Happy birthday Little Guy!

Little guy was very excited his birthday was on a holiday - Thanksgiving Day.  Elizabeth was jealous - why does he get to have his birthday on a holiday and I had to have my birthday on a Tuesday!

The weekend before his birthday we had a few friends over and a small celebration.  

 The little guy's favorite dessert is pumpkin pie, so of course we had to celebrate with his favorite. 

 On his actual birthday we were with Rich's side of the family. 

 He enjoyed being the center of attention.

And he really liked the Thomas cake! 

Trophy Day, part II

Elizabeth got her soccer trophy last weekend, and when we told Andrew he was going to get a trophy, too, he was beside himself with joy and excitement.  And then soccer day was cold and rainy, and it looked like the handing out of the trophies would be canceled.  At the last minute, someone offered up their office, which was close to the soccer field.  But it caused a huge rush to get there and many families didn't make it.  I'm thankful we could - Andrew was so happy. 

 He took the picture of the waiting trophies. 

There are a few kids who are almost as small as he is, but in this picture he is soooo much smaller than the other kids!  He so loves it though.  Can't wait to see Coach Pablo in the spring! 

a groupie is born

Here's an old one from the summer.  

Do you watch PBS kids shows?  If so, you know SteveSongs.  Inbetween the shows, to fill the 30 minutes, this guy named Steve, who always wears a red shirt, sings songs.  They're catchy and fun.  So when I saw that he was performing at Wolf Trap's Theater-in-the-woods, and there was another show - an African storyteller - before him, and the shows were two for the price of one, I decided we had to go.  

It was like 1000 degrees that day, and it's a theater in the woods.  We actually got there early and staked out a seat in the front row. 

 And when he walked out on stage, Elizabeth turned to me and said, hey, I know him from TV!  And insisted I take her picture with him in the background, and then snatched the camera and took 45 other pictures of him performing. 

 And she kept tugging at my arm and asking how we could talk to him, and how we could meet him, and how great he was.  He called a couple of kids on stage with him throughout the show, and then near the end sang a song and invited ALL the kids onto the stage.  Bliss.  There were so many kids I couldn't get a picture of Elizabeth up there.

And then they announced he'd be signing autographs and selling CDs and meeting fans after. 

 So of course we had to buy a CD. 

He was really great, and said he remembered her from the audience and he saw her in the front row.  He recognizes kids just freak out when they're in front of him, so he asks them to tell him a joke.  (she managed to choke out the interrupting cow, which he countered with the interrupting starfish)

Both Elizabeth and Andrew loved the entire experience.  But Elizabeth REALLY loved it, and turned out to develop an intense love of the song she sang on stage.  The song is called Shapes, but it's the chorus that is burned into my brain: line line circle circle square square square square triangle triangle. 

Elizabeth loves to listen to the CD on the CD player in the dining room.  We'll listen all the way to the shapes song, then she plays the shapes song over.  And over. And over. And over. And over.  And over. And over.  Until one of us snaps and makes her move on, which usually results in an argument.

We saw the show about a week and a half before we went on vacation and rented a small (very small -  like the smallest possible house ever) beach house with our long-time friends Chris and Tricia and family.  So they also were subjected.  I can't remember exactly what happened, but at some point late in the vacation we saw a band perform. I'm going to have to get Rich or Chris or Tricia to remind me of what exactly happened or what the band was, cause I am drawing a blank and can't even imagine when in the world we would have seen a band - Oh, got it, last day, Blueberry festival (where the blueberries are trucked in from NJ), also 1000 degrees outside and some poor Irish band (? Chincoteague is a weird place) playing under a tent, and the group of us sweating to death under a tree sucking on rapidly melting snocones.  Anyway, Chris leans over and says in his deadpan dry way, huh, I wonder if they know line line circle circle.  So yeah,  the CD made quite an impression.

But the songs are clever, and catchy, and he is a super nice guy.  As with anything with kids (or at least E and A) there's a cycle in interests and this week we've been listening to the CD a lot.  A knows all the words now and sings along enthusiastically, and E's desperate love of line line circle circle has lessened to a tolerable level. 

I saw he's performing at Jammin Java in February, so we might go.  $15 a ticket gets steep, but it would be worth it.

And Theater-in-the-woods?  We had a good time.  Steve was great, and so was the storyteller.  If they have the deal of two shows for the price of one (and that one is priced at $8), I'd totally go again.  Though, there were some stressful things.  We staked out this good seat in the front row, right?  But it was 1000 degrees and so not like we had anything on us except a snack bag and my bag.  Thankfully E did not have to go to the bathroom, because saving our seats would have stressed me out.  As it was, A was STARVING, and they only allow you to drink water in the actual "theater" part - step onto the path leading to the theater and you can eat whatever.  So I had to take A 20 feet onto the path, keep my eye on E who was tasked with saving our seats, and urge A to choke down his cheesestick as quickly as possible.  Stressful.   Also, let's just be honest, sitting in an amphitheater for two hours sweating is not entirely my idea of a great time.  There was a lot of downtime between the shows, and they didn't start on time.  But for the cost, it was great, and now we've got a little budding groupie on our hands.

hell week

I"ve long had last week circled in my calendar.  Hell week.  Every fall activity beginning, plus a birthday and a handful of other activities means we're all exhausted today.  But it was fun.

So here's our fall schedule, along with the extras from last week:

Monday- Elizabeth soccer practice
Tuesday - School Of Religion for Elizabeth, and the first week was a family mass followed by potluck.  But not potluck dinner.  As exhausting as that would have been, at least we'd have gotten fed.  No, it was potluck snacks at 5 pm.  This week it's the opening ceremony for SOR.  For the love of god (literally), can we just get this thing going?
Wednesday - morning, Andrew's music class, afternoon, Andrew's soccer class

Then, last week Thursday was parent association meeting in the morning at Elizabeth's school, and of course Elizabeth's birthday (post to come!).  Friday was the co-op sale that my friend TSM runs (post to come on AwwwClutter!).  Saturday is usually Elizabeth's soccer game, but it was mercifully cancelled because of wet fields, so we had more time to prep for our supposedly easy neighborhood happy hour / birthday party.  Saturday night Elizabeth hosted her first ever sleepover, as a special birthday treat, with a her friend who lives down the street.  The girls stayed up til midnight and woke up at 7 am.

Sunday the neighborhood was shut down because of the Latino festival that takes place one block from our house, and brings something insane like 30,000 people to our little neighborhood, shutting down all streets around us.

Oh, and let's not forget another parent snagged Rich one morning at school and asked if we could bring snacks for the week, then sent us a page-long rules of snacks (no artificial colors! no Nuts! no dairy!) that sent us off to two different stores and boiling 24 eggs and lugging three giant bags of snacks into school last week.

And then let's talk about our plague.  Of fleas.  Which meant a previously unscheduled, 2-hour, expensive trip to the vet during the week, and a full day Sunday of flea control measures.  Frontline, you ineffectual crap product, I hate you and your expensive price tag with a passion!  There was simply no time to go 100% on flea control before Sunday - when Rich did 7 loads of laundry (none of them clothes!) and bathed both pets and I read up on fleas and combed both pets and swept and swept and swept.  The only good news is we have a new product for Skipper and an entirely different new product for Harrison so maybe, just maybe, after an entire summer of battling fleas (I cannot believe I am admitting our flea problem, but let me just make it clear we have been AGGRESSIVELY battling fleas since mid-July, and none of measures worked because our main line of defense - Frontline - only managed to DO NOTHING, but we have been combing and bathing and washing and flea bombing and doing everything we are supposed to do to no avail) maybe we will finally turn the corner and gain mastery over them.  Or, it will finally get cold and no longer so humid and the cycle will end for the year.  One or the other.

So that's why we all struggled out of bed this morning bleary-eyed.  To start it all over again this week with the soccer and the religion and the soccer and so on.  But we made it through, a more regular schedule starts this week, and the humidity is finally scheduled to break, so maybe fall has really begun now.

If it's fall it must be soccer

Elizabeth started taking a soccer clinic when she was 4.  It met once a week, and basically it was just a series of fun drills.  This year, now that she’s going to be 6, she’s ready for soccer league. Soccer leagues apparently have their own little code language and traveling teams and blah blah blah that I am only just beginning to be frightened of learning.  But whatever, bottom line she’s on a team coached by a friend of ours, they practice at the park right by our house, and it’s all friendly and low key, oh, except that we are scheduled to the max every.single.Saturday.morning.through.November.  Yeah, that little thing of adjusting your whole life around your kid’s activities.  Welcome to the next 16 years of our lives. 

Which reminds me, one of my child-free friends asked me a question about some activity one evening and I replied, can’t, school night.  Which caused her to bust a gut laughing and she said, oh, I haven’t thought of schools nights in years.  Yeah.  Haha.  Me either. 

Anyway, now we’re on an actual team, with uniforms, and cleats, and shin guards, and games.  Wow.  They don’t keep score, there’s no out of bounds, and they play 4x4, with no goalie. 

Here’s the team. 

And here’s the first game, with Daddy/Andrew cheering from the sidelines.  The first 5 minutes of the game were definitely a highlight – it was a whirling dervish of kids and the ball, utter chaos at a fast pace until they burnt the excess energy and settled in to a level of moderate chaos. 

Elizabeth had a nice dribbling run at one point, but overall was not a fan of games.  “But there’s only 1 ball!  And we all have to chase it!” That, plus a mid September cold spell which made the tip of her nose numb left her not loving soccer, though she is a huge fan of the cleats.  But, she still likes soccer, and is looking forward to practice tonight. 

And then there’s Andrew.  Poor little guy has ben carted along to Elizabeth’s activities since he was a newborn, and has in general been a trooper, though a fairly disappointed trooper when forced to remain on the sidelines.  Even though the clinic starts at age 3, I knew I had to get him into it this fall.  Because, as we all know, Andrew is a ball guy.  Anything and everything to do with sports thrills him to no end.  He wants to play. 

Once Elizabeth started school and her activities kicked in, he’s been asking every day when his soccer class and music class starts.  Not yet, little guy, but soon – next week, we’d reply, leaving him a little bit crushed.  So I woke him up in the morning by whispering, guess what today is?  Soccer day!  Which caused him to leap up.  He desperately wanted to wear his soccer outfit all day, but the shirt is white, and his nanny told him he needed to wear another shirt and change into his soccer shirt before practice.  This did not go over well, and he sulked for a bit. 

Rich and I both took off work for his first soccer practice, and as I drove he and Elizabeth to practice, he made up a song about how excited he was to be going to soccer.  At the field, the other kids milled around their parents, but Andrew was ready and kicked the ball back and forth to me to warm up.  And once it started?  Well, he paid rapt attention to Coach Pablo. 

Every question that was asked Andrew raised his hand and/or shouted out the answer (except the first question was, who went to school today and he looked around as every other kid raised their hand, poor little guy).  Every time they moved around or changed activities, Andrew moved his way around the pack of kids to position himself right next to Coach Pablo.  He gamely attempted every activity, though he was one of the smallest in the class.  The only time he age really showed was when the coach would “trick” them (asking them to run to the blue spot, when they were already on the blue spot, for example).  He’d take off along with a handful of other kids, and have to be called back.  He was just so eager to DO, and that’s just clearly a development thing, a lack of true comprehension skills at age 2.75.  It is always hard to remember he’s not even 3 yet.  There is not much holding this guy back. 

And how did Elizabeth enjoy being carted along to Andrew’s activity?  Well, two of her friends and soccer teammates have a younger sister in Andrew’s class, so the three of them amused themselves by ripping a dead branch out of a tree and marching it around.  You know, safe self-directed activities like that!  

My son is a marketing genius

Telling an old story here, but I've got a lot of old ground to cover, so, remember when we (Elizabeth, Andrew and I) went camping with my parents in their RV?  We had a lot of fun, and Andrew coined a new term that lives on in the family.

I brought a long a bunch of stuff they like, including some food and drinks.  One morning, I started to get Andrew some orange juice.  Now, since he was quite small he's never really liked cow's milk, strongly preferring OJ in the morning, so (pediatrician-approved) we buy the calcium-fortified OJ and don't worry about milk (too much).  And as you all know, I come from a long line of bargain shoppers, though I do have quality standards.  Bottom line, I buy whatever name brand OJ is on sale, and don't pay much attention to it.

And so I pulled out the OJ I brought along:

Which resulted in screeches from Andrew.  No, I don't want that juice, I want straw juice!

Hmm.  Straw juice.  What the heck?  So, like any mommy, I tried to find out what was making my 2.5 year old screech.  What do you mean straw juice?  What is straw juice?

Which just made him screech louder.

So, in the midst of the screeching, I started wondering, maybe he had seen me pack the cooler.  I had put in two small, frozen juice boxes, and those juice boxes were tucked away into the RV's freezer.  Maybe he wanted a juice box?  But it was breakfast time and I was not going to give him a frozen juice box, because a) it was frozen and b) we don't drink juice boxes at breakfast.  But, the juice boxes were in the freezer, and he wasn't around when I packed and unpacked the cooler, so why does he want a juice box?  And why is he calling a juice box straw juice, though they do all come with those little plastic straws that peel off and get lost everyplace and...well, let's jut say the screeching continued as I pondered all this.

So, I tried reasoning with the 2.5 year old toddler.  Andrew.  We don't have straw juice.  We have orange juice.  Let me pour you your orange juice and let's all just calm down.

I'm sure you can imagine how well that worked.  And remember there are 5 people in a 30 foot RV while a 2.5 year old is screeching about straw juice.

Exasperated, I flung open the RV's fridge door and said, Andrew. Look. There is no straw juice!

Whereupon he launched himself across the RV and with a shout of glee, grabbed:

 Oh.  Tropicana.  With the logo of an orange with a straw.  Straw juice.  OK, gotcha.

And since that time, we only buy straw juice.

Which would be the end of the story, but I needed a pic of Tropicana, and a little googling led me to discover that my 2.5 year old has more marketing sense than the execs who run the Pepsi-Cola Corporation.  You see, in 2008, Tropicana (a subsidiary of Pepsi) went through an entire re-branding effort, which resulted in complete redesign, at what must have been enormous cost, of their entire product line.  Straw in orange out, bland expanse of orange juice in wine goblet in.  The redesign was such a failure and resulted in so many complaints, that in 2009, they went back to the tried and true.

Orange in straw.  Straw juice.  So simple even a 2.5 year old understands the power of a brand.  Stick with what works.

You can't fool him!

Last night, I scrambled for dinner, and to round things out, decided to include a special item - olive spread on crackers.  I was smart, and divided the spread into two containers, and grabbed a couple of spreaders for each to use. 

Andrew was fascinated by the utensil:  What IS this? he kept asking, until he grasped I was saying "a spreader" and he could say it himself.  All good. 

Until he realized that in my haste, I had grabbed a spreader that had footballs on one end and given the football spreader to Elizabeth!  The horror!  What was I thinking?!  Well, I was thinking where the hell is the other plain spreader, and why is it taking so long to get the spreaders and so I just grabbed what was on top.  Of course, once Andrew saw the football spreader, he wanted it, but that just made Elizabeth clutch it ever tighter.  There was a brief argument, but it actually passed fairly easily and I thought I had dodged a bullet. 

Until I heard Andrew, who has learned faaaarr too much from his big sister, mutter quietly with a tinge of despair, "I hate this spreader." 

Trying to be clever and distracting and taking a page from Rich, I picked up the now-hated spreader and said in a high pitched voice, "oh Andrew, why do you hate me?  I am a good spreader!" 

But he wasn't having any of it - Andrew looked at the spreader suspiciously and rejected it by stating, "it doesn't have a face." 

In the end, though, perhaps it was mission accomplished as I burst out laughing at his logic that since the spreader didn't have a face it couldn't talk, and then Elizabeth also laughed, and finally Andrew laughed too, so that crisis, at least, averted. 

the temper

There's one aspect of Andrew's personality that isn't quite so charming: this boy has a temper.  Unlike Elizabeth, he has been known to throw a tantrum a two.  I wonder sometimes if it's because unlike Elizabeth, he has a older sibling who attempts to control him?  Whatever it is, it can be fierce.  He throws things and has been known to hit.  But also, the storm usually passes fairly quickly.

About two months ago, something happened at the end of dinner that set him off - we can't remember what it was, but he was mad.  For dessert we doled out 10 M&Ms to each child.  In his anger, though,  when I put down his M&Ms, he angrily swept them off the table onto the floor.  'Oh no', I said, 'that's too bad, no M&Ms for Andrew.  I will pick them up and put them at Daddy's chair and Daddy will get M&Ms.'  This, of course, only set him off further and his furious cries continued.

Until suddenly they stopped, mid-cry.  Andrew turned to us with a big smile on his face and said, 'I done crying now.  Can I have my M&M's?'

And yes, he got them.  Call us suckers - but how can you turn this down?

The little guy

I read through some of the archives this morning and can't believe how spotty this record is.  It's not NaBloPoMo, but I have a little pledge for my own Rest-of-June-Blo-Po-Mo.  We have too much cuteness not to share! 

Last summer I wrote Andrew was just on the edge of language explosion, but then I never got around to describing it.  He's amazing - Elizabeth was and is a very verbal child, but I can't tell you how people gush about Andrew.  He may be more talkative than she ever was.  At 2.5, you can have clear conversations with him.  He's the most verbal boy on our street.  We saw a child-free friend last weekend we hadn't seen for awhile and after their conversation she turned to us and asked the usual question - how old is he?  Is it typical for 2.5 year old boys to talk this much? 

Last summer, he started counting.  It started on pool trips.  He would walk to the edge of the pool, shout TWOOOOOOO and then jump in.  Whether or not anyone was there to catch him.  We kinda sorta use the 1-2-3 discipline method, which means you count to 3 and if child is not complying by 3, there are consequences.  However, both Rich and I are too loathe to impose said consequences, so we tend to drag out the twoooooooo.  And Andrew picked up on it perfectly. And he's not looked back since - he can count to 12 now without any problems (5 was a little left out for a while), and keeps trying to  push it further. 

I always get freaked out at the pediatrician when the nurses ask all these development questions at the beginning.  I think I take them too literally and get all worked out about being precise with my answer.  Last November, at the 2 year mark, the question that through me was does he know his colors?  My reply, is he supposed to know his colors?  I had no idea - it wasn't something we were working on.  The answer was he knew no colors, so we started working on that.  For a while, he would just simply guess green for any color.  And if we said no, he'd guess blue.  Then, lellow?  But by the spring he was getting it right more often than not, and now he's pretty good, except last week we noticed he clearly had trouble with red/green.  We'll see where that goes. 

And he loves to pretend to be his trucks or animals or whatever toy.  He grabs two similar toys, holds onto one, hands you the other and says, you be dis vun, I be dat vun.  He's losing the dis and dat for a more clearer this and that, and vun is slowly becoming one, but I loved the way he said it.  Initially, he didn't know what to do after you'd agreed to be dis vun, so the two toys would just look at each other and say hi repeatedly, but now he constructs adventures and expects you to follow along in character. 

And he does not like it when you do things for him.  "I fought I was goin' to do dat,' he'll say accusingly.  So you have to back off and let him do it. 

The video above is from May - Elizabeth's school does a mother's day program that he and I attended.  There was a delay in staring it (*eyeroll*) and so to occupy him, I suggested he run around.  He LLOOOOVVVES this video and we watch it all that time.  Andrew running?  Let's see Andrew running! 

Last weekend, Rich attempted to put him down for a nap, only to hear, today is not nap day! 

But my all time favorite started about a month ago.  When we put him in his crib at night and he lays down and is ready to sleep (as opposed to when he stays standing and insists on one more book or playing dis vun dat vun) he lays down and snuggles in and then says, when the sun comes up, I will wake up. 

And we say, ok, little guy, that sounds like a good plan. 

Boo-boos and writing

I was going to write today about Andrew's rough week - the falls (seems like every day), the scrapes (last weekend), the fat lip (Wednesday), but then Elizabeth's writing last night captured my attention, too. So first Andrew - this has been a rough week for the little guy. Last Saturday, somehow he tried climbing the wall in our backyard and slipped and scraped up all the knuckles on his left hand, and so he's been sporting impressive scabs. Maybe because of the scabs, he's been pretty focused on his hand as his boo-boo, so even though he's fallen and gotten subsequent extremely minor injuries, if you ask him about his boo-boo he holds out his hand. I kiss it every time he holds it out and one day he asked, Do you love my boo-boo?

The other notable injury occurred when he tripped over the rug in the kitchen and smacked down on his face, giving him a fat upper lip and a crack in his lower lip. Neither seem to bother him at all. He's fallen out of the stroller more times this week than we can count (since he insists on climbing in and out himself), and once fell climbing off a chair, smacking his head on the floor.

I of course scoop him up and he cries hard while I feel around for any injuries. But, tough boy that he is, I'll say, ok, let's calm down - tell mommy what hurts? And he'll calm down and most of the time say, scary! and just need a little comfort from the scary part of the fall. We've learned you have to be precise with your wording - if you try to ask where he fell or what he fell on (trying to figure out what part of him hurts) he just looks at you and says, the floor! (Duh, mommy!) But nothing phases him for too long, and after a quick cuddle he's always right back where he left off.

--
Last night at dinner Elizabeth had a pad of paper and a pen. One of the issues with her writing struggles has always been that her imagination works much faster than her writing skills could possibly approach. So sometimes, she narrates a story and chicken scratches on the paper while she speeds along in her own world. We were a little alarmed at the start of this story:
Yep, bad boys. Ut oh! But then she started in on the story part, and there is no way I could ever even capture the complexity of her stories, but apparently the boys were henpecked but the farmer was really worried about the foxes but the chickens took care of it and then the bad boys were henpecked some more. That's the vastly abridged version. Or something like it.

Ele-fun

I need to get the camera cable and upload photos, so a video from my iphone for now.


Perhaps I need to add this game to the Little Guy's Christmas list!

Ball guy

One thing I hear from parents of older children is how you become an expert in a topic you never thought might be of interest to you. Parents of girls, for example, might get to know all the intimate details of every Disney princess tale, or the intricacies of the relationships between My Little Ponies, or not to be too horribly gender stereotyping, breeds of horses or I don't know, whatever interests them at the time.

Most mothers I know don't tend to complain about the typical "girl interests" possibly because they were once girls themselves. But I've heard more than one mother grimace when describing how she knows the name and function of every sort of motorized construction vehicle that exists, or arcane trivia about steam engine trains, or the entire taxonomic branch of every dinosaur species known to man. I cannot believe how much this post is embracing every gender stereotype. But the thing is, your kids are their own people no matter how you raise them. When Andrew was quite small, I looked for (because I thought it was interesting) any possible gender differences and noticed no obvious ones. No reaching for toys of one sort over the other, no preferences for dinosaurs over baby dolls.

And then he turned one. And it quickly became apparent what kind of boy we have, and it's very different that Elizabeth. Andrew is a ball guy. And they all pretty much interest him: football, soccer, baseball, basketball. Thus far, with the passing of each season, he's happily transitioned to the next sport and been just as interested. Rich and I are pleased. We can handle this interest while enjoying it ourselves. Whew.

Now, Elizabeth likes football, too, don't get me wrong. But she does not insist on carrying a ball with her at all times. Nor practicing pitching, catching, throwing, or kicking any of the various shaped sports balls that litter our house. Andrew really likes two things right now - kicking the football, and playing 'tackle.' Given the ongoing discussion of increasing violence in football, kicking is about the only position he'd ever be allowed to play, if this interest of his continues, and he's got a decent leg on him already, and loves both kicking it and being the holder.

The thing is, we don't have a no-throwing-the-ball in the house policy. Until recently, it's not like he could do much damage. But he acquired a real pro baseball this summer, and he's got some strength. And some of those footballs could do some damage, too, particularly to our thinly-paned original glass, historic windows, or yikes, our big screen TV, or our original built-in leaded glass-fronted cabinets. But, it is fun to play in the house, so we'll have to think through some house rules.

still puzzled about this one

The weekend before last, Elizabeth and I were out and Rich put Andrew down for his nap. Andrew was having none of it though, and played and sang and talked in his crib. After about 45 minutes, he started calling Daddy daddy daddy. So Rich went in, only to find Andrew holding his diaper in his hand, with his pants pulled down to his ankles.

OK, so pants down, but still fully on both legs. Diaper off - but one side of the diaper was connected. It must have re-connected after he pulled it off, right? It's just not physically possible to take off a diaper with your pants still on without unhooking both sides, right?

Mercifully, the diaper was merely wet. And also mercifully, there have been no further repeats of any Harry Houdini-like moves. Fingers and toes crossed this was a one time occurrence.

(found the camera cord, but it's too late to upload a billion pictures and write the halloween post. That's tomorrow's goal!).

Wordless Wednesday - little football fan

newest mimic

I've been giving Andrew short shrift lately, but we'll make that up soon. For now, I'm just wondering if we have a new mimic in the house.

Andrew has been following Elizabeth's path in music, with the exception of not getting quite a much kid's music and getting far more exposure to popular music at an earlier age. He happily sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and the ABC song. He loves Music Together and requests/demands we play the CD or sing the songs. I'll often hear him singing to himself songs from Music Together, and he loves dancing. He might even have more moves than Elizabeth.

We keep one Sesame Street CD in the car, and he often demands Elmo. Sometimes when Daddy gets a little tired of the kid music and changes from CD to radio, hoping no one will notice, we'll hear a little voice pipe up from the back, "Hey! Elmo!" which is the cue to change it right back, thank you very much. (Elmo only sings one or two songs on the whole CD, and we rarely watch Sesame Street, but that Elmo has a magnetic appeal - his presence on diapers probably has something to do with the indoctrination since birth).

So last night, Eizabeth, Andrew and I were eating dinner, when he suddenly yelled, completely out of the blue, "COLD AS ICE!" Dumbfounded, I just looked at him, then hesitantly sang, you're as cold as ice, you're willing to sacrifice our love? Which caused Elizabeth to say, hey, cold as ice/sacrifice: that rhymes!

Rich was out to dinner with friends, so I texted him and asked if he'd been listening to Foreigner lately, but he was as puzzled as me. I doubt Gee is that into Foreigner, so it's a mystery. We weren't actually eating anything cold, nor was there any ice on the table. Who knows?

But I thumbed through my iphone and not surprisingly I have it on there, so we cranked up the music and boogied our way through clean up and had a dance party before the bath. Which is not a bad way to end the day.

You know how some poeple don't like musicals because they think it's silly that people randomly burst into song and dance? Yeah, that's kind of my ideal life.

And the dancing queen herself - ugh, I should use this picture on AwwwClutter to demonstrate how awful our hallway is right now!

Not for the weak

What is it they say about parenting not being for the weak? Well, we've had a fun few days here.

Friday Elizabeth fell on the playground - with the nanny, not us. Knocked back her top two front teeth, and we can't tell if she broke a third tooth or if it got jammed up into her gum. The dentist is not worried, and we had just scheduled a checkup for three weeks from now, so we'll see what he says then. She woke up Saturday morning with a hugely swollen top lip and said, but I can't even kiss!
We've not been able to get good pictures - she's slightly self conscious and we don't want to make her more so. The swelling has gone down, and it is possible those front teeth will realign, so we will see what happens.

Apparently not content with her own damage, tonight Elizabeth took the scissors to Andrew's hair! We've been talking about getting haircuts, and I had a semi-firm plan to get it done Friday afternoon. That plan is firming up as he looks ridiculous. Rich has been suggesting we trim up his front bangs to get them out of his eyes, but Elizabeth decided taking the bangs up to the scalp was a better option.

She put a tiny heart sticker on his forehead when she was done. Sigh.
It just makes the rest of his curls look ridiculous. Andrew is not entirely happy - he kept touching the top of his head and gesturing at Elizabeth at dinner with some dissatisfied grunts and complaints.

She hid the chopped pieces under a cushion on the couch. At the sight of those chopped off pieces I couldn't help it and burst into tears. Have I mentioned he looks ridiculous?

But we'll get it fixed, it's only hair, and it was time, anyway.

She did say she cut some of her hair, but given her mop it's not noticeable, but she'll get it trimmed up on Friday, too.

Baby hair, baby teeth. And Rich left tonight for a work trip, back Wednesday night. It's all good. Though I think I need a drink.

hot days

If you haven't heard, we've been having a heat wave this July, the warmest July ever. On one of the 95 degree days, I asked Elizabeth to get dressed as we needed to walk to Target. This is what she came up with:

Toboggan (or ski cap for those not from PO), sunglasses, t-shirt, size 3 corduroy pants, and red flip flops. I hadn't even realized those pants were still stuffed in her dresser, and tried mightily to dissuade her, but she could not be dissuaded. From any of it. Even her stuffed kitty is wearing a coat. I knew the picture inside was of dubious quality, so I asked her to pose on the steps outside.

Well of course little mr me too noticed the posing and struck his own pose, which basically consists of lifting a shoulder and dropping his chin, like Elizabeth above, but with more awkward looking results:
He's getting there. He'll figure it out. After all kids, no matter how annoying they are (size 3 cords! in 95 degree weather! and toboggan!) fairly quickly learn how to appear charming.
I'm warming to my theme of eye rolling frustration with Elizabeth and her fashions. You know why the pants were still in her dresser even though they are a size 3? Because they'd never been worn.(*) A thrift store find, so not that huge a money waste, but she had refused to wear them for two years. 95 degrees out? Of course then they must be worn. That girl! Well, they are really cute. And they did match the shirt. Though I think I picked out the shirt after realizing she could not be dissuaded from the pants.

*ETA: Geez, my memory is failing! The very link in this post, about the toboggan story, contains a picture of her wearing the cords on inauguration day. It was a freaking freezing day, and we never went outside, so I guess it's accurate to say until the 95 degree July day at age 4.75, she's never worn the size 3 pants outside!

Baseball!

Andrew is, as always, a funny little guy. His love of all things sports related continues unabated.

Ball was one of the first words he learned, and it was usually accompanied by the signal for touchdown - two hands raised in the air. He's beginning to figure out there are different types of sports, though he almost always calls all sports still bup-ball. But he's figuring out that each sport is played differently. Football still yields the touchdown signal, and he's started sorta saying touchdown too. Basketball has him making a swish motion as if the ball is going through a net. And now with the world cup on, when he sees soccer he'll kick with his foot. Some might say calling soccer football is more accurate, of course, but we are an American football loving family, and Andrew just continues that tradition.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a Nationals game with a 4:35 first pitch. Even though it was 98 degrees, it was perfect. One section of the stands is in shade in the afternoon, it also happened to be $1 kids ticket night (under 2 years old is free, but otherwise kids pay adult prices), there are plenty of concessions, and Strasburg was pitching (and despite getting the L, he had 10 strikeouts and set the record for most Ks in 4 games for a rookie).

Andrew enjoyed watching, though at one point got a little grumpy. So I pulled him onto my lap and started a little play by play, in my best Chuck Thompson/Jon Miller (sigh) voice. The batter steps into the box. Pitcher receives the signal from the catcher, nods, checks the runner on first, sets, here's the windup and the pitch, high and outside, ball 1. Etc.

After an inning of this, Andrew pushed himself off my lap, and started showing me his windup! He would stare down at the field and just throw his right arm out in what I guess you could call a side arm pitch. Very cute.

Elizabeth also had a great time watching, though she is more a fan, at once fascinated and yet terrified, of the big-headed Presidents.

We got there late and it was too hot and not enough time to move around much, but as we were leaving she spotted the kid area.

We went back on July 3rd, again a late afternoon game (4:10), again Strasburg pitching, but this time got standing room only seats that allowed us to explore the stadium a little more. There's a lot to do there, but all in all I think seats are better - even though there are a ton of attractions and food outside of the seating, there's not a great way to follow the game, presumably to keep people in the seats cheering for the home team. For those keeping track, the Nats were down at the end of the 8th, it was hot, and the kids were tired. We left with the hordes of others streaming out. After all the Nats were 0-39 when losing going into the 9th. So of course they stage their only successful comeback and win the game.


He's taken to carrying around baseballs (and footballs, too, but baseballs fit in the hand better). We still rock Andrew to sleep at night, and I'll just admit I get a little stir crazy rocking in darkened room. So I've been turning on the nightly Nats game, and we'll watch a bit before he snuggles in, baseball in hand, and drifts off. I have to admit it's kind of nice watching baseball again. This week, with the allstar break, he's been grabbing the TV remote and trying to get me to turn on baseball for him to watch and getting angry when I turn on music. Oh, and his bedtime story? Well, we got one of the free booklets about the Nats and we have to page through it with him (several times) while he points out the balls, bats (bap!) and gloves.

If you knew me before '90, you knew me as a die hard Orioles fan. Even though FSU had/has a great baseball team, my group was never into it, and I embraced college football whole-heartedly. The strike in the early 90s killed my love of pro baseball. We can get through two world wars without a canceled series but greed? A strike, a wasted season, no world series? uh uh. I was done, and even Ripken couldn't bring me back. I turned my back on baseball and haven't watched a game in years. This Nats thing, though.....I might slowly be working my way back. I can't root for the Orioles anymore, sad to say. Angelos, you are a hated man. My family - still die hards - will disown me. But watching the Nats....I don't know. I don't know if I can get into the National League. It feels weird. (I don't know who to hate or who to tolerate or who to root for. American League East I still have down cold, but this national league stuff is weirding me out. Plus why is the pitcheer batting? I mgiht be the only (former) die hard baseball fan who defends the designated hitter).

There is one more 4:35 first pitch, September 23, the day after E's birthday, against Houston. I think we'll be there. There are a few fun promos left in the season (bobble heads, backpacks and the like) so maybe we'll try an evening game, too. Sept 6 (Mets, 1:05 - Labor Day) and September 12 (Florida, 1:35) are the remaining $1 kids days, which unfortunately is right at nap time.

Meanwhile, college football kicks off September 2nd!

Vocabulary

There are times when the Pocomoke in me really comes out. Mostly when I try to pronounce foreign words, but also when I let a little country slip into my vocabulary.

Until a few years ago, I thought that uh oh was actually spelled ut oh. Yes, I did. Because that is how I pronounce it, and how I hear others pronounce it. Ryan and Rich still tease me mercilessly about it.

Anyway, my mom was asking me about Andrew's words and I told her this past week he's picked up at least a word a day. I said I wanted to blog about it, but I was struggling with how you spell his newest favorite word. Not uh oh, but along those lines - I would spell it "unht uh." My mom paused for a moment then said, wouldn't it be spelled "uh uh?" Ummm. Yes, yes it probably would be spelled uh uh and I am probably the only dope in the world unable to spell uh uh. Becasue it has an n and t sound in it! Jut like ut oh!

Anyway, he started saying uh uh on Monday, and it has not abated. He knows no, and we've gotten really good at communication once he started shaking his head yes, but not every.little.thing. is uh uh. Are you hungry? uh uh Do you want a drink? uh uh Do you need a diaper change? uh uh He'll even nod yes while saying uh uh. Yes, he nods, while signing "drink" and yet saying uh uh uh uh uh.

Can I just say: annoying.

He is still doing great with sign language and has thank you down. So we'll hand him something and say, say thank you and he signs it, no problem. Imagine our surprise when on Wednesday he signed thank you and said thank you!

Tuesday night at prayers we concluded with amen and he echoed right along. Aaaaay-men. Just before we say amen we say and god bless everybody. Last night, before I could then say amen he said it.

Today he said daddy, not dada, but I am still mama. And I kind of like that. He's been saying sister for a couple of weeks - dit da! And he is working on Elizabeth. He's actually quite the chatty little guy. There's a lot of babble, but we are beginning to hear the words forming.

There is one looming issue with Andrew: the hair. It's gotten longer and he is regularly called a girl. It's not that long! I was hoping to wait a bit before cutting it, because once you cut a toddler boy's hair he is suddenly a big boy. But the time is drawing near.