Sugar! Tee hee!

Nicholas gets (the secular part of) Easter, to the point that by the time we got to eating the bunny cake, he was extolling the virtues of sweets in the manner you see above.

We had quite the busy day with Grandma Alice, Grandpa Richard, Uncle Brian, and Aunt Shayna all in town, so I'll try to keep things brief and illustrated.

After church this morning, we took our traditional holiday portrait:

From 2012 April

And just because, Nicholas wanted to pose with Elmo:

From 2012 April

Our apartment complex is not designed well for egg hunts (lots of open grassy space, which is great for other things, but not hiding anything), but we managed to find a spot around the corner from our building with an odd rock formation, so Nicholas was able to hunt for eggs:

From 2012 April

From 2012 April

It probably would have been more fun for him (and definitely for the adults) if there were more children running around looking for the eggs, but we persevered as he found all of them (and some of them twice, thanks to Grandpa's antics). The Easter Bunny was very nice to Nicholas: in addition to candy (yum!) he got galoshes, a Mickey Mouse shirt, and some puzzles, and Grandma brought more bubbles!

From 2012 April

Nicholas was exhausted much of the weekend because he was having so much fun, but that's okay, not least because he's back in school tomorrow so his teachers will be the ones to have to deal with it! He loves having family come visit, and told us this evening that he thought we should go visit Grandma and Grandpa, "because it will make them happy." Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

From 2012 April

Nicholas Visits Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Patrick!

Since we were away from Nicholas for a few days, we invited his helpful babysitters (Grandma Alice, Grandpa Richard, and Uncle Patrick) to write a guest post for the blog on their time with him.  Here is their report:

Joe and Sarah are off at the American Historical Association's Annual Meeting, and we had Nicholas for four days.

Joe and Sarah left for Boston on Thursday morning, Nicholas got over it pretty quickly and began the work of exploring the house and enjoying the trains, puzzles and books that we left for him.

Each day upon waking up at 6:45 am, Nicholas called out for Grandpa, Grandma and Uncle Patrick.

From 2011 January

After a hard day of playing on Friday, Nicholas was glad to see Grandma when she got home.

From 2011 January

Dinner at the Diner, then back to Grandma and Grandpa's. At bedtime, Nicholas got silly, and played a game of "No" with Grandma about going to bed.

From 2011 January

But he was just kidding. Pajamas, teeth, prayer and night-night. He went to bed beautifully, blew kisses and went right to sleep.

Once again waking up early in the morning, Nicholas began his last full day at Grandma and Grandpa's. Joe called from Boston, and we all spoke together on the speaker phone, including Nicholas, who was pleased to hear from Daddy. Nicholas knocked on Uncle Patrick's door starting around 9:00, and kept at it until Patrick got up. We went to IHOP for breakfast. Grandpa ordered pancakes and sausage, and got to eat the portion that he was quick enough to eat before Nicholas devoured it. Then Nicholas tackled some of Grandma's toast.

From 2011 January

The folks at the next table came over to admire Nicholas' red hair and complimented his mother. "Grandmother", she replied, pleased at the compliment.

We are reminded of how much work watching young person can really be - and even more so, we realized, in an adult house where child-proofing is done on the fly. The gates we purchased worked well to at least take the stairs out of our concern. But Nicholas wants to go up the stairs . . . and down the stairs . . . and up the stairs again. We count the stairs (EIGHT stairs from the living room up to the bedrooms, SIX stairs down from the living room to the family room) and Nicholas counts with us: "two, three four, six". He NEVER starts with "one", and he almost always skips "five."

Is Nicholas tiring? You be the judge.

From 2011 January

Food for Thought

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

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

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

Internalizing Danger

So because of our frequent (and sometimes only) commenter Rob, I ended up reading a series of posts on another blog about kids and "stranger danger".  The author's main point:

There's this attitude in this country that any man who is interested in or talking to children is a child molester. I think that this is as dangerous an idea as the idea that all women are objects/sluts/etc. It is as destructive as the idea that all Arabs are terrorists. It is not a prejudice that I think should be taken lightly

Instead, she suggests that we "start parenting from a point of logic and sanity, instead of parenting out of fear."

First of all, amen.

Now, I tend to agree with the sentiment.  I do think there is in parenting circles today (God, the prudent academic in me is gagging on the broad generalizations, but whatever) a rush to identify and eliminate risks.  Hence we get recalls of cribs that can injure a baby when not put together properly, warnings to be hypervigilant for potential food allergies, and on and on.  Do all of these have a degree of worthwhile caution?  Absolutely.  Does Nicholas eat the occasional strawberry or piece of chocolate?  Yep.  Call Child Protective Services right away!

In painting all adult men with the broad brushstroke of "danger," I would argue we actually make it more difficult for children (adults, too) to figure out just who is and is not dangerous.  If we eliminate all nuance from the discussion, children have no skill set from which to draw to calculate much of anything about the people they encounter.  (And speaking of generalizations, boy could I go to town on a loss of nuance in society.  But this blog is about Nicholas, childhood, and parenting, so enough about that.)  It would seem much better, then, to develop a comfort around people who are extremely safe (family and close friends), and give Nicholas the means to figure out for himself how to trust neighbors, how to decide how much to trust strangers he encounters.

And I ended up commenting on one of the posts, because the discussion turned to how this woman's husband felt that he couldn't be open with kids around because of this very danger.  I must admit that I share that feeling as well, and it makes me sad.  It also reminds me of my grandfather.  Here was a man who lived to have fun with kids.  He was the kind of person who could see a five-year-old with an ice cream cone, walk up, take a bite of the ice cream from the kid, and have the kid laughing in stitches.  So maybe he posed a public health risk if he had a cold, but the point is that he never once seemed to think about whether kids would find him threatening.  Now maybe some of that ease came from knowing him later in life (being a grandfather probably helps in knowing how to appear innocuous and fun), but from what I've heard, that's what he was always like.  But how would he behave today?  Would he have mall security escorting him from the food court for talking to a little girl and making faces at her?

The point is, if I even have one, that I have some of those genes that allow me to interact with people and to want to interact with kids (not nearly as many—I would never even contemplate crashing a wedding in East Asia, let alone do it).  But I don't interact with kids I don't know.  Now, you might ask just how much that kid at the next table at Red Robin loses because I don't smile back when he looks over.  In the grand scheme of his day, probably not all that much.  But on the other hand, it's the little things.  If society has made the two of us mutually nervous to extend what should be common courtesy, that makes the world just a little bit less fun, a little bit more sad, a little bit too protected.  Multiplied over dozens of interactions, kids learn not to trust anyone, and that can't be good for any of us.

Joe and Nick's Excellent Adventure

We're back from New York, and if you couldn't tell by the post's title, things went off without a hitch.  We had a great visit with Grandma Alice, Grandpa Richard, Uncle Patrick, and Great-Grandma Claire (plus a few neighbors who were itching to meet the Most Popular Little Boy in the World).  We spent most of the time at the house just hanging out and playing, but Nicholas seemed to enjoy himself immensely.

Here he is, for example, demonstrating to Grandpa Richard how to properly eat your fingers to soothe teething pains:

From Nicholas - Month 6

And he's gotten really good about letting anyone feed him (Grandma's not just anyone, but still):

From Nicholas - Month 6

[N.B.: More photos in the Peanut Gallery, as always.]

For this trip I had worried most about two parts: Nicholas being separated from Mommy, and sleeping in a strange place.  Now, he'd already done one overnight mommy-separation successfully way back in August, so I wasn't too surprised about his handling that part with aplomb.  And for the most part, even at home he doesn't get too clingy with Sarah, or notice that she's not around, or mind eating a bottle.  Unless of course, if she walks by when I'm in charge, and then all hell breaks loose.  But with Sarah safely ensconced in Tennessee, that last was an unlikely occurrence.

As for sleep, the last time we traveled with him (at the end of August), he had a lot of trouble adjusting to the new sleep patterns, being in a different bed, and so on.  So we tried to prepare him a little bit by having him take a few naps in the last week in his pack n' play in our bedroom—a different location, a different bed.  And boy did it pay dividends.  Plus it helped that he decided to be incredibly agreeable.  We arrived at about 11pm on Thursday night, and I set him down—still in his car seat—on the floor in "his" bedroom (it's currently a shrine to Uncle Brian) and went to quickly warm up some milk.  He sat very patiently, and beamed a huge (mostly) toothless grin when I came to get him.  I fed him, and he went out easily and quickly for five hours. [Ed. note: Yes!]  The first night, I had to share a room with him, since Sarah's parents had also come up, and took the other bedroom.  This caused a problem when I fed him at 4am, because I apparently got back to the room too quickly, that is, before he'd gone back to sleep.  In our efforts to adjust him to a new bed, we forgot to adjust him to the idea of sharing a room, which he hasn't done (except for our Louisville trip) since he was about four weeks old.  He screamed for nearly an hour, and I finally got him to sleep by picking him up to comfort him, putting him back in the crib, and then stepping outside and sitting by the door to wait for him to fall asleep.

Needless to say, I switched bedrooms the second night.

Other than that one little hitch, he was fantastic.  He slept the same amount as he usually does, ate with the same frequency, and threw in at least one five-hour stretch each night.  In other words, Sarah was envious.  Even more importantly, this trip gives us added confidence that he'll be good for our upcoming travel extravaganza, involving another trip to New York, a Christmas jaunt to Louisville, and an early January trip to San Diego.

TRAINS!

As you know, Nicholas the Rambunctious needs outings like whales need minnows.  And today was a free day at the B&O Railroad Museum, so it was the perfect opportunity to make the trip.  Plus, Grandpa Dan was in the mood to play hooky from work, so he joined us for a little guys' trip to the train museum.

It's a small museum, with only a few small exhibits, but it has a large number of old train locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, railway post office cars, basically anything associated with railroading in the first 150 years of train travel in the U.S.  In that respect, it will probably be more thrilling for Nicholas in a year or so.  Right now, he doesn't find the motionless hulks very interesting in the way that he does the moving fish in tanks at the aquarium (to take one example).  But we had a good time, and it definitely merits another trip, especially since he got cranky before we could look at everything.  Plus, they sometimes offer train rides!  And, next spring, there's a Thomas the Tank Engine Day, which should come right on [railroad standard] time for Nicholas to be thrilled by such things.

Finally, as a rule I am required to take photos whenever Nicholas and I go somewhere without Sarah, so I present one from today, with others available to the right in the Peanut Gallery.

From Nicholas - Month 5

Nicholas' Baptism

We had a busy weekend, with family and friends in town for Nicholas' baptism. Between the level of activity, the shortage of naps, and the colds we're all still fighting, we're worn out, but it was a wonderful weekend and great to spend time with everyone. Thank you to everyone who came in to help us celebrate this special day in Nicholas' life.

We were so busy spending time with all our visitors, organizing for his party, and trying to sneak in enough power naps for Nicholas to avoid code red meltdowns that I didn't really have time this weekend to reflect on the significance of the event. Thinking about it now it feels sort of anticlimactic. I guess because it doesn't seem like much has changed.

The best definition I have ever heard of sacraments is that they are the recognition of something that has already taken place internally rather than a tranformative procedure. I like this definition a lot because they point to the process of transformation that we as humans have a role in, in connection with God. We can't do it on our own, but neither are we completely passive objects. And so, in that sense, Nicholas' baptism was the official welcoming ceremony even though he has been a member of the church family from birth (or at least when we started taking him to church at 5 weeks old).

Just as importantly, as a welcoming ceremony, his baptism was just the beginning. It is important to us to give him a strong foundation in a religion. He may change which religion he practices later in life or decide he does not want to practice any religion at all, but we hope to provide him with a foundation he can turn to. The baptism was the easy part.

And now I'll stop reflecting and get to the real reason you check this blog . . . pictures.

Here is our beautiful little boy in the baptism outfit my mom made for him:

From Baptism Weekend

And here he is playing and happy before the baptism started:

From Baptism Weekend

Then Deacon Ed poured the water on his head and Nicholas decided the day had gotten a lot less fun:

From Baptism Weekend

Outside of the church with his parents and godparents:

From Baptism Weekend

At the church with Grandma Kathleen and Grandpa Dan:

From Baptism Weekend

Joe's entire family came in for the baptism!

From Baptism Weekend

Believe it or not, these are only a small fraction of the great pictures from the weekend. You can see the rest of them (and a couple hilarious videos) here.

Explaining the World Around Us

I meant to write this post yesterday, but I was away much of the day, so it never got done. But here goes.

Over the last three months, I've thought about Nicholas growing up, and trying to explain to him the world around him. Simple things, like what the grass and the sun are, more complicated things, like the infield fly rule. Since January, I've looked forward to telling him what it was like to stand out in the cold and watch a Presidential inauguration.

It will be hard enough someday to explain to Nicholas was it was like to be alive on September 11, 2001.¹ How I heard about the attacks—and that my first thought was that it couldn't possibly be true. How I spent 90 minutes trying to get his grandparents on the phone, at the same exact time as everyone else either in New York or with relatives there, just to make sure they were okay. What it's like to realize that something you've always taken for granted as part of the landscape just isn't there anymore.

But I also realized yesterday that at some point we will have to explain to Nicholas that there are Bad People in the world, and sometimes they do Bad Things. I don't think I'm intelligent enough to even broach the topic of why anyone would do such a thing. There's just no answer that truly makes sense, to explain what would make someone want to murder 3,000 people (actually, I suppose the hijackers hoped they would kill even more) and take out landmark buildings. It will have to suffice for him to know that such things happen, that we move on, that we don't succumb.

That day will be a moment, one among many, in which the cocoon peels away just a bit, and he becomes just a little less protected. That's a sad thought right now. I mean, there is a part of me that looks forward to seeing him make his own way, and confront the world. Maybe he will even make some lasting change in the world—who knows? But I just hope we can shelter him from the bad long enough that he's strong enough to handle it.

¹ I also find it somewhat bewildering, because the event reinforced a sense of community, that we now have a member of the family whose first long-term memories of anything will come some 12-14 years after 2001.

Are you ready for some football?

Nicholas is!

His New York Giants outfit arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon, thanks to Grandma Alice, who apparently has been very anxious to get Nicholas something with a New York sports logo. Photos to follow later, either today if we try it on him, or on Sunday when the Giants open the season.

Travelling

From Louisville-Cincinnati Trip, Aug. 2009

Nicholas did a great job on the actual travelling from point A to point B, but was overwhelmed by the number of different people and places involved in our trip. We drove around 1700 miles and crossed state lines 8 times and I think Nicholas was awake for a grand total of less than 2 hours in the car. We stopped at a rest area each way to feed him and give him some awake time, trying to keep the daytime car sleep feeling like naps. The rest areas in WV and OH are great for this because they have picnic tables spread across grass, giving me some semi-privacy to feed him, and lots of trees and such to show him as we walk around. And on the longer drive out we also stopped for a few hours at an aunt and uncle's house, which gave Nicholas a long awake spell.

But every time he woke up we were in another new place with a host of new people. We learned that in these situations Nicholas has two gears: charming and meltdown. He can work a crowd with his grins and laughter (and seems to really enjoy the attention for awhile), but he hits a point where he gets overwhelmed and needs to regroup, which was often only accomplished when he cried himself to sleep after screaming inconsolably. This meant he was something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on this trip, either angelic or a nightmare.

There are pictures of the trip (along with captions that hopefully work as a narration) here, but even I was unable to document even a fraction of the people Nicholas met. He met all four of my grandparents, 4 great aunts and uncles on one side and I think 15 on the other side, a host of my cousins (whatever that relationship is to him--I always get confused), some of my cousins' kids, and a bunch of my college friends and their husbands and kids.

Despite the fact that he had more (and more extreme) meltdowns than normal and had a lot more trouble sleeping at night (back to getting up every 2 hours or so), I think Nicholas actually enjoyed the trip and we think it was good for him to be forced to stretch his comfort zone some. He is so used to spending all his time in our living room with one of the two of us and everything centered around his needs, but on this trip he had to adapt to more noise while napping (which he did better with, although still not nearly as well as the other kids we were with) and new people and places.

He also really enjoyed watching the older kids (7 months, 2, and 4) and playing with their toys. Watching him playing with one of my roommates' daughter's toys convinced us we need to get him some more toys. The toys were a little beyond him, but that actually seems like the perfect time to buy them, to challenge him and give him time to grow into them before he grows out of them. As much as he loves the animals on his playmat, he has been playing with them every day for the past 2 months, so we should probably mix things up some.

All in all, we had a lot of fun and like always I miss everyone like crazy now, but for the first time I am actually also glad to be home. I wish we could live closer to them and see them more often, but our crazy marathon trips and staying as guests in other people's houses don't work as well now.

Time with the Grandparents

We often get together with my parents for dinner, when Nicholas isn't up for much playtime, so last weekend we decided to spend the afternoon together. And of course Nicholas slept for the first three hours of their visit. But after dinner, he enjoyed visiting with his grandparents and Uncle Andrew ... and Mommy the paparazza got these shots.

Here Nicholas is playing "horsey" with Grandpa:

From Nicholas - Month 3

Uncle Andrew tried to sell Nicholas on a pair of shoes:

From Nicholas - Month 3

And here he is looking so grown up with Grandma:

From Nicholas - Month 3

While we were putting this up, we posted other new pictures to this gallery.

Car Saga

I'll give you the end of the story first: I drove home tonight frightened that I, like my father had done 25 years ago, would total a new car on the drive home from the dealership. I can't print what was said when the car arrived on a flatbed tow truck, but let's just say my mother wasn't particularly concerned with my father's well-being at that moment.

Anyway, with that as preface, we have purchased a car. It's a 2006 Accord, with under 26,000 miles on it. About the only fault with it is that it has an automatic transmission instead of a manual. We both enjoy driving stick-shift, and so this is rather disappointing, but the car is really quite nice in every way, and we didn't want to wear ourselves out searching (potentially in vain) for a manual Accord.

Even so, we're pretty exhausted. We've spent much of the past two days car shopping, hopping from one dealer to the next, and dealing with all manner of bad salesmen. From the one who insisted that we could get a car seat into a 2-door coupe, to the one who thought we'd spend more on a Ford than a brand-new Accord, we have seen just about everything. But we're done.

As long as we can get loan paperwork signed with our bank before labor starts. Tick-tock, tick-tock ...

Happy Mother's Day!

Sarah is a mom for holiday purposes, as far as I'm concerned, even though we don't yet know Peanut's birth date.

So Peanut and I would like to wish Sarah (Mommy to Peanut), and Grandmas-to-be Kathleen and Alice (and all the other mothers out there) a very happy Mother's Day!

17 (Days) Again

Today is seventeen days before Peanut's due date. Why am I telling you that? Well, because I was born seventeen days early, way back in the dark ages when due dates were still calculated using a sexton and an abacus. But the point is that Peanut seems to not be taking after its father just enough to hang out in utero a little while longer.

In other news, Peanut's grandpa thought it would be funny if Peanut were a boy named Crystal Alexis. I think it was mostly because he thought he might slip an 80s pop-culture reference by me. No such luck. But I was amused to learn that the "official" website for the TV show "Dynasty" is shoulderpads.net. Seriously.

Update on Walkers from Grandpa Zippy

Apparently I once was a victim of the malice aforethought I described last night.


But at least since then I've grown into my ears. And don't you just love the canopy on the swing? In case it rains in the house, I guess. Or maybe even at that age I got sunburns from fluorescent light.