Nick's Halloween 2009

This was a real Halloween for Nick, trick-or-treating through our neighborhood one last time. He handed out 'gorgeous' candy (his adjective) early in the evening, then went to four houses with mama before saying, "I'm done" and they came home. He and I went back out for a good mile lap with Aunt Amber and Joseph the Bumblebee. Nick was Caesar, with branches on his head, and a toga. Now, he'd been wearing a sheet around the house all week proclaiming to be a ghost, then decided against it an hour before showtime. So mama whipped out scissors, halved the sheet, and he became a Roman Emperor instead.

He charmed them at every house, counting pumpkins, and being himself. One house he proclaimed, 'look at the Jeep!' while the other kids were lining up for candy. The owner was flattered. Then he found two teenage girls on a stoop, and swindled them for about 6 or so pieces before I peeled him away. He sniffed the flowers by their porch and pretended to sneeze, then sat down next to them and began telling them about the purple pumpkin he just saw. He was calling out the costumes of other kids as they walked by: lions, scary ghosts, and others I can't remember. At one house, he ran up to their bonfire yelling, "Fire! Oh my gosh!" He stopped short, and began blowing on it as if to extinguish it. More young girls in attendance, more bonus candy.

We concluded the evening with a massive poo about one mile from the house (he's just 'this close' to being potty trained, but the ten packs of starburst before we started must have broke him loose.) We were at a familiar neighbor, who had a diaper handy. Good thing that was this year's experience. When we're in a new neighborhood next year, borrowing diapers from strangers doesn't make the best first impression.

Pictures from Halloween with this month's pics.

- Jason

Nick's Thirty-Fourth Month

Coins now have true meaning and value to Nick. We worked with him for months on the differences between the various coins, and he only ever called them coins. Then at the store, he says, "I need quarters for jelly beans." Jelly beans are the Skittles, or anything else, the store marketers place at the exits to usurp loose change from parents via their pleading children. Fortunately, we carry cheaper candy on us in case of such an emergency. But amazingly, he now knows the value of a quarter.

There's no better place to play than the cemetery. I've been a visitor on occasion over the years to 'share a beer' with my grandfather, and I've not visited much since Nick was born. So I took him along, which he refers to as, 'have an eer' at, 'the flower garden.' It's actually pretty awesome: clean, quiet, a nice fountain, plenty of flowers for Nick to pretend to sniff and sneeze, and he collects 'Amerigo Flags' (his word for American Flags, which might even be more historically proper than what we call them) from the veteran's plots. (Yes, I put them all back right behind him!)

Sometimes he'll rattle off a paragraph like a CNN pundit, and other times the tongue twisters get the best of him. He gave up on, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." His shortened version is, "Goodnight bugs." And his made up words this month are: eye browns (brows), baloney (blowing) winds, and when things are ruined he calls them 'bruined' (between that and booing the Red Sox, I hope the poor kid never has to live in Boston or I will have wrecked his ability to conform to society.)

Favorite foods this month: string cheese, barbeque chips, and bagels (he eats them from the outside-in.)

The new game this month is Dominos, which he loves to stack and count and knock down. They're relatively enjoyable for the adult involved, except he loves the sound of the word, so he repeats it 500 times while he plays (like staccato DAH'-mi-nose). He also loves rolling the basketball across the fireplace step, trying not to hit any obstacles. His mother started this, and when I played the first time with him, he explained the rules to me ('Roll it; no hitting obstacles; there you go!) I'm just incredibly impressed with this language skills. He addresses me sometimes by my first and last name, which is a chuckle. He has unlimited energy, and once he starts running, can make laps through the house indefinitely.

He's been waking up in the night a little more lately. One night, when I went into his room at 3 AM, he was insistent we needed to go to the parade. I read him a short story as a compromise, then he started correcting me when I was reading it wrong in the dark (he had the words memorized.) Then the next night, he was in tears for two hours over the 'sparkleberry tree'. That's the only word I could understand through the sobbing, so I can't fix that, obviously. Turns out it's a sad story online from one of the videos he watches about two little airplanes saving a tree on some public television show. YouTube is warping him! He'll sit in front of the computer until you peel him away, clicking through videos for hours. Last night, I heard 'C is for Cookie' non-stop during two loads of laundry. I miss the old stuff, which was a little more interesting to adults. Remember the 'mystery box' with Kermit and Cookie? I always laugh when Cookie Monster says, "arrivederci, frog".

New pictures for Month 34 - click here. Picture above is from grandpa's garden, with pumpkins for Nick, and tomatoes. He decorated the punkins with marker for Halloween,

-Jason

Nick's Thirty-Third Month

Nick got a new train set from his grandpa. It's just like the train tables he loves at the bookstore, except more elaborate than any one I've ever seen. We're at least 8 hours of assembly into this setup, and there are many more pieces still requiring hardware to put together. He sleeps with 'chugga-chugga choo-choo trains', one engine in each hand. He falls asleep at night on the floor in his room, playing with trains. (Don't let his mother lift him back into bed, with appendages flopping everywhere.) One night he rolled under the bed asleep, and we thought we lost him!

We took Nick to breakfast with us one Saturday morning, and as usual, he wants to drink from whatever glass is in front of someone else. He will gravitate towards my 'Arnold Palmer' usually (unsweetened iced tea and lemonade). After taking over my glass, he spilled it when I turned my head, of course. He yelled, 'I spilled my coffee!'

Our shared joy of the summer has been 'the white car' which he requests for every ride. We take it out on the weekend evenings for a cruise, and his car seat fits in the back seat nicely. With the tops out, he loves the breeze in his face. I figured, with no food back there, he can't hurt the car, right? Well, the ceiling padding deteriorates in those old cars, and now I have the little handprint of a 3-year old over the back window in the roof. It's a nice complement to the rip in the pinstripe his mother added during our first month of dating almost 15 years ago.

And a special thanks to the Wolverines for giving Nick five opportunities to yell, 'Touchdown!' in the first week of the season. Now mama has two guys yelling at the TV on Saturdays. (And thanks to the Lions, we don't yell at the TV on Sundays, too.)

I traveled for 9 days this month, and Nick was speaking in complete sentences when I returned. He's still enamored with trains and planes, but now we've advanced to steam trains, locomotives, F-16s and Blue Angels. We need to find him some video longer than 4 minute clips online, to give his mother time for a break once in awhile. While at the computer this morning, he lifted an old plaque from my home office desk that I had at Lincoln Mercury over 10 years ago. The Mercury logo 'flying M' is on it. He pick it up and said, "Grandpa Earl's car!" Now, Grandpa Earl has a 1993 or so Grand Marquis, which Nick probably last played in a year ago (the end of that fun came when he filled the cassette deck with loose change from the ash tray), and no one ever associated the badge on that car with the logo on this plaque. Think kids don't pick up everything, and marketing doesn't work?

He got one more swim in before we closed the pool this weekend. The water was about 70 degrees (lake temperature, but too cold for us old folks) and he didn't balk for a second. He jumped right in, and we had to pull him out bordering on purple and shivering.

The other pics from this month are a trip to the zoo with Mason Poley, and finger painting. Also, the tub pic is with his cousin Thatcher when we were in Atlanta for Labor Day.

Click here for 33rd month pictures.

- Jason

Nick's Thirty-Second Month

Nick is beginning to use the computer, with simple clicks to replay the videos he loves. YouTube increased their traffic heavily this month just from Nick. He loves music videos, like 'Three Little Birds' by Bob Marley, and any videos of planes or helicopters or hot air balloons. But what tops them all is chickens. We found a video of muppet chickens, and he requests it frequently with 'more chickens!' He's understanding now when he sees himself on video, and he covers his eyes. His favorite word this month is, 'look!' I put shortcuts here for him to find the videos, so the favorites are linked here on the blog.

We're playing more basketball on his small hoop in the house, while I repair the real backboard outside that has deteriorated from 30 years of use. I love it when he blows on the ball for good luck before he shoots, and then he nails a basket and yells, 'score!' He's now learned to consistently boo the word 'Red Sox' on site, and we're working on a photo of Woody Hayes next. :) The favorite new toy this month is his little red-and-yellow dump truck, which he quickly broke in two, and now carries the pieces everywhere, including to bed. Inside, he and mama build forts from blankets and couch cushions.

Favorite foods this month: orange juice, silly straws, knockwurst and sunflower seeds (known as sunflower treats.) More made-up words this month, for you to work on your 'Nick-cabulary'. 'Cheese cot sauce' is barbeque sauce; 'Bluenocerous' is the blue rhino float toy in the pool; 'yellow-gold trumpet' appears to be a gold finch (he knows robins and cardinals on sight.)

The video of him running around in a cape yelling 'super bunny' is something from one of his television shows. Mama made him a cape from a pillow case when she saw him pretending. He also picked up 'One potato, two potato' from TV, and will do so whenever you put your fists out.

He outran me on a walk down the street last week; thank goodness for the distraction of dandelions that stopped him cold for me to catch up. Really, they're the fluffy white 'weeds' that he blows all of the seeds off. I don't let him roll in the mud outside as much as his mama, who takes him to stomp in the puddles intentionally, and chase toads in the yard. I'm more into cleaning the red dump truck.

We took him to the open house at State Line School, where I attended for several years 30-some years ago (and as you can image, they still remembered me by name when Brandi called the school). He marched into the classroom for 4-year-olds, called out every shape on the wall, every color, and finished with his rundown of 'plus, minus, times, divided-by'. So intellectually, he can run with the group twice his size. But I assured the teacher we would not be enrolling him without a few more months of seasoning, as when it came time to leave and peel him from the train set in the classroom, he melted down in red-faced tears and anger that lasted another 30-minutes after we left. Not to worry, he'll grow out of it. By the time he's 24 or so.

Click here for pictures from his 32nd month.

- Jason

Nick's 2009 Summer Swimming

Summer finally arrived in Michigan, with some hot days in August. Nick spends alot of time in the pool, swimming, sliding and floating. With his turtle lifevest to help him stay above the surface, he can now climb the slide, rocket downward, bounce up from under the water, and swim to the ladder, all on his own (the video was an early shot). It took about 2 days from his reintroduction since last summer, to claiming his independence on the low backyard seas. He navigates all corners of the pool on his own, even swimming in the deep end (but I suppose when you're only 3 feet tall, it's all deep.). He's not just floating; he's kicking and paddling. And there's no peaceful end to swim time - he never wants to come out, no matter how shriveled and blue he gets. He calls his swimsuit his 'sharksuit'. Of course, because it sounds tougher.