If you were anything like me as a child, you had a fine mess of a room to be proud of. In addition, your parents sighed in desperation as they picked up after you and you had many a “Go clean your room!” arguments discussions. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I saw the light and realized that a clean room is actually a good thing.
Well, it appears I’ve fully embraced my “parent” role. As expected, S and I now do our round of toy pick-up, nightly, after G goes to bed. It’s in our futile attempt to reclaim the living space of our home from the invasion of toddler toys.
What IS interesting though is G’s response to our cleanliness efforts. Take last night for example. S and I were up in G’s room (with G of course), as we were approaching bed-time. S did the daddy-thing and picked up all the scattered toys and arranged them on/in their respective pegs/boxes. G meanwhile was getting a diaper change. As soon as I let the little monster go, he scurried over to the now-straightened line of toys, and proceeded to dismantle everything that S spent the last while putting away. EVERYTHING.
S sighed, saying “Buddy you just undid my work!”
To which I replied “No, you just undid HIS work, and now he’s putting it back”
And it felt so true. G was just determined to disassemble every wooden piece off of it’s peg, and pull every felt-food item out of it’s picnic basket. He was almost annoyed at S for putting it all together.
So yeah, it’s a loosing battle at this stage. Honestly, at this age, this is as expected. If I had a well organized/clean baby I would be worried as to what was wrong with him (and run for the woods as he would be FAR more anal than either his father or I). So for now, his room now has a corner of well-scattered wooden blocks and play-food items. Go mess!
Do you remember Picture Day from school? I won’t date myself here, but as it’s been awhile, I had completely forgotten all about it… until G started at his new daycare. Since the new digs are part of the public school district, even the infant/toddler class gets their “mug-shots” taken for Picture Day. The other day, S brought home the proofs.
They’ve gotten pretty fancy, I must say. I remember being placed in front of a blue background, which only helped the “deer in the headlights” look I invariably acquired as the flash went off in my face. The result? Years of terrible ID and year-book pictures. Of course it never helped that I never could remember when picture day was coming, so I invariably wore the wrong thing, or had a pimple, or bad haircut. I’ll spare you (well.. really… ME) the embarrassing images, ‘kay?
G on the other hand gets the nice foliage background with a little bridge to troll over. Cute, no? Although, I will say that he seems to have inherited his mom’s “deer in the headlights” look when it comes to that final snap. Oh, Child, I pity your high-school photo future!
My favorite photo in the set was that of G’s class. Yes, yes, the pictures of him are adorably cute, but for some reason the plain photo of all his classmates and teachers is so much more rewarding to me. No, I don’t know all the kids’ names (I know — bad parent over here — I blame it on the fact that G’s the 2nd kid to show up at school, and I leave before the others arrive), but it’s neat to see who he interacts with during his day. Unfortunately, not all the teachers are in the photo, which is a bummer.
P.S. Psst — It’s illegal for me to scan these, but you won’t tell… right?
“Here Mama, have a coaster!”
Yes, this is what a temper tantrum looks like
“No, Daddy! You’re too heavy to push”
G got a great toy from his Grammie a few months back: the Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Baby’s First Blocks set. He loves this thing and plays with it all the time.
When he was little I was really proud of him taking the blocks out of the bucket. Then I got proud when he started putting the blocks back in the bucket, as this demonstrated a mental development milestone he had reached.
Then imagine my awe this week-end when he started using the bucket lid to try to get the right shape through the right whole. He was passing the circle through the round hole for a good two minutes. I got all giddy thinking that my kid was a genius and already recognized his shapes. Alas, I was wrong as he spent the next two minutes trying to cram the circle through the square hole.
Eeeh, at least he’s figuring it out!
… the best thing EVER!
Yes, it may have taken a while to get one, but S and I were each treated to a hug from G tonight.
G and I were playing on the living floor, when he came over to me, scooting on his knees, then stood up, stretched his arms wide and fell into me. Confused, I asked “Buddy are you giving me a hug?”, then hugged him back as he just stood there.
It was an amazing feeling.
Then S came down from rinsing off diapers (today was poop day galore, apparently), and G did the same thing to him.
Yeah, after spraying down poo, a hug from your kid is a pretty good reward.
We took G to meet some pumpkins yesterday. Last year he was too young for a visit to the pumpkin patch, so I had to wait my turn. Well, no more waiting! G’s a big boy now, ready for some orange gourd action, and I’ve been really excited seeing the pumpkin patches getting setup around town.
We spent our morning at Lemos Farm, and while S and I were having a pretty good time, G was just “Eeeh!” I don’t know if he just needed a nap, or he was still feeling poopy from yesterday (he had a light fever and spent almost all day sleeping it off), but he was not in a mood to be social. He was quiet and focused, and generally just stared off into the distance. My happy-go-lucky boy who mostly smiles, was just in a “Eh! Can we go home yet?” mood. We got a few grins, so my face was glued to the camera in hopes I would capture one should it present itself.
Either way, enjoy the photos.
Lemos Farm also has a petting zoo. There are a family of goats enjoying the grub provided by kids. We took G up to the fence, but didn’t give him any feed (mostly because I was worried that G would end up chowing down the pellets along with the goats). Well, the goats, expecting food, wouldn’t take empty hands for an answer and decided to conduct a pat down search: it began with eating G’s sweater. At first G was perplexed over what was going on, but feeling the constant tug of a hungry goat made him mad and he started crying. Yeah, it was pretty darn funny!
Want more photos? These and many more are posted on Flickr.
Oh, PS. Did you notice the photo of him standing unsupported? Oh yeah — he did it a few times yesterday each lasting for 10 seconds or more. I have a feeling unsupported walking is but a month away 🙂
Last week, after a nice warm spell (thank you Indian Summer!), I decided that it was time to introduce G to ice cream. I’ve been relaxing some of my food rules of late and thought that it would be good to give him some frozen yummy goodness. To be fair it wasn’t “real” ice cream — it was soft-served frozen yogurt, but none-the-less, fullfilled the frozen sugary treat purpose.
Verdict? Major win!
G got over the first taste of coldness and kept coming back for more. He had his little vanilla taste (which if you’ve ever been to Yummi Yogurt know that it’s big enough for a small serving) and then proceeded to help S and I with the one we were trying to split.
Well, at least now 3 of us can split the calories.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emQTVsHldnM]
Ok, so it’s a little early for another edition of “Surviving the X year: The Gear” post, since we just did one not too long ago, but here’s another baby gear item that’s been really good to us: the Fisher-Price Deluxe Booster Seat.
We got ours used (thank you T and D), and although it wasn’t a great seat for us at first, it’s been really handy lately. We have the Fisher-Price Space Saver high chair at home, which I love. It reclines, which was key to us when G first started on solids. He just used to hunch over too much, and wasn’t able to sit absolutely upright, so this chair didn’t quite work out.
However, now that’s he’s a confident sitter, this is quite good. For us this is the chair that we take on the go whenever we go out. It’s actually better than high-chairs you get at restaurants (at least to me). Sadly, there are also many places that either don’t have enough of, or don’t have any high-chairs at all. So this is super handy. It collapses small, so it doesn’t take up much room in the car (and with our Honda Fit that’s a plus). It’s light to carry, and easy to clean. The trays also easily fit in the dishwasher too if you need a more serious spray-down. All of a sudden any chair you have access to becomes a baby seat. G to your left is sitting on a stool at Noah’s bagels (he loves him a cinnamon raisin bagel, by the way). A stool people — a chair with no back. Ha!
As our second high-chair it’s also really convenient for when we have company with babies over — that way G can enjoy his meal with a friend, rather than waiting to take turns.
I wouldn’t use this as my only high-chair, but as on-the-go item, it’s a really nice to have and at $25 a pretty good buy.
We spent last Saturday hanging out with Augie (Augie Chang) and his family. His kids are so sweet to G and it’s just good to hang out with everyone. We did Dim Sum for lunch. In my mind you can never have too much Dim Sum! Since Augie and I used to work together (back in the day before he decided that he was too good for the corp job gig ;p ) we used to go out for lunch a fair amount, so Augie knows all the stuff I like to eat. S on the other hand never had a desire to do Dim Sum with me, so he knows nothing about my favorite treats. So it’s just funny to have your friend say to your husband “Oh, I know what A likes”. Good thing S is not the jealous type. On the other hand, since he’s a Dim Sum newbie, he just gets to benefit from our tested taste buds.
Anyway, in addition to some quality fun w/ the C family, we took some photos. These are G’s 1 YR pics, albeit a tad little late. Oops ;p
G decided that day that he hated the outfit I had picked out for him. He went from Happy, “My goodness he’s so mellow” Baby to Fussy-Temper-Tantrum Child after he got dressed. He spent most of the time crying and looking like this:
… so we had to take off his fancy duds and take some pics frolicking around in a diaper.
In addition, now that he’s hit the Big 0-1, G’s come to the conclusion that he’s a big boy and doesn’t want to be in any pictures with his father and me. So he hogged the camera spotlight. Man, I thought being embarrassed of your parents was going to hit in his teens, but I was wrong. In most “Us” photos, G displayed the similar scrunched-up face. Sucks for me, ‘cuz our Holiday Card photo this year will probably need to be PhotoShoped to get all of us in.
Anyway, without further adieu, some photo fun:
G has now produced his first masterpiece. S brought this home from daycare the other day.
I saw the flower, and G’s name on the pot and thought “Oh, how nice, G has his very own planted flower”. And then I saw it – G’s first drawing was surrounding the pot. Oh the use of color (purple with just a touch of green), the amorphous shapes, the meaning behind the negative space, the choice of medium (marker. confident)…
G’s an artistic genius don’t you think?
All jest aside, I’m surprised I never thought to put G down with some big ole’ construction paper and a marker in hand. It’s fun and as long as I don’t pull out the finger paints, we have a shot of keeping it clean too. My mom saved every drawing I ever did for a long time. I remember a huge pile of randomly sized paper with evolving scrabbles in our home. She framed a few of my better early “pieces” for me this year and it’s been good to have them around. I’d like to be able to do something similar for G (actually my plan is to scan in all his work and then print them in a book, annually) so that he’ll see himself grow as an artist over time too.
Either way, hurray for baby art.
