Jackosaurus Rex

A few months ago, when Jack started roaring like a dinosaur as we were reading one of his favorite books, I decided he should be a dinosaur for Halloween (and for the various dress up play times he's already had and will hopefully enjoy in this costume for months and months still).  This morning, our little dinosaur made his first public appearance at a members' coffee morning at The Magic House, the (fantastic!) St. Louis children's museum.  I'll update with more pics tonight from our adventures "tick or"-ing at our neighbors' houses.

Even dinosaurs need to call home every once in a while.

ROAR!!!

A 3 Hour Nap = A Planned Vacation

Finally Jack has done the unthinkable.  Yesterday, for the first time in probably a year, Jack napped for over three consecutive hours.  He didn't take a morning nap, despite being (like Ben and I) horribly sleep deprived yesterday during our late night journey; we didn't get to Napa until 2 a.m. PST (4 a.m. home time), and Jack only slept for maybe 3 hours while we were traveling.  Poor guy was so exhausted that on the second flight he fell asleep during takeoff!  Nonetheless, it's encouraging to me to know that a one nap a day routine could still leave me with enough time to myself without going crazy.

Other than our lack of sleep, the trip here was great.  It was actually really interesting to see how Jack reacted to flying.  Although he's flown every few months since he was six weeks old, his last flight was just before his first birthday, so this was the first time he was interested in what was going on.  He giggled with delight as we took off the first time, and he made sure to point out the

 "fie-fies" (fireflies, or city lights to us unimaginative grown ups).  He also pointed out his "noo soos" (new shoes) to anyone who smiled at him for more than 2 seconds.  We had a brief layover in Denver, during which Jack learned the joys of moving sidewalks and escalators.  

Above is my attempt to capture Jack exploring the people movers with Ben.  Unfortunately I couldn't get very close, because as soon as Jack sees the camera now, he rushes toward me, begging me to show him the pictures I've taken.  For the past few weeks I've rarely been able to snap many good pictures before he starts backing toward me, rump pushed out in anticipation of sitting on my lap to look at pictures.  Thus, the lack of pictures on the blog lately.

Yesterday the massive nap kept us from doing too much.  We went grocery shopping and drove in to the city of Napa, which is about 10 miles away.  We went out to the pool, since it was 85 degrees, but once there I realized it was unheated.  Fortunately I checked before getting Jack in, and my big toe was the only frostbite casualty.  We ended up doing our swimming in the bathtub and called it a night early.

But his long nap did give me a chance to plan out the rest of our trip.  As soon as he wakes up from his morning nap, Jack is in for a great surprise.  We're headed into Napa to go to the Firefighter's Museum.  I harbor a personal somewhat debilitating fear/hatred of all automobiles, so before he was even born, I issued a no-vehicle rule on toys and especially clothing for Jack, with airplanes as a slight, occasional exception.  And I detest the machismo so rampant in police and firefighters.  So I never expected to be excitedly anticipating a trip to a fire fighter's museum. 

But we live about 2 blocks from our cute little Brentwood fire station (like everything else in our tiny semi-suburb, semi-town, it really is cute, with its two engines and picturesque city hall structure, but more about that in another post), and Jack has developed a fascination with fire trucks.  Since the fire trucks go by several times a day (I assume to rescue kittens or help other fire departments), he has learned to do a fairly impressive imitation of a siren.  He frequently runs to our front windows, does his siren noise, and looks at me expectantly, beseechingly, as if to say, "Please, Mama, can I see the fire engine?"  He doesn't seem to understand that I can't make it appear at will.  Last week I heard Jack's siren impression about twenty times an hour every single day.  Last week I took a significant amount of Tylenol.  The two are not unrelated.  While it's very endearing at first, Jack's siren is a very high pitched squeal, almost like a baby fire engine.  It can get a little grating after several hours.

So I know what I'm getting myself into today.  I'm almost guaranteeing a constant siren noise not only for the rest of the day, but for the rest of the trip.  But it will make him so happy.  And that's worth it to me.  Just have to remember to pick up some Tylenol before we go.

A few pictures to add:

Jack making cookies.

Jack on his first day of "school"--we went to a drop in parent and child Parents as Teachers play time at the high school last Friday.  He walked all three blocks there holding my hand!

On his 18 month birthday.  Can you believe how grown up he looks!?  

Also on tap for today:  A trip to the park.  A downtown Napa trolley ride across the Napa River.  And Jack's first haircut, at this adorable place down the street called Pigtails & Crewcuts.  They have a fire engine chair.

Surprise!

We found out Friday afternoon that Ben has to go to Napa Valley for business, so Jack and I scooped up tickets and are going with him!  Quick turnaround, though--we're leaving tonight and we'll be there through Sunday.

Since I'll be tied to the hotel room while Jack's asleep and won't be able to do anything too noisy, I should have lots of time to update the blog, with tons of pictures of our adventures, of course.  So look for lots more blogging tomorrow through Friday.  That is, unless we can get a room within baby monitor range of the swimming pool...hmmm...

One and a Half!

I can't believe how quickly Jack's growing up.  He's one and a half today, and I don't know how so much time has passed between this

and this!

More Random Thoughts From a Disorganized Mommy

One of these days I'm going to get it together enough to post more than once every few weeks, and then I will have lots of nice, organized, little day to day stories, rather than letting lose in massive, stream-of-consciousness blog entries about everything I've forgetting to mention.

Today is a wonderfully rainy day, and our calendar was blissfully empty, after our park playdate was rained out.  So Jack's still in his pajamas, even though it's 4 p.m. and he's already down for his second nap.  It's been fantastic.  We've read, we've built a fort, we've danced to new music on Pandora, and we've cooked a lot.  Since we made cookies this weekend, we didn't do that (as Nonna and I always did when I was little), but a yummy acorn squash will be ready as a snack as soon as Jack wakes up, and I've put a brisket on as a surprise for Ben tonight.  

Jack has also practiced his jumping.  We were changing his crib sheet, and Jack decided the mattress on his floor was just the right height to jump on and off of.  He's continued doing it all day.  It's really adorable, because he doesn't quite know how to get his feet off the ground, so he looks just like a little bird trying to take flight and getting so excited about almost making it!  I tried to get a longer clip, but Jack decided that he wanted to "perform" for 1-2 seconds and then run to my lap to watch the video I had made.  This clip required several takes.

But I should fill you in on some of the things we've been up to in the past three weeks.  Jack's talking a lot more now, adding new words and sounds every day.  Some are a little hard to make out.  "Wa wa" stands for both water and firefly, believe it or not, although firefly is moving closer to "why why."  And his word for milk sounds an awful lot like "no," although it's moving closer to "nawk."  Sounds for a cow and a pig (sounds more like a snort than an oink) have also started popping up.

The new words are, in part, coming from Jack's massive attachment to his books.  He doesn't want to read books just a few times through--he wants them like 10 times in a row, several times a day.  And late last week he suddenly became so attached to his (completely ripped apart) copy of Goodnight Moon that he would scream if I tried to get him to leave a room without it in his hands.  Some days he's more attached to it than others, but he generally spends several hours a day with Goodnight Moon in his hands.

And then there's the development about which I have been most conflicted and concerned.  The one I feel nervous about even mentioning because it makes me feel like the mom at a newborn playgroup who is almost embarrassed to say her child is already sleeping through the night for fear that the other moms would hate her.  I would have hated that mom, given Jack's sleep issues during his first year. So anyway, we're working on a slight early, no-pressure form of potty training.  I know, I know, this sounds awful, since he's not even 18 months yet, but stay with me for a second.  

For several months Jack has been able to make the sign for diaper change.  He started by making the sign while he was getting a change, then started making it when he needed a change, and now does it when he needs to use the potty.  I had also read in a Montessori-theory book that Montessori believed there is a window of opportunity for starting potty training between 12-18 months, during which children are more receptive to learning something like that before the terrible twos (aka the "NO!" stage) starts.  I'm still not quite sure I buy into that, but I figured that if Jack was already telling us that he was about to go, I might as well get a potty chair and show him a different place to go.  I figured that if it meant I had to change just one less poopy diaper a month, I would be thrilled, and I was really surprised the first time he used it.  But now he's becoming more and more clear about when he needs to use the potty, and he's using it successfully several times a day!  We're not even close to attempting it while out of the house, and I'm not anticipating that he'll be done with potty training any sooner than any other child, but it's really nice that on days we're home a lot I don't have to change quite so many diapers.

His sweetest new developments?  While talking to Ben or Nonna or Pops on the phone, he stops, holds the phone out, and gives a big kiss to them on the display part of my cell phone.  And anytime Jack wants to show an adult something, he grabs their hand and leads them to where he wants to play.  He did that with our law school friend Khang who was in town a few weeks ago.  Khang visibly melted and said on the spot that he wanted a baby.  

Three--well, actually two and a half--new teeth have also made their appearance.  Jack's, not mine.  And my teeth are fine now.  The root canal actually ended up happening back to back with my fillings, so I didn't have time to agonize over and fear it.  Honestly it wasn't that bad.  After having given birth (even with an epidural it wasn't a complete picnic) and breastfed, a little drilling in a numbed mouth is nothing.  The worst part was having to have my mouth open for two hours while the dentist fixed it!

And I've been having lots of mommy contact the past few weeks.  So much so that I started craving a stay at home day so much that I reevaluated and decided we needed to slow down some.  I've finally gotten to know a couple of great new friends, several of whom may even become part of my stay at home feminist mommy book club!  And two days in a row I had great conversations with Stacy in London and Juliet in New York.  Both of them had their second babies this summer (Edie in September and Miles in July), which gave us even more to catch up on!  It's so nice to finally feel like I'm back in a situation where I have a whole handful or more of close friends I could call up at any given time to talk with about anything at all.  I love my mommy friends.