Houston, We Have a Problem

It turns out Gabe has a jealous streak. A serious jealous streak. When I arrived at school on Friday afternoon to pick him up, he was cheerfully playing with a drum and could barely be bothered to look up and say hi to me. So I sat down on the grass beside him and watched the drumming, amused at my musical son. After I had been sitting for about, oh, eighteen seconds, three other children from his class came and sat down on my lap. One sat right in the middle, and the other two perched on each of my knees. It was absolutely charming and I loved it. Of course, I have known these children since they were only a few months old, and it amuses me to no end that they are now walking, talking little people.

After a minute or two Gabe looked up from his drum-playing to see his friends sitting on my lap, and he was not amused. Not one little bit. He stood up, threw the drum to the ground, and ran the whole distance between us (approximately five feet) in just a few seconds, shouting, "No! Mine! Move!" and then trying to push his tiny friends off of my lap. "No! Mine! Move!" he cried, getting more and more frustrated.

I scooped him up in my arms rather awkwardly, not wanting to dislodge his friends (who showed absolutely no signs of moving and looked utterly unperturbed by his protests), and managed to hold him sort of against the side of my body as I explained that yes, I was indeed his mommy but there was room for everyone to sit and it's nice to share and we don't push our friends ever no we do not push.

I would write this off as an isolated incident, but it wasn't and it's not. He doesn't like me to hold other babies or toddlers or kids. Ever ever ever. In the past week he has been angry about my holding: (i) his cousin P; (ii) our friends' two-month-old son; (iii) our friends' one-year-old daughter; and (iv) Gabe's friend L who is three and who we regularly see for playdates. His protests are always some version of the aforementioned "No! Mine! Move!" (He will sometimes mix it up by locking eyes with me, pointing towards the offending child in my arms, and declaring "All done! All done!")

I think poor Gabe is in for a very rude awakening come February 1. And I have no idea what to do about it. And as much as I am thrilled and excited for baby number two, I feel so terribly guilty about how it is going to affect Gabe. I hope he can learn to love his sibling. People do this all the time, right? Someone please reassure me that I am not actually ruining his life by giving him a sibling.

OK, enough of that whining. Please feast your eyes on Gabey the Pooh! (Halloween was excellent. Gabe tasted his first bite of chocolate and ate an entire roll of Smarties candy. It may have been the greatest day of his life.)

An Ode to Three (Four) Day Weekends

Oh, what a great weekend we had. It was the kind of delicious, leisurely weekend that makes it almost physically painful to return to routine on Tuesday morning.

Last week I had to go away on a business trip, which, frankly, was horrible. I mean, the trip itself was fine, but three whole days without this?? Torture! Deprivation!

So to celebrate my return home, I worked from home on Friday and after getting some contracts done I just played and played and played with my fantastic son. We went to the park, we read dozens of books, we played tickle torture until we laughed so hard we could barely breathe. And then the real fun began!

On Saturday we took him to the first home football game of the season! He loved tailgating with GrandBob, Uncle Ross and Auntie Katie, loved eating junk food, LOVED the marching band. Every time the band played - even for just ten seconds in between plays - he would turn his face up to me and cry, "More! More!" He made it through the entire first half without complaint, and we would have stayed even longer had it not been so hot. I think Gabe was actually a little sad to leave the stadium, he enjoyed the experience so much. The whole day made me happy.

And on Sunday things got even better still. My parents belong to a charitable organization that puts on a very elaborate equestrian competition each year, with all of the money benefiting Childrens Hospital. If Gabe loved the marching band on Saturday, then he had fits of ecstasy over the horses at the competition on Sunday. "Neigh! Neigh!" he shouted over and over again, his finger pointing, his head whipping right and left as quickly as possible to make sure he got a glimpse of every single horse. He even got to pet two beautiful horses (including one who was the great-grandson of Secretariat!) and he and GrandBob got to ride on a tractor. When you are sixteen months old, I am not sure life gets any better than this. He finally fell asleep in my arms in a heap of absolute exhaustion around 2:30 p.m., and we managed to get him into the car and all the way back home before he woke up from his nap. And when he did wake up, he was MAD. "Neigh! Gammy! Bob!" he demanded, angry to be at home and away from the horse show. "Neigh! Gammy! Bob!"

On Monday, we celebrated Labor Day with a barbecue at Matt's parents' house, and Gabe got to go swimming in the pool with Cousin Parker. He was also allowed to eat vast quantities of Earth's Best Vanilla Cookies (affectionately known in our house as "ELMO COOKIES YAY!") and Pirate's Booty, and I am sad to report that's pretty much all he ate all weekend. Apparently when we deviate from his routine with too many fun activities, he refuses to eat any food containing any semblance of nutritional value. This stresses me out to no end but so far does not seem to have an adverse affect on the child. Although I am debating taking him back to the baby store near us where they have a weigh station so that I can weigh him and make sure he hasn't actually dropped any pounds in the past couple of weeks. Wow, I have gotten paranoid in my old age.

So in sum, GREAT WEEKEND. I think this is best captured by Gabe's reaction when it was time to take him to daycare this morning (and he is loving the Toddler room, by the way). As we reached his classroom I opened the door and began waiving to all of his friends, saying good morning. I looked back and he was still standing in the doorway. He caught my eye, raised his eyebrows, and shook his head no. He was not interested in going to school. It took a blueberry muffin and two turns on the slide to warm him up to the idea.

So for all of you who had a rough day back at work, rest assured that even toddlers get the end-of-long-weekend blues.

Aloha!

This morning at breakfast Gabe signed, "More crackers, please." Clearly, he is some kind of genius baby.

But I digress! So, once again I have been a slacker about posting. But I have a good excuse! We have just returned from a week on Maui! Oooooh, I love me some Maui. I could probably live there. If I could live in a hotel and get spa treatments and go to the beach and snorkel with sea turtles and tropical fish and not actually work at a job, I mean. Then it would be seriously great to live there.

We had an absolute blast. Gabe loooooved the hotel where we stayed. It had a giant lake that wrapped around the entire hotel, with multiple waterfalls and little rivers branching off. It was full of koi and swans ("ducks," according to Gabe), with parrots nesting around the perimeter, and he could pretty much have hung out in the hotel lobby looking at the lake for the entire week we were there. Every single morning when we stepped off of the elevator and into the lobby, he bounced up and down and pointed excitedly while proclaiming, "Wa wa! Duck! Wa wa! Duck!"

The hotel also had five gorgeous pools, one of which contained a little baby waterslide. After some initial uncertainty, Gabe decided that going down the slide on mommy's or daddy's lap was maybe the most fun thing he'd ever done in his life. We went down the slide and into the pool over and over again until Gabe was so cold that his little teeth (ok, mostly gums) chattered.

He also loved digging in the sand in shady places on the beach. He even ate a little sand, just as an experiment. Not so yummy, but very funny, as it turns out.

He ate other things too! Yogurt and fruit every morning for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, crackers and snacks all day long, and quesadillas or chicken fingers or bites off of my plate for dinner. He ate vegetables, people. Vegetables. I know, I can't believe it either.

The only thing he did not do in Hawaii was sleep. He never really adjusted to the time change, so he decided that waking up at 4:45 a.m. each morning was perfectly acceptable. But he woke up in such a good mood that we couldn't even be upset about the wicked lack of sleep. Instead, we would bring him into bed and he'd snuggle between us and then laugh and say hi and poke us. It was so great.

And then, just to cap things off, our good friends J and G were on Maui at the same time, and we managed to coordinate schedules and meet them for dinner on our last night there. They hadn't seen Gabe in a while, and were properly appreciative of his charm and good looks. And Gabe loved them...he happily sat in J's arms for much of the evening, babbling and eating goldfish crackers. So the end of our vacation was filled with easy conversation and laughter and good old friends.

The real magic of the trip was that I was able to just step back from our usually rushed routine and simply enjoy being with my husband and baby. No rushing off to daycare, no checking the blackberry every ten minutes, no worrying about nap schedules, even. There was just no point. We slept when we were tired, we ate when we were hungry, and we giggled and played a lot. Because we are so lucky. So very lucky and blessed.

Traveling Man

Gabe very much enjoyed our trip to Arizona this weekend. We were in Scottsdale for four days to visit my grandparents and my uncle Steve, and the whole trip was a smashing success, if I do say so myself. There was much laughing and many hugs and an excessive amount of food was consumed by all (including about twelve pounds of spicy salted almonds).

Here are a few of the highlights:

Gabe Attempting to Pull the Hair of the Woman Sitting in Front of Us On the Airplane

Gabe Enjoying Complimentary Waffles at the Hotel nom nom nom

Gabe Experiencing Culture at the Phoenix Botanical Gardens, Figure 1


Gabe Experiencing Culture at the Phoenix Botanical Gardens, Figure 2

Gabe Partying at the Hotel, Rock Star-Style

Gabe Exhausted After a Fun-Filled Weekend

Gabe, Loved

. . . . .

On a terribly serious note, please say a prayer for the family of the beautiful and charming Madeline Alice Spohr, who passed away last week at the age of seventeen months. Her mom and dad are awesome and fellow Trojans, and my heart breaks for them. If you have any money to donate to charity this year, please consider donating to the March of Dimes in Maddie's honor.

Noel, Noel. (Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.)

We put up the Christmas tree this weekend. I always get a little thrill of excitement when retrieving the boxes of ornaments and decorations from storage, unwrapping the angels and snowflakes and Santas from their tissue paper, plugging in the strands of Christmas lights to make sure none of the bulbs have burned out.

Of course, this year the little thrill was better than usual, because of this:

There are many reasons I love this photo: the old-mannish sweater; the slightly elfin chapeau; the chubby legs sticking out of pants that are decidedly too short ("Capri pants are not a good look on baby boys," my good friend Wendy would say). But most of all I love, love, love that open-mouthed grin. Here, take a closer look, why don't you:

Could he be more charming, I ask? Could he? I think not. He was just so pleased by the whole thing, so enamored with the lights and fascinated by the ornaments. He would have cheerfully spent the entire afternoon examining the giant thing full of colors and textures that had magically appeared in his living room. It even motivated him to work on his scooting. (Although he still hasn't figured out how to go forwards, and thus he spent much of his time accidentally propelling himself away from the tree. Much frustrated grunting resulted.)

Anyhow, as far as Gabe is concerned, the Christmas tree is the best toy ever. And he hasn't even noticed the wrapped packages underneath the tree yet. Never mind that I suspect the wrapping paper will entice him far more than the actual toys contained in the wrapping. As far as Gabe is concerned, Christmas decorations are a huge success!

Wait until we get to the menorah! That involves fire!