The boy is ready for Christmas

We got a surround-sound stereo system for the living room from Dan's parents, which they had us just order ourselves, and Dan has spent the last two days assembling it. At the same time, V has been getting a slow stream of Christmas presents from his old babysitter Marissa and from school, and my friend Lise has given him a duplo advent calendar (this is really cool- she wrapped up a bunch of duplo legos individually, numbered them 1 to 25, and tied them to a braided cord for him to pull off and open every morning). So the child is not lacking new stuff to play with. Of course, though, he's all about the giant styrofoam blocks that were packed in the stereo box.

This morning, he got up at 6:40 (argh! on a Sunday! Fresh hell!) to play some more with them. In the middle of building the millionth tower, he turned to me and said, "I think Manny wants styrofoam for Christmas, just like me. I'm going to get him styrofoam." (Manny is the mammoth from Ice Age, his current favorite movie). Then I thought about how I wanted him to help pick out Mom Wayland's gift and asked if he wanted to go do that with me today. He said "NO! Grandma Jeanne wants styrofoam too! I'm going to get her styrofoam!"

Sorry I gave it away, Mom. ;) Oh, and now you can see his haircut, too!

Someone needs a haircut

And it will happen on Tuesday, but thought you'd like to see the craziness of V looking like a Beatle.

October visit to the pumpkin patch

Photos from Mom and Paul's visit in October, when we went out to Didier Farms (in Deerfield?) to the pumpkin patch. Which these days includes rides, bounce-houses, petting zoo, and so forth.

Halloween, and a new camera, part 2!

And a comment on the time I'm posting these, that extra hour from daylight savings is only fun if you don't have small children. ;-)

Halloween, and a new camera!

This is Halloween morning, after pumpkin waffles.

Sunday night

We got Vincent his birthday big boy bed this weekend- only six months late. Good thing he can't read a calendar and is easily distracted! ;-) It was a great success. Though when we were taking apart his crib, he wanted us to set it up in the living room. He took a nap in it yesterday for the first sleep, and we went off to spend a couple of hours at the mall getting new cell phones (why, why does it always take at least two hours to do this? It took Robbie THREE HOURS when his phone was stolen!). Anyway, V woke up before we got back and Uncle Robbie took care of him for a few minutes, but V had a terrific nap and was totally happy about his new room.

Before he went to bed last night for the first time, he asked if he could get up by himself in the morning. I'm thinking that this is how it starts and next thing I know he'll be standing next to me at 4 a.m. asking for cereal, but I said, Yup, you can get up by yourself in the morning. And he got really sad and said but I don't WANT to get up ALONE! Of course I told him I would come get him up in the morning, same as always, he didn't HAVE to get up alone. So we dodged the bullet there, for the time being.

So I got him up this morning, and he was so excited about the whole thing, he asked, Can I keep my big boy bed? It was adorable. So good times around here. Can't wait for our camera to arrive so I can show off his new room.

Chopper

Our upstairs neighbors are extremely hip. They have three kids, and the oldest one (who wears Prada clothes to third grade) just got a new bike. Vincent has been coveting all of the kid's bikes in our building (there are two third graders, two kindergartners, and one one year old in the two condos above us), but Duncan's is by far the coolest. So when he got a new one, Duncan and his folks told Vincent that he could start riding Duncan's Old Bike (this is what Vincent calls it). So we put training wheels on it and that's how we've been spending every afternoon after school. We get home around 5, and Dan takes V out on the bike, he rides it over to the track around the corner and goes around the track. Yesterday I took him as Dan had a defense so he couldn't get home before 6:30, and V pretty much rode the whole way around the track by himself!

I don't have pictures because we still haven't gotten a new camera yet (it's been broken since our trip to Florida to visit Mom and Paul in MARCH!!!), but here is a picture of the bike from Amazon. See what I mean about our hip neighbors?

I also only have a few minutes before V wakes up, so you'll have to cut and paste this link, as I don't have time to figure out how to put a link in. Jil? A little help?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000F9777U/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=3375251&s=sporting-goods

First sick day, though I'm not sure it wasn't first nightmare day

V usually sleeps like a rock, twelve hours, 7 to 7 every night. Last night, though, he started hollering and crying for me at 10 (which was actually after I had gone to bed). I went in and he was so sad so I put him on my lap and cuddled him, and he was SO hot. I thought he might have a fever, and he was asking for a drink of water, so I called for Dan who brought in water, Motrin, and the thermometer. Too bad the thermometer battery was dead, but we gave him the Motrin anyway, and sent Robbie to the drugstore to buy a new one (he was hanging out playing video games when this all happened, so it wasn't like I woke him up. Though he probably would have gotten up for V). By the time he got back with a new thermometer, V didn't have a fever, and went back to sleep (though he woke up a bit later having to go to the bathroom, good job on not peeing in your sleep, buddy!). We decided that if he had a fever this morning when the Motrin wore off, we'd keep him home.

So this morning, I go in at 7, when we would normally be getting cereal and getting ready for school, and he's still out cold. I took his temp again and it was totally normal, but he was so sleepy, I just let him sleep and Dan agreed to stay home with him today and we'd see how it went. Well, he slept til 8, and today told Dan all about how the reason he was hollering for me was that he had had a terrible nightmare, and I needed to go help him because the big bad wolf was climbing up his crib four times, FOUR TIMES!, and I needed to put the rail down to squash it. (And yes, he is still in a crib, I have gotten new linens for his big boy bed, and we've tentatively picked it out, but we need to go to the store and look at it as a family, which Dan couldn't do last weekend, something about a hundred mile bike race..., but we ARE going this weekend. I promise we are not trying to stunt his development or something. )

So apparently he got a day off from school because of nightmares. It gets better: our preschool instituted a policy that if a kid has a fever and a cough (and V always seems to have a cough lately), then the kid must stay home for TEN DAYS. (They better be counting weekends too). So even though I didn't know for sure, the fact that I said "I think he did, though he's fine this morning" when they asked me if V had a fever, well that could mean I'm working from home at least part of the time for the next week and a half. We'll see. Fortunately I'm not teaching so I won't be dropping the ball for my students. So it's possible he gets a week and a half off from school thanks to the big bad wolf.

In other news: the beluga whales are pregnant at the Shedd Aquarium, where Robbie is doing his internship. They're literally about to go any moment. So we're sitting around tonight and every time his phone buzzes with a text message or email we call out, "Beluga babies?", but no dice. He's very excited and nervous. It's pretty funny.

Saturday morning

Hi there,

Yesterday when I dropped V at school the morning teacher told me that he is the best block builder she'd ever seen. :) Apparently he goes straight to the blocks in the a.m. and just has these ideas in his head of towers and buildings and builds these really beautiful symmetrical things while all the other kids who play with the blocks pile them up haphazardly. She said he's a little engineer.

I thought the grandparents (and uncle) would like that little bit of bragging.

(To balance it out, he also got in big trouble yesterday at school for calling his friends names, laughing when he was told to stop and ignoring the teacher, and generally not listening. Yep, my superstar...)

Holy cow start a new job and three months disappear!

I will try to write more regularly, people. :) I have ten minutes before I have to get ready for bed, so here is a gem from today's car ride home. We left school an hour late because I had a parent's council meeting. Normally if Vincent is good at school (listens well, keeps his hands to himself, takes a good nap, etc. etc.) we stop at the drive-through Baskin-Robbins and get him a little kid's cone on the way home. He usually eats about three bites then either Dan or I get to finish it. But tonight, there was just enough time to get home and eat dinner, so when Vincent asked if we could go for ice cream, I said that we were really late but we would go tomorrow. Well all hell broke loose and he cried and cried and I told him I was SORRY and we'll have ice cream after dinner at home, until finally he wailed "IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!!" Which I had never heard him say before so I asked him, "What? What doesn't make sense?" And he goes, "I didn't dump any wood chips in the water fountain, but I'm NOT GETTING ANY ICE CREAM!!!!!!! It doesn't make sense!" I don't know if you find this as funny as I did. I've never heard him use the word "sense", much less exactly properly, so I was blown away. But before you feel badly for him, we came home, he ate a huge meal of awesome pulled pork tacos his dad had made, and then he got a piece of chocolate AND a bowl of the last of the homemade mango sorbet. :)

Preschool!

We had our preschool orientation this morning. Since we were out of milk and bread when we got up (thanks, Uncle Robbie!), Vincent and I were planning to go to the diner down the street for breakfast when Dan got up and decided to come along too! So it was a rare three-in-the-family morning, and really fun. The diner is next to the metra stop, so we watched the commuters go by and the trains pull in (and the occasional express fly by without stopping). V was such a good big boy, he ate almost the whole waffle, the egg, the bacon, and the sausage, then stole some of my eggs too.

We drove over to school, the whole way V was so excited talking about how he's going to go to school with mommy, mommy goes to school in HER building and Vincent would go to school in HIS building and so on, and kept saying he was so! excited! for! school! Pretty much right up until he got there. Then it was clingon time. We stayed in the room with him for about five minutes and then they were having "rug time" when everyone sits on their spot on the rug (marked by a different colored shape) and they sing and talk about the day ahead of them, etc. So V was sitting there quietly watching while we and another set of parents were in the back, when the director's assistant came and got us to go do paperwork. I didn't know how long we'd be gone, so I just went over to V and whispered in his ear to be sure to go tell the teacher if he had to go potty (he had refused to go earlier, all excited to go on the new! toilet! at! school!), and that we would be back soon.

So we went and it turned out to be about an hour of forms and reviewing policies and signing things. I was getting pretty anxious to see V, mostly because he hadn't gone to the bathroom yet today and I had no idea if he would be confident enough to speak up and ask. So we went back and V seemed fine, ran up and asked if we were leaving now, but as he turned away he was messing with his backside, and I thought hmmm. So I went over to his teacher and asked if he had gone, and she said that he had, he went to her and said he had to go so she sent him off to the little bathroom there in the classroom. Which is how I found out that they do not go in there with them, the kids are entirely on their own. (We pull his pants down for him and put him up on the potty, and when he poops we still wipe him off). So apparently he had gone in there, tried to pull down his shorts himself, but I'm guessing he didn't get them down far enough because he peed all over the back of his underwear and shorts. Then he apparently put them back on. So he was messing with his backside because he was wearing damp underwear!!! It looks like we're going to have a very busy couple of weeks of teaching him the finer details of this potty thing. The policy at the center is that they do not touch the kids at all. I just got off the phone with the teacher from the younger kids room where they do potty training, getting pointers from her on what to do.

Anyway, the teacher said that he had cried some when we were gone but then he was ok. As we went home, he kept telling us that he had "cried and cried because mommy and daddy were gone and we didn't come back". He also said that he was all alone there, without anyone to play with, and we asked him about the other dozen or so other kids and he said, oh yeah. It was kind of funny, actually. I just wish we had prepared him better for the hour or so alone. I really didnt' know that was going to happen.

It's also finally sunk in with Dan what a transition this is going to be for the boy. I plan to have Marissa here in the afternoons in July and August and have V go to half-days to get used to the idea, then transition to full days in September. Dan thought it was dumb, until we were there and it hit him that if I was planning to drop Vincent off at 7:30 in the morning five days a week, that meant V would be having to get up at 6:30, no hanging out time for an hour in the morning, no leisurely breakfasts, no TV or DVD, just up and eat and out. At least being able to come home for nap and unwinding in the afternoon will make this a little less of a shock, he now agrees. I'd like Dan to try to move his schedule a little earlier to help out, since he won't have anywhere to be in the morning and I'll be trying to get ready for work, but I'm not hopeful. I think I'm going to be continuing to do the morning routine by myself every morning, even if it gets exponentially more complicated and difficult. I'm pretty stressed out at the thought, but I'll just do what I have to do and make it work somehow. I'm sure it won't be as bad as it seems right now. Getting any exercise is going to require me to get up at 5 a.m., though.

I do think that Vincent is going to love it at school. After he said for the millionth time in the car that he was sad and cried and cried when we were gone and how he was all alone and he didn't like school, we asked him if he made any friends and he perked right up and said YES! I played with boys and girls!! So I think he'll be fine.

Saturday

This morning it was drizzling and cold (55 degrees), so Vincent and I watched a lot of Thomas the tank engine while Ivan snoozed on the rug. By 10 a.m., though, Ivan needed to go out and I was pretty sick of the couch, so I convinced V to give up Bob the builder and we went out for a long jog in what was now a decent rain. The jogging stroller has a great rain cover you can put on it, though it could use a defrost switch. There was an old (clean) diaper left over in the basket of the stroller so I occasionally stopped to wipe the rain off of the front and the fog off the underneath part. We did our usual route, from our house over to the Rockwell Street el stop, which is at street level so has gates and lights flashing, where we always stop and wait for the trains to come and go (this time under a tree so we weren't getting rained on while just standing there, somehow it's only not uncomfortable when running), then we go over the bridge over the Chicago river, then run around Blogejovich's neighborhood on the west side of the river. It's really nice over there and there are a lot of trees so again the rain doesn't come down as hard.

I haven't been running much since my little race at the end of April, so coming back I was really, really tired and kept walking. V kept yelling "NO MOMMY! YOU HAVE TO RUN! YOU HAVE TO RUN FAST!!!!" I was like, thanks buddy. We've been out for an hour here.

Got home, put the boy to bed for his nap, and took one myself. First time in a long time I've felt like I have time to do that!

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday?

Really? It's been almost five days? Sorry about that!

We've had a fun and busy week. Vincent and I have been walking the dog together every morning, two blocks down, then one long block over, then back up and over to complete the square. The only way I can get him to leave the house is by allowing him to bring his new battery-operated electric guitar (Marissa's birthday present to him, it plays and everything), and putting sandals right on over his footie pajamas. So he looks pretty spectacular walking down the street in his bright green pj's strumming his guitar.

Marissa has been coming every afternoon while I go in to school to try to wrap up all the loose ends before I start my new gig in July. She and Vincent have been playing over at Lincoln's house a lot. They have a gigantic playground thing, like a swingset but with a climbing wall and a bunch of cool things like that, in the backyard so V is obsessed with going over there. She interviewed for a new nanny position, since in the fall V will be starting school and we won't have him home at all. I hope she finds something soon, as I don't think she and her fiance have any sort of savings to cushion the blow if she stops bringing in money. It's a tough time to be on the job market for anything.

Vincent is getting trained along with Ivan. Ivan is learning to spin in a circle, back up, and scootch along the floor. Vincent is learning to pet the dog gently and not hit him or pull his fur or tail. They are about equally motivated and receive the same treats for behaviors: puffed wheat cereal. Good thing Robbie's here until October, he may need the whole time for these two guys.

Sunday/Monday

Vincent and I went back to the Raven (see previous post) on Sunday. We got his face painted like a tiger (so he went around roaring at everyone, pretty funny), and he actually started going through the whole long two story (!!) bounce house on his own. He was in that thing for three hours, I think, though he took breaks to go back to the little petting zoo and go listen to the music (every band, I think there were five while we were there, covered that "867-5309 Jenny" song from the early 80's, it seemed).

(Unrelated to Vincent stories but speaking of bands, my friend Staci wants me to meet up with her while V and I are in Bath and go see some band she loves. They are playing at Dundee Raceway, and Staci actually said, "It's one of their best venues, pretty much the entire audience has all their teeth!". I told her that I'd have to give that one some serious consideration.)

This morning Vincent and I went swimming at the Welles Park pool across from the library. It's indoors and huge and really quite nice for being a Chicago Park District pool. We went with Michelle and her son Max, neighbors of ours in the condo complex. Max is the one who is a year and a half younger than V and totally idolizes him. Apparently the park district has swimming lessons for kids V's age starting in the fall. Though I am also thinking of the little tots soccer league (soccer! for 3 year olds! Can you imagine?) which may conflict. It would be good for him to learn to swim. We have to get him a life jacket for Keuka Lake.

Gotta run, beer is waiting on the Gershfeld's back porch. I could get used to this tenured thing! :)

Saturday

Dan and I took Vincent to the playground around the corner this morning-- Dan left for a week-long conference this afternoon on the outer banks of North Carolina (tough life, this academic gig!) so he wanted to spend some time with the boy before being gone for so long. He'll get back and Vincent and I leave for upstate NY less than a week later for ten days or so, then Dan will drive out to meet us and we'll visit with some friends for a week before coming back to Chicago in early July. Phew! Where was I?

So V was adorable at the park showing his daddy all his new stunts that he can do, and we generally had a terrific time. After his nap, I took Vincent back to the park for the annual neighborhood festival called the Raven (our neighborhood is Ravenswood). They have two inflatable moonwalk like things, which Vincent went totally berserk jumping in. They also had a small petting zoo, which Vincent LOVED, he hung out with a huge llama, and pairs of donkeys, chickens, and calves, and many goats and sheep. After much hand-sanitizing ;) we split a funnel cake. Apparently fried dough is an east coast invention, in the midwest they have funnel cake, maybe they drop the dough through a funnel into the hot oil to fry? Either way it's the same powdered sugar basic result, though funnel cake has more fried outside than doughy inside, which I think is kind of a loss. Easier to eat the funnel cake though... We go back tomorrow, hopefully it will be warmer (today it was 60 degrees and rained on and off, blech).

So now it's just me, Vincent, and Uncle Robbie for the next week. Robbie is on a training tear, he is teaching Ivan all kinds of stuff. Tonight it was "come", "speak", and "target" (which involves Ivan touching his nose to your fist, which means you can get him to go anywhere). Ivan is so excited about it he's becoming insufferable for the attention. He keeps going up to Robbie and sitting in front of him expectantly. Really funny.

Thursday part II (WARNING: adult content)

Today V was running around naked and I actually had to say this out loud: "It's not nice to put your penis on the dog."

Wednesday

In the morning, I took Vincent to Hermitage Park, which is a 15 minute walk away, with the stroller, where we could only stay 10 minutes before we had to walk home to meet Marissa (the sitter). He had been obsessed with the place, and even though we could be there for a short time and it's never got many kids there (in this case, only one besides V), that's what we did.

Uncle Robbie is staying with us, and he eats a LOT. So he finished off the box of Cinnamon Life, not realizing that's V's current favorite, and when V found out he said he was going to yell at Uncle Robbie. Sure enough, when Robbie came home from the aquarium, V ran up to him and full-on scolded him, saying that he is not allowed to eat ANYTHING. Then he told Robbie, "You suck!" I'm blaming Uncle Robbie for that one, which merited a very grave discussion with Vincent.

Ivan is blowing his coat, and I brushed enough fur off of him yesterday to fill a laundry basket. V likes to play with it and make giant piles using his digger. He calls it the bad grass that we took off of Ivan, because the landscapers killed all of our grass over Memorial Day weekend (they dumped a bad batch of fertilizer on it and literally killed everything), so they have been here for the last few days, tearing up the entire lawn and laying down new sod, a noisy and kind of spectacular sight for a 3 year old.

Tuesday

Tantrums. LOTS of tantrums.

Sunday

Another lovely day outside for us. Vincent and I went over to the Gershfeld's Sunday morning, they are our friends who used to live in our building until they bought a house across the alley. Now they have a beautiful backyard with a great deck, though their house address is actually on Ashland so the front of the house opens out onto a very busy and noisy street, with no front yard to speak of, just high fence and littered sidewalk. But the backyard, they decided, made it worth it. As their friend who gets to come over and visit all the time, I would agree. ;)

Anyway, the Gershfelds have two boys, Oscar is a year and a half older than Vincent and Levi is three years older. The three of them have so much fun running around and playing with bubbles and the sandbox and playdoh. I hung out with Liz and she was showing me the raised bed they just built. They saved a couple of squares of it for Vincent, it was so nice of them. Of course, V had zero patience or the whole planting thing so Liz and I did carrots and lettuce on his behalf. V and Oscar were champion waterers, though, and actually watered every plant in the backyard with little watering cans. So cute.

After nap, I took Vincent back to Chase Park. He is really into the big swings these days, so I spend a lot of time pushing and pushing and pushing. We also ran around on he baseball field kicking a ball around pretending to play soccer. He was having a really hard time with himself during every transition (leavign home to go to Oscar and Levi's, coming home from the Gershfelds, going to the park, coming home from the park) yesterday, there was a lot of screaming and tantrums. Fun. This is even with giving him plenty of warning and lots of choices about how the inevitable change occurs. On the bright side, the kid actually dressed himself yesterday for the first time and I think he is fully, completely potty-trained now. Hooray!

Saturday

Vincent and I spent quality time outdoors today. We went to Chase Park, a playground that is around the corner from us and close enough that V can either walk or ride his tricycle while I walk alongside. There are three younger kids in our building, two girls and a boy (all different parents), who all happened to be outside in the courtyard playing as we left on our way to the park. The boy, Max, is 20 months old and idolizes Vincent. It's adorable to watch him follow Vincent around. He was SO sad when he found out that V was going to the park that he and his dad ended up joining us there, where Vincent demonstrated all kinds of feats of bravery and Max tried very hard to imitate them all. Sorry, Max's parents!

Then after nap Vincent and I headed out to Elmhurst for an afternoon of visiting with some other friends of mine who have kids the same age as Vincent. He got to jump on a real trampoline for the first time! Trampolines are nothing like the ones from my childhood-- these are enclosed by a net that actually separates the bouncing part from the hard edge. V had a blast but freaked out and wanted to get out any time anther kid joined him. It was a 50 minute drive each way, hence these are not friends we see often, but lucky for us the traffic wasn't too bad and the whining on the way home was even minimal, though he got to bed an hour late.

Hope you're all having a great weekend. :)

Cardinals Game (Memorial Day weekend)

It's kind of great that he's been to a Cardinals game every summer since he was born (which means that yes, his first baseball game was at about 3 months old), and each year his St Louis grandparents get him a new Cardinals shirt. Maybe I should do a three year retrospective. ;)

Details: the horses were Budweiser Clydesdales, if that wasn't obvious from the furry feet. The big baseball he was standing on was in the kids play area behind center field. Finally, he was passed out asleep for probably an hour, during which there was a double hit with an almost tying RBI and much yelling that he slept through.

These will be the last round of photos until we get the camera fixed (or my mom can send some from V's birthday party)... enjoy! There are a few that will get framed for my new office, I think. :)

St. Louis Transportation Museum (Memorial Day weekend 2009)

Spent the weekend in St Louis, and since our camera broke over spring break (sand?) we have been without pictures. Luckily grandparents have lots (mom and Paul have the 3 year old birthday party ones). So this post will be all pictures from the transportation museum in St Louis, which is basically a lot of trains (including a Big Boy engine) parked outside for folks to climb in and look at. This is my second time there, my dad and stepmom and Dan's folks and Dan and I all went a few years ago. This time was much better- it was NOT close to 100 degrees and totally humid with the midday sun pounding down. :) 5 pm and mid 80's makes the whole "Let's stand around without any shade and look at old trains" thing bearable! That and having a three year old who was SO EXCITED to see all the trains and be allowed to actually touch them.

Pictures from Nana (many more to follow)

First blog post

Hi all,

At Jil's request I am starting a blog. It will, in all likelihood, be painfully lame and include many accounts of what we had for dinner and what Vincent said today. Actually that sounds kind of awesome, so I take it back. This will likely be the BEST BLOG YOU'VE EVER READ. After, Jungle Jil, of course. ;) It will also be a way for Jil to keep up with life here in Chicago.

So my grad school friend and housemate Tara has been in town from Glasgow, Scotland for the last two weeks for work. She came up for dinner last night (clam sauce! Green beans! Vincent-made chocolate chip cookies!) and then back tonight for dinner again, this time with Nate, a great friend of ours from grad school as well, who is finishing a long (five year) postdoc at University of Chicago. U of C is really far from here psychologically, though only 40 minutes by car, so I have seen Nate twice since we moved here six years ago. We are also in utterly different places in life, so maybe things would be different if he were not single and living a sort of bare-bones intellectual Hyde Park life. At any rate, it was great to see them and Vincent had a blast once he decided he liked Nate. After dinner we took Ivan for a long walk around the neighborhood and it was so great to be around friends. I have almost no social life here, it's always just work, dinner with the boy and Dan, then TV or read until bed while Dan works. But now that I have tenure maybe that will change...

The sitter is off this week so I am exhausted and going to bed now. :)