Nick's Twenty-Fourth Month

Nick experienced his first brain freeze. While eating some of Grandma Sue's frozen strawberry yogurt pie, his mama warned him. About 10 bites in, he dropped his head onto the counter, brow crashing with a thud against the hard surface, and mumbled in a monotone, "Oh, no." It was rather hysterical, actually. Best laugh I've had all month. (Even better than my buddy Donny singing "Queen" at karaoke, and that was a riot.)

Nick really loves music - no question now. He still sits daily at the piano, and loves to hear Brandi play her violin. Still dances the same, too. But he needed an instrument easier to handle. So we let him play with his great-great grandpa Golembiewski's harmonica, and he never puts it down - and he's aggressive with it. I call home to talk to Brandi, and it sounds like we have a hobo on speed in the background.

He counts everything now, clearly up to 10, and learning through 15 fast. But I got most excited when Brandi drew him a baseball, and he knew it by name. A touching manly moment.
Favorite new words: dragonfly, triangle, and parasail.

We shoveled the driveway together as a male bonding experience (and practice for what will become his job shortly.) I just can't keep his hat and mittens on him, but his hands and face are always warm - I think he's just warm-blooded, and gets hot.

Nick is not a kid shy of others, or afraid to be adventurous. I lose him in the McDonald's playground, and it's only one room. He takes off with kids older than him, into the tunnels high above the ground, and I have to go in after him to get him out. We're beyond the simple climbing phase, and into advanced climbing. He pushes chairs around the kitchen to reach the counters, open the freezer, and reach the cupboards. Nothing is out of reach. We had only one McDonald's incident, which resulted in a fat lip. When we took him out shopping later, he would ride around with his lip pressed against the cold metal shopping cart frame to sooth the pain.

And then there's the prep for Christmas...
We decided to set up a tree and manger for Nick at the last minute, the week before. We did the small 2' tree, with small unbreakable ornaments, safe lights in an enclosed tube, and set it at his level, just off the ground. Had we put it up high, he would have climbed until he eventually got to it anyway. He was very helpful with the ornaments, and once the tree was up, we stepped back to watch him enjoy it... by grabbing the top branch, yanking it from the table, and dragging it across the room like a caveman until the light cord would let him go no further. He shoved the ornament balls in his mouth and spit them across the room in laughter, and pulled off all of the garland and draped it all over himself. After about 3 days, he left the tree alone. He calls it a baseball tree, because of the balls on it.

Click here for 24th month pictures.

- Jason

Nick's Twenty-Third Month

PC is on the fritz again this month, slowing me down, but here's the update!Nick is going to be easily motivated with positive reinforcement. Tell him he did something good, or heavens forbid you clap, and he'll show you he can do it ten more times, every way from Sunday, and if it's a new word, at varying decibles. He counts to three each night before being handed off to mama for bedtime (although sometimes he starts at five - don't know why.) He's picking up concepts and ideas fast now - from the differences in big and small, to pretending to pull the whistle chain and yell 'choo choo' like a train. One of my favorites is shouting, "Yar!" whenever he sees a pirate on TV.

He can jump, sort of. Both feet usually leave the ground, sometimes his buns hit the floor before the other foot if he gets too much elevation. I let him loose in the yard, and he climbed the tall swingset steps to the slide - it was a challenge, but he made it. Winter has been tough so far, with a cold Fall, he's been able to go outside less, and when he does, he's bundled up like the stay-puff marshmallow man.

Favorite food this month: Skittles (fondly known as 'good beans'), but also loves Subway and oh my, mama's pancakes. He ate a full breakfast with me one morning - I slaved over eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast, and then mama wakes up and he screams 'pancakes!' and she comes out like a hero with 3-minute hotcakes.

He has so many new words that I can't cover them all, but my favorite is 'caboose' which somehow he pronounces as 'caballs' and thinks it's correct. At this age, you can get away with alot if it's cute. But most others, he's right-on. 'Frog' comes out often sounding like something I didn't want him to learn. But we're jumping right into two, three and four-syllable words like 'balloon', 'airplane', 'caterpillar', and his favorite, 'butterfly'! And he pronouces 'pony' like 'pawney.' We have several picture books, and he picks up a few more words every day, sometimes by surprise; he picked out the pumpkin picture tonite, which was a new one.

We set up a little table and chairs for him in the TV room, where he can have his snacks, draw shapes, and color. It's another hand-me-down, as I used the same table 30 years ago.

He still dances, but he's pickier about the music (prefers Mozart) and he hikes his pants up when he dances (we can afford pants that fit - I don't know why he does that.)

Click here for 23rd month pictures.

- Jason

Nick's Twenty-Second Month

This picture is what happens to Nick when he spends a week with his grandparents in Atlanta. He ends up in a dusty sombrero, wearing an elephant sweatshirt (in an election week!), and eating carpenter's glue. Truthfully, they are taking wonderful care of him, having toddler-proofed most of the house, from swapping out doorknobs to shifting every valuable in the house above chest height. Ironically, I spent this week in San Antonio and Houston doing cultural research, so the sombrero is a funny coincidence. I'll even make a plug for Lupe Tortilla's if you're looking for a good local flavor in Houston. Nick does miss home when he travels now, like the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling in his bedroom. And counting the chimes on the old parlor clock, even though he just smiles until the fifth chime, and then starts counting at five. Placement of valuable items in the house is even more important now that he can climb out of the crib.

You can tell from videos he never stops talking. He's either pointing at something beyond the sight of old eyes yelling, "Look, look!" Or making ambulance noises like 'wee-wah, wee-wah.' Big words this month are 'helicopter' and 'kitty-cat' and he asks, "What is that?" continually. After spending so much time with older cousin Seth, Nick now loves planes as much as cars. He points them out in the sky everytime he walks outside, spotting them from distances so far I can't find them until a few minutes later. We're suspecting that he believes he can make them appear by pointing to them, not the other way around. My nephew made me a paper airplane that was pretty fancy. I considered throwing it at the airport when I got into the open air, as a proud gesture, but didn't since it has sentimental value to me, and I figured throwing anything at the airport would probably get me tackled by an unusually motivated TSA agent.

With Halloween comes punkins, and we had a good month for them. Grandpa Mantel grew him a bunch all summer on a vine in the garden; Nick would go out and test them by knocking on them all the time. Now he knocks on every pumpkin he sees - that takes forever in the four-foot-deep bin at the Meijer. He decorated his own punkin this year with a marker (you'll be able to guess from the pics which one is his when I get it posted) and we carved a couple with the Faylings. OK, so mine isn't an original idea, but I did add a little spin of my own. Great pics here. As a little extra, here's a great link to a less-messy pumpkin carving site.

His feet finally grew more, requiring new shoes. His growth has slowed a bit, falling back to the expectation that comes with two short parents. His eating habits are 'feast and famine' but there's little risk of him starving. He found a bag of animal crackers the other night, walked them out to the TV room, pulled up on the couch, opened the bag, and fed himself. It's almost like having a teenager, except for the diapers.

In my world - Carrie, Miranda, Jess & Robin - you'll be proud to know the sweater you bought me when I turned 16 found new life last week. I wore it for an 'ugliest sweater contest' at work, and qualified, but didn't win. I wasn't sure if simply being outdated was good enough to be considered ugly, but my younger coworkers assured me I was only feathered bangs and a Members Only jacket away from 1980s hideous. I argued I should have won a special category for 'first owner' sweaters to make the judging fair, as I didn't have to run to the Salvation Army the night before for a retread pullover. So save something in your closet for 20 years from now (although I can't imagine anything from today will look as awful as fashions from the 70s and 80s look today.)

Click here for 22nd month pics.

- Jason

Nick's Twenty-First Month

We've had 20 months of cute pictures - the kind that make you say, 'awwww!' Then somehow Nick crossed over into the bizarre. As I sort through all of the pictures from this month, I see him flipping 'the bird' to the camera, eating a Master padlock, in a dog cage, wearing what appears to be a racoon hat, and flushing himself down the throne (a moment in time that could well be titled 'a creative way to lose a good pair of socks.' 'Kind of a funny way to potty train, don'tcha think?,' observed my father. You never have to stage a great moment for a photo op at this age, you just have to be quick with the camera.

More time this month with the cousins from Atlanta, and with no gasoline in the south, they had plenty of time playing at home on the slide, in the yard with bubbles, and indoors, safe from the Georgia heat. Most of the time you see baby Thatcher in the pics with Nick, as Thatcher is usually intent on whatever Nick is doing, where Nick is intent on intervening into whatever Seth is doing. And the dogs steer clear, for fear of being trampled by the high traffic of kids barrelling in and out of their doggie door.

Cool food of the month: he can dip his own Chicken McNuggets, and loves the BBQ sauce. He usually dives in 'double fisted' with a dry nugget in one hand, and a BBQ nugget in the other, so he can mix and match for the taste buds. Also loves chocolate Teddy Grahams, and Goldfish crackers. But nothing tops Gushers!

He sits for hours and stacks blocks one on top of the other, and they're the little ones, too, so it's not easy. His record is 15 blocks, and man is he excited when he sets a new record. He must be able to count in order to know, right?

Nick now meaningfully says, 'Hi' and 'Bye' and is pronouncnig other words better like 'doggie' and 'book' (the letters G and K took a little extra time.) Now we need to polish the non-verbals, like ripping off his diaper when he's ready to be changed.

Click here for 21st month pictures.

- Jason

Nick's Twentieth Month

Nick placed his first independent phone call this month, one year after crawling over to the phone and randomly pushing buttons just to hear them beep. Fortunately, when he stole his mother's phone he called me, not Italy, so the call wasn't expensive. This is part of a continuing pattern of his increasing sociability. We're making more friends in the neighborhood now as Nick waves at every car, bike and runner that goes by.

Brandi filled out a personality inventory for Nick in one of her magazines (probably the same one where you can 'rate your mate by the color of his socks' or 'estimate your ideal % of body fat by the number of carrots you can stick in your ear' so we take the advice with caution.) It appears he is a "Spirited" child, which is one of those words you use to describe another person's kid when you really want to say 'pushy' or 'loud' or 'uncontrollable tornado.' Essentially, he's uber curious, points at things constantly wanting me to say their name, and plows through other kids like the circus folk I encounter stampeding to board an airplane in every city. (Why do people have to cram onto the plane? What is this urge to compete for space on a plane where your seat is already guaranteed and assigned?)

Joy abounds as I finally stopped being cheap and bought an industrial sprinkler that will water my entire yard from one spot. Nick loves it - sticking his head in the streams, runnning under the water. It has a lifetime warranty, so he can take it to college with him. He's also back in the pool this summer, of which I have yet to post videos. He got his first skinned knee this month by racing around the pool and nosediving into some unforgiving concrete. He bled a little, brushed it off, and kept on trucking. Didn't slow him down.

Favorite new foods this month: barbeque chips, sloppy joes, and bratwurst.

I went away for a few days for business travel, and he sprouted while I was gone. He walked up to me when I returned, looked me in the eye, and explained to me... well, something I couldn't understand. But it felt like I got my first lecture. He's now very direct with his conversation. Tonite in the car, we pulled out of the driveway, and he asked, "Where are we going?" I'm not ready for full sentences yet; my reaction felt like immense surprise as if the neighbor's dog would have asked me for more treats in plain English - just hard to believe that's Nick already talking.

And he can find his belly button!

Click here for 20th month pictures.

- Jason