Happy Halloween

Tonight was Halloween and despite my best efforts to get Andy home from daycare and dressed early, it just didn't happen. The roads were jammed likely due to everyone else in Northern Virginia having the same idea. Fortunately, we got home in time to walk around and see the neighbors. I took this as a good opportunity to wander around and meet some of the neighbors I'd never met before. Everyone was friendly and I got some candy I didn't need to boot. Score!

P.S. I have a billion pictures from tonight, but I can't get any of them to load at the moment. It's probably because everyone else on the east coast is trying to do the same thing. I'll try adding them later.

Rar!

It's almost Halloween and therefore time to start taking pictures in costume. My mom got Andy an awesome Spiderman outfit, but it's still a little too big. Then a friend of mine gave me her son's outfit from last year and it fit great. I also like it since it's a two piece and more like a pants/sweatshirt top so that he didn't have a chance to get too mad about it. He started to protest, but I was able to get the top on him and let him get used to it before putting on the pants. We've been working on our bear/lion "rar" noise so once he saw himself dressed in the mirror, he was amused by the ears and tail. Funny thing is that the leopard outfit was the big hit this year. At a party with 12 kids, four were leopards. Here's the one picture where we had them all in the same frame.

Status report

The cut on his head is looking better, but now the swelling is spreading. This morning the redness has spread over his entire eyelid with a nice red streak under his eyebrow. It doesn't seem to bother him, but it bothers me to see his perfect face marred. I suppose that's what I have to look forward to as he gets older and spends more time getting into trouble.

Bjorn gets back from San Antonio/Dallas tonight. Andy keeps asking for Dada so it will be a sweet reunion.

Injury update

Here's a picture from last night. Clearly, it's not as huge and enormous as I made it out to sound, but that sucker really did bleed at the time. It was still rather traumatic on me. I don't think Andy was nearly as worried as I was. Fortunately, the little guy will be just fine and probably won't even have a scar in three or four months, the doctor thought.

Injury report

Andy didn't sleep well last night, mostly due to Miles lingering in his room, and he woke up with his eye a little more swollen so we went to the pediatrician's office just to be safe. She said it looked fine and that I'd made the right call not to take him to the ER (nice to get independent verification of my mommy skills). She said they might have made a case for stiches, but that looking at it, it didn't need it and that the whole ordeal would have been more traumatic for everyone. She said the thing to look for in cases like this are that he cries immediately (a sign that he's not in shock), that the bleeding stops quickly and that his pupils don't seem dialated. She thought that the swelling was partly caused by him lying down overnight so the blood had a chance to pool. The instructions were to put neosporin on it a couple times a day and try to keep him from picking at it. I felt better after that.

His babysitter was so sweet when she saw him. Unfortunately, he's taking to clinging and crying during drop-off, which is particularly traumatic for me. Today, since I was already running late, I went in and the three of us talked and played together. He hugged me for a bit, then hugged her and then me again, then her, at which point I left. He clearly likes her (he certainly doesn't hug most people), but right now this is sort of freaking him out.

House of Martyr

High drama in the house today. My regular babysitter needed today off, Bjorn's out of town and it's the really, really busy season at work so I hired a friend's former nanny to sit for me today. I was worried about the hand-off, but the promise of Jack's Big Music show quickly distracted him. She said the only time he got teary all day was when she moved Coltrane quickly and he seemed upset that she was hurting him (why I don't understand since we're always moving Coltrane). That was all perfectly nice and then he and I proceeded to have a nice evening. Until the bath.

Actually, 9/10 of the bath was great, but as I was luring him out of the tub, he slipped and hit his head by his eye. And started bleeding. I quickly scooped him up, wrapped a towel on his body and started applying pressure. He calmed down pretty quickly and after a couple minutes, it stopped bleeding. In the meantime, I had time to call Bjorn several times, my mother and sister and none answered. After more mild panic, I assessed that it wasn't emergecy room worthy, but could probably use a bandaid. Of course, no kid-friendly band-aids were handy so we headed out to Rite-Aid for a sampling of adhesive tape, New Skin, butterflies and band-aids. And after all that, he refused to keep the butterfly on. It actually looked so much better by then that I just put some Neosporin on it and it seems fine. The swelling is mostly gone and through it all, he was less worried than I was. I've decided to reassess in the morning to decide if he needs a trip to the doctor. I however need a drink, but I'm going to settle for Benadryl to hopefully combat the cold and allergy symptoms I've been having for a week.

It's really a shame no one takes this kid's picture

Old friends

My friend Andrea from camp was in town with her family for a wedding so we met up today at the National Zoo in Washington with her husband and two boys, aged 4 1/2 and 7 months. The oldest and youngest kids were great, but Andy got cranky relatively early which put a damper on things. We did get to see the new baby panda who was simply adorable, very playful and quite a showman. It was great seeing my friend even though the kids got in the way of us ever completing a thought. Louie, the 4 1/2 year old, was very protective of Andy and kept trying to push his stroller (not that he wanted to be in it), hold his hand and keep him from wandering off. It was really sweet to see. It's also so weird to see the kids of old friends and look into their eyes and see their parents. Cool, but freaky.

Good times

My freshman year in college, my next door neighbor, Laura, and I spent a lot of time doing nothing, including watching Fame reruns and The Little Mermaid on VHS. I don't remember why we watched video so much other than the fact I really liked it and Laura thought that was funny, but we did watch it. A lot.

That was, gasp, 16 years ago and now they're out with a special 2-disc edition. I'm don't get why it needs to be on two discs, but I was looking to get it and it was actually only $14 on Amazon. Sure, I theoretically bought it for Andy, but I know I really wanted to see it. We watched the first 20 minutes of it tonight and I'm surprised how much of it I remember verbatim. In case you didn't know, I am a dork. Andy seemed to like it fine. In fact, the scene with the shark I thought he would find scary, but he instead laughed at the whole thing.

Jail break

Guess who decided to fling himself over the side of the crib this morning? Granted, the crib railing was down, but still. This does not bode well. This may get me thinking about a big-boy bed sooner rather than later. Fortunately, Mr. A was scared more than hurt from his escapade.

Home again, home again

I just got back from a whirlwind 36-hour trip to New York. The work was awesome and went really well, but missed my boys something fierce. Plus it turns out Andy has grown a foot (at least it seems) and learned new tricks. The one that I saw today is when something hurts him, like the edge of the table, he points to it and says "ouch." How precious is that?

Family names

One of my cousins is having a baby and my mom was asked to list some of the family names to see if some of them might be in style. While some are indeed coming back, some of them are downright ugly. My favorite in the bunch is Unicy, which Mom thinks might be short for Eunice, which is also not so pretty, even if you're a Kennedy. Hulda is also a good one. It's fun to read through the list though. I'm always interested to see how names come and go over time.

Miles
Elizabeth
Carolyn
Harry
Jim
John
Will
Mary
Katie
Henry
Jasper
Margaret
Joe
Alexander
Levinia
Vardry
Sarah
Livine
Eliza
Dianne
William
Elbert
Jane
Hulda
Jehu
Providence
Thomas
Winifred
Edmund
Nathaniel
Hosea
Alfred
Benjamin
Margaret
Lewis
Adam
Stephen
Larkin
Unicy
Aaron
Ruth
George
Joshua
Virgie Maud
Rezi (Resiah)
Nancy
Munn
Mattie Lou
Frank
Pearl
Lou
Hamp
Addie
Gertrude
Rob
Ida
Gladys
Bruce
Nannie
Edna
Norvell
Lillian
Lester
Eustace
Charlie
Jack
Carl
Bert

Pull-ups suck

Andy likes to drink water before he goes to bed. It's our fault for offering, but he seems to find it comforting and I didn't see much harm in it. Except that the water intake can exceed the level of absorbency in his size 5 diaper. He doesn't seem to need to move up to a size 6 (the final frontier in diapers) during the day, just at night so I thought I'd try out some of those "overnight" diapers. We bought some Pull-ups from Huggies that say "extra absorbency for nighttime." Seems logical, right? While the size 2T-3T seem to fit him alright, it turns out they leak. And by leak I mean flood.

I came in to his room about 1 a.m. this morning to find him sobbing hysterically because he was soaking wet - his bed, his pajamas (top and bottom), his blanket. And to add insult to injury, it's cool here right now so we was wet and really cold. Poor guy. He was still kind of asleep as I pulled him out of bed to change his clothes, wipe him off and put him into something warm again. Since his bed was soaked, too, I put him in bed with Bjorn while I changed the sheet and got dry bedding. Poor little guy was so scared of all this (I don't think he ever all the way woke up) that he sobbed hysterically with Bjorn and didn't calm down until I put him back in his bed and rubbed his back until he stopped the convulsive breathing. Even then, Bjorn had to go in about every 10 minutes after that to settle him back down. It was sad.

The only upside is he slept until 9:30. I don't want that trade off, but 9:30 a.m. is like sleeping until 1 p.m. for an adult. Even after a big night, it just never happens. So we're officially breaking up with pull-ups. Perhaps I understood their purpose wrong, but somehow I figured extra absorbent for nighttime meant it had more absorbent power than a McDonald's napkin.

I

Alert, bad mommy ahead

Most days, I feel like I've got a general handle on this motherhood business. I know, I know, it's about time, but in my defense, the course keeps changing on me. Today we were out picking up some wedding presents at Neimans and Tiffany, hereafter called "no touch" stores since I had to repeat that a million times as I tried to buy a couple of items and the ever present staff took for friggin ever to process my card and collect the items. While I was trying to keep my son from breaking something very expensive, I kneeled down and noticed his neck. Turns out he has that sort of crusty layer of smudge in the folds of his neck. I bathe him almost daily, but somehow the neck folds have been missed, similar to the spot behind the ears I discovered six months or so ago. In the bath tonight, we worked on the smudge, much to Andy's chagrin as I took a washcloth and had to rub a little more than gently to get the dirt out. As Andy would say "ewwwww."

And speaking of his favorite phrase, we were at my favorite Chipotle the other night and he pointed to a gentleman across the restaurant and shouted "ewww." The guy wasn't really goofy looking (thankfully and thankfully not disabled either), but I now have something else to work on.

Pictures

Andy and his grandmother driving. He really loved playing with these wooden trucks and the steering wheels.

Note the hand stamp - this fall festival is like a club, at least that's what they were like 10 years ago. Fortunately, it washed off easily rather than seeing it appear on his cheek the next morning. Not that that ever happened to me. Never.

Mom kindly got him two costumes to try on. This chicken costume was not his favorite. It was returned.

Music struggle

Good news - Andy really likes music. Bad news - he really likes his music all the time in lieu of anything anyone else (i.e. me) wants to listen to. Granted, WTOP isn't exciting, but I do need to hear the traffic and weather on the 8s. Andy has a fit now if I listen to anything other than what he wants. It's partly my fault. I've indulged him in listening to Steve Songs in the car alot since it seems to calm him down and that's worth something to me. Apart from it being annoying to me, Bjorn is now outraged that he can't listen to what he wants to when we're in the car together. I've been trying to find happy mediums and the most recent one that works is listening to Barenaked Ladies. I love them, but I haven't listened to the CD in ages. Fortunately, the cadence is similar enough that I can love hearing "If I Had a Million Dollars" and "This Is Me in Grade Nine, Baby" and Andy can tolerate it as well. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to think the same way about Sheryl Crow.

Ewww

My mom left today after an all too quick visit. We had good fun and I think she taught Andy a dozen new words. Yesterday we hit the Burke Nursery fall festival, which was pretty cool and very close to our place. It's not quite as extensive as Cox Farms, but it's about 15 miles closer, which is worth a lot. We had a good time checking out the slides and rides and going on the hay ride (although come to think of it, there wasn't any hay on it). My mom also took us shopping and Andy has some really cute fall clothes and jammies, including an awesome new sweater vest from Janie and Jack. You know how I love a little boy in a sweater vest! He also got a Halloween costume. Well, he got two, but he refused to let Mom put him in the chicken costume. The pictures of him protesting are priceless. The little guy had so much fun that he was still asleep when I left the house at 8 this morning.

The other notable thing about the last couple of days was he used the potty. Well, first he peed on the floor in the hallway (thankfully, I pulled up the carpet so it's just a hardwood floor). I then pushed him to the potty where he sat and then peed. Most impressive! He seemed proud of himself and then he got in the bath. The funny thing is that when I change his diaper and it's dirty, I say "ewwww" which he finds hysterical so now he says it, too, when it's dirty. After I'd let the bath water out of the tub, Andy decided to sit naked in the tub for a bit to finish up with his toys. I went across the hall to print Mom's boarding pass when he called out "ewwww." Turns out, he's gone number two in the tub. Ewww indeed. Mom then clothed him while I cleaned up the tub. During the changing, he kept saying "ewww" and then after she was done, he rushed to see what had happened to his poop.

Gross, indeed, but it shows some interest in his bodily functions so perhaps potty training at this age isn't so ridiculous after all.

Clothes horse

It's gotten pretty cool pretty fast, it seems, here in Washington so we've been breaking out the cold weather gear. I have been amusing myself by reorganizing Andy's clothes to see what we have, what doesn't fit and what we need. So far, the only thing he really needs, needs is socks as the bugger has outgrown all but four or five pairs and that won't last very long. He seems to have plenty of long sleeved shirts, including a precious flannel shirt I bought on sale last spring that looked great at the bar mitzvah we went to today. Pants are a bit of a quandry as he can sort of wear some 12 month pants although they're a bit short while the 18 month ones are a little long still. I also have gobs of 24 month pants that are simply way too long. That basically translates into having like three pairs of pants that actually fit right now. I do think he is due for some new pajamas. The ones we have are designed to fit snuggly so when they start being too small, it's really obvious really fast.

Andy's grandmother comes tomorrow (yay!) for a very brief visit and I've been trying to get him to say "grandmother," but he just smiles and says "go-ga." It's very cute.

War wounds

This kid may be the death of me. Lately, every time I turn around he's smacking me hard with something. It's unintentional stuff, but dang, it hurts! Yesterday, he knocked over a stool right onto my big toe. I limped all afternoon. Then tonight, he smacked my elbow with some tongs in his "kitchen." It's been four or five hours and it still hurts and is a tad swollen. I prefer bumps to spit up because it doesn't smell, but holy Foley, my body aches tonight.

Words

It's pretty amazing to watch Andy's language skills develop. I swear this morning as I started to clean up his breakfast, he handed me his bowl and said, "Here you go." Just like that.

He's also really getting into books, which is so fun for me. Of course, he never wants to read the ones I find interesting (although, sadly, he finds my People magazine worthy of a flip). But I find I'll be getting the bath ready or something and he'll come to me with a book from his shelf and want to read it. Unfortunately, he can't sit quite sit all the way through a story book yet without getting punchy and flipping the pages too fast. The other fun part is that he is starting to point to details in the pictures and ask about them. Like tonight, he was looking at a picture of a boat and pointed to the flag and then the chimney thing (at least it looked like a chimney - I'm not sure why sailboats have chimneys, but I didn't draw it). He also wants to play along so in the book about the kitten's tounge, he wants to stick out his tounge, too. It all just makes me want to gobble him up for more kisses.

Farm Party

We hit Cox Farms on Friday, which is awesome for kids. They have all sorts of animals to play with (including cute piglets), a pretty elaborate hayride and lots of slides that were lots of fun for me, too. We went last year but he wasn't really old enough to get it. This year, he was walking all over and really seemed psyched to be there.

It was a really good group this year, as witnessed by the attempt at a group photo in the middle (I have a new appreciation for cat herders). The daughter of my friend who died a few weeks ago was also there with a family friend. It was nice to know we're not going to lose touch, but it was strange to see Charlotte there without her mother. She also came without long pants (it was an usually cool day) because her dad couldn't find any that fit that morning. I was thinking that Karen probably hadn't thought to buy any just yet since it wasn't cool a month ago. It's all just so sad.