Long Pants

AJ's Chicago grandma is a great seamstress and made him three sets of short pants or "John-Johns" (named after JFK Jr., who I guess sported short pants as a little boy in the White House, setting off a fashion craze in the toddler crowd). Now that fall is here, she brought by a new batch of long pants. Are these the cutest things you've ever seen? She finds these great buttons, too--my favorite are the monkeys, but these green hands are pretty cute, too.

More words

Here are some new words that AJ added to the mix this week:

Glass, bear, Kim, boy, drink, baseball, football, carrot, and puff puff (from his delight at the words puff-puff, chug-chug, ding-ding! in The Little Engine That Could).

The Zoo, Part II

AJ made a trip to the zoo again this weekend to take in the great weather and to see a friend of mine from college and to meet her new boyfriend. The Lincoln Park Zoo has two viewing spots for the polar bear exhibit--one from up above like most zoos have, and another underwater viewing window that is by far my favorite thing that I have ever seen at any zoo. When we walked up to the window this time, we saw the polar bear doggy paddling his way over to the window with his huge paws. Then he treated us to a modified flip-turn off the glass and cruised around in the viewing area for a while. Is is amazing to see how graceful such a massive animal is in the water, and his wet fur was beautiful, feathering out in the water and reflecting the sunlight that was filtering into his tank.

Hoser

Our little guy can't get enough of the hose, and I can't get enough pictures to capture his absolute joy when he gets to play with the hose. It's fun to watch him get braver as he tries a drink from the hose, gets a shot of cold water up his nose and yet dives in again for another try. He is also getting good at responding to requests based just on words with no gesturing. For example, when he was playing with the hose, I asked him if he could water mama's pink flowers and he dragged the hose over to the right pot. The power of a baby's brain to learn language is pretty amazing to watch. Makes me wish I had been a brain researcher. That may have something to do with the fact that I had to work all weekend and am fantasizing about alternative careers.

Work To Do

I just read a magazine article that said within the next three months, AJ should start to be able to (1) wash himself in the tub; (2) climb up on a step stool, turn on the faucet and wash his own hands; (3) dress himself; (4) pick up his toys; and (5) help with household chores. So far we are 1 for 5. AJ scores a point for showing an interest in number 5, help with mopping, putting away clothes, etc. He shows no interest in number 4, putting away his toys, that's for sure. He does like to rub lotion on his tummy (does that count toward washing himself?) and will put his arms up when I say "hands up" to help me get his shirt off, but the idea that he would be able to put on a pair of pants is hard to fathom at this stage. It looks like we have some work to do here in the coming months.

More Jabber

To follow up on my last post, it turns out that I forgot some entries on my list of words that AJ can say in some form. My sister pointed out that I missed ewww, which was the subject of a prior post. My mom also came to visit this weekend and added some to the list that she heard AJ use over the two days she was here. Below is an addendum:

Ewww, hat, tractor, cup, button, choo-choo, cracker, grape, door, bath, bella (umbrella), again, meat, cool, and ding-dong (said when bells at the train crossing are ringing).

We were hoping to also add White Sox, peanuts and popcorn to the list since we had tickets to take AJ to his first baseball game on Sunday, but it rained cats and dogs in Chicago over the weekend. We didn't brave the weather and delayed start time even though the game did eventually start around AJ's bedtime. We'll have to wait until next year.

I'm just sayin'

AJ has his 15 month pediatrician's appointment coming up, so I was trying to count up how many words he can say to give her an estimate of how he is doing on language. Here is the list that I have come up with so far. It is interesting to see the things that capture his interest and make it into his vocabulary first. Some are no-brainers, like ma-ma and da-da, but it is more interesting to me how he came up with some others, like cream cheese (a fan favorite at our house) and around, which he learned from listening to a Sesame Street CD that has a song where Grover sings ah-rooound, ah-rooound, ah-rooound, ah-rooound to a very catchy but eventually annoying little tune that gets stuck in your head. My mom says songs like this are called earworms.

Without further ado, here is the list: Mama, boom, shoes, maw (meow), woof woof, cat, Dada, uh-oh, Ka (for our nanny's name), Papa, Ma-maw (Grandma), uh-CLE (uncle), eat, down, more, blue, geen (green), geen been (green beans), peas, keem cheese (cream cheese), bagel, duck, quack, neigh, oink, tweet, no-no, please, peach, apple, socks, tu-bus (toothbrush), around, Elmo, mermain (airplane), car, color, deitzah (pizza), balloon, zoo, ball, phone, eh-lo (hello), bye-bye, hi, din-din (dinner), fowuh (flower), 'kay (okay), girl, baby, kay-on (crayon), me, mine, key, ah dun (all done).

Pint-Sized Cleaning Service Available

He mops, he dusts, he even helps empty the dishwasher and take out the trash. By way of full disclosure, he does put all of the fingerprints back on after wiping them off.

Touch a Truck

Our town has this brilliant event once a year where they get all of the municipal equipment like fire trucks, street sweepers, a Bob Cat and a giant orange digger (for lack of a more accurate term) out in the park and let all of the kids from town check out the equipment from close up and even sit behind the wheel. As one of my Iowa relatives is known for saying, "Oh, my heart!" There were about 300 kids there who were in heaven. The event is aptly named Touch a Truck.

I think Touch a Truck might rank a close third behind Christmas morning and Halloween around this town in terms of popularity with the kids. To illustrate, one of my in-laws' neighbor boys who is 5 came running out of his house shouting at the top of his lungs to ask my mother-in-law, "MRS. L., ARE YOU GOING TO TOUCH A TRUCK?!?" My mother-in-law got a kick out of the idea that her neighbor boy assumed that of course everyone in town wouldn't be able to pass up the chance to touch an actual fire truck. It is the event of the season. So this year we marked the date on the calendar a month ago and made sure not to miss it. AJ met a couple of his buddies there, and while they were all mildly interested in the equipment, they were incapable of waiting in line for the 5-10 minutes that it took to get to the front of the lines to see the equipment. They range in age from 13 to 16 months, so they were toddling out of line to look at other kids/bugs/trash on the ground nearby, etc. The playground at the park was much more popular with the toddler set. Frankly, I think about half of the excitement at the event was really the parents getting to live out their fantasies--"Look, Jimmy--you can see how the firemen turn this switch to start the siren. How cool is that?" The dad was psyched.

In the end, we were able to take turns waiting in line so that we could snap a few pictures of the kids on the equipment.

Labor Day Weekend

After a stressful week at work and more to finish over the weekend, we decided to postpone our holiday weekend trip to Iowa and ended up staying in town. Although we missed my family, I think we ended up being much more relaxed by sticking around here. AJ and Joe enjoyed two last trips to the pool to celebrate summer's end, and we managed to get in a family trip to the aquarium downtown before they packed up the whales and dolphins to send them away for a year while the oceanarium is rebuilt. We capped off the weekend with a summer cookout at Joe's parents, complete with swinging in the hammock and an ice cream mustache for AJ. Life is good.

Ewwww

I am not sure what he is holding, but AJ is definitely saying "ewwwww" in this picture. It is one of his favorite words lately, and the part that interests me about his usage of this word is that he has figured out that certain items are socially undesirable, dirty and/or gross. AJ's Uncle Dave confessed that it may have started when he was babysitting and let an "ewwww" slip when he went to change a diaper and discovered that it was of the poopy variety. He said AJ looked at him and mimicked the "ewww" sound. AJ's nanny also uses ewww to indicate to him that things are dirty or gross, like picking up food off the floor and putting it in his mouth or picking up a cigarette butt in the parking lot.

Lately, AJ has become fastidious about his changing pad and inspects it for any little bit of lint or mark. Nothing is too small for him to miss, including a tiny piece of thread that fell off his shirt and stray marks from crayons that he is constantly clutching, even while he has his diaper changed. At least we know that he does not need glasses. If his inspection turns up something he will point at it and give a prolongued "ewwwwwwwwwww" with great relish. The first time I saw him inspect the pad, he discovered a microscopic brown spot that could conceivably have been a nano speck of #2 from an earlier change and shamed my mothering skills with a loud "ewwwwwwww!" I am dreading the day when he points at an actual person and says ewwwww without being able to explain that he has spotted a drip of ice cream that fell onto the guy's shirt.

In the meantime, since he links the concept of ewwww to knowing that certain items are dirty, I have started to adopt using ewwww as a shorthand way of telling him when things are off-limits. So at our house, for the time being the litter box is ewww, used kleenex in the garbage is ewww, and the toilet brush is a huge ewwwwwwwww. When he is 16, I won't be able to get away with teaching him with phrases like "unequal pay for women and minorities--ewwwww" or "drunk driving---ewwwwww", but for now it works.

Lemonhead

When AJ begs for food that Joe thinks AJ will not like but AJ will not give up asking for it, Joe sometimes will give in and say something like let him figure it out for himself. My dad had a similar philosophy when my brother would not stop begging to try his whiskey at age 2. The way my dad tells the story, he had repeatedly told my brother that he couldn't have a drink and that he wouldn't like it, but after much whining on Andy's part, dad decided that he would let him learn the hard way by taking a sip of liquid fire. This did not go over so well with my mom and grandma, who figured out what had happened after my brother took the sip and started screaming bloody murder. Although I am not an advocate of lowering the drinking age to 2, I can see my dad's point that my brother never asked to try it again.

So far, AJ is 3 for 3 in stunning Joe by liking whatever it was that he was begging for, namely: (1) calamari; (2) pizza with hot pepper flakes and (3) lemons. At dinner on Friday, AJ shocked his daddy by sucking his way through two slices of lemon and one slice of lime. As my family can attest, I also liked to suck on lemons as a kid, so I guess he gets that from me.

My K.

Here is AJ with his nanny, K. He has stopped giving hugs from the front in the conventional manner but has taken to giving surprise sneak-attack hugs from behind that are very sweet.

Parallel Play

AJ had his little buddy, L., over for a playdate last week, and it was like the definition of parallel play to watch them together. I didn't know this before becoming a mom, but apparently playing together and interacting with other kids is a social skill that kids don't pick up until somewhere around age 2. Until then, they just play next to each other. This seems a funny to me, because AJ will interact and play with adults, but it is true that he doesn't seem to know how to engage other kids his age, and they are the same way. Every so often, though, I will catch them watching each other to see what the other one is up to. It is not subtle, watching-you-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye glancing, it is full on openly staring at the other kid. Joe finds it amusing that AJ has no self-consciousness about staring at other people yet and gets a kick out of seeing AJ ogle someone in the grocery store, at the pool, etc. The one time the boys interacted the other day was when one had a toy that the other wanted, which would spur some direct interaction as they tried to get it away from the other guy while looking up at me and pleading to be awarded the prize.

It was also fun for me to watch L and see how he is different from AJ. L is a very physical guy who is a fast runner, loves to play with push toys, and (my favorite) likes to spin around in circles with one arm up in the air. By comparison, AJ is more into crayons and scribbling on paper (he is obsessed with crayons lately), naming things and working with puzzles. Their common love, though, is water. You can see that they have matching swim shirts on in the pictures above, and they spent some quality time splashing around in the water table.