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!

Spring or Snow?

It is currently a balmy 75 degrees and beautifully sunny.  It took forever to get Jack down for his nap this afternoon--in part because he was overly tired, but I have to think that some of it was not wanting to miss out on the terrific weather.  So we're headed out to the park to meet up with our Brentwood playgroup friends as soon as Jack wakes up.  I love, love, love having a great park within close walking distance (less than a mile away!).

But I wanted to take a minute to post about a snowstorm we had about a month ago. 

 As much as I'm dying for spring so that we can get out of the house more often, I'm a bit disappointed that St. Louis didn't get as many big snowstorms this year as there were last year. 

 

There was just one big snow of about 8 inches and a few icy days (which are absolutely NO fun!), although I suppose there's still a possibility of more snow this winter...

Nonetheless, we made the most of what we got.  It was Jack's first real snow, as he had only seen a dusting in London before, and our first snow in three years, so we were all incredibly excited.  Jack helped Ben, "Scoop!" and "Dump!" the snow from the driveway.  He also made many ill-fated attempts to wade through the snow that was up to his thighs, all of which ended with a chilly faceplant.  

Afterward we drank homemade hot chocolate from grown up cups, leaving Jack with an adorably dark mustache.

As you can see, Ben wasted no time before teaching Jack the secrets of snowball wars that he learned during Wyoming winters in middle school.

I later helped Jack retaliate by throwing a snowball at Ben's car as he drove into the garage after work one night.  I hadn't anticipated Jack's reaction, however--he immediately started bawling, apparently crushed that his lovingly created snowball was now "broken."

Since it was too cold to be outside for long, later in the day (and for several days afterward) we brought the snow in to us.  A few messy mats and a couple of different sized containers and our afternoon slipped happily away in play. 

On a side note, I heard about this just after it came out a month ago, but can I just say that the horrible doctor who fabricated a (THE) study that linked autism to MMR vaccines should be jailed?  Honestly, how much trauma has he caused parents with or without autistic children, and how many preventable deaths has he contributed to by encouraging parents not to vaccinate?  Ugh.