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.