Second Best Idea Ever

A beauty salon/spa with child care!  Care of up to two children under 6 during the treatment (cut, color, mani, pedi, pre/post-natal massage) is included in the price.  How nice would it be to not have to spend 30 minutes calling back and forth between a babysitter and salon to arrange a time that works for both?  It's in Paris, so it might be a stretch to go there (ya think?!), but now I'm daydreaming about starting my own business.  Think there's enough demand in St. Louis? 

Counting Mommy Friends

Well, actually bags of wool, but we've got lots of fun new friends and catch-ups with old ones the past few days.

Part I -- The Friends

Yesterday's Inauguration playdate was lots of fun.  We met up with Rachel and her adorable 2 1/2 year old Cloe and one of her friends who has 9 month old twins.  There was pizza, goldfish, juice boxes, and lots and lots of happy mommy tears.

Later in the afternoon, Stacy and I had an impromptu, long-overdue catch up.  It's so great to be able to pick up our conversation as if I just padded down the hall in my socks to have a cup of camomile tea and some cake.

And today I had a meeting with some new friends about starting a toddler group at our church.  I'm so excited about taking charge of this big project; I have grand visions of turning it into a mix of the KCWC New and Expectant Mums club I was in charge of for a while in London and the women's Bible studies I organized during college, mixed with new volunteer and school type groups that I haven't yet run.  So many ideas bouncing around right now!

Part II -- The Counting

Jack's been obsessed with his book "Snow" about a little Russian boy who gets excited about a slowly starting snow storm.  "No Snow!" has been a regular refrain around our house lately.  Despite some weird phrasing and a bizarre scene involving Mother Goose ("Mama Gooooo!") and Humpty Dumpty ("Huh Duh!") dancing with the boy, it's got great pictures and has been organically teaching Jack colors (the sky goes from gray to white to blue) and numbers (first there's just one snowflake, then two, then three).  So we've been hearing a steady stream of "One, two, one, two," lately.

Tonight as I was putting Jack to bed, he started asking for "ba ba," which is what he calls his binky. (Yes, I know he's getting old to still have a pacifier, and I have lots of mommy guilt about that, but we're trying to phase it out and have been down to using it mostly just for naps and bedtime for the past 6 months or more.)  I was trying to delay giving it to him, so I started singing, "Baa Baa Black Sheep," acting as if I thought he was asking me to sing it.

After I asked if he had any wool (refer to this link if it's been a while since you've sung nursery rhymes), I paused and Jack responded, "Yesh!"  So I sang another line and he prompted me with "One."  So we had one bag of wool for my master, and Jack said, "Two."  Apparently we had two bags for my dame, which I would have thought would leave the little boy who lives down the lane empty handed.  I would have thought wrong--Jack promptly filled in "Tee!"  

So it's not really how the rhyme traditionally goes, but as of tonight,  in our house we've got a new version.

Best Idea EVER!

So I got an email from my liberal stay-at-home mommy friend Rachel this morning with the most clever idea ever--she's having an Inauguration Playdate!  And I quote, "I will get some pizza and I have a bottle of champagne still in the fridge so we can sip on that (not too much so you can safely drive the kids)."  Truly brilliant.  An historic, fantastic event that I'm so excited about becomes even more exciting because I'll be able to better communicate this excitement and hopefulness to Jack while he's surrounded by his ultimate celebratory treat combo of playmates and pizza.  I'll be sure to post pictures Tuesday afternoon.

On a slightly frustrating note, yes, that's still "liberal stay-at-home mommy friend" singular, much to my dismay.  And she's headed back to work soon, so it will be a null set in short order.  I've made great progress on the totality of progressive-minded friends we have here, but adding to the ranks of those who can meet up for daytime, weekday playdates (true sanity savers) has been slow going.  Here's to hoping Madeline's new baby brother or sister (due any day now!) is a portable sleeper and their momma Neesha recovers quickly so we can make the most of her maternity leave together! ;-)

Noises

Jack keeps making them lately.  Surely to be expected, but it's interesting to see his pre-speech sounds and speech developing.

There's the "Wooo" of the fire engine he still constantly imitates, with its latest variation, "WooooMa," which apparently means, "Momma, read me my fire engine book please."  Ugh.  Love that he's learning, hate that he currently wants to learn about trucks, which I find infinitely boring.  The "WoooMa" was repeated enough times yesterday that, amazingly, after a few hours the "Mega Rescuers" book somehow disappeared.  I was seriously thinking Jack was going to lose his voice. 

And there's the "Whoa, Whoa...Merr, Merr" that Jack says when he sings when he needs to wash his hands.  (Clarification: He's singing "Row, row, row your boat," which we sing while Jack washes his hands to make sure he's scrubbing long enough to kill germs.)

Then there was the little gem that popped up this morning.  We've started watching lots of slideshows of family pictures with Jack, one of Ben's truly brilliant ideas.  Before Christmas it helped Jack learn more names of family members we don't get to see very frequently and those with slightly more complicated names.  He's started saying "Stee" for Uncle Stephen, occasionally pulls out a perfectly pronounced "Tylo" for Uncle Tyler, and has gotten to "Ray-

Ray" for Aunt Rachel (which thankfully he's also able to use for Uncle Tyler's girlfriend Rachael).  More often than not, it leads to Jack repeatedly insisting, "More Nonna!"  He always, always wants to see more pictures of Nonna, just like he always searches "Goodnight Moon" for the door on the dollhouse. (For those of you who haven't read that classic lately, the alternating page full-color pictures of the entire room zoom in and out during the book.  Since the dollhouse is in a far corner of the room, it's only in about 4 of the dozen or so pages showing the room.  Every time we turn to a page that doesn't include the dollhouse, Jack says, "No.  No door.")

This morning Ben was showing Jack a slideshow that included pictures of Jack's baptism and was talking about all the people who were there.  Jack started parroting "Godmother Melanie" and by mid-morning had her name down so well that we had to call and tell "Ga ga Ma Ma" about it.  See the video below.

  

As an added note, the little laugh Jack gives in the video is as close as he gets to saying, "Yes" when he's too excited to speak.  I hear it many times a day, most often when I ask if he wants a snack (see the now blissfully bulging belly, with the rapidly healing umbilical hernia) or wants to read "Owl Day-dees" (one of the cutest children's books ever).

When Jack's sleeping and not making his noises (except for the occasional little snore), I've been indulging in one of the semi-guilty pleasures that got me through lots of long, lonely, new mom afternoons in London.  A glass of diet coke, a piece (or two or four) of chocolate, and an episode of Desperate Housewives is my perfect recipe for an afternoon naptime break.  I have about 20 hours of recorded back episodes that I'm currently going through.  TiVo is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

So I run off to indulge in that (hoping I have a few minutes left!) and leave you with the picture that made me begin the last post.  Jack has been talking to himself and playing in his crib a little in the mornings after (blessedly) sleeping until almost 7 a.m.  One morning earlier this week we went into his room while he was chattering, expecting to see the usual debris of stuffed animals, blankets, and binkies that he always throws out of his crib in the process of waking up.

  Instead, we found that Jack had lined up Waddle Waddle, More Waddle Waddle, Day-dee (Baby Andy), Teddy, and Quack Quack at the head of his bed, had covered them with blankets, and had given as many as possible binkies.  Woof Woof had his usual place at the foot of Jack's bed but had a binky carefully placed near his mouth.

Oh, and thanks to all of you who left such sweet comments to the last post--it's nice to be reminded that I'm not just writing into thin air!

Pre-Christmas Pictures

When I started to upload pictures from my camera this morning, I was shocked to find that I haven't uploaded pictures for over a month!  So sorry to deprive all you loyal readers (all 4 grandparents and 2 non-grandparents of you now that I've become so lax about writing) of pictures of Jack for so long!  First things first, I'll post a few of the old ones with just captions to get it done quickly.  Then hopefully tomorrow I'll get back to the post I was going to start today.

Although Jack has a very nice cable knit hat, I wanted him to have mittens, too, and I couldn't find any to match the hat, so I got a cheap hat and mitten set from Target when it started getting colder.  It was a huge hit.  This is Jack trying them on the day after we got them.  The first picture he's showing off his mittens ("Guuuves") 

and the second is showing his hat (though it looks a little like a salute!).  Now when I tell Jack it's time to go, he immediately starts listing all the outerwear we both have to put on. "Co-co?" (coat)  "Momma co-co?  Jack co-co?  Guuves?  Momma guuves?  Jack?  At?  Jack at?  Momma?"  He takes this job very seriously and won't let me forget anything. 

Looking at trees with Daddy.

Walking through the tree lot.  This year because I had to get all new decorations (our supply for out little flat in London looked pretty meager in our new, big home, and we didn't have any lights at all) and because I was caught off guard by the shortened Christmas shopping period, we took some shortcuts.  Next year hopefully we'll be more settled and will be able to make a trip out to a tree farm to cut our own down instead.

Jack loved our tree after we got it up.  Our lights have a control panel button near the outlet that allows you to rotate through eight different patterns of blinking (steady on, slow fade, fast blink, etc.), and Jack felt it was his job to change the blink multiple times every day.  He had not yet discovered that when we took this picture.

While helping us make white chocolate covered pretzels for Christmas cookie tins, Jack discovered that he could sample the goods and that they were yummy. I inwardly (and outwardly, too, I'm pretty sure) groaned that he had finally discovered candy.

With the pre-Christmas pictures up, I'm thinking I now need to post other random fall pictures and maybe even Christmas at some point...  I'll get back to you on that.