Butts and Boobies, or How I Learned to Love Toddler-ese

G2's vocabulary has exploded in recent weeks. Our vacation in early September coincided with rapid development on his part, and he just started picking up words left and right. Three days at the beach, and he very clearly knew how and when to deploy "sea shell," "sea gull," and "shore." Since then, it's been one word right after another.

This isn't dissimilar to the way LG developed, either, with big developmental leaps forward. The crucial difference, however, is that G2 is a lazy talker. If he can distill a longer word into a shorter form that he knows you understand, he won't make the effort to say the whole thing.

As you might expect, this is hilarious. Yesterday after breakfast, he was running around shouting "boobies! boobies!" Once I recalibrated my Babel fish for toddler-speak, I realized he was telling me about the BLUEBERRIES he had for breakfast. Later, he handed me a small Minion toy, pointed to the front and said, "Butt." I started to correct him with "belly," when I realized he wanted me to push a BUTTON located on the figure's stomach.

I'd love to better understand how these short word forms develop. One of his very first words was banana, but these days he can hardly be bother to muster much more than "bann," "bana," or "nana." Clementine is another fun one. Most often it comes out "cline-tine," which is, admittedly, closer to the real thing than "boobies" is to blueberries. Meanwhile, he has no problem saying "cupcake."

Before he regularly said "Dada," G2 briefly and inexplicably referred to me as "Nya-Nya." LG loved this, though I was somewhat less than enthusiastic. He refers to his sister as "Mimi," which is the best kind of endearing.

Anyone who knows Hollie well knows that there is no shortage of Peanuts memorabilia around the house, especially at holidays. We decorated for Halloween over the weekend, and re-introduced G2 to an animatronic Snoopy mummy. While I certainly get tired of him pushing the "butt" to activate the toy for the 37th time, I very much enjoy his repeated, failed attempts at saying Snoopy. So far, we have "Poofny," "Foofny," and "Poopsny," which is somehow the closest he's gotten.

LG had similar trouble with the word "pretzel." For a long time, she only called them "pencils." That was amazing and confusing, and I loved it. Then it became "prentzel" and it weirdly remains so, despite the fact that this child regular uses "simultaneous" and "similar" in regular conversation. Today, she told me the difference between her right and left hand, and noted that "right" means two things. "Right means this side of my body, and it also means you did something the way you're supposed to. You can do something right." She understands homophones, but pretzel still eludes her. 

Never change, LG. Never change.

They are pretty cute.

Year 4 in Review: The Pictures

In one year, my daughter will be in school. Real school. Not just coloring all day, or affixing glitter to things that shouldn't have glitter on them (NOTHING SHOULD HAVE  GLITTER ON IT), but honest-to-blog going to a place where the primary purpose is to learn. But we're not there yet, which is something Hollie and I have to remind ourselves daily. Right now, we have a 48-month old girl.

A number of things have marked the past year as one of growth. Less physical, more mental. Less height, more depth. Less big, more big sister. Without the ability to conduct a conversation, these pictures won't show the true differences between Year 3 and Year 4, but hopefully the color commentary will fill in the gaps.

As with the last three years, each of these photos was taken on or near the 12th of the month.

And because it's how we do things here, this is where we left off.

September 2013

While not the most ambitious thing she rode at the beach last year, she was pretty darn thrilled by it. Now? Not so much. This year on the boardwalk, after the second ride that only went in a circle, she slumped in her seat and muttered, "This ride is booooooring."

October 2013 

KidZooU at the Philadelphia Zoo finally opened in 2013. The most notable thing about our trip is that Millie made it into a viewing bubble without incident. At 37 months, she was finally able to judge when to stand up without smacking her head. This is a serious achievement, because I was getting pretty tired of crawling on a fours to fish her out.

November 2013

While she technically achieved older sibling status while she was two years old, I would argue she didn't really come into her own as a big sister until she hit three. That's at least partially due to G2's role as a non-mobile lump for the first six months. Regardless, in the last year, she has come to relish her newfound responsibilities. Chief among these? Playful tormentor.

December 2013

From the time she could stand on the step stool next to the counter, she's enjoyed baking and decorating. But this was the year she realized the most important benefit of the task. Now we just have to teach her to finish decorating before mainlining the piping bag.

January 2014

There was a lot of snow this year. Like, a ridiculous amount of snow. It got kind of boring after a while. We took a lot of pictures like this one.

February 2014

2014: The Year We Made Contact (with LEGO). As discussed in this space previously, I have developed a process (patent pending) for indoctrinating children into the cult of LEGO. To be fair, it hasn't stuck as well as I'd like, but a couple of times per month, she asks to get the bricks out. She still mostly builds walls, but they're getting taller. We call this progress. Also in February, she attended her first concert. 

Laurie Berkner is totally amazing, you guys. You don't even know.

I have no regrets, except for maybe cheering too loudly during the encore. That might've been over the top.

March 2014

"Hey, LG! Smile!" And this is typical of what we get. Weird pose; weird face; 100% my child.

April 2014

Speaking of weird poses, this is also standard procedure for most afternoons. The hat is her brother's; the glasses are a hand-me-down from Aunt Kristen. The sprinkler? I think I blame her mother for that.

May 2014

This is the year she discovered that dandelions aren't just yellow flowers you can stick in a glass of water to give to Mama when she comes home from work. This is also the year that my backyard weed problem has gotten completely out of hand. Coincidence?

June 2014

Camping! S'mores! Sparklers! This year was full of big firsts. For instance, this was the first year she grabbed a lit sparkler from the wrong end and burnt her finger. That was less dramatic than you might assume. She's gotten much braver and more resilient in the last 12 months, and it's nothing less than thrilling.

July 2014 

My brother and his wife had their first child in June. LG met him in July, and the most amazing thing was her reaction when he soiled himself quite loudly as soon as we put him in her lap. She could barely contain herself.

August 2014

We got LG a bike back in March, but it took a while before she got really comfortable with it. Just in time to get too big for it, as it happens. And the other picture? Well, how could I not share that? Just look at it.

Sept 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

In the run-up to our annual beach trip, we spent an agonizing few days watching the weather forecast get cloudier, colder and rainier. At the last minute, we decided to shift the trip forward a few days so we could catch some sun. As the picture on the far right illustrates, we made the right decision. This was about three minutes after letting her loose on the sand. She spent the better part of that day in the water getting smacked in the face by waves, over and over. And she loved every minute.

And boardwalk rides? I'm not even allowed to go on rides with her anymore, unless the rules state that I have to. Because she's a big kid now and does these things by herself. It's bittersweet, to be sure. (But markedly less expensive, at least until G2 wants to ride things.)

September 2013, 2014

Of course, that sort of thing tends to tire a person out. And thus begins a new tradition of comparing her vacation naps. It should be noted that she hasn't reliably taken an afternoon nap since she was two-and-a-half. On vacation? Out like a light.

But once again, she didn't officially celebrate her birthday on the beach, and since we do want to make her actual birthday something special, we got her a little something. Her reaction?

September 2014

But what could elicit such a response, you ask?

A horse, of course, of course.

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.