G2: The Year in Review

Today, my second child completes his first trip around the sun. He's traveled 585 million miles through space, yet traveled to only three states (and the District of Columbia). His worldview is limited to what he can hold or shove in his mouth, but, like the rest of us, he's hurtling through an inconceivably large universe, one body in a sea of near infinite possibility. And that's just his first 12 months. What's he going to do for an encore?

As we do around here, I'm recapping G2's first year in pictures. By a rough count, we took 8,986 pictures this year (compared to 5,024 for LG's first year). The major difference? Hollie has an iPhone now.

Reminder: each of these pictures was taken on or around the 29th of the month.

Here's where we started, one year ago today. We were presented with the customary baby burrito, grande, in this case.

Who you callin' grande?

Even in his first month, he showed signs of the very expressive person he would become. This first month was pretty good. At this stage, he was a better sleeper than his sister. We thought we had hit the easy baby jackpot.

April: See? Even tummy time isn't so bad.

As we cleared month number two, he was starting to play, though this picture doesn't really show that so much.

May: As soon as I get some arm strength, that frog is mine.

June came and went, and he started to class up the joint. Right around this time, he decided he'd had enough of being an easy baby, and it was time to cause some trouble. We have never been as tired as we were in June.

June: Note the rakish angle of my tie, suggested the devil-may-care way I approach life.

Hey, he's four months old! Time for solid food! Maybe he'll sleep better when he's got some rice cereal in his belly!

July: Naaaaaah!

This is far from G2's first smile, but it shows just how happy he can be, even when he's a pain in the butt.

August: I am a joy to be around! And don't you forget it!

Never had a child so resembled a pumpkin at the appropriate time of year.

September: The hat helps.

As the product of a Bucknell union, we feel compelled to point out other, similar unions.

October: Orange is their color.

I know it may seem like we are a month off with these pictures, what with the November picture featuring a Santa hat, but since his birthday is the 29th, he's practically in the next month every time we take one of these pictures.

November: Is there something on my head?

See? A December picture, and there are Christmas decorations! Sometimes the timing works.

December: And you thought I was trouble before. Watch out, sister!

Since this was the winter of never-melting snow, he spent far more time in the white stuff than his sister did in her first year. Crucially, he didn't typically mind, despite being stuffed into his snow pants like Randy in A Christmas Story.

January: A smile, or has my face frozen this way?

Full disclosure: this next picture is definitely the first day or two of March. But to be fair, February only had 28 days this year.

February-ish: But it's a rocking chicken! Surely we are forgiven.

And on the morning of his first birthday, he sat at my computer and... good God, what is he doing?

March 2014: This is what I have wrought, father. And, lo, I was super pleased with myself.

Bonus pic from DC vacation!

Hop in, Dad. I'ma fly us outta here!

Come on, baby! Do the Locomotion!

I'll be honest, for a time we were slightly concerned that G2 was falling behind in his physical development. Gross motor skills, like sitting up on his own, pulling to stand, crawling or cruising? These did not come easily or early. As ever, our only other point of reference is his sister, and by 10.5 months, she was taking her first steps. At 10.5 months, he could barely get himself into a seated position on his own.

Let's be clear. He's healthy, happy, inquisitive, and he could pick up a speck of lint off the floor between two fingers faster than you could say, "STOP! DON'T EAT THAT!" But getting from place to place? Not his strong suit.

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. Because this kid is trucking and getting into everything.

There was something comforting about sitting him on the floor in the middle of the room and knowing you could get a glass of water and he'd be where you left him when you got back. No longer!

Though he's still not walking on his own, he does have numerous ways of getting around that don't involve begging to be picked up. As I remarked on Facebook a few weeks ago, it's not always elegant.

There's the ever popular drop-to-your-butt-then-zombie-crawl-across-the-floor maneuver.


Or, recently discovered at our hotel in DC, the-round-and-round-we-go.

This went on for some time.

If his tunnel is in play, you can count on the ever-popular recede-into-the-distance gambit.

It helps if he can chase his sister.

Lately, however, it's cruising. Everywhere. All the time. Initially this was limiting for him, because he would only cruise around or along objects. Put him next to the TV console, and he'll move back and forth. Put him next to the refrigerator, and he'll make his way along the cabinets, across the dishwasher, pass the corner cabinet, stop at the stove to turn on a burner, finish at the trashcan, then reverse.

That lasted about three days, and now he drops to the ground, army crawls to the dog bowls, tips them over, then uses the wall to stand back up before he moves into the hallway or living room. Gaps used to  stop him, then he realized that gaps weren't gaps, just an opportunity to find a wall and take the long way around.

Except for spilling the dog's water, that's all sort of charming.

A month ago, I didn't think he'd ever get to the point he's at now. A month from now, he'll be walking freely, and I'll just want him to sit down for a dang minute. And as I dive to insert myself between his finger and the electrical outlet he's managed to yank the cover off of, I'll think about how great a video of our adventures would look if I sped it up by 800% and set it to a Yakety Sax knockoff.

G2's Favorite Things (Part 2)

LG has a favorite movie, dessert, color (or litany of colors at the moment), sandwich, book, toy, shirt, fruit, stuffed animal, song, cookie, cup, etc. These favorites may change minute to minute, but she can tell you what she likes and why in detail. Sometimes her explanations make sense and oftentimes they don't, but there is always an answer. Each answer as to "Why do you like that?" is a trip down a rabbit hole that is always entertaining.

We've already looked at some of G2's current favorites. For the most part, the reasoning behind each favorite was pretty obvious. Lions=awesome and who doesn't like blinking lights and swings?  As he gets older, I'm excited to see the kinds of things that will be important to G2, and more interestingly, I am very much looking forward to his explanations of why he likes one thing over another. In the meantime, we make our best guesses as to why he likes what he likes.  The one basis for liking something that we can pretty much count on?  "It's hella dangerous and could possible injure himself and/or compromise the safety and wellbeing of others" is the most obvious reason for most of the things he currently likes. But let's take a quick look at some (mostly) not dangerous things. Why does he like these things?  I guess we'll never know, but that will not stop us from speculating.

• Pointing- The real fun is when he points at you and you point right back. Every meal is seriously like The Creation of Adam. 

They call them fingers, but I've never seen them fing.

• Sleeping in the Mei Tie baby carrier- Bonus- he is very heavy.  Wait, that's not a bonus.   

I get to sleep, and you get a sore back.  It's win-win.

• Whisks- Babies and kitchen utensils are a match made in heaven.

Help a baby out. Dip this in icing?

• Books- He's just getting to the age where he can sit still for multiple books with multiple pages. We're going deeper into the kiddie lit wilderness- send a search party in a few years.   

Delicious, delicious literature

• His Ikea tent- Man, those swedes know what american babies want. 

Hej!

• His sister- This one we really don't have to speculate about. He loves her so much because she really is an amazing big sister. She sings him to sleep at night ("Tomorrow" from Annie), shares her toys (most of the time) and gives him great hugs and kisses. If only we could get her to stop poking his cheeks so much, they'd be perfect together. Who are we kidding? Those cheeks are begging to be poked.  

Bring it, big sis. 

• Sitting atop the washing machine- I started plopping him up here to save my back from carrying him around. He likes the dials and the fact that he can see out the window. I like to imagine how startling it is to the people walking their dogs to see a disembodied baby head peeking out of the curtains.

So tell me what this thing is for again?
Nah, save your breath, I'm not going to do laundry. 

• Being freshly bathed- I'm not going to post any bathtub shots here (though they do exist), but honestly bathtime with G2 is like Baywatch. Matt is a less hairy David Hasslehoff trying to keep G2 from slipping under the soapy waves. Post-bath is much less stressful.

I tried to scald myself with hot water, climb out of the too-tall tub on my own,
dunked my face into the water, and ate some soap.
Same time tomorrow?

• This chipped baseboard under the kitchen cabinets- I dropped an iPod behind the kitchen cabinets a few years back and we thought we could get it back through the baseboards. We were wrong, and the kitchen bears the scars of our ignorance. G2 is drawn to our failure like a moth to a flame.

I need a paper clip and a piece of gum and I can get your ipod back. 

• His musical farm- This is a hand-me-down from LG. It's a weird toy that lets you make Dr. Moreau-esque animals like a sheep-cow and a duck-pig. G2 mostly likes smacking the buttons so that it only ever plays the first three notes of Old McDonald. Why won't he let the song finish? Why? 

Should we listen to the first 3 notes of "The Farmer in the Dell?"
What about the first three notes of "BINGO?"
Eh, I think I'll turn the whole thing off
and get annoyed that it doesn't play the first three notes of any song. 

• Mud- Who doesn't like mud? Mud is way fun. 

I have .4 seconds to get this muddy stick into my mouth before Mom catches me.
I'ma risk it. 

• Messes- I love a good mess. LG loves a good mess. Matt does not love a good mess, but he loves photos of a good mess that is good and cleaned up by the time he gets home. G2 seems to be in the "loves a good mess" camp. The jury's still out as to whether or not he cares if they get cleaned up.

This. Is. Awesome.

When G2 was first born, LG was quick to try to tell us what he wanted. Pretty soon, he'll be able to tell us himself. Until then, his smile is proof enough that life is pretty good for this little dude. 

I say to-MAY-to, he says YAY!

As Hollie said on Facebook yesterday, part of the reason for this weeklong series of posts on G2 is to make sure the documentation of his development isn't neglected. Though I scrupulously detailed all sorts of minutia related to LG's first year, I've been somewhat lax with her brother. And you can understand why. Two kids means more work, split focus and less time to think of creative ways to tell you about his latest escapades. But sometimes you just need to grit your teeth and bear down and get the job done.

SO, with that said, let's run down G2's vocal abilities. Make no mistake, he is more vocal than his sister was, and he's always been that way. As an infant, he was easier to smile, easier to laugh, and easier to babble than LG. (Though they were both as likely as not to talk to themselves in their crib when they should be sleeping.)

Babbling aside, the kid is a mimic. Sure, that's how all kids learn, but he was mimicking sounds well before we were trying to teach him Mama and Dada. The first time we noticed it was during a typical play session, and he performed some action we were trying to encourage. I think it was throwing a ball or passing a toy back and forth from person to person. Each time he'd do it successfully, we'd shout, "YAY!" Not too long after that, he would immediately shout "YAY!" right back at us. And then he just started celebrating everything. Throw a ball? "YAY!" Dump out a bin of toys? "YAY!" Smack his sister in the face? "YAY! YAY!"

This got out of hand quickly.

The first distinct, animal noise he ever made was in response to a cheap-o plastic lion. Somewhere along the line, one of us (Me, Hollie, or LG) made that lion roar. Then one day Hollie pulls out the lion, and G2 grabs it, opens his mouth as wide as he can, and says quietly, "rawr." I don't have video, so you have to take my word for it, but the wind up suggests he's going to scream, but instead what comes out is a strained, breathy, strange approximation of a lion's call. It is never not hilarious. It's also the same sound made by any large animal, be it a big cat or a dinosaur. The funniest thing to me: he seeks out specific animals just so he can do it. On a recent evening, close to bedtime, Hollie read LG a story about dinosaurs. G2 was on the opposite end of the couch with me, and the second Hollie finished the book and put it down, G2 kamikazes off my lap, lands facedown on the book, lifts his head, points to the cover and whispers, "rawr."

LG's first animal sound was "quack," (more specifically: "kack") and there must be something about that noise that grabs small kids' attention, because it wasn't too long after "rawr" that G2 starting "kack, kack, kack"ing all over the place. He's scaled it back a bit now, and he never reached LG's heights of assuming that all animals whose vocalizations she didn't know must quack, but it's still fun.

As we've noted, we have a dog, and despite the fact that she barks maybe three times per year, G2, like LG before him, has discovered his dog bark, though it's a bit abbreviated. Still, when he points at Lola and exclaims, "FF, uFF, uFF!" there can be little doubt what he's trying to say.

But the funniest sounds aren't animals or words, but mimicked exclamations. We all say things we don't realize we're saying, but when your son starts dropping food off his tray and dropping a plaintive, "uh-oh!" you realize he had to have picked it up from you. "Uh-oh" is just a funny, purposeful sound, and he usually uses it in the right context. Until LG hears him do it, and eggs him on to repeat it ad nauseam, just so she can reply, "Spaghetti-Os!" (To the best of my knowledge, she's never had Spaghetti-Os, so I have no idea where she learned that one.) And when she really gets him going, she starts laughing hysterically, which in turn makes him laugh hysterically. The laugh cycle is a lot of fun, but more interesting is the fact that he starts repeating the rhythm of her giggle. I have no idea if it's intentional or a natural phenomenon, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it's just the tiniest bit creepy.

For Christmas, LG got a miniature oven/stove. The four burners each have a button, which causes them to light up and make a noise either like a boiling pot of water or a sizzling pan. When they burner shuts off automatically, it makes a loud "DING DING DING!" And when G2 pushes these buttons (which he does, for what seems like hours on end), he waits for this noise and shouts "Dee Dee DEE!" I don't know when this child is going to start talking, but until that time, I'll content myself with the thought that he's perfectly happy to converse with a toy stovetop.

I prefer this to him playing with the actual stove, which he still attempts regularly.

G2 also delights in repeating your physical actions, as you'd expect, since I assume that's how he learned to turn the stove on. But it's more fun when you loudly tell him "NO" and shake your head in response to doing something he shouldn't (like trying to overturn Lola's water dish or turn on the stove), and he responds by shaking his head right back at you. And by fun, I mean equal parts fun and frustrating. Good job copying my head motions; now stop rubbing peanut butter in your sister's hair!

G2's Favorite Things (Part 1)

Mama here. As we get closer to G2's first birthday, he's becoming a very funny little dude with very distinct (and often baffling) preferences. Here in no particular order are some of things G2 likes (and pictures I like).

Favorite Animal
I'm going to have to go with lion on this one. This was one of the first animal noises he made (more on that in a later post), and every time we bring out the toy bin, he will dig out this rather mangy looking lion toy we picked up in a dollar bin somewhere. He desperately wanted to pet the one that was lounging near the glass at the zoo. 

Hey. Hey. Hey. Lion. Hey. Lion. Lion. Lion. Hey.

Favorite Song

It's a sad truth that I sing fewer kiddie songs to G2 than I did to LG. When LG was little, I was constantly singing about spiders and lambs and doggies in the window. (By the way, totally conflicted about that song.  It's short and punctuated with the kind of doggie noises that speak to discerning baby sensibilities. Though the whole puppy mill angle makes me a little uneasy.  Don't even get me started on "The Cat Came Back.") G2's world is filled with no less music, it just happens to be dominated by less Wee Sing and Mama-led-melodies and more by Spotify, Frozen and Laurie Berkner.

There are still a few songs that can stop a meltdown in its tracks. When he spent some time in the hospital, "5 Little Monkeys" kept him calm.  Better yet, he acts out the whole song. He bounces when the monkeys bounce, he's got the finger-waggling of the disapproving monkey doctor  down (A monkey doctor or a doctor for monkeys? You decide.) and shakes his head furiously and cracks up when the well meaning physician tries to help some concussed primates.

However, the current favorite is "The Wheels on the Bus." This is a fine choice for an almost one year old. Classic. Hand motions. Public transportation. Wonderful. Unfortunately, this has ruined the song for me. Seriously. Why was this made? And yes, that is Roger Daltrey as the dragon bus driver. We happened upon this before G2 was born, and when LG was sick before he was born we watched that. A lot.

Though nothing gets him grooving like the ABCs. 

Favorite Pet
This is a tie. He loves Lola. I think. If the amount of food he tosses her while he's eating is any indication, he loves her a lot. Though, typically, when you love an animal you don't try to grab fistfuls of fur, or poke your fingers in her eye, or flick her paws. I choose to blame this behavior on a lack of fine motor skills. Lola, who is very old at this point and is generally not fond of wee people, is very patient and has yet to eat him. Win.

Our long-suffering dog.  We don't have any pictures of G2 and Lola interacting. We're usually on heightened alert when they get close to each other so photos take a backseat to making sure he doesn't get eaten.

And there's the fish. I like having fish, though as Matt has mentioned in the past, he's indifferent to our fish wards. We recently restarted our tank with six very pretty guppies. LG seems to to take after her father in her disregard for the fish. G2, however, loves the fish. Mainly, he likes to try to poke his fingers through the hood of the tank and yell nonsense at them. The fish, who are thankfully behind some very thick glass and are always expecting to get fed, are very patient and have yet to eat him. Win.

He's only knocked the hood off once.  Poor fish.

Favorite Toy

He likes just about any toy that blinks and makes music. (I like the ones with volume control. This is not a post about what I like, but I thought that was important to note.) There's the singing guitar, the singing turtle storybook, the various singing phones, and his (singing) office.

You mean your office doesn't also contain a piano?

He equally likes anything with wheels- motorcycles, trucks, cars, shopping carts, baby carriages. He particularly likes a set of cars he has that move via a spinning ball at the center. He does spend some time moving these various vehicles back and forth, however, his favorite pastime is flipping them over spinning the wheels.

By far, the cutest favorite toy he has is his dolly. He got the doll from Santa in his stocking for Christmas. I started putting it in his crib without really thinking about it. I wanted LG to have a lovey when she was a baby to help her sleep, but she never took to the stuffed animals until she was older (and now she sleeps with a rotating entourage of about 4 stuffed animals). G2 didn't seem to care one way or another about the dolly until I started to notice a trend.

He holds her hand while he sleeps. Have you ever seen anything so amazingly cute in your entire life?

NO, YOU HAVEN'T.

Favorite Food

Blueberries. Hands down. Kid would eat his weight in blueberries if we would let him.

There are no blueberries on his tray you say? He ate them all. Come on, it's a cute picture.  Work with me.

Favorite Leisure Activity

It's hard to choose a leisure activity for a little person who sleeps about 15 hours a day. But when G2 wants to relax after a hard day of pseudo-crawling (more on that later), putting peanut butter in his sister's hair (true story), and shouting at fish, he engages in some serious swinging.

His partner in crime.

Unfortunately the buckle on the swing got stuck and I had to cut him out of it. It was all very dramatic; bonus, now he can fling himself out of at will.

With spring on its way (in theory), there will be much swinging!

Ah, the feeling of the wind through his hairs.

So much joy. 

More G2-approved stuff later this week!

Childproofing 2: The Quickening

The most significant childproofing I've ever done was in the service of preventing our dog from eating all the snacks in a kitchen drawer, and that amounted to a handful of drawer locks. After that, putting a couple of outlet plugs in place once LG was mobile was no big deal. And honestly, that was almost unnecessary. I don't think she ever looked twice at an outlet.

But G2... oy. That boy. In the spirit of most proper sequels, this round of childproofing is bigger, wilder, and more expensive. The kid can't even walk on his own and he's gotten into more trouble in three weeks than LG has in more than three years. Suffice to say, I'm not looking forward to the climbing phase.

To give you a sense of what we're up against, Hollie recently had to employ rockclimbing equipment to prevent pinched fingers.

And it's only a matter of time before he can reach and figure out how to unclasp the carabiners.

He was opening the lockers with one hand and slamming the door onto his other hand. As yet, he hasn't learned this isn't a good thing. Yes, we want to stop him from hurting himself. But we also want to prevent this.

Seriously. LG didn't develop the "let's empty the container of all of the things" impulse until 15-18 months.

Sure, it's messy, but it also leads to another cause of injury: slipping on floor books. For the record, children and parents are equally susceptible to slipping on floor books. We are not a graceful people.

Back in the kitchen, there are a host of ways to get in trouble. I left G2 with his sister for about 30 seconds the other day, and rushed back into the room when I heard the telltale click-click-click of the stove knobs firing up a burner. I find LG on the other side of the room and G2 smirking to himself while grasping the oven door handle like a chin up bar, left front burner turned to medium-low. There's a reason ovens and stoves have the knobs on the top console now, and $10 says it isn't because it's more convenient for the cook.

And the cabinets...

The ever-popular "Let me at the household chemicals" ploy.

For the moment, the door latches have stymied him. But he's a problem solver. It's like the raptors testing the fence in Jurassic Park; one of these days, he'll find the weak spot.

Which brings me full circle to the drawer I originally secured because of the dog. For the record, it only took Lola about a week to figure out how to open the drawer after I put the latches on. Something tells me if he was taller I wouldn't have that long.

"There are cookies in here. I know it!"