Nick plays KCRW!

With Lizz Wright on Morning Becomes Eclectic, one of our favorite music shows!

A day in the life

Here's a snippet that captures several hours of life in our living room on a typical weekday. I set the webcam to capture one frame every second then I ran them together using virtualdub. I removed a couple hours where nothing happened except for the cat walking through once in a while.

Oh man, I just got a great idea for the next version. Check back soon.

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary

Sir's climbing abilities are advancing. To his credit, he did ask for help getting down.

His favorite spoken word of the week is "Daddy."

His favorite signing word of the week is "cold." Chris and I were talking about cold at the dinner table and Peter jumps up and signs "the ice cream is cold" then runs to the window and signs "outside is cold." I gave him popsicles last weekend because he was cutting molars. Later in the week I was asking him if he wanted a cracker in the car and he said he wanted a popsicle. We don't know the sign for popsicle, so he pointed to the popsicle stick on the floor (alas, there are many things on the floor of my car) and signed cold. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

All of a sudden he started to ask to watch "Blues Clues" a lot! His request coincided with him actually playing Blues Clues. For those of you who don't know the show, the characters find a series of clues and try to figure out the answer to a puzzle. The first time I saw that he was "playing" was when they asked "which of these piles has 3 things?" Peter signs "the bananas" and the actor says "that's right, the bananas." I thought-- this must be a fluke. Maybe he just saw bananas on screen and signed that coincidently-- but the other piles were all things that he knew the signs for and when he signs just to say things that he recognizes, he'll sign the whole picture. Then I thought, well, he's seen this episode 100 time and he memorized the answer-- but then we got a new Blues Clues DVD from the library and the first time he watched it, they asked "which animal goes above and below the water?" and he signs, "the dolphin." I had no idea they could know all this at such a young age!

Yesterday, I wasn't planning to put him in baby-sitting at the Y -- but he saw the other kids playing with the toys and begged to go in. When I left, he ran off to make some pretend phone calls. I had no idea that pretend play started so early! When I came back to get him, he had made a friend. The sitters said this little boy was crying when his mom left him and Peter went to console him. They continued to play together the rest of the time. I ended up leaving him an extra half hour because he wanted to play with his friend. Sniff! He's growing up so fast!!

My Endorsement

I encourage you to ignore this and I hope you will feel free to disagree, but here it is:

I sent money to Barack Obama the other day. I want him to be the next president.

I don't think I know him very well, but I have never heard him say anything idiotic or reprehensible. I don't mean to damn him with faint praise, I think that's extraordinary these days.

He seems to match my priorities well:

I think the best way to deal with America's foreign problems is to stop making them worse. There are no meaningful foreign threats to the physical security of Americans that can't be fixed with honesty and intelligence.

I think that our top national priority should be to restore and promote America's "soft" infrastructure: an educated population, unafraid of penury, full of optimism and enthusiasm. Such an America would have nothing to fear from anyone or anything.

I want to be proud of America again.

no no no!

I've written before about Peter's spoken vocabulary. All of the words I listed before are "baby talk" words. Now he's said his first "real" word. I don't know how to describe the difference that I'm getting at-- but if you heard it, you'd know what I mean. Anyway, the word is: NO! He goes around the house demonstrating all the things he's not allowed to do saying no, no, no. He also says no to food he doesn't want to eat or activities he doesn't want to do. Sometimes he just says it because he knows he says it well and he's pleased with saying it. I'm trying to get him to say yes instead with little success.

He made his first sign language sentence this week. He pointed to the radiator and asked, "Hot?" then he went and touched it and said, "No. Cold."

Last week he clearly needed to go potty and I asked him if he wanted to go. He said no. Then I asked him where his potty was. He pointed to the guest room. I'm thinking that he's confused because there is no potty in the guest room. I tell him it not there. He tells me it is there. This continues a while and I drop it. Later I was in the guest room and I find that he'd hidden a bag of poopy diapers in the guest room. He knew.

bragging about my fella

They did an article about Chris' school in the local paper and featured Chris as a model teacher. Check it out!

recommendation

We really love "Signing Time!"

It was created by the family of a deaf child. It has so much heart and wonderful music. Peter really enjoys it-- and actually, Chris & I do too. We found the whole series at our local library.

At first, only Chris & I were learning from the DVDs but after Peter had been signing for 3 months or so he started learning from the DVDs. I know this because lately he started signing a bunch of words that I never taught him. I can also tell a difference in the the way he watches. It's like you can see the wheels turning in his head.

I've started using some of the songs at the sing-a-long I lead at the library. Several moms said those are their kids favorite songs -- and I see them really learning the signs too.

milestone

Yesterday Peter made pee-pee in the potty for the first time. Today he made his first poopy in the potty. After he learned the sign for potty he started telling me that he had to go. My mom said that I should take that as a sign that he was ready for potty training. I borrowed a potty from a friend. The next time he told me he had to go I tried sitting him on the little potty-- he seemed afraid to sit on it, so I put it in a corner and let the whole thing go. Weeks later he pulls it out of the corner, sits on it and signs for me to undress him-- but when I came to take his clothes off he signs for me to take him upstairs to the grown up potty. I did. And he sat on it no problem-- but no pee pees came. Chris said he would have a hard time peeing in front of his Mom, so yesterday when Peter asked I let Chris take him to the bathroom and it worked! Today he was able to make it work with Mommy in attendance.

childproofing defeated

So, Thursday 29 November I go into the kitchen to see if we had marmalade, or if I needed to add it to my shopping list. I was in there less than a minute. I hear a squeal from the dining room that sounds a little too happy. I come back in and Peter is in the middle of the dining room table eating the salt. I'd never seen him climb before and instantly he is an expert.

Monday 3 December, I slammed the index finger of my dominant hand in the car door rendering it useless for a week. Wouldn't you know it? Peter proceeds to defeat almost every bit of baby proofing we've done that week. He easily climbs the barrier to get to the stairs. He climbs my accordion to get onto a side table that has an interesting antique lamp. And he's figured out how to pull climbable things over to unclimbable things so he can reach them.

Fortunately, he's pretty good at climbing down stairs and tall objects and he seems to remember which things I've told him are hot -- but still, he really can't be left alone now. And he's so fast. The same week as the salt incident he ran away from me at the pool and almost jumped into the deep end before I could get there.

He's starting to really get into books now. He really listens and signs all the words that he knows and asks about pictures of things that he doesn't know the words for. Hours of fun. Last week he asked me to read "Goodnight Moon" to him in the middle of the day. When we got to the part where you start to say goodnight to everything he started crying. He was inconsolable until I made it clear that he didn't really have to go to bed.

He's signing all the time now. He signs to ask for what he wants, when he sees an object he recognizes in real life or in a picture, and also when he hears a word he knows either in conversation or in a song. Chris and I were making a curry and looking for fish sauce at our local grocery. Peter starts signing "Fish" just to be part of the conversation. We like to watch Northern Exposure, which has a moose in the credits. Peter will start signing "Moose" now during the opening scene-- before the music has even started to let us know that he knows there is going to be a moose.

He's extremely verbal now. He'll make long streams of sounds-- like sentences. Sometimes the sounds sound like words. Sometime they don't. He is very good at imitating the musicality and flow of the way he hears people talk. It's very disconcerting to hear how he hears me and to see my gestural life mimicked.

Small creatures talking

We had a great weekend. Boy news first: I was on record as being dubious about the whole infant sign language thing, but I am a believer now. The kid talks all the time.

He talk about what he wants: eat and drink have been consistant for a while now, but he's starting to get more specific and increasing his vocabulary. In the kitchen this weekend, we saw him ask for a banana for the first time. He's was pointing but we kept not understanding, so he just made the sign for banana and our jaws dropped. It's not one of those signs you can easily misinterpret either, you hold up your index finger and make a peeling motion with your other hand. He said it clear as day.

He also likes to talk about what he sees, which mostly means lots of animal signs. Anything large and quadrupedal gets the horse sign, but that's not bad. The difference between horse, cow, donkey, and moose signs are pretty finicky. He came to visit my high school class on Friday and impressed everyone by correctly identifying the animals we found with google image search.

And to think that without sign language I might have no idea how much goes on in his head! I might not have known he could tell a cat from a dog, much less a picture of a dog from a picture of a horse! Credit to his mom, again, on this one.

So here's me, psychology grad, certified teacher, didn't know anything at all until this kid came along.

Yesterday Peter went to visit my folks while Grey and I went to see the Golden Compass. It was great! I found it much more emotionally involving than the rest of the epic fantasy type movies (Narnia, Star Wars, Hobbits, etc.) and I thought that the seditious themes were portrayed fairly true to the books. Any more overt and it would have been caricature, there is so much less room for imagination and subtlety in movies.

I'm writing a lot this morning because my lesson is coming hard, but at least I am getting something done, right?

Us, you, and your mailbox

I really love how a blog post lets you reach your friends in a way they can ignore without hurting your feelings. Here's another time I am relying on this feature.

If you are reading this, you are one of our friends. We want to send you one of our new Christmastime cards. We have probably lost your address. Can you help?

Would you consider filling in this obnoxious form to tell us where to send your card? It's completely private and will make it much less likely that we lose your address in the chaos of Chris's inbox.

Here is a picture of Peter from Halloween that I really like.

Things I learned this morning

My morning commute is often a time for reflection and contemplation, a quiet time on cruise control with coffee and a bagel.

But this morning I learned three new things:

1. There is at least one coyote living in Boonton, NJ

2. A Cadillac at 60mph can brake and maneuver more abrubtly than you might think

3. Coyotes are extremely nimble

Metacognition and armored bears

The nice thing about a blog post, I guess, is that friends and family can ignore it easily without hurting the originator's feelings, unlike an interjection around the dinner table or even an email in the inbox. This may be a candidate. But at the moment I am going to test the idea that when I feel like blogging I should blog.

A have a break in my routine this morning because I am going to a workshop at Rutgers instead of teaching at high school. I got up early and finished my grading early so I have been reading.

Let me link to two articles that might be really interesting to parents and teachers.

From an online journal called Cognitive Daily: What's the best way to praise a child? Be specific.

From Scientific American: The secret to raising smart kids

And now for something completely different, a link to another article I enjoyed reading this morning.

The Atlantic Monthly on the movie adaptation of His Dark Materials: How Hollywood saved God

If you enjoyed Philip Pullman's books you will enjoy this article. And mmmaybe the movie too.

time is getting away

Peter is growing so fast and no one is managing to write anything down. He's an expert walker now. He was doing <5 steps starting in  August. September 27th I was going to an evening training class for our new job. Peter and I teach Mom-and-tot swimming. Peter was going to stay home with Daddy and I was trying to slip out before he noticed I was gone. He did notice, however, and just walked down the driveway after me. Daddy counted 27 steps before he lost count. Peter on fell when he tried to go up stairs. Daddy was the only person who witnessed the first big walk. Now he's pretty much unstoppable -- unless you put him in bulky shoes or very uneven ground. I saw him thinking about jumping today.

Peter was a cowboy for Halloween. He managed to keep the hat on for a few minutes.

He's almost swimming on his own-- kicking me to get away. He can jump in from the side, kick, put his face in & blow bubbles -- but not on command.

His spoken vocabulary includes:
mama, dada, bye bye, all done, hat, hot, hi, hey, woo woo (meaning train), juice (only understandable by me)

His signing vocabulary includes:
milk, more, ball, eat, drink, all done, bye bye, hi, no**, kitty, dog, mouse, fish, rain, snow, train* , hat, hot, up

*his own version, but clear and consistent

He can't make the fingers for cow, donkey and horse-- but he knows all of those signs are on the head, so he ends up signing hat for these. He also knows that the sign for shoes involves putting hands together. His version looks more like his version of ball. He's working on signing bird and airplane -- but they are still a work-in-progress.

Yesterday he almost went potty. We borrowed a potty from a friend. He knows what it is and what it's for-- but when I brought it home he was afraid to sit on it, so I put it in a corner and decided to wait. Yesterday he pulled it to the center of the room, opened it, closed it and sat on it. Then he stood up and started pulling on his clothes to let me know he wanted them off. Then he took my hand and led me to the bathroom and pulled on his clothes again. I took off his clothes and sat him on the toilet. Nothing happened. So, I demonstrated going potty and then sat  him up there again. Nothing happened. I took him in his room to get dressed and he sat on the floor and peed. Close!

Our friends Rob and Molly introduced us to the great family band Dan Zanes and Friends. We've seen them twice now. They are great to see live if you ever get a chance. Here's us with Father Goose at Jewsapalooza.

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.

shed days

The new shed is up in the back yard, there are some good pictures of my dad and unk with Peter.

Look, picasa web albums has a new obnoxious flash slideshow!