Housekeeping

I am so, so, so glad that I'm not the only one with a dirty house...

Madeline Madness

Trains have been replaced as Jack's favorite play activity and topic of conversation. We have moved on (and backward) to Madeline. I'm thrilled to have something to talk about other than tenders and smokestacks and roundhouses, although our current repertoire of storylines is still a bit limited and starting to get somewhat tired. Until he starts remembering all the plots of the stories, which we've just started reading again, the favorite by far is pretending to fall off a bridge into the river. At least 20 times a day, Jack informs me that he's on a bridge, saying, "I'm not being careful..." to which I'm supposed to respond, "Oh, no, Madeline, don't fall in the river!" Jack then dives to the floor, yelling, "Splash!" One of us has to find his stuffed dog to play Genevieve and drag him to the shore, whereupon I (Miss Clavel) give him a big hug and tell him how glad I am that he's okay.

In the second favored place is the play in which Jack groans in bed, I proclaim, "Something is not right!" and we "drive" (I carry) Jack quickly to the "hospital" (downstairs couch) where he gets a full checkup with his doctor's kit and has his appendix removed.

I knew this was not just a passing fad when, after the first day of Madeline play, Jack woke up twice during the night and instead of calling out "Momma," summoned me by yelling for "Miss Clavel." Requests for Ben are even more complex as Jack has dubbed him Pepito, who is the son of the Spanish Ambassador who lives next door. So when calling for Ben, even during the middle of the night, Jack asks for "Daddy Pepito son of the Spanish Ambassador."

He has, however, started a couple of irresistible bedtime rituals that melt my heart. He knows this and exploits it to full advantage. First, he has ingeniously replaced goodnight kisses (which he started refusing a week or so, to much protest and sneaking of kisses from me) with nuzzles, which he very freely gives. He rubs noses, although he moves his head so quickly that's it's generally better for the recipient to just stay still and wait to the nuzzle to come. Second, instead of accepting going straight to bed after his goodnight lullaby, as soon as we start to leave, Jack says, "Momma, will you stay wit me?" That request is quickly followed by, "Talk about our day," which leads to a quick recap of the events of our day. It has become my favorite 10 minutes of the day.

I have to say that I greatly prefer this to his previous routine of falling asleep on the floor in his doorway. Every night for about two months we had to put him back in bed before we went to bed ourselves.

Engineer Jack

A few weeks ago, our Parents as Teachers parent educator asked Jack what he was going to be for Halloween. Although we hadn't talked about it yet, I had been planning on making him a really cute chicken costume that I had seen in a magazine. Nope. Jack immediately responded that he was going to be a Little Blue Engine. I gulped. I can sew decently, but something like that would be beyond my sewing prowess. Then I briefly envisioned a painted microwave box for Jack to wear around his torso. That sounded even more daunting, because if my sewing skills are basic, my painting skills are non-existent. And I was absolutely not going to purchase a Thomas the Tank Engine costume--I loathe Thomas (apparently I'm not the only one, though I hate him for other reasons as well). So I decided to do what any other sane mother would do when faced with an impossible costume request. Nothing.

Score one (or is it about 10 million in my lifetime by now?) for procrastination. While we were visiting my parents week before last, Jack fell in love with an engineer's cap my brother had picked up on vacation while I was in high school. Jack, not normally one to wear hats, wore that one nonstop. A quick trip to Farm and Home (yes, Warrensburg has a store called Farm and Home, and it's chock full of John Deere stuff, Carhartts, and, more importantly, overalls in all sizes and styles), and a peek through old dress up clothes to find a handkerchief and we were all set.

And so I present Engineer Jack:

Note that the smudges on his face are not just normal two-year-old messy face; we made a special trip to the organic potting soil bag for that "just shoveled a pile of coal into the steam engine" look.

At the end of the night, we took this little video of Jack Trick or Treating our house. Sorry for the sideways-ness--can never seem to remember which way is upright, and YouTube, unlike the now defunct Google Video, doesn't seem to allow switching frame orientation. I also have to clarify that although Jack was an engineer, not a conductor (there is a difference, and normally Jack, over-educated in the field of train travel as he is, would be the first to explain it), all the adults who saw his costume asked him if he was a conductor. By the end of the night he had given up and was even calling himself a conductor. Too bad, especially because the way he says "eng-i-neeo" is even cuter than the way he says, "con-do-tor."

Baby update: I'm 15 weeks pregnant now and fully into maternity wear. The baby is now about the size of an orange and is kicking away like crazy. At my 8 week ultrasound s/he was already moving enough to impress my OB, and for the past few weeks the movements have been strong enough for me to feel, even though it's still abnormally early for that. In about a month we'll have the big ultrasound when we'll find out the baby's gender and blessedly be able to refer to the baby as either "he" or "she" instead of "it" and soon after to have a name other than the undignified "Baby #2" or "the baby."

Telling Time

Jack today, pretending to answer the phone:

Yeth, we can do dat. Otay, Nonna and Pops, you will be 'ere at thirty o'clock? Atter bedtime? Otay. Bye bye.

Halloween post of the train engineer tomorrow.

Combatting Commercial Influences Already

Jack and I had this conversation in the grocery store this morning:

Momma: Hmmmm... what kind of waffles should we get, Jack?

Jack: I wan de Cookie Monster ones.

Momma: Seriously? That's already starting? How old are you?

Jack: I am two, Momma! (as if I had asked him the silliest, most obvious question ever)

Momma: (before looking at the nutritional information and content) Honey, I'm not sure that the Cookie Monster ones would taste very good. You might not like them, even though they have Cookie Monster on the box.

Jack: Dey will! De Cookie Monster wattles WILL taste yumdee.

Momma: (with relief, discovering that Sesame Street has at least some scruples about what foods it associates itself with, as the first ingredient is whole wheat, there's no corn syrup, the preservatives are minimal, and it's even organic) You know what, these are a good for you green light food. Let's get them.

Jack: (very seriously, as if I had just learned something very important from him) Yeth. Dey will taste yumdee. An dey are a greee ligh foo.

I felt vaguely as if I was in a PBS TV ad.

And I made a note to myself to remember The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood in our annual end of the year giving.

As a side note, pressure from that organization, the CCFC, has led to Disney offering full refunds to anyone who has bought a Baby Einstein DVD in the past 5 years. A few years ago the CCFC filed an FTC complaint that led to Disney withdrawing their (completely unscientific) claims that their DVDs were "educational" for babies, and this is just a further, but incredibly impressive, extension of that admission. Turns out studies now show that though educational TV can be helpful (in some environments, very helpful) to development in preschoolers, any screen media time (including so-called educational DVDs for babies) is actually harmful to infant and toddler development. Plus they're mind numbingly boring--the Baby Einstein videos are just strings of 5 second clips of toys and household objects in motion, things most babies would see and be interested in in real life but not in 2D on a screen. The American Association of Pediatrics recommends no TV time at all for children under two, yet American infants (children under 12 months) watch an average of an hour of TV a day. Check the first CCFC link for information on how to return DVDs.

Exciting Explanations

So I've been off blogging for a while. And a big part of it is because of some very exciting news:

We're having a baby!!!

Baby #2 is due April 25--not quite two weeks after Jack's third birthday and a mere 3 days after Ben turns 30. April will be a busy month.

So for those who are counting weeks, that means I'm 12 weeks pregnant already. Into the second trimester (thank goodness!), and past the worst fatigue and nausea, although that was even easier than last time. I know it's probably silly to keep such good news quiet for so long, but I've been struck recently by anecdotal reminders that up to 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. A friend of mine miscarried at 11 weeks, a neighbor discovered an ectopic pregnancy at 6 weeks, and an old high school friend miscarried at 9 weeks, all three of those happening in the two months since we found out our baby is on the way. In thinking about how hard it must be for those couples to have to repeatedly retract all the happy announcements they had made, we decided only to tell those people we would talk with if I had a miscarriage.

Difficult, though, to blog about other things when the joy of the new baby pervaded every communication I've deemed worthy of blogging. Well, that and the fact that I haven't had much time for blogging as I've done practically nothing for the past two months except eat and sleep. The cleanliness (or rather lack of) of our house is a huge testament to that. Already up 10 pounds and starting to be forced into maternity wear, although a few (very kind or very visually challenged) friends say they can't tell yet. I'm just starting to give up needing to nap every second Jack does.

But after a second OB appointment today, I'm fairly confident saying this pregnancy is going very well and risks for something life-threatening happening to the baby are way, way down. The heartbeat was strong today, and all my bloodwork came back within normal ranges. Amazingly, I'm also fairly certain I've already started feeling the baby move. All the pregnancy books say most women start feeling movement around 16-20 weeks, which makes me sound completely nuts. But a few nights ago the kicks got so intense that I insisted Ben put his hand on my belly. His very skeptical look (if I'm not supposed to be feeling it internally yet, how on earth would he externally?) quickly changed to one of awe. I'm thinking that was corroboration.

Jack seems to have taken my lethargy and moodiness mostly in stride, and for that I credit in large part Richard Trevethick, inventor of the first steam locomotive. Since summer, what began as Jack's strong interest in trains has become a complete obsession for him. We long ago finished reading through every train book in the Brentwood and University City libraries, including those written on 3rd grade+ reading levels, the kind that explain the function of every single part of the train. And yet, every time we go to a library or bookstore or friend's house or even the grocery store (you think I'm kidding), Jack says, "Maydee dey will had a good train book dere. We'll see!" The train set has taken up permanent residence on our living room floor and provides a good 2 hours of entertainment for us almost every day.

He, of course, doesn't quite get all the implications of my pregnancy yet. He's given the baby a few kisses. He understood today that we were going to the doctor to see if the baby was okay. He heard the heartbeat going "ka-bump, ka-bump, ka-bump" and asked, "Is that the baby?" But the bump isn't really there yet, and even when it is, it's still a far jump from that to "We're going to have a new person in our house forever now." Fortunately a good friend of mine, whose son is a few weeks older than Jack is due with her second baby six weeks before me. Yeah, if you're charting that on a calendar, that's new baby for them (2 weeks), Jack's friend's birthday (2 weeks), Jack's birthday (2 weeks), new baby for us. I foresee some slap-dash third birthday parties in our future, accompanied by prayers of, "Please, please, please don't let the baby's first entrance disrupt with his/her big brother's birthday celebration!" I don't envision that being a good start to a smooth sibling relationship.

Also heard over the past few days: this entire sentence from Jack, "Momma, I would like to listen to the Goodbye music on your computer while I am eating my pizza at the table." I think he's mastered the English language.

In another development from this week that normally would warrant its own banner headline post, but is, in light of other news, a mere postscript, Jack may have given up his bah-bah for good! Two nights and two naps without one, and all without tears! And it definitely wasn't Jack's idea to give it up--it was all me and I didn't ask for his input or warn him ahead of time. Kind of out of character with my normal parenting style, but in this particular situation it appears to have worked well for all involved. Yet another reason to take some, leave some of every parenting manual's suggestions. Even those I consider nothing short of child abuse (Gina Ford, Babywise) at least have at base (an incredibly warped view of) the idea that some form of structure/routine is good for the sanity of parent and child.

The reason for my drastic bah-bah zero tolerance policy? A ballooning three-binky-at-a-time habit complete with color preference request lists ("I need a pink bah-bah and a boo bah-bah and a yeddow bah-bah!" He had also started to blur the bed-only boundaries, which caused me to have to say upwards of 50 times a day, "I can't understand you with your bah-bah in your mouth. You need to take it out of your mouth. All the way out. Good. Now can you say that again?" The entire series every time got a little old, and I was really starting to fear for Jack's speech development. Fingers crossed this isn't just a false blip of hope like early potty training success appears to have been...

Good Question...

There are sleep issues in our house again. Nothing like when I first started the blog--the months-long pattern of nighttime waking every hour or two then was mind-alteringly horrible because of my inability to get any REM sleep for weeks on end. The toddler sleep disturbance we're facing now is also rough but in more of a Momma's-going-to-scream-if-she-doesn't-get-a-break way, not a Momma-needs-to-sleep-for-days way.

Jack's refusal to nap last Sunday was apparently only the beginning. Yesterday I struggled from 1:30 until 3:30 to get a very tired toddler to stay in bed, close his eyes, and be quiet. For at least half of that time, I heard a refrain of, "Jack trying to sleep, Momma!" every 5 seconds. Precious if you're reading it (especially imagining the sweet earnesty with which he said it); precarious if you're hearing it for the thousandth time. Yesterday afternoon was a patience endurance test and I only barely survived. After a two hour struggle of getting up and down and closing and opening doors, as a last resort I put Jack into the Ergo Baby sling. When he was very young, Jack used to take at least one nap a day in the sling while I walked around London or just around our flat, so I figured it was worth trying. Yesterday I walked around (which he liked) holding him tightly against my chest and refusing to let him wiggle around or get playful (which he decidedly did not like). Ten minutes later he was fast asleep.

This morning he woke up at 5:30. Bleary-eyed, I took him for a run in the jogging stroller so that Ben, who was up late working last night, could sleep in. Within the first three blocks it seemed like we had already seen half a dozen people walking their dogs. After contorting his head so that he could look up at me through the window of the stroller's canopy, Jack gave me a puzzled look and asked, "Where's Jack's dog?" Ahem. The little boy who has pined for a dog for at least a year has now developed the ability to ask for one. He spent the rest of the run deciding what kind of dog he wanted. For the record, he wants a "niddle one" like Aunt Rachel's dog. According to Jack it would live inside our house in the upstairs. Jack would "pat pat pat" it, throw a ball for it like he does with Miss Kelly's dog Peyton, and ask if it wanted food or wanted to go for a run. It seems he's thought about this before.

The following is a gratuitous photo montage of an afternoon playing with trains which is intended to make up for the lack of pictures in recent weeks/months (Do I ever seem to have any kind of picture post other than a completely unrelated montage lately? My camera is getting a lot less use than it was a year ago.). This was during a day that Jack insisted he did not need to wash his face. In case you hadn't noticed, there are independence-related conversations bubbling up at least every 30 minutes now.

Heard Around Our House

Jack now talks nonstop. Nonstop. Nonstop. And exactly that way--repeating everything several times in a row just to be sure we've heard him clearly. Yesterday was a disastrous example of what this new-found verbosity can mean. We foolishly tried to go to Latin Mass at a different church, and the stares from the almost exclusively over-70 and otherwise completely silent congregation seemed to go along the lines of, "Well in my day I would never have let a child behave that way!" And then naptime didn't happen at all because Jack had too much to say. No, he's not ready to give up naps--it's a one-time thing, and it was not a fun one.

But in every other situation Jack's talking is sooo much fun--now I can get comments and even a few questions in response to my communications! In fact, I've got so many make me laugh comments built up over the past few weeks that I plan on blogging them one at a time every day or two (maybe that will get me back into regular blogging?) until I run out. I'm sure more will build up in the meantime.

Other times, his train of thought is very obvious. As I told Pops that Jack had devoured a "C-O-O-K-I-E" the day before, Jack chimed in, "H I J K L M N O P?" in exactly the same intonation and rhythm.

The ones I find most funny are the comments Jack makes when he understands something I'm saying to someone else but doesn't understand what I'm communicating. Sometimes these responses take a little detective work to figure out. A few weeks ago I was talking to Nonna on the phone about one of my friends getting a doctorate, when Jack starting repeatedly saying, "Kabump, kabump." After a few minutes of questioning I realized that Jack was making his heartbeat sound effect, so I got out his toy medical kit and stethoscope. It was only then that I realized he had started saying that because he heard me say "doctorate." As I asked if that was what he had been thinking, the biggest grin came over his face. Whether it was pride in his ability to communicate or in silly Momma to understand him I don't know, but I'll take it either way.

A Vacation (From Bah-Bahs?)

Two bits of exciting news in our house today.  But first the pictures.

Trying to take pictures of Momma from the grocery cart.

Playing basketball--the barstool is apparently the basket.

At the circus.

Playing tennis with Daddy.

Showing off his playdough pizza.  We also make lots of gingerbread cookies out of playdough for our now frequent tea parties.

Jack ready to go, although where exactly he plans to go with galoshes and a helmet I can't say I know.  But he put both boots and helmet on himself.

Apparently the flash on my camera is much better than I thought.  This was taken at 10 p.m., after Jack had been asleep about 2 hours.  And yet the Edna book was still open on his lap.

Buckling Easter Bunny into the Bugaboo.

And now the exciting news:

1. Starting today Ben is taking at least a week off work in the form of a much deserved "staycation."  In the past three years since we finished law school, Ben has had a month-long break from work each year until this one; the first year it was paternity leave when Jack was born and last year it was a moving break between his London and St. Louis jobs.  So for a while I have been urging him to take another, slightly shorter break.

But we weren't sure what to do since we're not big travelers.  We've frequently joked that we don't vacation, we move.  That's not much of an exaggeration since in the first six years of our marriage (it will be seven on Tuesday!), we lived in seven different cities.  In that time I think we took about four, maybe five vacations Honeymoon in Estes Park, Disney World, Rome, Rome for Jack's baptism, New York for bar admission (which was business-motivated, so only partially counts), and Napa Valley (again, for business).

So we decided to just stay home for a week.  And it's already off to a fantastic start.  We have a whole week of play time, good daily workouts, grilling outside, and just being together ahead of us, and I for one can't wait!

2. I'm not quite sure how we did it, but Jack started his nap this afternoon without asking for his binky.  This is a (pathetically) indescribably big deal.  Although it's been restricted to bedtime and naptime use for almost a year now, Jack is completely attached to his pacifier, and I've been concerned about getting rid of it since he was about six months old.  Last week a nurse at our pediatrician's office severely chastised me for continuing to give Jack a "bah-bah" (as he dubbed it at around 9 months), and I realized that it really is past time to transition away from it.

We've gone through a string of potential replacement comfort objects for Jack, but nothing has yet worked its way into Jack's heart the way the bah-bah did.  A fuzzy blanket and several teddy bears were among the most traditional candidates, although at one point Jack seemed determined to carry a board book copy of Goodnight Moon to bed every night, something I can't imagine was very comfortable.  Most recently we thought his chosen lovey would be a stuffed rabbit Jack has dubbed "Easter Bunny."  Jack has pushed Easter Bunny on countless stroller rides around the block, down the alley behind our house, and to the fire station to see if the garage doors are open.

Then yesterday morning, very quickly and somewhat by accident, Easter Bunny's position as top toy was usurped.  As a little background, I have to say that Jack has recently been obsessed with Corduroy, the lovable little bear with green overalls that are missing a button.  I have read both of Corduroy's stories at least 500 times now.  About two weeks ago Jack discovered that we have a Corduroy video.  It's part of a children's book classics DVD set that Ben's parents got Jack.  Most of the stories take the book's actual illustrations and animate them Reading Rainbow-style, but Corduroy is done in live action.  Considerable liberty is taken with the script and the dialogue, which adds a wonderful dimension to our discussions about the story.  Finding this video took Jack's Corduroy obsession to an entirely new level--one that only increased yesterday.  

Yesterday morning Jack was playing with a flashlight and pretending to be the security guard who finds Corduroy under a bed in the story.  After secretly planting a bear under Jack's bed, Ben suggested that Jack look under our beds to see if Corduroy was there.  The ensuing commotion resulted in Teddy being instantly renamed Corduroy and immediately after becoming Jack's constant companion.  Easter Bunny's reign lasted almost a month.  Any bets on how long before Corduroy is toppled?

My Favorite Jack-isms

Now that Jack's a near constant chatterbox, he's got some wonderful phrases.  It's interesting to see him trying as hard as he is to communicate.  Generally he gets his message through.  The one glaring exception is that we're still baffled about what name he's given to the clips for my hot rollers.  He uses the same word for them every time he points them out, but we can't figure out what he's saying!  It's rather long and German-sounding in its compound name structure, which is fitting given his apparent conviction about their dual use.  I have the kind of clip that looks like an extra large bobby pin, and Jack's convinced that they not only hold the rollers in my hair (he's seen and attempted to imitate that) but that they also unlock doors.  It is not an exaggeration to say that at any given time half of our upstairs doors have curler pins sticking out of them.  

 

So I thought I'd share some of my favorite Jack-isms with you before I forget how much I love them.

"'Ere go, Momma."  Translated: "Here you go, Momma."  He says this any time he hands me anything, whether I want it or not.  Frequently he says it when handing me infinitesimally small crumbs that have fallen from his plate to the table or from his food to his carseat.

"WHOOOO! 'Nudda steet." Translated: "The firetruck went down another street."  This comes out any time we hear any kind of siren but don't see an emergency vehicle.  The second half of his statement is always said very reassuringly, as if I had been terribly concerned about the absent firetruck and he's trying to comfort me.

"Doww Pay?" Translated: "May I get down from the table to play?"  He says this with an incredibly earnest look, as if he's asking for the most wonderful favor in the world.

"Pay???  (Folds hands in prayer, makes a makeshift sign of the cross) Amen. EAT!"  Jack is extremely consistent about saying mealtime prayers.  So much so that he'll remind me to pray when we're eating in a restaurant (which brings up interesting issues for me--continue to do what we always do or avoid any outward sign so as not to seem showily pious?).  The sign of the cross is a work in progress.  Jack gets that it starts on his forehead, but after that it's generally just three taps on the middle of his chest.  Also, I'm fairly sure that Jack thinks the prayer doesn't end with the "Amen" but with the "EAT!"  We don't know where that came from.

"Jack's bah-bah NOW!"  A few months ago, in an effort to get Jack to give up his binky (I've since somewhat suspended this effort), I started saying, "It's Momma's bah-bah now!" every morning when we playfully fought for control of his prized pacifier(s).  Now anytime Jack finally finds and grabs a binky, he cheerfully proclaims that it's his.  It also serves as a template for anything else he happens to find; i.e., "Jack's new bike NOW!"

"Okay, Mommeeeee!"  It's amazing to see Jack's sense of humor develop.  He's discovered that I'm not all that crazy about being called Mommy.  I thought I would be, but somehow when he got stuck on Momma for a few months, it really grew on me and sounds so much sweeter to me now.  So any time he wants to tease me or get me to chase him, he calls me Mommeeee, squeals a giggle, and races away.

"Paygown!  Maddie, KayKay Baby, Neeeesha?"  Translated: "There's the playground!  Are we meeting Maddie and Kaleb the baby and Neesha (our friends) there?"  It's been almost a month since we've seen these friends, but Jack talks about them incessantly.  Any time we see or talk about a playground he assures me that we will see them there.  Any time someone asks where he's going, Jack will invariably answer that he's going to see them.

This is closely related to the narrative, "Choo choo, MeyMey, Phoenic, no MurrDee" in which Jack recounts his trip on the zoo train with his friends Meghan and Phoenix, an outing which his friend Murray was expected to attend but did not in fact make.

"Daddy fall down, Jack fall down, uh-huh.  Bah-daid.  Mwah!  Bad gate, bad gate! Okay, okay." This story is actually a little more complex than a simple sentence interpretation.  A few weeks ago Ben was carrying Jack over the babygate at the top of the stairs when Ben lost his balance and the two of them landed hard on the other side.  It was actually pretty traumatic.  Ben had a severely bruised knee for about two weeks and is just getting over his (irrational but no less real) guilt.  Jack bit his front lip and his cheek hard and cracked a portion of one of his teeth off.  We have yet to figure out which tooth was the damaged one, but after an emergency trip to the dentist (whom Jack had not yet officially visited), we were assured that he would be fine.  Nonetheless, it was scary and we castigated the gate when we got home.  Repeatedly.  The middle part of the sequence tells about how he got a band-aid and a kiss to feel better.

"Hey, Oh! Reh Ha Chiddy Peppa CD!?"  Jack loves those Chili Peppers.  He now asks for them by name and can sing half of "Snow."  Good mom for exposing him to many musical genres or bad mom for letting him listen to rock music at such a tender age?

"Beept, beept!" (while walking backwards)  Several months ago Jack saw a firetruck backing into the fire station and heard it beeping.  He said "Beep?" and I responded, "Yes, that fire truck beeped as it was backing up."  Now Jack thinks that the present tense of to beep is not beep but  beeped.  And he makes that noise any time anything goes backwards.  Including himself.

"Momma: Kiddy Me!" and "Momma: Sear-ly?" Translated: "Momma, you're so funny to say 'Are you kidding me!?' and 'Seriously!?' again." Last week I had several mornings during which everything seemed to go comically wrong.  Ben couldn't get one car to start, so he took the other one (which I had already filled with Jack and my thinks for the day)--finally got the other car to start and realized Ben had left without taking my purse out of his car--finally got to the tailor's where my bridesmaid dress was waiting for me (drove VERY slowly and carefully, had already paid for the alterations), and the tailor had just stepped out for a few (20) minutes.  Plus there was the day of 4 grocery stores and a disappointing tux rental visit mentioned in the last post.  Thus, a seemingly endless stream of "Seriously!?"s and "Are you kidding me!?"s spewed out of my mouth last week.

I'm now extremely grateful for having long ago decided to censor my language so that I'm now in the habit of using completely G-Rated phrases any time Jack might possibly be in earshot.  It's a good thing I've finally perfected that art, because this time Jack immediately repeated my words as if they were the funniest things ever.

But by far my favorite Jackism of all is "I you, Momma!"  He leaves out the operative L word, but the sentiment is absolutely there, and I love it.

Congratulations to Aunt Rachel and Uncle Chad

The past few weeks have been very busy around our house.  Ben was working on a massive deal at work (Energizer bought SC Johnson), which meant I was a mostly-single parent for a few weeks, even more so than while we were in London.  It was not fun for any of us, and we're all really looking forward to having a weekend alone together again starting this Friday.

But more importantly, we were busy because my little sister got married on Saturday!  To be honest, I didn't have to do all that much, even though I was the Matron of Honor (seriously, couldn't they just call all of us "maids"?  "Matron" is so, so awful!).  Nonna had pretty much everything covered, and two of Rachel's friends took care of the bachelorette party.  But even just the packing for a long weekend and taking the train to Nonna and Pops' with Jack on Thursday morning took a bit of thoughtful planning.  On one truly annoying afternoon I was led to believe that Jack's tux wouldn't be here in time and I visited four different grocery stores trying to find exactly the type of natural-fruit raspberry jam that Nonna wanted to use in the wedding cake--which she amazingly and to great results made herself!

All three of us were in the wedding party; Ben was an usher and Jack was one of three ring bearers.  Ben helped seat a full church of over 250 people.  I managed not to trip while walking down the aisle or to smear my makeup horribly with tears.  And Jack did a tremendous job.  Jack and I had practiced for a week or so, using finger puppets and Little Tykes people to act out the wedding, and we had picked up a few books about weddings from the library.  Thankfully, Rachel and Chad had decided from the start that the children in the wedding should sit with their families during the ceremony instead of standing up front the entire time.  That alone took a ton of pressure off.

The night of the rehearsal Jack went up and down the aisle several times without issue.  At the actual wedding he seemed a little surprised to see so many people sitting in the pews, which makes sense but is something I would never have thought about.  About halfway down the aisle he started peeking into every row, looking for Nonna, who, as mother of the bride, was of course seated in the front row.  So it took a little while for Jack to get to the front, but he did it (!) and the whole congregation seemed amused by the process.  At the reception someone pointed out that Jack had looked a little like a politician working a ropeline.  I cringed slightly, silently hoping he can avoid that fate... 

The wedding turned out beautifully.  Rachel has terrific style and picked out very flattering bridesmaids' dresses and shoes so cute that I anticipate wearing them at least once a week this summer.  The music was jaw-dropping; our former piano teacher played the organ, our cousin Julie's boyfriend brought tears to my eyes during Trumpet Voluntary, and friends of the family played cello and harp during the seating of guests.  And Rachel looked stunningly beautiful in her gorgeous dress.  Seriously, pictures will express it much better than I could describe it.

Unfortunately since we were all incredibly busy the day of the wedding, we didn't get around to taking any pictures with our camera.  The closest I can get to pictures right now is their engagement announcement in my hometown newspaper and their wedding website (see that for one of the worst post-poodle-hair pictures of me ever! Gotta get a new batch of pictures together, Sister!), but I promise that when the photographers have the pictures ready I will post plenty of them here.

Until then, I hope Aunt Rachel and Uncle Chad are having a great time in St. Lucia.  Congratulations!

Oh, and in key Jackson girl fashion, the wedding has again overshadowed Uncle Tyler's birthday.  I'm by far more guilty of doing that than Rachel, having had two graduations (possibly three--I can't remember when my high school graduation was) within a day of his birthday.  And another time I arranged for Tyler to travel to London to see my newborn and had him returning home just hours before he turned 21.  Twenty-one doesn't seem quite as impressive after spending a week in a country with a drinking age of 18.  So, in rare fashion, here's a birthday shout out to Uncle Tyler for tomorrow.  Happy 23!

My New Naptime Obsession

When Jack was a newborn, my favorite way to spend his naptime was to go to sleep myself.  I embraced the advice to sleep when your baby sleeps, letting laundry go undone and dishes sit in the sink, sometimes for an embarrassingly disgusting length of time.  When Jack reached about seven months or so and was (finally!) only waking up 3-4 times a night, my naptime treat became watching Desperate Housewives and Daily Show reruns while drinking a Diet Coke and eating chocolate.  While I still greatly enjoy that setup, today it has been usurped as my favorite naptime pastime. 

Slate.com, my long-time favorite online magazine, has just launched a new for-women sister site called Double X, and I am obsessed.  For about a year and a half I've followed religiously the conversations on the XX Factor, Slate's women's blog, and now it's evolved from a blog into a full website.  I couldn't be more thrilled at the prospect of spending Jack's naps reading the brilliant insights of these incredible journalists.  Much more mind-expanding than Desperate Housewives reruns.  I predict a rapid decline in the cleanliness of our home.

Even though I, as an over-educated, unemployed/stay-at-home mother, am occasionally (okay, repeatedly) attacked through varying levels of chastisement in many of their articles, I love the idea of an online home for intelligent conversation about news, women's issues, and families with other women.  This article about the failures of feminism (or maybe just the lack of a definitive solution to Betty Friedan's "problem that has no name," described in The Feminine Mystique) had me intrigued today.  It describes some of the conflict I feel between wanting to be a "perfect" mom/wife and recognizing we could all use a little relaxation of standards in the name of both feminism and sanity.  A brief quote:

"If, as Joan Didion noted of the women’s movement in 1972, “to make an omelette you need not only those broken eggs but someone ‘oppressed’ to break them,” today you need the women who spend their days buying organic eggs from Whole Foods and mommy-blogging about the frittatas they made for their kids to question seriously their life choices. This is a much harder proposition than merely claiming membership among the oppressed. The generations of women now in their twenties, thirties, and forties were raised to believe they could be anything and do anything they wanted to do. Now that they have educations, jobs, husbands, and children, they are finding that doing all of these things well isn’t so simple. They don’t suffer from a problem that has no name so much as they nurture resentments with no obvious cause.

In the end, the modern day querelle des femmes often reveals more about class (and status anxiety) than it does about the particular experience of being female. It is the maddening demands of an ever more competitive meritocracy, and not the malevolence of men, that challenges these daughters of the second wave." 

Every time I read an article like this I face another interesting conflict--do I attempt to write something publishable on mommy feminism, or is that market flooded already with women more eloquent than I am? 

Good Neighbors

With the wonderful summery weather we've had the past few days, I've realized once again how much I love our little neighborhood.  Brentwood is a cute little town of 7,000 right in the middle of the inner suburbs of St. Louis.  I say "inner suburbs" because urban sprawl here really is horrific--it's not as bad as D.C. or Houston, but there are actually people who commute 40 miles or more to downtown without going through a bit of rural area.  On our trips to visit Nonna and Pops, it takes almost an hour before we officially leave St. Louis's outer suburbs.  And even where we are it takes Ben over half an hour to drive to work, which makes me feel as if we're living way out in the boonies, since Ben's London commute consisted of a 7 minute walk by some of the city's tallest buildings.  The preppiness of it all also occasionally gets to me when I realize that there are 4 identical white luxury SUVs in line at our local Starbucks driveup window or when I see moms at the park dressed in skirts and with lipstick on(!) while their children play around them in Strasburg Children clothes.  And I completely don't get the monogramming fanaticism--seriously, I've seen it on cars, on baby bibs!?  Didn't even J.Crew ditch that fad as too preppy about five years ago?  But, again, good outweighs bad.

But, being relatively out of the hideousness of McMansion exurbia, Brentwood's a pretty nice area.  The public elementary school is literally six houses away, and our favorite park is less than a mile's walk through a tree-lined neighborhood.  There are a few businesses that we can walk to: the library, fire station (this is key for Jack), dry cleaner's, pharmacy, our insurance company, Whole Foods, Panera, Starbucks.  If the streets were set up a little more walker-friendly, we could even make it on foot to Target!  

The best thing about our new home is our neighbors.  We're in a row of 10 newly built houses that share a common back alley private drive that leads to all our garages.  In those 10 houses live 13 children between 7 months and 10 years of age!  So as you can imagine, the alley in back is home to frequent bike races and impromptu soccer matches.  I'd imagine it's like going back in time 50 years to stickball game years.  Except that the parents join in, too, jumping in and out of the games and talking to one another.  Saturday we walked outside and were greeted with drink and barbecue offers from both our neighbors whose kids were playing in the sprinkler and those who were making their first attempts at gardening.

It's also reassuring to know our neighbors so well when I read a story like this one that was briefly on CNN.com earlier today.  As I incredulously read the story to Ben, his jaw dropped and he said, "I could totally see Jack doing that!"  Me too.  And let me give you an example of exactly why we could see that happening.

Some background: although the big boy bed thing is going fairly well (our featherbed has been returned to its intended use and we've yet to have a falling out incident), Jack does like to get up and crack his door open after we've put him to bed.  We've now gotten used to hearing the creak of his door a few minutes after lights out.  He then spends at least 15 minutes jabbering away to himself before falling asleep; generally he recounts highlights of his day (presumably for the benefit of Waddle Waddle and Little Teddy), then ends by giving his animals kisses and singing the last line of his lullaby, "Goodnight Jack, we love you."

Saturday night, however, Jack seemed to go to sleep rather quickly.  It was a little late and he had spent a lot of time playing outside in the sun, so we chalked the lack of noise up to exhaustion.  In the process of opening the door, however, Jack kicks off all his covers, and he's still learning how to cover himself back up, so I've recently made a habit of stopping by his room before I go to sleep and straightening his covers.  I find it really sweet.  But when I went in to do that on Saturday, Jack wasn't in bed.  I patted the blankets and pulled them off the bed in shock and had a brief moment of panic before I realized exactly where he was.  When we weren't outside playing in the sun, we spent a good portion of Saturday in our guest room.  We had a huge buildup of laundry to fold and I (embarrassingly) still hadn't washed the sheets from our Easter Grammy and Granddad visit, so we spent a lot of time playing on the twin-sized guest bed with the trundle underneath it pulled halfway out so that Jack could jump up on the bed, too.  

Jack had apparently tried to recreate our afternoon fun, because there he was, snoozing away sans sheets, with no blanket, no pillowcase, not even a stuffed animal for companionship, just three bah-bahs (pacifiers, one for each hand and one for his mouth, on constant rotation) on the "Nonna Pops bed," as he had dubbed it earlier in the day.  We carried him back to his room, but Sunday morning, instead of wanting to snuggle in our bed for a while after waking up (as usual), Jack urged us to go to the guest room instead.  We politely declined.  At least we have an inkling that,  should he have a baby brother or sister who would need to be in a crib and in the nursery closer to our room, changing rooms and moving to a true big boy bed will not cause much emotional trauma for Jack.

Here's to hoping that by the time Jack has siblings who can toddle along after him he'll have turned his leadership skills toward more productive endeavors so that we won't end up on the CNN ticker on a slow news day.

And Happy Birthday to Daddy!

And the birthday madness continued, only to end today.  Jack's birthday is not only (generally) close to Easter, but it's just a week and a half before Ben's.  So on Monday, after a final birthday party for Jack two days before at Nonna and Pops's house, we were at the grocery store buying ingredients for Ben's birthday cake.  I was, as usual, attempting to keep Jack happily in the cart (as opposed to unhappily throwing himself out of the cart) by using my standby tactic of talking his ear off so he doesn't have time to process anything else (Uncle Tyler, you can keep your Nonna comparison jokes to yourself, thank you very much!).  So I was explaining to him what we were getting and why we were having yet another birthday cake.  Jack turned to me and said, "Hap Birday Jack all done.  Hap Birday Daddy."  

Actually, I should qualify this by explaining that Jack wasn't just saying this to me but to the entire grocery store.  You see, he doesn't actually say, "Hap Birday"; he sings it at the top of his lungs.  Every.  Single.  Time.  I don't think he understands that the sentiment may also be adequately expressed in spoken words.  

I'll attempt to capture the singing on video tomorrow and repost it here, although I have two concerns about doing this: 1) whether Jack could possibly refrain from looking at the camera long enough for him to sing the entire song or even a representative snippet, and 2) whether such a post would require paying royalties.  I'm going for the defense of tenuous connection to the actual tune and lyrics given a 2-year-old's vocal development.  That is unless any of my litigation friends have strong arguments against it.

Regardless, I'm indescribably glad that my wonderful husband and best friend was born 29 years ago today.  

Happy Birthday Dear Jack...

I can't believe it, but Jack is two years old today!  Since I know pictures are always the big draw and we had some great ones taken weekend before last, those come first.

Jack had a busy weekend with Grammy and Granddad (Ben's parents) in town.  Friday night we had a birthday party, complete with a Momma-made three-layered strawberry-lemon cake with strawberry buttercream icing.  

Jack, who has been deprived of almost all sugar almost all of his life, predictably went crazy over it...and eventually got sick.  Poor guy!

Although it's been fun celebrating for four days straight (with more to come this weekend at Nonna and Pops' house!), I'm eager to get back to a little normalcy.  After two days of waking up to presents and surprises, I'm wondering what Jack expects for tomorrow.  Since my birthday is December 3, I've always been sensitive about wanting to celebrate my birthday separately and before Christmas.  But this whole having a major holiday the day before a birthday thing is new to me, and I'm not sure I've got it down yet.  Luckily I have until Jack's 24th and 29th birthdays to figure out just how to manage celebrating both Easter and Jack's birthday on the same day.

And now since I've demonstrated my apparent overabundance of time, I'm off to read Slate--I gave up reading that, my favorite magazine, for Lent, and I've built up a 43-article backlog of interesting things to read.  I may once again have interesting, non-mommy things to say by the end of the week.

Things We've Been Up To

1. Sleeping in a big boy bed.  He feel out once the first night and once the second and since then has been fine.  Two or three times when he had trouble going to sleep we had to turn the bed around so the crib rail side was facing out, but other than that it was an amazingly smooth transition.  Hooray!

2. Making music.  Although it was not useful to keep him in bed, Jack decided that the one of the rods from the non-toddler bed bedrail would make a perfect Riccola-style instrument.  He now sing/plays, "Doot doot doot doot doot, good morning, Momma!" many times a day. 

3. Cooking.  I've been doing pretty well on my resolution to cook more and better.  We've had multiple variations of gourmet muffins and pancakes, some lamb, risotto, and homemade soups, among other yummy treats.  Here Jack is helping assemble crepes.  We didn't end up with any blueberries actually on the crepes, but the pumpkin butter ones were particularly good.  

Our exception to fine cuisine?  National Corndog Day.  Honestly, it's a real event.  We used to celebrate with our law school friends Tim and Juliet.  On the first Saturday of the NCAA tournament, parties are held across the country at which brave souls attempt an edible (by some accounts) triple double.  To do so requires eating 10 corndogs, 10 cans of beer, and 10 units (of 10 each) of tater tots, all within the hours of live basketball play during the afternoon.  Greasy goodness.  

This year we showed our age by substituting organic veggie "corndogs," homemade sweet potato fries, and blackberry juice cut with sparkling water.  We'd definitely be laughed out of the UVa party.  Needless to say, even with the modifications, none of us made it close to triple doubling.   

4. Obsessively reading all the Madeline books.  All six of them bound together in one book that we borrowed from the library and devoured immediately and repeatedly.  Within a day we had read through all 300 pages, some of the stories several times through, and we continued to read at least two before every nap/bedtime every day.  I'm normally a fan of greatest hits collections, but I can say with utter confidence that at least half of the Madeline books never should have been published.  That bad.  I've been surprised at several of the classics that I had just assumed I loved that I can't stand at all.  I found "Where the Wild Things Are" particularly disappointing. 

We returned the Madeline book this morning, and I am thrilled to be free of "Madeline and the Bad Hat."  Free at least until Jack's birthday when he's getting his own copy from us.  I'm hoping two weeks absence won't increase his fondness.

5. Working out.  In a preview of his college days, Jack spent Saturday morning shirtless and playing with a frisbee.  

On Monday afternoon Jack suddenly dropped and gave me three, and he counted the pushups nonetheless!  I cracked up and called Ben to report Jack's imitation.  

Ben responded, "Oh, yeah.  We do pushups together.  And we count them out loud."  Apparently they did several sets while I was at a meeting on Sunday.  Hmmmm.  Wouldn't have thought of that activity.  The first video is just included because I love that "hooray for me!" smile that he gives at the beginning.

6. Building and climbing.  Jack has started stacking everything.  I handed him the blocks in the picture in order, but he put them all together by himself.  

And the climbing has gotten a little out of control.  Our kitchen is now constantly littered with chairs Jack has repositioned and repurposed as stepladders.  He can now even manage to clamber up on our barstools.

7. Talking with wonderful friends.  Neesha and I are taking a parenting class together while Bobby and Ben stay home with the kids, so we had some time to chat as we carpooled to the first meeting tonight.  Juliet, a friend from our Charlottesville days, called this afternoon for a nice surprise chat.  And Stacy and I have booked a Skype visit for tomorrow afternoon.  It's wonderful to have friends who I admire so much as women and as mothers.  Sometimes being a stay at home mom can be very isolating, but those pats on the back that we share with one another make it so much easier.  I just hope I'm as generous with and deserving of the compliments as they are.

Our Big Boy

Yesterday I took Jack to get his third haircut ever.  In just over two months, it had gotten unbelievably long!  I suppose now I'll have to get used to getting it cut more regularly, since it seems to be growing at normal adult speed now, rather than at the old man speed it had in his haircut-free first year and a half of life.  At any rate, I don't think I ever posted pics of his first two haircuts, so here's a retrospective.

That first haircut was by far the best.  It grew out very well.  The last one got a little scraggly by the end, and I think this one will, too.  

Or it could just be Jack's hair changing.  Unfortunately I think he's inherited my wavy and Ben's thick hair.  It would be a beautiful combination when kept long on a little girl but is not so easy to deal with when trying to do a short boy's do.  Just ask Uncle Tyler who has dabbled with a Jack Osborne puff and a #2 cut, with very little in between because he's got similar hair.

This afternoon while I was folding laundry in his room, Jack pulled the Huggies box over to his crib and started climbing into it again.  I was thrilled because he was interested enough in doing that that he let me record a clip.  

He even did a nice zoom in to the camera before performing his party trick.  As a side note, the "uh-huh" he gives me at the end has finally, finally replaced that maniacal laugh he used to use as an affirmative answer.  We're still working on getting a "yesh" instead of more ambiguous responses.

After recording the video, however, the ask-Momma-or-Daddy plan upon which I had been relying started to go awry.  At one point Jack flung his leg over the outside of the crib rail, pulled himself up, and was straddling it like a rocking horse.  I'm very glad this happened while I was playing with him, not while he was resisting a nap.

Needless to say, I spent part of the afternoon converting the crib to a toddler bed.  Careful long-term readers might recall that on several occasions this crib has given me much time-consuming trouble--specifically any time I've had to reassemble or otherwise take a tool to it, as in when I had to lower the mattress twice in the span of a week or two.  

So, unceremoniously, Jack's crib became his big boy bed this afternoon.  It was only after I had disassembled the rails that I discovered that the bed rail I had picked up so forward-thinkingly a few weeks ago is too large to fit toddler beds.  Hmmm... issue.  Thus, the featherbed that Ben and I have not been able to use for the past month and a half (because it's been surrounding Jack's crib due to the then more theoretical possibility of Jack trying to jump out) is not yet ready for repurposing.  And it's been supplemented by a few extra pillows just in case.

I'm hoping to only be woken up a half dozen times by a startled little boy falling out of bed or wandering into our room.  He was very tired by the time he crawled into that rail-less bed, which I'm hoping will help reduce wakeups, even if he should fall out.  (Please, please, please follow Kaia's lead and roll out of bed only once and without waking!)  So far he's logged three hours in the bed with not a peep, and he's still actually in bed!  Here's to hoping for another solid 9.

Things That Made Jack Happy This Weekend

1. Playing outside.  Saturday was beautiful, and we had playdates at the park on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons.

2. When I burped and had to say, "Excuse me."  Luckily Jack was so shocked that I beat him to saying it so that it wasn't a reprimand from my sub-2 year old.  He broke out into a huge Momma's-doesn't-do-that! smile and said, "Momma, 'scuse me!" then burst out laughing.  His smile is all Ben and I love, love, love it.

3. Singing the "Me" song.  The lyrics to this one aren't hard--"me" is the sole word in the first verse, followed by the "you" verse and "we" verse, which ends with "you and me make we"--but he's actually starting to get the tune a little.  We've been taking a weekly music class together for about two months, and Jack has now started singing some of the songs.  Normally I don't buy into all the Gymboree-type development stuff, but this program was started at the Princeton Center for Music and Young Children and is taught by real musicians who have backgrounds in early childhood education, too.  It's lots of active fun for both of us, without being the hyperactive, overstimulative edutainment that classes like that can easily turn into.

I have to confess, though, that Jack is probably behind most of the other children in class in recognizing and singing the songs because I don't play the class CD as much as parents are supposed to.  Really not much at all.  Okay I've played it like twice total, and I don't think we made it all the way through either time.  Which is why we're probably not going to take the next 10-week session of classes.  The classes are a blast when all of the music is made in person, but the CD has the unmistakeable tinny sound of most children's music.  Therein lies the problem--I absolutely refuse to listen to those types of kids' CDs.  I find it pure sound junk food.  I freely admit that I have some horrendous musical preferences, but at least they're diverse and musically complex.  Raffi is my nemesis.  Even the supposedly cool line of CDs that has musak versions of classic rock songs is a no-go with me.

Not all nursery songs are subject to the ban; Nonna got Jack a great folk-music-inspired CD that makes me more than happy to indulge his requests for "My YunYine" (You are My Sunshine), and Miss Kelly got him a high-quality, artsy production that's fun to listen to, too.  But Jack has a much higher intake of Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Ben Folds, and even Cake, than your average 15 year old, much less 2 year old.  "Short Skirt, Long Jacket," is high on Jack's top 10 list, possibly bumped up based on the hideous lack of self-consciousness with which I dance in front of only him.  It's just my keep-Momma-sane guilty secret.  So maybe we'll take music class again later, but for now we're exploring Ella Fitzgerald and Avril Lavigne on iTunes and singing songs we learned in class to our own soundtrack.

4. Watching Daddy and Unk Stee Stee play tennis.  One of Jack's favorite toys over the past few weeks has been a tennis racket.  Baby Agassi?

5.  Doing somersaults into his crib.  He pushed a massive box of diapers from his closet to the head of his bed.  He then climbed on top of the box, grabbed hold of the headboard, flipped over, and landed flat on his bum sitting up on his pillow.  This was so thrilling that he asked to get out immediately and headed straight for the box again.  He can now complete the entire process in about twenty seconds, including getting the box out of the closet.  

Fortunately he hasn't shown any interest in getting out of the crib by himself.  I have repeated to him over and over, "Momma and Daddy need to help you with getting out."  So now whenever he starts to put his leg on the crib's top rail, he stops, pulls his leg down, and says very seriously, "Momma, Daddy," followed promptly by the demand, "Momma UP, UP, UP!" occasionally punctuated by a, "Peeeeas" and the sign for please.  Still, I'm thinking we'll need to turn the crib into a toddler bed sooner rather than later.  Ugh--NOT looking forward to nighttime and 5:30 a.m. (still nighttime!) visits to our bed.

6. Repeating absolutely everything everyone said.  He even attempted "important meeting" after I left for our homeowners' association meeting Saturday morning.  On Wednesday my friend Neesha came over with Jack's friend Maddie and her newborn baby brother.  As Neesha was leaving, she said to Jack, "Tell your Daddy hi for me!"  Jack obliged.  In spades.  I must have heard, "Hi Daddy, Neesh Neesh!" several hundred times in the past five days.

7.  Daddy being home and not having to work.  After two rough weekends in which Ben had to work for hours and hours (but at least at home rather than at the office), all three of us have come to appreciate just how much Ben's job change last spring has improved our family's quality of life.  It's so nice to have my best friend back!