Words, words, words and trouble

G2 is a talker. I don't mean to suggest that he has a large vocabulary, because it's not that. But the little guy just doesn't stop babbling, and it's been this way since he first started making noise. For a while, it didn't seem like he was going to turn those babbles into actual words, but in the last month or so, language has begun to coalesce. As it did with LG, it started with animal noises, but we've come a long way. When LG was about the age that G2 is now, I tracked her words for 36 hours. And since we pretty much compare the two kids constantly, I decided to do the same thing with him.

And here we go!

baby
banana (sometimes "nana," sometimes "ba nana")
ball
bear
beep-beep (cars, trucks & buses all go beep-beep, or sometimes wee-ooo-wee-ooo)
bird
boat
bowl (almost always in reference to the dog bowls, which he knows he's not supposed to touch, but does anyway.)
bus
button (usually on my iPhone, but any button will do.)
car
cup
Dada
dog
eagle (Why eagle? He has a tiny stuffed eagle. Weirdly, he has an entire stuffed menagerie, but eagle is the only one he picked up on.)
Mama
night-night (this is adorable, and is usually combined with laying his head down.)
shoes
seat (Different from sit, below, because it refers to the place where he gets his food.)
sit (Which he knows from how many times we shout it at him while he stands on his sister's bed.)
this (this is a typical response when you ask him what he's holding.)
truck
up
water

Three things of note. I'm surprised how many of these are "B" words. It just seems a little odd. Also, he has fewer abstract concepts in his word list than LG had. He doesn't say "yes" or "no" or "me" or "more." But he has more concrete nouns, like "bear," "boat," and "eagle."Additionally, he has a book of shapes and whenever we turn to the page with the triangle, he shouts, "ker-rangle!" It seems deliberate and he's done it multiple times. To paraphrase Perd Hapley, "I don't know what it means, but it has the cadence of a word."

Tracking words with G2 has been harder, because it's not uncommon for him to point at something, say what appears to be a deliberate word, and THEN NEVER USE IT AGAIN. Case in point: He usually refers to the dog as "dog" or occasionally "uf-uf." But the other day, he looked at the dog, looked at me, pointed at the dog, and clear as day said, "Lola." He has never repeated this.

But then, he expends effort in other ways, like getting into trouble.

This is all perfectly safe, except for the height and the hand mixer and the cheese grater.

Ugh.

15 Months: State of the G2

An unspoken truth about our son is that he's a big kid. It shouldn't be surprising, given how much he weighed when he showed up, but there it is. Although I still contend he never looked quite as big as his weight implied, then or now, the reality is that he's just darn heavy. We've never done anything to promote or control his weight, preferring to let it work itself out.

That's why I was excited to go to his 15-month checkup; in the last two months, G2 went from barely crawling to walking to running, while at the same time, his appetite has leveled off. He actually chooses to stop eating, rather than continuing to eat his food, your food and everything in between. Throw in the obvious vertical growth he's added since the 12-month mark, and he's noticeably trimmer. Given his status in the high 90-percentile over the last few months, the data nerd in me just wanted to know where we stood.

The result? 100 percent of his growth since the one-year mark has been vertical. Back in April, he was 30 inches, or 55th percentile. Yesterday, he measured 32 inches, for 75th percentile. And his weight is unchanged, dropping him into the low 90s. I cannot stress enough that I've never been terribly worried about his growth, as he's always been healthy (give or take a bout of RSV). But it's still nice to know that he's balancing out.

Data aside, the most exciting stuff over the last three months has been developmental. He could stand and sort-of cruise at 12 months, though he didn't really show much interest in it. At 13.5 months, he took some cautious steps. The day after that, he very clearly thought to himself, "Screw caution! I'm a runner!" By 14 months, he was essentially on par with LG at the same point her in development, despite the fact that she had been walking for three months at that time.

He's also taken big strides forward verbally. He had three to five words (mostly animal noises) at 12 months, and now he's got dozens. The only problem is that he refuses to do most of them on cue. He turned to Hollie a few weeks back, pointed at the fruit bowl and clearly said, "Banana." He's maybe said it twice since then. Likewise with "duck" and "dog". These were two of his first words, but now he just laughs at you when you try to get him to say either.

And therein lies the significant difference between G2 and LG at this stage of development. LG wanted to please. You could get her to say or do any of her words or actions with minimal prompting. G2, on the other hand, does things on his time. If he wants to let you know that he knows something, he'll tell you or show you. Otherwise, good luck, buddy.

As ever, there are so many things he does that amuse and irritate. I've recently considered what such a list will look like in 15 years, but by the time my brain got to visions of cars and curfews, the thought was too terrifying to continue.

Let's just stick to the present.

Night Night. Despite the fact that he doesn't sleep on a pillow, he knows what pillows are for. So when he wants to make us smile, he grabs the nearest pillow, lays his head down and says "Night night!" But because he wants you to know that he has no intention of going to sleep, he'll then proceed to make other things go "Night night!"

All of the things.

He thinks he's dog people. As noted earlier, G2 loves the dog bowls. He's faster now, which makes it harder to snag him before he starts splashing in Lola's water dish. He also loves the dog's beds, which is why our bedroom door stays closed and we have to be super vigilant when he's in the living room. There are few things more annoying that having to run a lint roller over your toddler twice a day because you weren't fast enough to catch him before he covered himself in two pounds of dog hair. That why there's a pillow on the floor of the living room in the first place. We thought it might be a substitute for the dog bed. (We were wrong.)

He's a better alarm clock than we are. Despite sharing a room, G2 usually gets up well before LG. So at some point, we get to say, "Go wake up your sister!", at which time G2 scurries down the hall, busts through the bedroom door like Kool-Aid Man, and throws himself onto LG's bed. It is as hilarious as it is effective. The best part is that LG does not mind, and she greets her brother with a warm "Good Moooooorning!" Yet if I quietly and gently attempt to rouse her from sleep, she moans, rolls over and complains that it's too early to get up.

Apple has his number. Yes, we have iPhones. Yes, we have iPads. I'm not going to get into a big thing about whether kids should or should not play with these things. G2 occasionally gets his hands on one. My phone is locked, so the only thing G2 can do is smash the home button over and over. I usually discover this when I hear Siri complaining she can't understand what he wants. However, I recently discovered this series of pictures in my Camera Roll.

Evidently he also figured out how to take a screenshot.

Sharing is caring. With two kids, we knew sharing would be high on the list of necessary lessons. So far, so good. G2 usually wants to share his things with you, though he'd prefer you share it right back after 1.25 seconds. His preferred method of sharing is to smoosh an object in your face. This is largely fine for his sister; it's somewhat less fine for his one-month-old cousin. Let's applaud the sentiment, and work on the methodology.

Animal farm. Kids like animal noises, and G2 is no different. But if you want him to make those noises, you have to ask in the right way. "What does a sheep say?" won't work. "Are you a sheep?" usually does the trick. It's at this point that I have to wonder, "Who's training who?"



Hi-oh! Before he had a great number of words or sounds at his disposal, G2's favorite refrain was "Hi-oh!" Think of it like "Aloha." It meant "Hello," "Goodbye," "Nice to see you," or "I'm going to take a run at the dog bed now. See ya!" It was the cutest thing ever, and he doesn't do it anymore. Tear.

Hips don't lie, but they do groove. I do not have much in the way of rhythm. When called upon to dance, I'm as likely as not to start rocking a white man's overbite. My son was not cursed in this way.



Since there's no way to top that dance, I'll just say this: kids are amazing. Mine, doubly so.

My Daughter is Hip to the Musics of Today and Other Things That Make Me Feel Old

I don't get hung up on age. Wait, scratch that. I don't get hung up on MY age, though I spend probably too much time thinking about how old other people are. I don't know why I do this. Whether I'm comparing my kids to other kids on the playground, or considering how old my new coworkers are so I don't make cultural references they aren't likely to get, it's something that runs through my mind frequently.

But generally, I don't feel markedly different than I recall feeling 10 years ago. Joints might creak a bit more, and my left elbow occasionally feels strained, but that has more to do with lugging two kids around for nearly four years than anything else.

That said, there are a few things that DO make me feel old. In no particular order:

* I was in Target with LG yesterday, and as we passed the electronics section, she stopped to look at the music videos playing on the monitor. I've long since learned to tune these things out, but she can't pass a screen without stopping to take it in. After all, you never know when a TV might spontaneously start playing Frozen. We weren't done shopping, and I managed to coax her away from the screens. She started singing, which is nothing new, and we moved on. Later, as we loaded up the car, I asked her what music she wanted to listen to on our drive home. We have Spotify, and I maintain several playlists full of kids' music as well as other things I want her to hear. This was the conversation that transpired.

LG: Play the Close Your Eyes song.
Me: I don't know what that is. Is that on one of Caspar Babypants songs? Or Laurie Berkner?
LG: No, no. It's a band that sings "close your eyes, hey-o, hey-o."
Me: No idea. Where did you hear that?
LG: In the store! I was singing it! There was a guy in a video who had a beard and he looked like you.
Me: I have no idea what you're talking about, but let's see if we can find it. Do you know any words?
LG (very insistently): I just told you! "Close your eyes, hey-o, hey-o!!!"
Me: Okay, okay! I'll Google it!

Turns out, she was surprisingly close on the lyrics, and the song is "Pompeii" by Bastille, and I can only assume she saw a commercial in the electronics section for the Target-exclusive version of their album. There is one guy in the band with a beard, and he looks nothing like me, and is at least 7 years younger. I vaguely recall fast-forwarding past their performance on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live.

So that's where we are. I am the guy who skips the music on SNL, and my three year old has to tell me about a song that hit #5 in the U.S (currently #25 on the Hot 100).

But if she starts singing Iggy Azalea, I'm going to flip out. See? So old.

* My youngest brother is five and a half years younger than me. When he graduated from high school, I didn't feel old. Didn't feel any different when he graduated from college, got a job, bought a house or got married.

But last week, he and his wife had a son. And nothing makes you feel older than your baby brother calling to talk about diaper changing strategies. Except for the fact that you actually have advice to give on the subject. I was in my 20s (too young to feel old) the first time I became an uncle. But this time? If I had any hair, I expect I'd be seeing some gray.

My head may take up more of the frame, but this little guy is the main attraction.

* We went camping over the weekend, and there was not one second of the entire night spent sleeping on a wafer-thin bed roll that I didn't feel like a 1000-year-old man.

So. Much. Pain.

How did I do this six times a year from age 8 to 18? More to the point, how did my dad do it when he came with us on trips? And how has bed roll technology not gotten any better in 17 years?

The fact that I hopped merrily out of the tent in the morning had more to do
with the relative comfort of standing than my desire to be awake. 

Also, the campground where we stayed had an arcade in the back of the main lodge. The most recent game in the place was Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, which came out in 1989, and we owned for the Super NES.

Yeah, NEWEST game in the building was from 25 years ago, and it was AMAZING.

A Serious Post about a Serious Thing

One month ago today, I experienced something that could have changed my life—and the lives of each member of my family—forever, and not for the better. Some of you have heard the story, and some haven't, but in the interest of providing a teaching moment, I'll share it here.

The short version: In one moment, I was cooking dinner at the stove; LG was dancing in the hallway to the left of the kitchen; and G2 was playing on the kitchen floor by the refrigerator, about 6 feet behind me. In the next moment, the cabinet 2 feet to my right—containing our stoneware and glassware—came crashing to the floor. The cabinet glanced off the countertop, pivoted on its way down, scraped down the side of my right calf and ankle in the split second that I turned toward the initial noise, and landed on the floor about 2 feet from my son, expelling broken glass and cracked dishes around him.

Now, because it's been a month, and you haven't heard any horrifying news about my family, you can safely and rightly assume that everyone is fine. I suffered only minor physical injuries, and short of a few minutes of crying from both children—largely as a response to the noise caused by the incident and my adrenaline-fueled scream-leap-and-scoop maneuver to get G2 away from the shards that surrounded him—the kids are fine, too.

The mental toll, however, is another matter entirely. Four weeks later, I can talk about it, even laugh it off, to some extent. But in the hours and days that followed, I was a wreck. "What if..." scenarios filled my dreams while I slept and fueled panic attacks when I was awake. I won't bore you with the myriad iterations of damage, injury or worse that I've conjured since then. Those of you with children can fill in the blanks yourselves; those of you without, I'm sure can at least consider what I might have lost in the fraction of a second it took for that cabinet to hit the floor.

My father, in an effort to put to words that which I could not in the aftermath of the incident, wrote the following:

We live in a precarious world. Never knowing when or if we may fall victim to some unforeseen calamity that could forever change our lives. Whether caught up in a sudden natural disaster or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time when danger strikes by human hand, the result is the same, a personal universe destroyed or irreparably harmed. These thoughts are far from our minds as we live out our daily lives busily scurrying to and fro. We only rarely experience or expect impending doom to exact its punishing effects upon ourselves or our psyche. But ready or not we must know that life is a tenuous thing, filled with uncertainty and possibilities for which we are unprepared. 

It is our reasoned expectation that we are safest in our own home, surrounded by the familiar and ensconced in the pleasing realm of family life. Then we are suddenly caught unawares, and for a time that feeling of security is shattered. This too will pass. The lingering effect of such an incident, however chilling, can serve to remind us of who and what we are and from whence we came as well as how fragile life can be.  

Thanks, Dad. Couldn't have put it better myself.

This incident has taught me two very important truths: one sort-of philosophical, the other more practical.

Be grateful for what you have. I can't believe I'm quoting Joni Mitchell, but "Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you've got/Till it's gone." Life is fast. Life is ephemeral. Everything can change in an instant. Don't take that for granted.

Never assume the person who installed your cabinetry knew what they were doing. The cabinet that fell was the largest single unit in my kitchen, and it's been there, holding those dishes, for the seven years we've lived in this house, and holding who-knows-what for who-knows-how-long before we moved in. It was held up by only two screws, one of which was drilled straight into drywall, not a stud. If you take nothing else from this story take this: It's worth your time to quickly double-check anything of moderate weight that is affixed to a wall in your home. It would not have occurred to me to do such a thing before, but it certainly will now.

I realize this post is not entertaining or replete with stories about the wacky things my kids get up to, but it is important. If nothing else, it's been a helpful exercise for me in getting over the what-might-have-been and getting back to the now.

Thanks for reading. Here are cute pictures of my kids.

We watched The Wizard of Oz; A good time was had by all.

In April, LG had a fever for five days straight. It sucked, but we watched A TON of movies. It's usually hard to get her to watch something she's never seen before, but in her weakened state, we didn't have too much trouble. (Except for Madagascar. She really didn't want to watch that for some reason.)

In the middle of our 120-hour binge watch of early 21st century animated fare, I managed to sneak in The Wizard of Oz. Not only did she enjoy it, but she didn't seem to be scared at all. Which is some feat, let me tell you, because Margaret Hamilton still gives me the willies.

That said, she had lots of commentary. Below is a sampling.

Why is this movie brown and white?
Dorothy is a little girl, why does she sing like a lady?
Toto should have a dog toy so he doesn't bite people.
(referring to the munchkins) Are they little adults?
(repeated throughout the film) Remember, Daddy, the lady on the bike turned into the witch.
The flying monkeys have wings! I thought they could just fly on their own. Like they would just spread their arms and fly.

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Many things happen in a typical day when you have kids. You wake them up (or they wake you up), feed them, clean them, take them to school, play with them, and sometime near the end of the day, you put them to bed. Some of these things happen once, some multiple times. But in between these things--the necessities--other stuff fills up the space. When people talk about the challenges and rewards of parenting, this unnamed, unquantifiable stuff is what they're talking about.

For instance, here are bunch of things that happened yesterday.

G2 and I read this book… 15.62 times. Why the .62? Because after the 15th time, he only wants to close the book and open it to the Chewbacca page and bark like a dog.

The Wookie/X-Wing spread is one of only three spreads not tainted by the prequels.

G2 loves lamp. Carefully squeezed between the entertainment center, firewood carrier and dog bed in our living room, we have a very skinny floor lamp. G2 has discovered he can move this lamp. So he tried to knock it onto the dog five or six times before I put a toy bin in front of it. He has yet to discover he can walk around this.

LG and I finished a tower. Her LEGO play hasn't yet developed into the full-blown obsession I was hoping for. In fact, I think we've been working on this tower for almost two months. A buddy of mine and his son assembled the Millennium Falcon in less time. But it's a start.

Now we just have to hope G2 doesn't get his hands on it.

LG became a dog for about half an hour. At some point in the afternoon, she decided she was a dog, and refused to pick up anything with her hands or say anything other than "Bark." The whole incident lasted longer than I would've liked, but I appreciate her commitment to the bit.

G2 follows suit. One of his three primary animal sounds is an insistent "Uf! Uf!!" So he barked at his sister, then insisted on staring at a picture of my cousin's dog in a family calendar my aunt made us for Christmas.

LG made unprompted art. While I was giving G2 a snack, LG asked for a paint brush and water. A few minutes later, she came back with this. I'll be honest; the kid paints and colors a lot of stuff, but this is the first time I was really impressed. To paraphrase a well-known quote, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."

And I like it. I like it a lot.

At some point, I realized LG was wearing rain boots, and they were on the wrong feet. Note: we had not been outside.

LG does not like hummus and bread. LG likes hummus. LG likes bread. DO NOT PUT HUMMUS ON HER BREAD. Evidently these two things do not go together, and you should really know this by now, Daddy.

Upon returning to the living room after dinner, I found this. Yes, those are stencils. Of dinosaurs. Markers were not involved, thankfully.

LG swears she has no idea how they got there.

G2 loves dog bowls. Unrelated to the other dog-based shenanigans, I probably stopped G2 from tipping the dog bowls at least three dozen times. On Facebook yesterday, I noted, "Saying 'NO' in firm, loud voice briefly had the intended effect of stopping my son in his tracks. Now it just makes him move faster." This is what I was talking about.

LG changed G2's name. And he's a girl now. They are so close to being able to play with each other in a meaningful way. But right now, they're dependent on LG's imagination and capacity for inventing nonsense to get any enjoyment from one another. For example, yesterday she decided G2's name and gender should be changed. "Daddy, his name is Comma. Comma is a girl. Come here Comma. Comma…  Comma…  Comma… You're a girl, Comma. Comma, come play! Comma! Comma! Hey, Comma! Hey, Comma! Hey, Comma! Hey, Comma! His name is Comma. His name is Comma. Comma."

G2 discovered lint. While I was making dinner, G2 cruised around the kitchen and discovered the laundry room. He cruised back and forth in front of the washer and dryer. He inspected the shoe bin. He examined the double stroller. He was quiet for a while, and when I checked on him, he was just out of my eye line, sitting next to the dryer and the wastebasket with a small pile of lint next him and his slightly sticky face covered in the stuff. Did he eat lint? It's altogether possible.

And thus it was that the dog gate became a baby gate.

After all of this, the kids go to bed. There's still work to be done, adult dinner to eat, dishes to clean, and then mercifully, a sitcom or two to watch. But then you look down on the floor in the living room, and you discover this.

What is this? It's a silk belt, stuffed into a plastic sandwich bag, stuffed into a tissue box.

Why? Because you have kids. That's why.

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!