talking with hands

I've been teaching Peter a little sign language. I started around 6-months when he started pointing and being inquisitive about the world around him. Somewhere along the line he started repeating signs to me -- but only in a monkey-see-monkey-do sort of way. There were a few times between 9 and 10 months that I thought he might know that what he was doing was actually a word. On his 10-month birthday, I knew for sure. After breakfast he threw a tantrum and I asked him what he wanted. He signed "more eat." I gave him more breakfast and all was right with the world. Pretty damn cool!

The boy is pretty much an eating machine. He's had Indian, Ethiopian, Turkish, Japanese, Mexican, etc. He'll try anything. If he doesn't like it, he'll usually take it out and look at it and try it again. Very game child. I'm expecting a growth spurt anytime now. He shot up to almost 20 lbs by 4-months-old, and now at 10-months-old, he's not yet 22 lbs. He's got 6 teeth now. The bottom 2 came back in April. The top 4 came last month. He's biting, unfortunately.

Oh, about our NC trip. I need to mention that Chris and I slid down this waterfall. Very scary!


We also rode ATVs. I only almost tipped mine over once.

Hell's kitchen

We have been feeding the cats in Weehawken while Nick and Zoe are up north for Emily's wedding. They have a nice new apartment around the corner from our old place.

Anyway, we drove out Thursday evening and decided to take the xbox through the Lincoln tunnel and have dinner at our old favorite Ethiopian restaurant in midtown. I felt like a rube in the big city after all this time as a suburbanite, I even had to pay cash at the tunnel, but the old driving skills came back quickly. It's almost hard to believe that Weehawken was home for five years!

Anyway, we enjoyed our meal and Peter was a real good sport. He tried everything but the spiciest dishes and he charmed the socks off the staff.

(I reminded Peter that he now has an Ethiopian cousin whom he will get to meet some day! Any of our friends who also know Magda and Paul in Toronto will be thrilled to know that Yonas is now at home with them. He's just the same age as Peter and looks just as handsome and just as active.)

After dinner we crossed the street to walk through the playground because Peter was so interested in watching the big kids. We watched the kids on the jungle gym and the basketball court, and we saw regular folks (not fund managers and consultants) from every culture you could imagine all taking care of their kids together. It was a great big-city time on a hot night in the middle of August. The kind of thing that makes you think you might like to live in New York after all. Momentarily.

And there was this super cool fountain with jets that sprayed every which way in an inpredictable manner. Peter thought this looked like the coolest thing in the world. I was being a scaredy cat but G reassured me, so we stripped off the boy and let him crawl right in. He had the greatest time chasing the jets and getting sprayed and playing with the big kids. The other kids were so nice and careful with him it was amazing to see. Much more kindness and consideration than I would have expected from kids anywhere.



I got these pics with my camera phone, and we met a photographer who was there with her 19-month old son. She snapped a couple pictures and we might see those some time too, but for now I want to post these lo-fi pictures because it was such a good time for all of us.



Of course that diaper got soaked but I didn't want to expose a naked baby in post-giuliani NYC so I just let him drag it around.



Most everybody was pretty impressed that our little sack of spuds was so game for an adventure. But that's how he is. It makes me happy, despite the down side that all parents will understand.



Of course, at the end of the adventure we discovered that our diaper bag had no fresh diapers in it, but we wrapped him in a towel and he was fine. We bundled back into the Scion and escaped back through the tunnel, past the old neighborhood, and back to suburbia. I carried the sleeping baby upstairs and we all went to sleep together. A good night had by all.

more smokies

There was a lot of rain during the week but most of the time it didn't spoil the fun. The picture below is a happy memory for me. We were all playing down at the creek and Peter was having a great time in the water. Grey and Picot decided to hike upstream with the tubes and I bundled Peter in a towel and headed back to camp. On the way, the heavens opened and I scampered for shelter. By the time I got under the canopy Peter was out like a light. I tucked in the towel around his little feet and sat down in a camp chair.

It felt like we sat there for hours, he slept and slept and I kept him warm and listened to him breathe and watched the rain in the forest.

Eventually Picot and Grey returned from floating down the creek in the thunderstorm. Picot gave me a beer and we sat for a while longer. Good clean fun.



Here's Picot and Suzie and us and Peter and Maeve. Myrina and Daphne ran around with pals all day long and had a great time.



Here's G and Maeve upstream on Deep Creek.



Camping with an infant is a lot of work but it was very rewarding for all of us. Peter had a blast every minute of the day, and slept well at night.

camping in the great smokies

This morning I am sitting with the boy while his mom steals a couple extra z's. He's watching a signing video and I will see if I can blog a little about our family camping trip.

We took the van, of course, with the biggest load-out ever -- even bigger than our cross-country trip where we lived in it for four months. In retrospect, we could have done without the stroller, but the exer-saucer turned out to be indispensible.



The rear bunk area of the van makes a comfy refuge when the bedroom doors are closed. Unfortunately it's not really big enough for the whole family at once, so I would decamp to a tent after lights-out.



We camped at the Deep Creek Campground in Great Smoky Mountains national park. We redezvoused with Picot and Suzie Floyd and their daughters Myrina, Daphne, and Maeve. That's Picot below, with Maeve and Peter.

The campground is near the Cherokee reservation, along the banks of Deep Creek. The water was colddddd but beautiful. It was great for swimming and playing in. We carried tubes upstream and floated down past the rocks and over the rapids. We fell in a lot. It was great.



Peter thought the whole thing was great. He has mostly stopped eating sand but once in a while he tries to eat a rock when he thinks we aren't watching. He loves the water and doesn't seem to notice the cold.



Better post while I can!

autocross pics with boy

We are back from camping and we need to blog about that, but in the meantime here are some pictures from last month's autocross.



Click on the image for more.