Superbowl

That's our boy, holding a football and pointing to the Superbowl game. OK, so it took several tries to get this picture. Thomas wasn't actually interested in the game, though he did like when there was music. He mostly enjoyed tromping around the den ("The Forbidden Room") and eating. We ended up having a rather snobbish looking set of snacks. Escagots in brioche and French brie on baguette. But I did make Buffalo drumsticks with homemade blue cheese dressing, which is a little more traditional. We also had plenty of cold beer. I was a little surprised that none of Curtis's man-friends had a Superbowl party, but all we need for a party is some good food.

P.S. My favorite ad was the Hulu evil-alien-plot ad, but there were a decent number of laugh-out-loud funny ads.

Give that Man a Medal

Curtis rocks. He's my hero. Why?

Because Curtis got up at 3 a.m. to watch the sick toddler who refused to go back to bed after I'd spent an hour cleaning him, his bed, and his bear, comforting him, and reading him a story.

Because Curtis cleaned vomit from the carpet, not once, but twice while I re-cleaned the aforementioned toddler.

And all that without even being asked.

In the Bathroom

Now that he's getting older, Thomas has become more competent and likes doing "grownup" things. I've been working with him on a bathroom routine. I guess you could say this is the start of potty training, but really, we're just building up some skills that are nice now, though they will be essential down the road. But here's our little ritual that we're doing 5-7 times a day.

1) I announce that we're going to go change a diaper and Thomas walks to the hall gate. I take down the gate and he walks into the bathroom.
2) He gets his step stool, puts it into position, climbs up on it and turns on the light.
3) I lift him up onto the counter and change his diaper. This is his least favorite part. Sometimes he plays with a toy to distract himself, sometimes we play games together, and sometimes he fights and I hold him down.
4) I put him back on the floor and remind him to wash his hands. He fetches his stool, moves it to the sink, and climbs up.
5) We wash our hands. I operate the knobs and soap since he can't reach, but he does scrub his own hands.
6) After we dry our hands, Thomas moves his stool and turns off the light.

Diaper changes now take significantly longer, but he enjoys it a whole lot more. He really feels like big stuff operating the light switch. Even with his stool, it's nearly at the edge of his reach.

Talking with Thomas - 21 Months

Thomas is becoming quite the talker. This week he made his first two-word sentance, "Bye-bye, dada." Since he never seems to be willing to talk into a phone or other recording device, here's a snapshot of his current speech. It's divided into actual English words, protowords, and other sounds and listed in roughly their order of appearance.

English Words
Pronunciation	Word	Meaning
ma-ma	Mama	That'd be me
da-da	Dada	Curtis, though it's interesting that Thomas should pick Dada, since we refer to Curtis as Bauji, which is Hindi for father. Why? Because we're weird.
bye/bye-bye	bye-bye	"goodbye" (when leaving a place, also to people who are leaving him), "going out" (as in, "We're going bye-bye")
uh-yeah/ya	yes	His default response to anything said to him.
maaa	Max	Curtis's parents' dog, but not dogs in general
foy-yer	flower	also used for trees and colorful shapes like hot-air balloons
wah-yer	water	water, cups, fountains, sprinklers, bath, but oddly enough, not usually "I'm thirsty." That's just fussing.
hi	hi	greetings
ice	eyes	Accompanied by a poke in the eye, we're working on that
Protowords Words that have a consistent meaning, but do not closely resemble adult words (or at least not enough for strangers to understand)
Pronunciation	"Word"	Meaning
tzah	"cat"	all cats, including ours
ha	"hot"	things that are hot, steam, bright lights
ha	"hair"	usually accompanied by pointing, to distinguish from "hot"
ya-ya	"light"	light, lamps, light bulbs
baah!	"bath"	Thomas loves to bathe. The idea of a bath is always VERY exciting
ruh-rar	"truck"	just about anything with wheels
Other Interesting Sounds
oh		Was just a sound, but has started to refer to cereal O's.
wow		Doesn't seem to mean anything, but often inserted into babbling
uh-oh		One of his favorite sounds. Used for all occasions.
"panting"		The sound a dog makes, and dogs in general
buh, buh, buh	"beep, beep"	The sound a truck makes
"clicking" with tongue against roof of mouth		done to imitate Ruthann
mao	"meow"	What the cat says

Thomas's words reflect the things that are important to him. What I find interesting are the things that aren't on this list. There's no "me" or "mine" or any other self-referential word. He doesn't have any word for Ruthann. There are no words about eating. He uses words to call attention to things that he sees, but almost never to ask for things. The most surprising to me is that he doesn't say "no." It's usually one of children's first words because it's so powerful, but Thomas just shakes his head when he doesn't want something. And believe you me, it's not because he never hears the word from me. It wouldn't surprise me if he believed that "sister" was pronounced "No! No smack."

Company's Comin'

The past week has been full of company. We had friends over on Saturday and Sunday, an overnight guest on Tuesday, and on Friday, I got a call that a friend was in the area. The Baby Circus and I met her at the Huntington Library and Gardens. Thomas loved walking around the Gardens, though his favorite part was the fire hydrant. I guess because it was on his level.

Pretty Baby

Ruthann's finally gotten to do something fun that her brother hasn't. She got to have her portrait taken. I'm not usually into the whole studio thing, but they offered my favorite price: free. I guess the Babies R Us photo studio was just really bored. I was glad that I had picked out cute outfits for the kids. The plan was to take a few shots of Ruthann, then Thomas, then both together. Thomas didn't like the raised area where the pictures were taken or the guy assistant. He just wanted to be held by Curtis. So Ruthann got more pictures taken and a free 5x7. She's such a cute, smiley thing.

New Year's Resolutions

Looking over last year's resolutions, Thomas and Beckham completed all of their resolutions and Curtis says that he's just going to copy his list over to this year. I only gained 14 pounds, then lost 48, but regained 10 and have now lost 2. Overall, a success, but I'd like to lose another 11 pounds. I made definite progress on praying more and getting stuff (mostly laundry) put away, but have completely lost control of the dishes and the paper clutter.

For 2009:
Curtis: Continue to lose weight, actually learn a language. Basically, the same stuff as last year. By the end of the year, be able to do 50 pushups in the morning and another 50 at night by ramping up one a day.

Jenny: Achieve what the chart calls a "healthy" weight. Get the children on a schedule that I can live with. Reclaim control over the housekeeping.

Thomas: Learn a language (English) (He's currently limited to mama, dada, bye-bye, uh-oh, wow, and Maa (for Max, his grandparents' dog)), Become an artist/craftsman.

Ruthann: Achieve what the chart calls a healthy weight. Get her heart fixed. Make some friends who want to do some free babysitting. Eat solid food. Learn to walk.

and we have a 2009 goal for the whole family: get a yard. There has to be a little piece of outside for Mr. Thomas to leave his toys out in. Even though we're on a month-to-month lease here, we need our leases to always coincide with school-years, so this is mostly a project for this summer. Plus by then, Ruthann will be ready for serious outside playing.

This Weekend She'll be 5 Months

Can't Imagine Why People Think They Look Alike

Election Thoughts

Curtis had the most profound thought of the evening:

"Do you realize that when this campaign started, we didn't have any children?"

Baby Circus as Circus Animals

It all started when Nonie found an adorable elephant costume at the goodwill. Then if Thomas had a costume, well, Ruthann needed one too. Then they needed somewhere to go in their costumes. So here they are at Curtis's HS football game on Saturday. Yeah, it was the day after, but when you're this adorable, it's o.k. to be the only people in costumes.

P.S. Ruthann's being held by a super-nice lady whose son is on the team.

Turning Japanese? I Really Think So

Here is my baby eating rice with chopsticks. Thomas and I were having dinner together and he wanted to eat my food just like I was. He had to have a pair of chopsticks for each hand and held both sticks together in his fist, but he did manage to get one grain at a time to stick to the sticks and go into his mouth. I've seen adults do about as well. To complete the scene, he also had some miso soup in a sippy cup. Babies are so cool.

At a consignment sale yesterday, I found a board book about sushi. I like this line "Miso in my sippy cup, tofu in my bowl. Crab and avocado fill my California roll." He does like tofu. Maybe a trip to the sushi buffet is in our future.

Would You Like Some Ham with Those Eggs?

Stupid Smart Baby

In the last week or so, Thomas has figured out:

* how to turn the fan off when it is hot and on when it is cold.

* how to lock the screen door when I go to the laundry room.

* how to shut the front door to keep any fresh air from coming in.
and worst of all
* that chocolate is really, really good.

Thomas's First Haircut

In honor of turning one and a half, I gave Thomas his first haircut. He got much blonder. Suddenly, he's looking more and more like a little boy instead of a baby.

Before:



After:

Family Fun

Happy Rosh Hashanah! While I'm still not entirely certain what exactly it is, Curtis got the day off for it. Many of his students were grumbling about spending the entire day at Temple, but we took the opportunity to head to the Getty. They were having an exhibition of Bernini's Baroque portrait sculpture. It was a fantastic exhibit. I felt priviliged to have seen sculptures that hadn't been displayed together since the 1600's. Just beautiful. We also saw the exhibit on humor in drawing, which was just ok. We wandered into a building that turned out to house the decorative arts. Somehow I'd never been there in all my visits to the Getty. I just fell in love with all the gorgeous furnishings. There's something about wood and inlay that just speaks to me.

The best part of the whole day was the babies. They were PERFECT. Ruthann fussed a little, then slept through most of it. Thomas waved at people, played with a few toys I brought, and sang happy songs. The docents got a kick out of him. I shoved them around in the double stroller, and they didn't seem to mind the confinement as long as we didn't stop for too long.

It was a fabulous day out.

My Momtourage

I just got back from my weekly mom's meeting. The group meets at a nearby church for two hours with childcare provided in the church nursery. It's so great to have time with other women who are also moms. I can get advice and stories from the moms with older kids and give advice to the moms with younger kids. Today was especially great because there were two other women with little babies there. One of them I feel is my alter ego literally my other self because she has two girls who are each two months older than my babies. We even have similar lifestyles. I just love bouncing things off of her and going, "You mean it's not just me."

Thomas was a big boy today and played in the nursery the whole time. I think it helped that there were lots of snacks today. He looked so big walking back in with the group of other kids. When the kids come back, it's adorable to see the women and children interacting. I can tell that I'm not the only one who discovers that even though we were only apart for two hours, I missed him and find myself happy to see him again.

A Mini-Vacation from Deciding

Last night, we failed to learn from the horrible experience of taking the babies to a restaurant for our anniversary and went to Red Lobster. It was actually wonderful. Ruthann stayed in her seat, looked around, made cute baby noises and smiles, and then went to sleep. Thomas liked looking at the lobsters in the tank during the long wait and played and ate happily at the table. Most people would have hated our table. In fact two different families rejected the other table in the room. It was in a small, echo-y porch where there was a loud birthday party going on at the other end. It was great for me, though, since Thomas's toddlerness just blended into the other noise.

An odd thing about being a housewife is that I live an almost completely unconstrained life. The only things I need to do certain times are for Curtis: provide dinner, and for the babies: feed them and change diapers. Everything else is done or not done by my choice. And it turns out that decision making is actually mentally tiring. It was actually quite refreshing to have my options severely curtailed. To only have to decide between the limited options of the menu rather than the vast possibilities of the items in my kitchen and nearby grocery store. It was also nice to just sit and eat. I didn't have to prepare the food, serve the food, clear the table or wash the dishes. Because of the noise, I didn't even need to carry on much of a conversation. It really felt like a vacation.

I think that this may be part of the reason that many people don't like to cook at home. It's too mentally tiring to make the decisions. Cooking at home from scratch saves huge amounts of money, but it requires a lot of decisions. The hardest part of making dinner every night and the part that takes me the longest is deciding what to make. Actually preparing the food usually takes under an hour. Without "convenience foods", nearly everything we've got at home needs to be combined with at least one other thing to be "dinner." But there are a huge number of possible combinations. If you've got pizza dough, you make pizza; a bread mix, you make bread. But if you've got flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and milk, you could make pizza crust, bread, pancakes, muffins, scones, pasta, crackers, pie crust, cookies, cakes, and the list goes on.

Cute Family

I propped Ruthann against Curtis to do something for Thomas. Thomas decided he wanted to crawl up onto the couch and sit down with Gilgamesh (the bear). Curtis fell asleep and Thomas started petting his sister's fuzzy head.

Worst Wake-up EVER!

I was asleep at 4:10 a.m. I was not even consiously aware of the sound that woke me up, but when I opened my eyes in a panic, the cat was THIS close to me and it had that look in its eyes. I jerked my head back and snatched at my pillow, but was too late, as the cat unleashed a hairball that got my pillow and the bottom sheet. Curtis was not amused to have to wake up and move so that I could strip the bed. Oh, and did I mention that they were BRAND NEW sheets? That we were sleeping on for the FIRST TIME EVER! 'Cause what I really needed in my life was more laundry.