Having Kids ROCKS!

Nate is a two year old boy.  He likes trucks and police cars and fire engines.  Oh, how he loves fire engines.  A few nights ago when we got home for the day there were two fire engines (a mommy and a baby per Nate) idling up the street.  Such excitement ensued.
Today we stopped by fire station number 3 in the Strip District.  It was awesome.  He gave Nate a coloring book and stickers.  But that is not all.  Oh no, that is not all.  He turned on the lights on the engine.  He let Nate talk into the intercom that went all through the station.  ("Hi" he said.  And "baba ganoosh").  He let Nate sit in the drivers seat and turned on the engine.  It was loud.  And then, the ultimate fire truck experience, he pulled it out of the garage.
And. Shot. Off. The. Water. Cannon.
It went high, high in the sky.  He said they can hit the top of the bridge about three stories up and a half a block away but he didn't want anyone to wreck their car so he just sent it over their own roof.
It was awesome and a demo that I doubt Dave and I would have gotten if we hadn't had a two year old in tow.

 

Having kids ROCKS!

Green Space

My mom is great with plants.  For years and years she had violets.  I know next to nothing about violets, but I do know they need special food and they don't like to be touched and the sun has to be just right.  They're beautiful.  And I would never even try to grow them.

Her yard and garden is always pretty and creative.  Her plants thrive. 

*****

I have trouble keeping plants alive.  One of the first gifts Dave ever gave me was a miniature rose bush.  It came with a beautiful speech comparing our relationship to the rose bush.  It was immensely touching.  A few weeks later I had effectively killed the poor thing, and he begged me to forget the analogy.

*****

Despite this history (and the bunny scourge) our garden is actually flourishing.

I LOVE having fresh basil outside my back door.  Caprese salad has figured heavily into our diet this week.  There will also be pesto.  Lots of pesto.


Nate is most excited about the cherry tomatoes - one of his favorite foods, though he does prefer the orange ones.

Dave chose these heirloom "Mr. Stripey"s and they are doing well.

Of all the pepper plants (multicolored bell and Holey Moley) the green bell pepper (blech) is the only one with fruit, but I'm staying optimistic.

I could not get a photo that does the watermelons justice.  I (or rather Nathan) planted three watermelon seeds.  Three.  Those three seeds have generated about 50 feet of vine and about a million flowers.  They are invading our neighbor's yard.  They are climbing the other plants in the garden.  They are probably  making enough O2 to keep our family alive for the summer.  They are not yet making any watermelons, however.   I am patiently using positive imagery to conjure watermelon and grilled watermelon salad and watermelon slushies.  It may be that our friends will be getting some watermelons as well.

Stay tuned to find out what I learn to do with a million tomatoes and a bushel of basil.

Yum!!

Don't Say That in Public

A few mornings ago Nate observed the ritual of deodorant application.
"What are you doing?" he asked, brow furrowed.
"I'm just making sure I'm not stinky" I replied.
After a moment of consideration:
"You're a skunk! You're a stinky skunk!"

Except he doesn't start any words with "S"'s so what he said was
"You're a kunk.  You're a tinky kunk."
It sounded bad.  Really, really bad.
I'm waiting to get called into the principal's office, but it seems that thus far no one at school has been a "kunk".

Tummy Troubles - an update

Yes, it is that time again. 

I am going to force you to consider my son's growth chart.

He's growing.

I will not include his height chart because it looks as though he has actually shrunk.  However, they measured him standing, which was fairly ineffective after 1+ hours in the waiting room.  He was antsy and giggly and it was impossible to get him to stand straight with his feet against the wall and his head up at the same time.  Especially since he kept turning his head to look up at the measuring tape.

As one of two adults who daily watches the "safe" areas on our high counters and tables shrink, I can tell you he is getting taller.  Either that or he is getting chimp arms.

He is overall doing a lot better.  Eating OK usually - as good as any toddler I suppose.  Occasional complaints of "yellow spills" but no actual throwing up except the "ice cream incident".  

While Dave and I were both hoping for a small change/addition, the doctor vetoed all my proffered suggestions.  She said he is growing but "just eking along" with all the support we are giving him.  That sounds a little scary but I think it just means we don't have much wiggle room so lets not rock the boat.

So we will go on without milk, eggs, soy, sesame, peas, beans, and peanuts and do another endocscopy in 6 months.  I think it's really all good.  He's doing great.  This will give me an opportunity to try out some more vegan soy-free recipes. (And yes, I did make vegan buttermilk.  It seems anything is possible.)  His new teacher at school, Miss Susie, is very aware of making sure he doesn't get left out of food related things.  Though it has presented Dave and I with some challenges in terms of food prep and delivery, we are very grateful.  And, last night, Dave made a tasty cheese sauce with almond milk and vegan rice cheese so Nate can have mac and cheese like any other toddler.

Sick Days

Nate and I had planned to spend Saturday alone together.  Daddy had to work and Nate and I planned all sorts of fun.
Friday night we transitioned to the "big boy bed".

The ensuing chain of night time wakings that seemed to signal an inauspicious beginning to this transition was proven, by the wee hours of the morning, to actually be due to a 102F fever.
Tylenol administered and breakfast ignored, Nate and I decided to run some errands, with the hope of making it home by the time the medicine wore off and the febrile shaking screaming beast reemerged.  A comedy of errors involving a missing Costco Card and a parking snafu somehow led us to the Children's Museum.  Yes, I have to confess, I contributed to the general seething cauldron of potential disease.
We did mostly stay outside.

When we left and I took his sunglasses off, his right eye was surrounded by an atrocious ring of eye goop and sand that I had completely missed the accumulation of.  Thankfully no other parent saw before I had a chance to diaper wipe it off his face.

He was still feeling fine, so we ran a few of our errands after all and ended up at Chicken Latino, one of our favorites in Pittsburgh for a cool watermelon slushie.

Freeing the Hostages

We sent Nate to bed last night essentially without dinner.
If that doesn't shock you, you haven't been paying attention.  The earnest care and angst with which we coax every possible calorie into our son is exhausting.  Moreover, I think he understands on some level that we'll do just about anything to get him to eat - bribery, silly dances, games, reverse psychology.  Now, he's in the heart of the twos, looking for a way to assert himself and be independent, and the struggles about food have been escalating.  We coax, he refuses, then sweetly acquiesces, then refuses, then agrees to some new point of negotiation.
Last night he was overtired, Dave was sick, I was recovering from the fever-virus-from-hades, and the second time he pushed his nearly untouched dinner plate away and said he didn't want it, I did not push it back.  I took it into the kitchen and took him out of his seat and declared dinner over.
It's fair to say he never did really calm down again.  He cried and wailed about wanting his food, wanting to be held, wanting to eat dinner.  Most of it was incoherent but we did manage to determine that if the price of eating was sitting in his chair like a big boy, he was not interested.
We bathed and pajama-ed a weeping boy and put him to bed almost an hour early.  He was out like a light and was more pleasant though still "two" this morning.

Dave and I have agreed to let him go without eating if necessary.  He's on the growth chart, respectably chubby, and except for the "ice cream incident" at the fair, he hasn't thrown up in months.  It seems that at this point not eating is more likely to be a behavioral symptom than a medical one.
Sometimes toddlers eat and sometimes they don't.  They all seem to get by without their own personal short order cook. Nate is loosing his.

Mind-works

Due to an unscheduled monsoon, we did not see any fireworks on Fourth of July.  Dave's parents had staked out a great spot down at the point and were protecting it from the expressed eminent domain of several large Pittsburghers.  We had planned to me them after spending some time at the New Fellow Welcome picnic.  It was literally as we were getting ready to walk out the door that the skies opened up and the water level in the pool started to rise.

No fireworks for us.

It was a bummer too because I had spent most of the day preparing Nate for the spectacle of loud explosions in the sky right above him.  We watched some videos on YouTube.  Talked about how Fireworks are pretty but loud and discussed strategies, such as giving big hugs and covering his ears, to deal with the noise if it got to be too much.

I also told him that the last time I saw Fireworks he lived in my belly and that he got so excited he was moving and kicking inside.  Initially, this did not get much of a response.  A while later, however, as we were on our way to the picnic, he piped up from the back seat, clearly at the end of a long period of thoughtfulness.

"Those fireworks be little loud. Scare Nate. Nate go back in your tummy and be safe."

*****

We had a hasty bath because it got late while we were planting our apple tree (more on that later).  Nathan was sitting in barely an inch of water, waiting for the tub to fill when he started loudly requesting "cold, cold water" which he gets, after the bath is filled, when I turn the tap down to a slow trickle for him to fill his various bottles and cups.  I told him no, not yet, when the water got up to his nipples, then he could have cold water.

He sort of listlessly stirred the water with his hands and then perked up.  he filled up his little bottle, poured it on his chest and announced "Yay! That water on my nipples.  Now I have cold, cold water. That's right!"

And, of course, because he is adorable and smart, we relented.