Winter, winter, and more winter...

Yumm-o! Here is Jack, the yogurt faced kid. Yogurt is the main thing that keeps him alive these days, I think. Also, you will note in this photo that Jack's eyes are still blue.

Playgroups make winter more bearable. Jack and his daddy attend group at the parent center 1-2 times a week. Mommy was lucky to be off work on MLK day when we got together with Haley, Grayson, Jamie and Vera. Wow, how these babies have grown. Really, as I look at the picture above, I have to admit they are toddlers now. Crazy...

Big snow! We have had some real, deep winter cold recently, with temperatures hovering in the teens and steady snow. It is beautiful out. We've gotten good use from Jack's sled (thanks nieghbor Bill!) as most sidewalks are impassable. Jack has very limited motion in his snowsuit/mitten/scarf combo. We have to kind of prop him up in the sled and watch how much it tilts to one side... we've had a few face plants already. Hopefull he'll figure out "holding on" sometime!
This is just the most awesome picture of Corydon ever. English Flying Spaniel....


Corydon sings about the snow. Jack smirks at it...

Skating...

Here are belated pics from our lovely night on the Rink at Wade Oval, compliments of Melinda and her schnazzy new camera....

In other news, Jack can now walk backwards. He gets a real kick out of this, looking at us with his mischievous grin as he carefully steps away from us. He loves to have us say "bye" to him as though he's heading out on a big trip.

Today he also very purposefully nodded his head for "yes" to a question. I am very excited about leaving the "no only" era behind. Very excited.

He can also sign for "please," if we ask him, and he likes to give a "bump" to show affection - touching forehead to forehead. He has given Corydon bumps a few times.

Today he also said "sink" a few times. He has discovered that playing in the water at the sink is the best thing ever, and asks for it every chance he gets.

Big boy bath!

Jack had a big event this evening-- he had his first bath in the ACTUAL bathtub. That's right, until tonight our 16 month old son was still getting his bath in the kitchen sink. How embarrassing! :) Tonight, he and I happened to be hanging out in the bathroom (one of his favorite pastimes these days) when I realized it was about time for his bath. I mentioned this to him and the smart little bugger looked right at the bathtub, and then back at me, as though to say "Shall we?" So we did and he seemed to have a great time. It was rather strange to see the little guy sitting in the great big tub-- squeezed into the kitchen sink, he looks huge. But by moving bathtime to the tub, I am now able to perpetuate the notion that I still have a tiny, little baby.

Seriously, I know I've been exclaiming over how big and grown up he seems for the past, oh, year or so-- but recently he REALLY seems big and grown up. The combination of the fact that his 18 month clothes are getting a little small, and that he is starting to be able to run, and that he is talking so much more... it all comes together to equal "toddler". Little boy. Crazy.

Speaking of talking, a BZ poll today asked about how many words the kiddos are saying. I made a list and determined, to the best of my memory, he's currently got about 27 that he uses spontaneously and functionally and that at least I can understand. Here they are:

No, truck, dog, dad, mama, sit, take it, down, stay (the previous 4 are said to the dog, of course!), up, sock, shoes, boot, hat, go, out, hot, eye, nose, cheese, keys, mew (for cat), water, down, done, hi, bye, night-night, bow wow

He also signs for more and is starting to sign for please, and just started nodding his head...

Other exciting news in our world-- it is going to be -12 out tonight. That is pretty darn cold for Cleveland. We are off school tomorrow so children don't freeze to death. Hooray for cold days!!

NYC pictures!

Playing at the Brooklyn Children's Museum-- what an awesome place! Jack loved the water table, the sand table, and the slide, as well as the big tunnel/ramp system you walk through in the entry way. He could have walked up and down that all day, but we forced him to explore because WE wanted to see all the cool stuff...

Silly Daddy and Jack in the apartment...

Hanging out in Caroline's apartment...

Mommy and Jack posing with Alice in Central Park...

Daddy and Jack in Central Park. How cute are they!!

Back to the real world

Time moves at a vastly different speed here in the real world... Since our return from NYC on Saturday, real life has returned with a vengeance. This week I have had 2 late meetings, WSC has started up again, and last night was my first spinning class of the new session. It is a rather rude awakening after 16 days off, in which I did, officially, no school work whatsoever, nor any exercise to speak of. The other difficult thing to adjust to is the general lack of cookies. I had become used to eating cookies at any time the mood struck, day or night. I find myself oddly hungry all the time with a mere 3 meals a day!

Jacky bear has, I'm sure, been adjusting too. He complains less than I do, as a general rule, but I do think the missing one another is quite mutual. Poor little bub is a sicky today, too, with a fever of 102. :( No other symptoms, and he's still been remarkably cheerful.

The Tiny Cup

We have had a wonderful two days spent tromping around in Manhattan. Lots of walking, lots of cold, lots of swarming people and swerving cars. Its been great fun! We managed to visit a great many of Nat's old haunts from his time at NYU, including, today-- Pizza Booth! Home of the world's best pizza. It hadn't changed a bit: Still a dive, still the world's best pizza. Even Jack, the non-eater-mouse, chowed down on it....
But I digress.
I meant for this post to be about Jack's exploits at the Tiny Cup Cafe, which, despite being located in Brooklyn and not Manhattan, turned out to be one of our very favorite parts of the trip. The Tiny Cup is a little cafe about a block and a half from Caroline's apartment-- just about the distance that it is possible to walk while carrying Very Heavy Baby in your arms...It is a delightful spot in so many ways. Charming, low key atmosphere, mismatched furniture, menu written on blackboards, homemade pastries arranged casually on an eclectic mix of cake stands on the counter. There is an old hoosier cabinet where you can serve yourself water from metal pitchers or put cream in your coffee, and strange, half finished red and gold stenciling on one wall. In the front of the cafe, two sitting areas are marked by very orange furniture, including a delightful corduroy couch which we used as home base on two out of the 3 of our visits. The staff are all young and hip and friendly. And, most importantly for Jack, the laid-back atmosphere and un-crowded nature of the place let him have free reign. Lately he's not been much for staying seated during mealtimes. Lots of whining tends to happen when we force him to sit in a high chair while we eat and he plays with, then flings, his food. So, when we are out, it is ever-so-much easier on everyone involved when he can move around.

At the Tiny Cup, he not only wandered around, he stole the show. Each and every time. He became the official welcoming committee, saying a bold "iieee" to each person who walked in. He flirted shamelessly with pretty young women. He developed a bit of an obsession with tall black men, going up to and "talking" to any one that walked in the door, and then staring in unabashed wonder at them for long period of time. And, every person he talked with responded, enthusiastically. Within a few minutes, everyone in the cafe knew his name. This evening he walked across the room to strike up a conversation with a young woman who'd been dutifully working the whole time we ate. She looked up, smiled at him, and said "Hi Jack, how are you doing." Last night, a charming British man named Clinton introduced himself to Jack and carried on quite a conversation. Tonight, a woman named Lucy did the same and entertained Jack for about 10 minutes while we ate. The tall black man he greeted at breakfast this morning smiled and waved at him off and on while getting his coffee to go. After he left, the waitress turned to us and said, "That is the happiest I have ever seen that man. He never smiles!" This evening, a woman across the room could not keep her eyes off of Jack, gushing about how beautiful he is to the extent that I worried a little bit about letting him out of my sight. Before she left, she came and gave him a few coins to add to his collection that he had been playing with at the table. Since we have been here Jack has earned 35 cents, a sucker, and compliments from at least 20 strangers. We should take him on a national tour...

Greetings from NYC!

We have arrived in Brooklyn for our rather spur-of-the-moment trip to NYC for New Year's... Jack is all tucked in and we are a quietly recovering from a LOOONG day of travel. All I can say is, I dislike the Holland tunnel a great deal. Ugh. Remind me to take the train here next time!

Jack was an absolute angel all day. Really. We ended up only stopping once in our 8 and 1/2 hour drive. Kiddo took a 2 hour nap in the first stretch, made friends at McDonalds and waved at trucks for a bit at our stop around the 230 mile mark through PA, then sat and played, babbled, sang, looked at books, ate snacks, and played peek with us for the next 4 and 1/2 hours without a single complaint. He is a trouper. I think I complained far more than he did, when we encountered the general inability to drive that is Manhattan...

As we were driving I realized that it's been a while since I posted a good, old-fashioned update of Jack's current progress. So, as we have not yet gotten any exciting pics of Jack in NYC, here are some recent accomplishments and changes:
* Tooth number 14 has come through! Jack currently has 2 out of 4 of his incisors in and wow are they pointy... Buckets of drool and continued, sporadic whining indicates that another tooth is on the horizon.
* Jack is a very proficient walker these days. He attempts to walk quickly now, which does not always go well. He also falls over a lot when he is tired, which is handy as he no longer admits that he's sleepy when asked. Another offshoot of his newfound verticality is his propensity to walk into the corners of tables, and also to stand up after crawling underneath tables. Jack is certainly learning from experience these days. It is so interesting to have this shift in his personality after so many months of Jack being more an observer than a do-er.
* Recent words include: Truck (he now points them out, consistently, when we are driving), Cheese (to the camera), Keys, water (wa-wa-wa), thanks (tek or teku)-- this one, combined with his winning smile, practically guarantees that he will get anything he wants in life. At least from Mom. Overall, his speech is much clearer these days. What was once just baby babble is taking on the resemblance of words more and more often, and he mimics so much of what we say...
*Sleep: Jack goes to bed like a dream most nights, between 7 and 8. Usually he's up once around 3-4 am to have some num-num's-- about 10 minutes of half asleep snuggle time which I don't mind at all, as long as its just once a night! He is up for the day between 6:30 and 7:30 am, and then naps around 11. He has been going on just one nap most days these past few weeks.
* Eating: continues to NOT be Jack's forte. He subsists largely on Trader joe's French Vanilla Whole milk yogurt, Kashi cereal bars, and Daddy's gourmet scrambled eggs. His diet could be worse, I suppose, but I do long for the day when he will eat a wider variety of food and whn ensuring that he has eaten enough is not such a full time job.
* Play time: Jack is hungry for novelty these days. Anything is fun, as long as it's new Christmas was a good time for Jack! Today in the car we barely made it with the number of toys I'd packed-- each one was great fun for 5-10 minutes, at which point it was cast to the floor and
greeted with a resounding "no!" and a swat if I offered it to him again...
Some current favorite toys are-- his mega-block legos, train cars, toy trucks, his new vaccum, books, wooden spoons, and any cell phone or remote he can get his hands on! He is starting to do more imitative play, such as driving his car the way I drove mine, as well as pretending to hug/feed etc his stuffed animals. He is also starting to do more "purposeful" drawing.

Pics of NY to come soon!!