Transition

This week marks a transition for our family. Our nanny, K., is moving back home to her town near Peoria to be closer to her family, friends and boyfriend. Her last day was Friday. My last day at work before starting maternity leave was also Friday. Beginning this week, I am home full-time for five months with AJ and his new brother or sister. I am looking forward to it. I like being the person who knows the most about AJ--what he ate for lunch, how long he napped, whether he is having a good day. I want to see the little day-to-day developments that are easy to miss when I only see him for three hours a day.

That said, it is intimidating. Now when I am with him three hours a day and on the weekends, I am focused on being with him and have more energy to focus on mothering. When I was home with AJ before, there were moments when I felt overwhelmed by having one child. Now there will be two! I am reminding myself of the things that I learned last time around--to focus on the things that absolutely need to get done, to sleep when I can, to make food for the next day the night before after the baby has gone to bed, etc. I was talking with my mother-in-law tonight and mentioned that I am ready to have this baby today. She encouraged me to enjoy the relative calm before the storm and let the baby takes its time because once it arrives, you have moments when you wish it was back in the womb again when your body just took care the baby's needs automatically without any crying or fussing. Spoken like a woman who had four children! I distinctly remember thinking that same thought several times after AJ was born and wishing that I could turn back the clock to when I was pregnant so that I could go to the bookstore and browse the aisles or go out to dinner with Joe.

Coins!

Give the little guy a container of change and a cheap plastic piggy bank that they were handing out for free at the grocery store and you get this:


Enough free time to actually get some holiday baking done! AJ was fascinated this weekend by putting coins into the free piggy bank he received at the grocery store, so I sat him down on the kitchen floor with a bucket of Joe's change and let AJ drop in quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies to his hearts content, which actually gave me a good 45 minutes to get in some holiday baking. As excited as I am about the upcoming arrival of the new baby, I have to admit that I am a little wistful about leaving behind the new phase that AJ is in where he can amuse himself for short periods of time to return to the land of much more time-intensive newborns. In retrospect, I think that AJ was particularly time-intensive as a baby because he never napped for more than 20 minutes until he was somewhere around at least 10 months old. I have a good friend whose first baby was similar to AJ in his sleep patterns and whose second baby is now 4 months old and has always been much easier to handle than her first. She said it is like a different world. I am hoping that we will be similarly blessed with a laid-back second child.

Muh-Mee

AJ has grown quite fond recently of his "muh-mee", which is his word for monkey. This is a Curious George stuffed animal that his godmother brought him a couple of months ago. It sat in the corner for weeks and AJ showed no interested in it until poof one day he woke up and decided that muh-mee was the most fascinating creature he had ever laid eyes on. Now muh-mee gets special treatment at our house, including the privilege of sitting in AJ's highchair or booster seat whenever AJ eats, going for car rides and getting food treats and kisses from AJ. Last weekend muh-mee got to try his first raspberries, so his lips are now stained a bit pink and he looks a little like a cross-dressing muh-mee.

The Bear Hat

In an attempt to address the issue of AJ's reluctance to wear a hat, coat and anything else that would make sense in a Chicago winter, I recently acquired a new hat to add to his collection in the hopes that it would entice him to want to wear one. This hat has the added attraction of having bear ears on the top. So far, AJ seems somewhat interested in this hat. The only drawback is that it doesn't have the earflaps that are great for those windy Chicago days, but I guess a hat with no earflaps on the head is better than a hat with earflaps that mama is constantly trying to jam on his head.

Fuh-nee

AJ's sense of humor is becoming more silly lately as he gets a sense of how to do things backwards or in a different way than the "normal" way to make it funny. For example, the other night at dinner he got that it would be funny if he put the foil pan on his head and pretended that it was a hat. Or as AJ says it, fuh-nee. He is also expanding his vocabulary a little bit from the usual nouns (his latest favorite noun is garbage truck) to a couple of somewhat abstract concepts like being able to name the idea of being funny or silly.

Big Brother Prep

Several people have asked me lately how AJ is taking the news that he will be a big brother. To be honest, I haven't tried to explain it to him, because it seems like such an abstract concept to explain to an 18 month old. Plus, the time period of even a few weeks is so incredibly long to a kid at this age that I feel like for me to tell him that a new baby will be joining our family in two or three weeks is like telling him he will be going to college in 16.5 years. We did get him a baby and a baby stroller as mentioned in a previous post, and he enjoys trying to feed the baby and pushing the baby around the house every now and then, although these little jaunts frequently end with AJ dumping the baby out of the stroller head first onto the floor so that he can turn the stroller over and "fix" the wheels with his screwdriver. My friend with a new baby did visit us a few weeks ago, so AJ had some first-hand exposure to a newborn. I got out our portable baby swing and set it up in the family room, and AJ was fascinated to watch the baby sleep in the swing. I left the swing up and put his toy monkey in it, and he will point at the swing every few days and say "beb-ee!" to let me know he remembers that is where the baby slept.

It also seems too abstract to me to try to explain to AJ that there is a baby in mommy's tummy. I am worried that he will wonder how it got there and think I ate it, since we often talk about that yummy whatever he just ate being in his tummy. ("Mmmm...was that muffin yummy? Is it in your tummy?") AJ has been noticing my growing belly, though, and seems to regard it as just a part of mom. A few times when I have been sitting in the rocker with him reading bedtime stories, he will pat my tummy affectionately and say "mama", as in "I love my mama and her big, fat belly." It made me realize that he has not yet been conditioned by the media to think thin is good and fat is bad. There's nothing like having an 18 month old try to stretch his arms around your huge belly and give a little happy sigh.

The pictures are of Joe and AJ working together to assemble a new swing for the baby.

Snow Patrol

We've had a couple of inches of snow a few times over the past week that has accumulated into enough that we thought AJ would be interested in checking it out. The first day that it snowed, I realized that we did not have the boots, mittens and heavy coat that are required for a toddler to be out in the thick of it, so I went online and put in an order that I was anxiously watching the mail for all week. My brother told me that he remembers loving bright colors at a little boy, which led me to go for the bright orange coat in the hopes that it would entice AJ to want to wear it and get over his recent fits about putting on his coat. My sister also suggested letting AJ pick out a hat and mittens himself at the store since part of his fits are about him becoming independent. I couldn't bring myself to brave the mall at 9 months pregnant during the holidays with a toddler in tow, so we just ordered them online and then made a big show of opening the box when it arrived, taking the things out, trying on the boots, etc., etc. to get him sufficiently revved up to want to gear up for an outside adventure. I also let him pick between his new hat and his old hat, although he didn't seem to get the idea yet of making a choice to have only one of two items. We'll keep working on it.

As far as the snow goes, AJ was definitely interested but a little frustrated about all of the gear that was in his way. He wanted to take his mittens off so that he could better maneuver his hands, and Joe said that he had a hard time walking in his snow boots. I think I might invest in a pair of the mittens that my sister said were all the rage at her former preschool in Colorado--they go up to the kids' elbows so that they can't get them off once the coat is on over the mittens. Those Coloradans certainly know their cold weather gear, so it is probably a brilliant invention. Other than that, we'll have to keep at it and see if AJ just gets used to the gear. His first outing lasted a good 10 to 15 minutes, which was about 10 minutes longer than I had expected. At least he is still wearing diapers, so we don't have the situation where we put the whole getup on only to get a request to use the bathroom.

The Guys

I seem to be limited to about 4 or 5 pictures per post by the blogger template, so my Thanksgiving post did not include a couple of great shots of the guys in the family on Thanksgiving that I want to add here. AJ spent some quality time hanging with his Uh-CLES! on Thanksgiving and was happy to be indoctrinated into the American tradition of tossing the football around on a Thanksgiving with decent weather. Joe made a special trip on Wednesday after getting home from work to buy both a regulation size and AJ-size footballs to have on hand. The top photo is of Uncle Roger, Uncle Will, Uncle Dave, Dada, AJ, Papa and Uncle Andy. The bottom photo is of AJ sharing a couple of animals from Noah's Ark with his Great-Uncle Roger.

More Talk

AJ has been adding more words to his vocab. Here are some of the latest additions: bun-bee (bunny), fox, monkey, panda, tiger, pour, peel, kip (for clip, as in clip my nails), pull, cime (climb) , up-tares (upstairs), down-tares (downstairs--one of our recent guests thought AJ's pronunciation sounded like dungeon), turkey, i-mean (ice cream), orghj (orange), nana (banana), pear, chip, cho-lay (chocolate), Ernie, CD, lamp, light, tag, chair, in, out, up, down, hup-hi (up high), Honey (our cat's name), K-2 (our other cat's name), towel, pink, ello (yellow), puh-pull (purple), red, cuh-cull (circle), fix, box, pay-do (playdough), dance, seep (sweep), and kib (crib).

Choo-Choos

In addition to tools, AJ is also an enthusiastic fan of choo-choos. We only have one car, so AJ gets to ride with his nanny in the morning and at night to drop off and pick up mama and dada at the train station, which usually involves at least one train sighting, to his delight. He has the lingo down--the crossing bar and flashing lights are "ding-dong!" and the train is a "choo-choo!" There are also lots of "oooh ooohs!" thrown in for good measure. Now that it gets dark so early, he is especially mesmerized by seeing the lights of the train at night when he picks us up in the evenings. He has a train book and has been flipping ahead in the pages lately to see the picture of the train at night, which he refers to as the "whooo, whooo" train because there is also an owl in the picture on the same page.

So AJ was delighted this weekend when his grandparents took him to the Botanic Gardens to see the special indoor holiday train exhibit. They spent a long time walking through and looking at each of the detailed train sets and cityscapes. Then when it came time to go, someone (and it wasn't Papa) through a huge fit and got to take a second walk-through to see it all again. Apparently the attendant said he had never seen an 18 month old who was such an enthusiastic fan of trains.

Thanksgiving

Well, we survived hosting our first family Thanksgiving in our new home. My mom and Joe's mom both were on hand to pitch in on the cooking. It never hurts to have a former Butterball Turkey Talk hotline representative on your team in the kitchen when it is time to put a turkey in the oven (Joe's mom!). We tried a new recipe for preparing the turkey out of Bon Appetit magazine that involved stuffing it with lemons and all sorts of fresh herbs. Then we just put it in the roasting pan in the oven--no basting--and were thrilled to see it turn out a nice golden brown. For all of you foodies, here is our menu and a picture of the turkey.

Thanksgiving Menu:

Salt-brined turkey with white wine gravy

Fresh cranberry relish with oranges and apples

Herb and onion dressing

Mashed red potatoes with sour cream and scallions

Maple and pecan-crusted sweet potatoes

Italian baked artichoke hearts

Green beans with pecans

Acini de pepi salad (this one is a Midwest classic with whipped cream and marshmallows)

Homemade rolls

Pumpkin pie

Pumpkin and brown sugar creme brulee

Whew--we were exhausted and think we might scale it back next year. We have been happily munching our way through the leftovers for the past few days, though. (Barbeque turkey sandwiches, anyone? And thanks for the excellent homemade turkey soup, mom.)

From AJ's perspective, the holiday was a delight with lots of family members to pay attention to him. AJ started off pretty well on Wednesday when we had a family dinner to welcome my mom and brother from Iowa, Great-Uncle Roger from southern Illinois and Uncle Will back from school in Iowa City. AJ was charming and generally well-behaved as he enjoyed hamming it up at the dinner table and slurping down i-mean (ice cream) that his Great-Uncle Roger was nice enough to spoon up for him. He also made it through the actual Thanksgiving meal in relatively good form. After that, he started a downward spiral of temper tantrums through the rest of the weekend. He actually was growling (no joke, I have no idea where this came from) and shrieking at the top of his lungs. I don't know if it was all of the excitement and attention or that he was tired from getting to stay up a little late or a combination, but he was a less than impressive host on Friday and Saturday. I think his temper tantrum at 8 am on Saturday sent our remaining house guests running for the hills. To see him having a temper tantrum so early in the day makes me think that he needs more sleep. Bedtime may be rolled back by 30 minutes to an hour going forward. I had been really looking forward to the visit from my mom and brother since we don't get to see each other as often as I wish we could, and it was hard for me to have AJ be less than his usual sunny self because I want them to see all the great things about him that I get to see every day. I come from a family that takes a great amount of Midwest pride in having well-behaved children, so this recent business is going to have to change ASAP. All advice on dealing with tantrums in 18 month old children is welcome.

The pictures from top to bottom are (1) the star of the show, (2) kiss the cooks!, (3) the table settings that took three different trips to Crate and Barrel to assemble, and (4) AJ previewing the upcoming dinner.

Pears Beware!

That's right, Anjou, Barlett and Bosc--we're talkin' to you. If AJ is around, you'd better beware. He will gnaw you down until all that is left is a tiny nub of a stem. (I'm not exactly sure what happened to the seeds...)

Mr. No

Now that it is frigid again in Chicago, we are waging the battle of the hats to get AJ to cover his head before going outside. And as a side note, what brilliant architect decided that detached garages were a good idea for Midwest winters? I will guarantee you that it was some guy who had never struggled to get a toddler into a winter coat. I think it should be against city code to build a home with a detached garage in Chicago. Instead, the city is designed with an alley system and nearly every home has a detached garage. As someone who grew up in sensible Iowa where garages are attached to their homes, I am baffled by the concept of the detached garage.

With the hat, I was encouraged to discover a tactic that seemed to work initially--whenever we were going out, I would put on my hat and say to AJ "Mama wears a hat...and AJ wears a hat!" He was willing to go along with this mommy-and-me scheme for a day or so before the novelty wore off. Now it is a major battle to get him into a coat and hat to run an errand, which has made me re-evaluate the need to go out each time and consolidate trips. By major battle, I mean he lays on the floor screaming "no!no!no!" as you try to put his arms in his coatsleeves. Today I think he was yelling "ow!ow!ow!" in an effort to get me to stop putting on his coat even though I am very careful not to bend his arms at an awkward angle when getting his coat on. He is generally in a no phase right now where he is asserting his independence by answering every question with no, even when it kills him to say no because he really wants to say yes. My favorite test is to ask him if he wants some item of food that I know he wants, because he eyes it mournfully and says "noooooo" even though it is clear he is dying for a bite.

Hamming It Up

On Sunday, three of my buddies from high school who all happened to be in town (including one who was in town from her international teaching job in Paraguay!) stopped by for brunch. (As a side note, old friends are the best. I love picking up right where we left off, whether it was last week or more than a year ago, and being comfortable enough around someone to ask her to throw the pot of coffee on even though she is the guest in my house.) For his part, AJ was hamming it up for the ladies and really basking in the glory of being an only child. At one point at brunch, someone said something funny that made everyone laugh, and AJ responded by waiting for the laughter to die down and then giving his best adorable baby laugh like he got the joke a little late. Of course we found this amusing, and AJ continued to fake laugh for the attention for a good minute or two. Joe and I have said to each other several times in the past few months that we think it is a good thing that AJ is getting a sibling soon, as we are worried that he is getting spoiled by all of the attention he gets. AJ is the first grandchild on both sides of the family and he often the only child when we get together with family and friends, so he has no shortage of people paying attention to him. Joe was also the first born in his family and his next oldest brother didn't come along for four years, which makes Joe marvel in retrospect that his head is able to fit through doorways after he spent four full years being the center of attention and getting his ego stroked in the same way that AJ is now. (Joe's brothers would argue that his head is indeed too big to fit through doorways.)

Michael Phelps

AJ, the little guy who detests hats and anything on, near or around his head randomly picked up a pair of swimming goggles the other day and voluntarily put them on his own head while he wandered around the house. This is the same guy who hates hats so much that he even takes hats off his friends' heads. At one point he also located Joe's earphones and experimented with sticking them in his ears like he has seen daddy do, which made for two things on, near or around his head at the same time. It felt like a breakthrough of some kind.

Since the Summer Olympics and the well-publicized shock-and-awe inducing diet of the swimmer, Michael Phelps, we have often joked that AJ is a mini-Michael in training. AJ is definitely on a growth spurt of some kind, because he is eating massive quantities of food for the size of his body. On Sunday night AJ and I went to his friend, J's, house for dinner. J's mom made meatloaf, mashed potatoes, squash and green beans, and AJ ate an entire adult-sized plateful of dinner. This probably explains why he also produces the staggering number of dirty diapers that he generates each day. He is in a phase where he hates to have his diaper changed, and let me tell you that a 3 foot, 30+ pound little wriggler is quite a match for a mom who is 7 months pregnant and doesn't move as fast as she used to. I have taken to changing him in the tile-floored bathroom in case he manages to break away from me.

To Catch a Thief

It's not very hard to catch this little thief--just follow the huge racket coming out of the kitchen as he is digging around in the drawer and the squeals with delight when he finds what he is looking for. I mentioned in a recent post that AJ has been caught repeatedly with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar as he digs around in our junk drawer looking for tools. He is truly obsessed with screwdrivers, hammers and nails and spends much of his day thinking and plotting about how he can access them. Until today, we kept several small household tools, including a couple of screwdrivers, a tape measure and a hammer, conveniently located in a junk drawer in our kitchen where they are close to the everyday projects they are used for, like removing the cover of a toy to replace a battery. AJ has taken to rifling through his drawer while on tip toe with one hand blindly reaching overhead to grab things out of the drawer while the other is used to steady his grip. He quickly examines and discards things that little kids love to play with, like magic markers, a deck of playing cards, stickers, pens and thermometers. When he discards them, he literally tosses them back over his shoulder onto the floor around him like a character in a cartoon. You can see the evidence of his discards in the bottom photo. After several days of cleaning up the mess and trying to reason with a 16 month-old about why he can't run around the house wielding a screwdriver, I finally wised up today and decided these objects that are so tempting to him should be permanently housed in the garage.

My mom says AJ is a smart and determined guy who has a bit of a little stinker in him, and I think she's right. When he focuses on something, he becomes insistent and really digs his heels in. Today we had a little argument when he repeatedly tried to push the power button on the computer while I was working. When a couple of stern "nos" did not work, I had to eventually take him outside the office and deposit him in the hallway to howl out his frustration. I realize the irony of a power struggle over the power button.

Beb-eee

AJ has been showing more interest recently in his baby doll (or as he prounounces it, beb-eee). Lately he has taken to trying to feed it food and give it a drink out of his sippy cup. In the pictures above he is trying to feed the baby a pea and give it a drink of milk. It is very sweet to watch. I hope that all future interactions between AJ and his soon-to-arrive new sibling will be as loving. (A mom can hope, right?)

The Zoo

AJ had his buddies over recently for a little Halloween get-together. By the time we got around to putting the kids in their costumes for pictures, it was close to everyone's naptime and our lion and our monkey were not happy about anything. Next year we will do pictures at the beginning of the party. As I blogged about in my last post, AJ's adorable turtle costume was covered in blood from his cut lip on Halloween (reminds me of the Halloween scene from Meet Me in St. Louis with Tootie!), so we substituted a lion vest instead that his Chicago grandma found at Costco. I thought he wouldn't even notice the costume since it is just a vest that zips up like a jacket that has a hood with a lion mane I could sneak up over his head at the last second. But he started wailing "noooooo!" as soon as he saw it. I felt like a bit of a pushy mom getting him into it only to have him cry throughout the pictures. I think next year I will try something more like J's costume above--he had striped overalls, a handkerchief and a cute train conductor's hat. I think it was enough like regular clothes that it didn't phase him to have it on.

PS--Note the gob of red playdough stuck to the bottom of AJ's right shoe in these pictures. So that is where that ended up--we had been looking for it around the house.

Tut-Tull

AJ's park district class had a wear-your-costume-to-class day on Friday, so AJ got a chance to show off the turtle costume that his godmother, K., sent for him. Or as AJ calls it, tut-tull. The pictures here are from AJ's class, where they play musical instruments and do a lot of climbing on toys. You can see the cute turtle shell on the back of the costume in the top picture. It also came with the cutest turtle head and front legs.

We were hoping to get a few pictures of AJ in the full ensemble during trick-or-treating on Friday night, but in his enthusiasm for running to open the door every time he heard the door bell, AJ was running, tripped, fell and cut open his lip. Luckily I wasn't home when this occurred, because I guess lips tend to bleed disproportionately to the injury. Joe said there was a surprising amount of blood, and the front of the turtle suit was covered in blood. Joe thought this made for a better Halloween costume--now AJ was a scary, bloodthirsty turtle, but I wasn't a fan of the horror turtle idea.

Social Climber

My law school buddies came for a visit this weekend, and AJ got treated to fun playtime with his Auntie A. and a trip to the playground on Sunday with his Auntie N. As you can see from the pictures, this guy loves a good climbing structure. Just in the past week he has started climbing on everything from a box of diapers in his room to his train table. I even caught him trying to climb on top of the toilet tonight.

Joe has a scar on his ear from an incident when he was a little boy in which he thought he was Spiderman and attempted climbing the window blinds. He tells me that he remembers that day well and truly believed he had the ability to climb walls. Although AJ has no idea who Spiderman is yet, I fear that he has the same suspension of reality when it comes it his Spidey climbing skills.