couch jumping

J: So Sam, if you were going to be in the Olympics, what sport you would want to do?

S: I think... couch jumping.

J: I don’t think that’s a sport in the Olympics yet.

S (deadpan): I think it’s in the summer.

we love our nanny!

Sam had a school vacation last week, so he spent a lot of time at home with our nanny. They worked on this elaborate "sity":



There's a park in the middle with lots of trees and benches. And also, there are no roads, only train tracks.



One day I came home to this:



(home made soft pretzels dipped in chocolate with crushed faux-M&Ms on top)

and also this (took the pic the next morning because it was too dark):



Have I mentioned how much our nanny rocks?

Sam also had two playdates, both of which went well, and was in an experiment in our department. He was in a control group in a study on kids who have been through traumatic events. One of the questionnaires was a list of potentially stressful events that kids can experience, and one of the items on that list was "Has either of your parents even been in trouble with the law?" Sam: "Yeah. Sometimes." (Also: "Have your parents been divorced?" Sam: "What's divorced?" Experimenter: "It's when one of your parents has to go away and live somewhere else." Sam: "Yeah. My dad has to go away all the time. He has meetings in different countries and stuff.")

Frida, for her part, was so excited to have her favorite source of entertainment around ALL DAY LONG that she barely napped. And once her schedule is firmly established again it'll be just about time for us to go to FL...

She's been eating a lot more (solids, that is), having recently tried, and liked, avocado. This week's new foods: chicken (poached then pureed) and millet (ground then boiled). I'm also going to have to buy some jarred food, because when we're out to eat and she doesn't get anything, she gets notably upset. Packing cubes of frozen pureed food is a bit too involved for me, and she's not quite ready to just eat mashed versions of whatever we're having.

We've been watching the Olympics most evenings, and a couple of times Sam has fallen asleep on the couch watching. This pic, though, was after we'd just gotten home from visiting friends in their brand-new house (well, brand-new to them, and newly-renovated, and absolutely gorgeous). It wasn't very late, but it had been a long day:

happy love

Frida is 13 lbs, 12 oz. And just over 25 inches long. For comparison: Sam was 15 lbs, 9 oz. at TWO MONTHS. The load of fuzzibunz (cloth diapers) I bought from Craig's List before she was born, which is supposed to fit from ca. 15 through 30 lbs, which I figured would be most of her diaper-wearing life? Still too big. Nobody's worried: she is happy and energetic and rolling and smiling and doing everything six-month-olds are supposed to do. She's just little. Maybe she takes after her Grandma (she certainly has her startle reflex (-: ).

But she's been cleared for just about all solid foods-- veggies, fruits, cereals, meat, salmon-- and as much as she will eat. So, twice a day or thereabouts, this is what Bean looks like:





(This was peas, with rice cereal.) Isn't that a beautiful sweater? Somebody knitted it for my brother or for me, and my mother saved it. Sam didn't wear it because he was allergic to wool-- and it probably would have been small for him-- but Beanie wears it all the time.

Yesterday I tried to take some better pics of Frida, and to capture her thousand-watt but tough-to-photograph smile. This came closest:



Mostly though she wanted to roll around and play:





(Sometimes I think she looks a little like Uncle Markus did when he was a baby-- slightly Asian-shaped eyes, but fair and with fuzzy blond hair-- which is kind of funny because his baby Emma looks a little like I did as a baby.)


As usual, Sam wanted in on the action:




I made heart-shaped pancakes this morning, in a stab at mom-geekery. With raspberry syrup (i.e. raspberry jam microwaved with a bit of orange juice). So cute:




Felt balls! The blue one with the orange-red heart has "XOXO" going around it, and Sam's has a heart on the back and another spiral on the bottom:

miscellaneous

Because I said I would: The rest of the Las Vegas trip was fine. We went to a children's museum that was raved about online, but getting there was an adventure... parts of Las Vegas are pretty sketchy, let's leave it at that. Upon arriving, figuring we'd at least take a cab back, we were informed by the nice folks at the desk that when they've tried calling cabs for people in the past, they never show up. So we had about 20 minutes at the (small, underwhelming) museum before we had to hoof it back to the bus depot. Friends of ours came from LA to see us (yay Brett and Val!) so we had a very nice time hanging out with them, generally one of us while the other was presenting/schmoozing at the conference. On the last night, we went out to one of the fabled casino buffets with J's lab and both kids... Sam had only adjusted a little bit to the 3-hour time difference, so as we stood in line at 7:45PM he was fading fast. At one point as he was eating I glanced at him to see him nodding off, eyes closed, while still chewing. I made sure he stayed awake to finish the mouthful, then hefted him onto my lap, where he sprawled, sound asleep, through the rest of dinner. Meanwhile, Bean jumped and socialized enthusiastically in the laps of various people around the table, being traded off while folks went back for seconds (and thirds) of ok-but-why-do-people-rave-about-this food. I never thought I'd say this, but I feel like I'd go back to Vegas again, given the chance (i.e. another conference there), just to have the grown-up version of the experience for a night or two... Cirque du Soleil show, nice dinner out, Bellagio fountains viewed not just from the cab window while driving by, etc. Eh, maybe someday.

Kid update: Bean is in full-on stranger-charming thousand-watt smile mode-- when I took her for a passport photo recently (upcoming conference in Montreal) she lay calmly on the white piece of cardstock they lay on the carpet for baby photos and beamed, until the Passport Photo Dude said she could come back any time. Her 6-month ped. appointment is this week, so we'll have an update on her stats. Sam, meanwhile, is full of clever, creative word usages, and is still notably sweet and affectionate. For the past couple of weeks, he has told me occasionally to guess how much he loves me, and then he'll answer extravagantly. Recently: "I love you as much as all the love in the world, AND all the love in your imagination, AND a truck full, AND a container full."

In the car, he'll announce, "An idea just flew into my head!" (And then expound at length on said idea.)

He asks about the meanings of words a lot. Recent curiousities: marvelous (from Big Bird's singing of abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz), and convenient. When I explained the meaning of convenient, Sam thought for a moment, then wanted to know why it existed when we already have the word handy.

He's also very sweet with Frida... he loves to entertain her, as shown in the previous post, but he also tries to help her out if she's unhappy (unless she's doing her patented Car Freak Out, in which case he zones out... there really is no other way to deal). A few days ago, he held out his hand to her, saying apologetically, "All I have for you is a handful of love!" Here he is entertaining her in a monster get-up. (Completed mid-way through with a John Deere cap.)




Sam's also loving his eurhythmics class, which seems much better suited to his temperament than the group piano lesson he was taking in the fall/winter... more movement and creativity, less sitting and attending.

I put together the crib this weekend (J. was gone, and I got tired of looking at the parts, brought up from the basement two weeks ago... and was pretty pleased with my solo Ikea-assembly prowess, I have to admit, aided only by Sam helping find the right hardware bits from the plastic baggy). So now Bean can turn over in her sleep-- that is, when she's not in our bed.

videos

More re. Vegas later. For now, two little videos. First: Bean thinks her brother is the coolest thing ever. Also the most entertaining:

And then, the bookstore Sam made with Stephanie (our nanny) today, complete with signs:


Hope you are all well and warm.

Vegas, (with) baby (and kid)

It's funny explaining to a 4-year-old what gambling is.
me: "People spend a lot of money playing games with a chance to win a lot more money"
Sam: "That sounds great! then you can buy a lot of expensive things!"
me: "Well, but most people don't win, so they just lose a lot of money trying."
Sam: "So why do they do it then?"
me: "Well, some people think it's fun."

After spending the morning covering his ears against the onslaught of noise while trying to win tickets at the arcade at Circus Circus (made even worse by the fact that loud noises and flashing lights happened in response to the very acts that won tickets), Sam just nibbled a bit at lunch. We hung out in the hotel room for a while after that, "resting", and then J. joined us for the afternoon-- took a cab to see the Shark Reef, then another cab to go to an outdoor playground (best thing we did all day). (Hadn't realized that this is such a car-centered town! we should have rented a car. Oh well.) We had dinner there after Sam ran around for a bit, but he was uninterested even in the dumplings we got (!!). Then after 3 bites of pizza he barfed copiously all over himself and the seat. We cleaned him up in the bathroom, boxed up the rest of dinner, left a big tip, and made a quick exit. On the cab ride back (with plastic bag at the ready), we at least got to see the Strip all lit up. He seems better now, crashed out on the pull-out couch. Poor exhausted little guy. Let's hope it's just exhaustion and not a bug-- fingers crossed.

Bean is in much better shape, but then jetlag and long trip mean a lot less when you just sleep and eat and poop wherever and whenever, and weird hyperstimulating surroundings are not so bad when you see them snuggled against all the sensory familiarity of mom or dad. We'll see how she does tomorrow with J. (and bottles), since I'll be at the conference for a few 2 or 3-hour chunks.

signs, maps, caterpillars

Sam's chart phase extended into signs. See if you can figure this one out:



Got it? "No feet on the grass." There have been DOZENS of signs.

Yesterday he got all self-referential:



("No do-not-allowed signs allowed!")

And the other charts, diagrams, and illustrations continue. Can you guess this one?



It's the digestive system! It was featured in a recently-Netflix'd The Magic Schoolbus (GREAT show, for anyone else with science-minded kids). Those gray things are teeth; the mouth leads to the esophagus and the stomach, with food and stomach acid, then the small and large intestines, and then Sam wrote "no" to indicate that the Magic Schoolbus and its passengers did NOT get released into the toilet.

This next one is a map of our house. Not to scale (those little gray and yellow boxes in the upper left are our respective bedrooms), but all the rooms are on there in their approximate locations.



a geyser:



Recently a periscope caterpillar visited our house:



And this evening after dinner the caterpillar came back, sans periscope, to examine the Bean:



She was delighted to make its acquaintance (as she is generally delighted to make anyone's acquaintance):



Bean's rolling and (assisted, of course) jumping continue. And she gets bored, now, just watching the world go by, so all of the old baby toys, and a handful of new ones, are up from the basement/unpacked/out:



(She can be very serious when she's playing.)

She and the nanny go for a walk at least once a day, and then they take the bus across town to go get Sam. It all seems to work very well (and it's so nice to come home to happy, engaged kids).

Frida had pumpkin for the first time this past week (and several times since), and likes it best mashed into her rice cereal. Banana was not a hit.

We're heading to Las Vegas for the second half of this week-- J. and I are both presenting at a conference, and figured we'd bring the kids. It should be some combination of fun and horrifying (but I think that would be true of Las Vegas with or without kids). Fortunately our presentations are not at the same time. Also, we were alerted to the presence of bedbugs in some LV hotels by a savvy postdoc of J's, so we switched hotels after finding a couple of reports of bugs in the one we'd originally reserved. [shudder] Wish us luck!

Two final notes of the crafty/home-y variety: First, I was inspired by this post on one of my favorite-ever blogs to start baking bread, and have done so twice (two batches, so far 5 loaves with one final loaf's worth of dough in the fridge). It's FANTASTIC. I think I am now officially a regular bread baker. Had never made it before, and despite being left out to rest an hour too long twice, it's been very good each time. (I used a mix of 2/3 white and 1/3 wheat flour, with wheat germ and ground flax seed, and leaving out the vinegar since none of us really likes sourdough.)

And second, I have no idea where I got in my head that I wanted to make felt balls (not from that blog, which I only found after searching for instructions), but I did, and was obsessed for a week, until my supplies arrived in the mail. It was a good intuition, though-- I love them. Have made a few; will post pics in a bit.

So, things have gotten extra crunchy around here-- flax seed in bread and wool felt in balls. (And a sorry, sorry election result, but I won't get into that here. Sigh.)

Sam doesn't usually fall asleep with a stuffed animal, but Boo has made a resurgence recently, and one night when I went in to turn off Sam's light, I found this:



(Boo's full name is Deshaboo Hallay. Boo for short. I thought I'd blogged about this when he was first named (by Sam, in case that's not obvious), but I can't find the post, so maybe it was never written.)