night" and refusing to do any schoolwork tonight.

Ring Bearer

I don't have any pictures of Nicholas actually doing his job as ring bearer, but here are a couple of him and Nate (Shayna's nephew and his co-ring bearer). And, yes, two ring bearers is certainly more than double the cuteness.

Trying to blow out the fire in the fireplace (for like 5 minutes):

From 2011 October

Fist bump:

From 2011 October

Nicholas at the Wedding

Sarah and I realized that at least half of the people who read the Chronicle were present when these photos were taken. So this one's for the non-Uncle Brian and Aunt Shayna family and friends. Sarah may post a more complete account of the weekend (or I might, who knows), but for now, we wanted to give you a glimpse of Nicholas in his tuxedo:

Here's the whole family outside the wedding venue just before the ceremony, all of us looking dapper:

From 2011 October

And here's one of Nicholas surveying the dance floor at the reception:

From 2011 October

Think he was tired?

A great time was had by all, especially Uncle Brian and Aunt Shayna. Nicholas was exhausted by the end of the weekend, but how could you trade a few hours' sleep for the adoring attention of aunts, uncles, and cousins?

EDIT: Photo credits go to Grandpa Richard (below) and his friend Rob (above photo).

Home

Nicholas and I are home safe and sound. Joe is still working on getting back to Philly, but should be back by 1am. Nicholas was a rockstar, especially on the flights. And even more so when you consider that when he went to bed at 10:20 tonight that was earlier than the previous two nights. Sometimes he is so aggravatingly 2 years old and other times he just blows me away with his patience.

Nicholas' feelings about the weekend can be pretty well summed up with his prayer tonight: "Dear God, thank you for the planes and for my aunts and uncles."

Goodnight.

This Week's Calendar

Joe and Nicholas made a calendar for this week over the weekend.

From 2011 October

And I have to say, it puts mine from last week to shame.

And Nicholas loves to go and look at his calendar and narrate all about it, so the past two nights I've tried to get a video of it. And I'll post them both here, because they are each awesome in their own very particular way.

Last night:

From 2011 October

Tonight:

From 2011 October

And, yes, Uncle Brian and Aunt Shayna are getting married in Chicago this weekend, and all his aunts and uncles will be there. He is so excited!

Weekend with Daddy

Since Joe was home two weekends in a row (gasp!), our to-do list was much shorter than usual and we managed to take care of our errands and weekend chores and still have a little time to relax.

I think the most fun part of the weekend for all three of us was the half hour we spent letting Nicholas ride his bike around the apartment complex and over to the playground.

From 2011 October

He has gotten really good at pedaling with all the practice at school and was thrilled to have a wide open space to really get going. Watch him go:

From 2011 October

We actually got the Giants game on tv today and after watching the first half during Nicholas' naptime, Joe was really hoping to watch the rest. So he put Nicholas in his Giants t-shirt, taught him some cheers, and tried to get him interested in watching the game. Nicholas was most interested in watching people catch the ball, yelling "good catch!" regardless of which team it was.

Once he got bored, he switched to dancing, and we couldn't help but get out the camera after a few of these performances.

From 2011 October

The only downside to having Joe home for the weekend is that we all have to be up at 4:30 tomorrow to get him to the airport. Not quite the ideal way to start the week. I have the feeling tomorrow may be one of those days where I end up taking a nap curled up under my desk.

Smarty Pants

It's official. My two-year-old is smarter than me.

The most recent evidence:

• He has the entirety of Corduroy's Christmas Surprise memorized. Verbatim. And this is no short board book. It is 30 pages long and each 2-page spread has 4-8 sentences on it. And sentences like, "Corduroy looked out the window to see a crisp, sunny day and a fresh blanket of snow on the ground."


• He knows his left from his right and gets them correct 100% of the time. And if I get confused when facing him, he corrects me, confident that he is right, which he is.


• He loves fruits and vegetables. Not only do his salads have a wider variety of vegetables than mine (both of which he makes virtually by himself), but he also carefully eats every single onion I saute with the green beans after his beans are gone.

I'm sure there is more evidence, but those are the things that blew me away today. He also has figured out enough of the abstract question words to have a real conversation. A conversation two days ago in the car:

• N: I have a sticker, Mommy. See my sticker?


• S: That is a nice sticker, bud. Where did you get the sticker?


• N: At school. In my new classroom.


• S: Who gave it to you? (expecting either a random aside or maybe "my teacher")


• N: Miss Laura.


• S: That was nice. Why did she give you a sticker? (At this point I didn't figure he was following, but was bored driving home and hadn't talked to anyone all day.)


• N: (brief pause) I helped clean up the classroom.


• S: Miss Laura gave you a sticker for helping clean up the classroom?


• N: Yeah.

He also properly converted a pronoun the other day in a way that stunned both me and Joe. Joe was on speaker phone while Nicholas and I were crossing the day off on his "count down for Daddy" calendar. Nicholas tried to show it to Joe through the phone (the difference between speakerphone and Skype is a little above his paygrade) and then started pointing to things to show him.

"This is pizza. And that is school. And this is Da . . . this is you, Daddy!"

From 2011 October

I have been in awe of this little boy for a long time, but his language development is really amazing me. He works diligently on grammar and often pauses or goes back and corrects himself when he gets it wrong. He still has some trouble conjugating past tense, but he tries hard and I am impressed. Where did we get this child?

I'm just waiting for the first snowfall (in, you know, a week), when Nicholas looks outside and proclaims that we have a "fresh blanket of snow on the ground." He has already declared that he is happy because he is going to Corduroy's house at Christmas. I tried to convince him we could only pretend to go, but he is pretty determined. Anyone want to come over dressed up like a bear in overalls and make a gingerbread house?

Prescience

From the post, "Six Days In," May 31, 2009:

Oh, and he's discovered how to suck his thumb. We may hate this last skill in about two years, but for now, it's a nice developmental step.

Why yes, yes we do hate that skill. And we somehow sensed through the haze that it would cause problems one day. Sigh.

Layers of Complication

Being away for long stretches of time means that things at home that ordinarily I wouldn't notice changing on a day-by-day basis all of a sudden pop when it's been a week or two. Perhaps the best case of this is Nicholas's bedtime routine, which is intricate enough to make your average government functionary right at home.

It started so simply.  Even at just a few months old, we'd read a few books before bed. When he was an infant, it was mostly to set the routine of bedtime reading, and to make it clear that this was the signal for "it's bedtime now, time to wind down." Good enough. I don't remember exactly when I started adding a song, but I would do it occasionally. (When he was a newborn, I spent many an hour in the middle of the night pacing the apartment singing every Billy Joel, Beatles, and Glee Club song I could remember to try to get him back to sleep.) At some point singing became an official part of the routine, usually some kid's song -- the ABC's, or Baa-Baa Black Sheep, or some other lullaby. When he was about one or so, we started to add a little prayer.

All well and good, right?

Well it's grown some. By the end of this past summer, the bedtime routine included teeth-brushing (and Nicholas always gets a turn and always insisted on rinsing off the brush afterwards), at least two books (he picks), the prayer, THREE songs--always the same ones, always the same order. Ask Nicholas and he'll tell you:

"Take Me Out to the Ball-Game Baa-Baa Black Sheep ABCD's!!"

That brings me to this past weekend. In addition to everything else, it's now apparently a requirement to include "keep us safe" as the last part of his prayer. Fine.  Plus I had to stand at his crib-side and rub his back while singing his songs. Okay, whatever. Then I had to give him a kiss while still at the crib. Oh, and his Elmo doll too. Then he demanded I blow him a kiss from the door. Then he demanded I blow him a kiss from outside the door. You are not allowed to skip steps.

Sarah hypothesized, and I'm in general agreement, that part of the problem is that she always does bedtime, and so whatever gimmicks and tricks she throws in on occasion are now all he ever gets, so they're not variations between the two of us but rather part of a strict routine.

It's good that he likes order (probably). It's fabulous that he has a good memory to keep track of all of these rituals. But boy is it tough to keep up with them when you've been away for a week.  Sometimes I need a handbook.

Wordless Wednesday: Baker-in-Training

From 2011 October

Scenes from a Weekend

Sixty hours at home can do wonders for the soul, and apparently for toddlers who miss their fathers.  We had a busy, productive, and slightly insane weekend.  In other words, par for the course.  Here, then, are a few highlights:

"Running Errands"
Nicholas now understands the concept, if not the particulars.  On Saturday morning, just after my arrival, Nicholas and I went on some errands that had piled up during the week—the bank and the post office specifically, with a trip to the library thrown in to allow him to play for a few.  It's actually more fun for him that you think.  He was good at the post office, and the postal worker gave him a free coloring book while we were waiting [ed.: a POST OFFICE COLORING BOOK! Can you tell Daddy was more excited than Nicholas?], and he loves the bank because he always gets a lollipop. In fact, the first thing he did in the bank was walk over to the desk where he first got one and said loudly, "Where's the woman?" She's not in on Saturday, but the tellers were happy to oblige a smile and carefully word "Please may I have a lollipop?"  And he loves the library, which I think we've discussed a number of times.

Anyway, part of the point of this whole anecdote is that we also ran errands this morning, to look for eyeglasses and get me a flu shot.  When we told Nicholas we were running errands, he exclaimed, "Go to the bank, and the post office, and the LIBRARY!!!"

Pumpkins
Sarah spent much of the weekend grading, so I took Nicholas to pick out a pumpkin, which he's been begging to do since we went apple-picking a few weeks back and he saw the pumpkin patch.  It didn't take very long to pick one pumpkin (and with the nice weather things had been pretty well picked over).  But we enjoyed some quality time, and also an apple cider donut and a free cup of apple cider (yum!).

And yes, I was under strict orders to bring the camera and take photos.  So here's some proof we brought back a pumpkin.

Trying to pick one up:

From 2011 October

Surveying the pumpkin patch:

From 2011 October

And one of only two photos in which he deigned to look at the camera (the other I spare from public consumption as I caught him mid-cough):

From 2011 October

In other news Nicholas helped Sarah make a cake (funfetti!), but that's a story that Sarah should tell.  It's great to be home, even if just for two days, but man, is it exhausting.  And yet I can't wait for Friday afternoon to come.

Animal Puzzle

Last night after Nicholas and I made a couple animals together, Nicholas declared that he was going to make a cow for me. Since this required that he do it all by himself and I not help (but pay close attention and praise), I decided to take a few pictures. And since pictures have become few and far between on this here blog, I will share:

From 2011 October

From 2011 October

From 2011 October

Reason 832

Reason 832 why I should never be a stay-at-home mom: dishes.

No, I don't actually have this list. Although maybe some day I will write one so I have something to look at on bad days at work or each time I look at my paycheck and realize just how much of it goes straight to daycare.

The thing with dishes is that you have to do them every. single. day. Cooking dinner gets to me for the same reason, but this week I don't mind it as much because I found some fun food at the grocery store. And at least you get to eat as a result of cooking. What does doing dishes get you? A counter that is clean for 3.2 seconds. And, seriously, how do 2 people make so many dishes and why can't most of them go in the dishwasher?

This is one of the stupid little things about solo parenting that really gets to me. It is dumb. It takes half an hour a day. But I can power through getting us out the door in the morning complete with lunches packed, a full day at work, making dinner, getting Nicholas ready for bed, doing the couple hours of schoolwork that are inevitably left for the evening, dealing with bills and paperwork and whatever else has accumulated. And then, just as I am relishing the idea of being done for the night, always an hour later than I'd planned, I remember. The stupid dishes. Every. single night. They are my nemesis.

The ironic thing is that in the grand scheme of things they are actually incredibly minor and a tiny speck in the chaos of my life. But I can despise and resent them without guilt. They are not something I need to be grateful for, nor something that I love underneath it all, nor something that I chose. They are free to absorb my stress and frustration.

And what started as a silly post about how I'd be an awful stay-at-home mom has apprently turned into an analytical voyage into my psyche. But one that was as therapeutic as breaking a glass would be. And with much less mess.

Weekend at Home

Nicholas and I were at home this weekend . . . all weekend . . . just the two of us. And we did absolutely nothing noteworthy or picture worthy. And it was great. Not because we had oodles of fun so much as because I was able to get through a massive to-do list and nothing makes me feel better than being productive.

Yesterday after doing the normal morning routine plus talking to Joe on Skype, we went to the bank, the library, the post office, Walmart (yes, evil but actually has crib sheets that fit because they are too cheap to put in good elastic, so I caved), the dollar store, and the grocery store. And that was just before lunch.

We came home, made lunch, ate lunch, each napped for 2 hours, then took care of some more stuff around the house and went on a date to the mall. Nicholas got to play at the indoor playplace (which I absolutely hate but he loves) and at the American Girl store. He really loves playing with the dolls. I don't know if it is the magic of the store or what, but he does much more real play with them there than with his yard sale doll ("Babydoll") at home. Maybe it is all the props they have. There were two dolls at a picnic setup (he declared it to be a birthday party), and he pretended to pour them drinks, fed them, gave them balloons, etc.

And I got dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Well, he ate there too, but it wasn't nearly as much of a treat for him--the kids meals are really the same everywhere. We actually had a delightful little dinner date and when he got bored while waiting for our food to come, he sat in my lap and read me one of his books, which was quite enjoyable.

The really amazing thing about all our running around yesterday is that he was actually helpful some. And most of the rest of the time he at least wasn't being a hindrance. I keep thinking that he and I have to become a team if this crazy situation is going to work, and yesterday we actually were. I am pretty certain it was a fluke and not a new normal, but if this whole thing can teach him to be more responsible and helpful, then that will be a good perk.

Today we talked to my parents and Grandpa O. on Skype, went to church (where he was also delightful), did our Target errands, he helped me put away the laundry I did after he went to bed last night, he did some dishes (or as he calls it, thanks to the lingo used at school, "had water play") while I cleaned off the piles of crap that accumulated on the table, we made a yummy dinner, he had a bath, and we even got his fingernails and toenails cut! And we actually played together for an hour, which brought on the realization that he hasn't touched a single one of his toys in weeks because he has only been home and awake to eat or for the 40 minutes each day when he watches tv while I shower and make dinner.

And, to top it all off, I even managed to grade a bunch of student papers and respond to a half dozen student emails!

It wasn't quite all perfect. This morning after Target he had a pretty huge meltdown (apparently I pushed him a little too far) and getting his toenails cut was, as always, a massive struggle, but we got through it all. And we have a full fridge, leftovers for lunches tomorrow, clean clothes, a coat that actually fits Nicholas, and a Mommy who feels much more able to face the week with so many fewer things hanging over her head.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

I went out for Chinese food at lunch today, and the fortune seemed particularly apt for the intersection of our work and parenting lives, so I'm sharing it with you all:

Ideas are like children: there are none so wonderful as your own.