fourteen months and counting . . .

As of yesterday, Andrew is now fourteen months (but who's counting?) and officially weaned (but we'll spare you all--especially Wendy!--the gory details). Both milestones are a little bitter-sweet for me. He's growing up so fast and each new milestone means greater independence from his parents. And Andrew's not shy about exerting that independence. Tonight, for instance, we had mashed potatoes with dinner. I tried to feed some to Andrew but he was pretty resistant (he's turned down mashed potatoes in the past--we think because they're so starchy, as we can't think of any other reason he'd turn down his dad's fabulous potatoes). I initially thought he simply wasn't ready for them yet, but it turns out he wasn't resisting the potatoes so much as being fed the potatoes. As soon as I helped him scrape the potatoes up with his spoon, he was perfectly happy to chow down on them. We're not sure yet whether this new move for independence is a good thing or a bad--as my dad reminded me on the phone, we may have opened Pandora's box. Andrew may have found the perfect weapon for making our already messy house even messier--self-feeding.

This week has been a little more eventful than most. Monday afternoon, while conducting his usual inventory of the kitchen cupboards, Andrew discovered that he could flip the lid up off the syrup container. Perhaps more importantly, he also discovered that syrup was sweet and therefore tastes good. While I was working on dinner, I turned around to discover Andrew surreptitiously gnawing on the top of the syrup container. I say surreptitiously, because he must have had some sense that he was doing something he should not have been--when he caught me looking at him, he would pop his binky in his mouth and look at me innocently. (Which is exactly what he did when I tried to take a picture of him sucking on the syrup container, below--as soon as he spotted the camera, he whipped the syrup container out of his mouth and put his binky back in. I wasn't quite fast enough to catch him red-handed. Or sticky-handed, as the case may be). I was highly amused by this evidence of my son's latent conscience--that is, until he failed to put the cap back down on the syrup, and knocked the syrup over in his haste to move on to his next project, whatever that was, leaving a distinct syrupy trail in his wake. Who knew syrup could spread that fast?



Monday night Dan abandoned us for the joys that are "group meeting" at Andy's house. (Although, to be fair, if Dan hadn't abandoned us, I would have abandoned them, as usually I work Monday evenings in the writing center). Dan reports that the meeting was surprisingly tame and easy to deal with--pleasant, even!

Tuesday, after I got back from the writing center and put Andrew down for a nap, we waited for the arrival of Grandma Patti, who was making a tour of the east coast. (Not really--she was actually just using her two east-coast bound children as convenient stopping points between meetings in Boston and DC). She only got a little bit lost on the way here--actually, as it turns out, she wasn't lost at all, she was just on a different route than the one mapquest provided. She stayed with us until Thursday afternoon, and we were thrilled to have her. The thrill was genuine, although she may perhaps have doubted that, as her reception involved our using her for free babysitting Tuesday night (I gave a workshop on academic writing to some sixty or so students; Dan went to Huntington for a Young Men's activity. You'd think that if we had a babysitter we'd at least have the sense to use it for some selfish, hedonistic activity!). We also made her sleep on our ancient hide-a-bed that we acquired free from Dan's advisor (it having formerly belonged to Andy's parents).

Wednesday we decided to entertain my mom (aka Grandma Patti) by doing what she loves best--shopping. Since State College has somewhat limited shopping arena, we drove down to Altoona to check out a new shopping complex that includes such bargain favorites as Kohl's, Ross, etc. We were only able to stop at a few stores b/c I had to be back to State College by2:30ish to prepare for yet another workshop (this time a class presentation on writing resumes and CVs--sounds exciting, no? The course professor wrote me a flattering email after the lecture: Thank you for a fine lecture. The students showed a lot of interest.They followed your presentation and asked a lot of questions. I thought you showed a lot of talent and poise, and you were very well prepared.--but I think the students--most of them--were actually a little bored!). At any rate, I at least had more fun shopping. I think my mom enjoyed it too (and Kohl's certainly benefited from us!), but I don't think Andrew enjoyed it too much. It must be tough being a kid, sometimes, not having much say in where you get dragged around on any given day. Needless to say, we shamelessly used my mom for yet another free round of babysitting that afternoon while I went to my workshop.

That evening, we decided to go out to dinner. We had to rule out most of the genuinely good restaurants in State College on the grounds that they were not child-friendly (or, like Olive Garden, the wait was too long), and opted instead for TGI Friday's--mostly because it was convenient, close, and child-friendly (not necessarily in that order). Notice that none of these qualifications required that the food actually be good. It was child-friendly--providentially, it turns out that Wednesday night is kid's night, so Andrew got to eat free. He was probably the only one who took unadulterated pleasure in his dinner (he ate probably a third of the plate of macaroni and cheese that the waiter brought out). He also quite enjoyed the child's cup he was given--whether that meant he was putting small pieces of food in it and then taking those pieces out to eat, or, later in the evening, spilling small amounts of water all over himself as he attempted to drink out of his cup. I don't think any of the adults were particularly impressed with their meals--especially not my mom, whose fish was slightly burnt.

Thursday, not content with the money she spent the previous day, my mom opted to go to the local mall (well, really she just wanted to go to Bon-Ton, as she remembered hitting a particularly good sale the last time she was here). After waiting out a brief snow-storm and Andrew's nap, we bravely ventured forth. The shopping gods must have been smiling upon us, because we found that not only was Bon-Ton having a sale, but they were clearing out all of their winter clothes to the tune of 80% off already reduced prices. Needless to say, Grandma Patti was in shopping heaven! We thoughtfully offered her another duffel bag before she left, in order to accomodate her purchases.

After my mom left, things settled back into their usual, less exciting routines. Thursday afternoon I decided to move some of Andrew's toys out of the front room into his bedroom. I put several of them in a box, and Andrew promptly climbed in the box with them. I suppose that's where he thought he was supposed to be. He climbed in and out of the box repeatedly until I finally moved the box.




Friday--neither of us can remember what happened, so it must not have been very exciting!

Saturday night, while Dan attended priesthood session in Altoona, Andrew and I (with our friend and neighbor Kelli Higley) drove up to the Hanscom's house to celebrate the birthday of our dear friend Wendy. Feeling the need to outdo the previous year's pirate theme, the party planner (another Wendy) opted for the theme of Ghost-Hunters, based on a hit TV series that Wendy really likes (one of the things that we like best about Wendy are her eclectic interests!). (Random fact: one of the Ghost Hunters, Grant Wilson, is actually LDS; his brother was in our ward here for the first few years we were here). We weren't able to dress in costume, but we were able to find her a book on Ghost Chasers. Andrew slept in the Hanscom's "Mountain Man" room while I hung out with the girls; after priesthood session, Dan drove up with Kelli's husband. It was nice to get out of the house and pretend to be social for once!

Yagulm

In honor of Gollum, Snarf, and other onomatopoetically named creatures, we have decided to rechristen Andrew "Yagulm." It seems to be his favorite word of late. We have no idea what--if anything--it means. Other variations seem to include "Yakum" and "Ya-um." He repeates it at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and while he's trotting around the house. He said it repeatedly during Relief Society this morning. (After, of course, repeatedly attempting to empty a cabinet he providentially discovered at the front of the classroom, right behind the teacher where he was sure to cause the most distraction. Although the Relief Society president assured me that there wasn't anything there he could hurt, she did finally attempt to put a chair in front of the cabinet as buffer. Andrew scoffed at the thought that a mere chair could deter him. He tried--successfully--to alternately wedge himself between the chair and the cabinet and then open the cabinet door, and, when we switched the position of the chair, he just pushed it out of his way.)

As you can perhaps tell, we don't have much to report this week. The snow day, which I already recorded, was perhaps the most momentous occasion of the week. Although yesterday was a minor red-letter day for Andrew. He finally seems to have gotten over his fear of the vacuum--he didn't cry when I vacuumed the front room in the morning (although admittedly he spent most of that time on the far side of the room or in the kitchen or hallway). He also slept for nearly two and a half hours--something he rarely--if ever--does! So I made a little progress on my dissertation reading (not something I need to bore anyone with!).

In lieu of other substantive information we have--as we often do--opted for pictures of Andrew. Below, you can see our budding chef, Andrew in his snowsuit (we had a couple of requests for pictures). Like Ralphie's little brother in The Christmas Story, Andrew also had a hard time moving when he was in his snowsuit--in fact, he had a hard time getting up off the ground. When he could stand up (second picture), he had trouble maintaining his balance. And the last picture merely illustrates his watch fetish. He played with my watch for a little while, and then had a fit when we took it away from him because he was chewing on it.

Happy Valentines

Normally Valentine's Day is not my favorite holiday--even as a married woman, when I no longer have to dread the ignomy of being single on a couples' holiday, I still find it a fairly silly, mostly pointless holiday. But today has been rather nice. As you may know, most of the mid-West and New England is being hit by a fairly major storm system--and central PA is no exception. A recent estimate that I saw said that approximately 10 inches of snow has fallen in the last day and a half. It started snowing early yesterday morning and hasn't stopped yet (and isn't predicted to stop until tonight). As a result, we got the first official snow day of the season! All of the area schools have closed, and even Penn State, which tends to be hardier than those educational facilities served by school bus routes, closed until 5 pm today (the library is expected to open then). This didn't affect Dan at all, since he can still trudge through the snow to lab, but I got to spend all day with Andrew instead of going in to the writing center.

I'm not sure Andrew knows what to make of all this snow. I tried to take him out, just to get a break from the monotony of being stuck indoors (we're not going anywhere soon--there's nearly two feet of snow behind our car, courtesy of the snow plow). I bundled him up in a snow suit, replete with boot, hats, and mittens, to the point where he could hardly stand up. (In fact, when he first had the suit on it overset his balance completely--he lay on the carpet for a few minutes before he could even roll over!). Then, because we don't have a sled (I could kick myself for not buying the 75% off sled I saw a few weeks ago at Target--but I didn't think I'd get a chance to use it this winter!), I had to use a little ingenuity for our walk. I threaded two belts together through the slats in a rectangular laundry basket, and presto! It worked pretty well, except for a tendency to upset anytime Andrew tried to move. He only fell over twice, but the snow in his face definitely did not endear the experience to him! At any rate, we got outside. And we made snow angels. Well, more accurately, I made a snow angel with Andrew, who couldn't figure out what in the heck I was doing, but the movement made him laugh.

And last night was a bonus: because of the inclement weather, Dan didn't go down to Huntington for the mutual activity; instead, he stayed with me! Not, of course, that we did much--after working in separate rooms for a while (me on a class presentation, Dan on some papers), we finished watching a rather odd, but entertaining movie called The Young Visiters (misspelling deliberate), a late Victorian period-piece that was originally written--seriously--by a precocious nine-year-old girl in the late nineteenth-century. This BBC production stars, among others, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, and Bill Nighy (better known as "Davy Jones" although you won't, of course, recognize him as such!).

Below, you can see Andrew pulling his "sled."


Andrew, in the spider-man chair he got for Valentine's Day. It makes a perfect armchair for the budding intellectual.

Brought to you by the letter "B"

Andrew's language acquisition skills continue on apace. This week's sound of choice seems to be "ba." However, because of an unfortunate tendency to drop the latter syllables of most words, this means that this same useful sound appears to be applied indiscriminately to indicate "ball" "bottle" (sippy cup), "bath," "bye," (although here he sometimes supplies "ba ba") instead, and "baby." Context generally helps here, but not always.

And, in the spirit of Valentine's Day, Andrew seems to have fallen in love. Not with some dark-eyed, curly-haired damsel of his own tender years, but with that perennial favorite of little boys everywhere: ball. We unearthed a garage sale purchase that lets him pound four different balls into a little maze, from whence they drop out of an opening in the bottle of the box. He has spent most of the last couple of days carrying anywhere from one to three of these balls around the house with him. I'm sure he'd carry all four, if he could only handle the logistics of that. And of course, he continues to love his basketball, soccer ball, bowling ball. You'd think that, with all these balls around, he wouldn't need any more. But no. Yesterday, at Walmart, we passed a number of carts with giant soft balls in them. Andrew stared hard at the first, and then announced delightedly, "ba. ba. ba." Of course, what could a doting mother do when we passed the giant stack of balls but pull one out? (They were quite cheap, too.) Andrew spent the rest of the time halfway swivelled around so that he could pat his new acquisition and announce to anyone in earshot that this, indeed, was a "ba." This fascination is quite useful in distracting him, too. If he's heading towards danger (he likes to try to unplug one of the lamps from the wall), I can often head him off by asking him to find his ball. Sometimes, of course, this doesn't come across so well. Earlier this week, when he was trundling around with three little balls tucked under his arms, I asked him, "Andrew, can you show me your balls?" Almost as soon as I'd uttered the words I realized that they didn't sound quite right. Dan looked at me for a moment and then said, "Please don't ever say that again."

This week has been marked by singularly cold weather--cold enough that several of the area school districts closed on Tuesday this week (there was a wind chill warning in effect) and others were on two hour delays--apparently because it was too cold for the buses to run at their appointed times. At any rate, it meant that we didn't go out of the house more often than strictly necessary, and when we did, we bundled up! I think the reality of how cold it was finally hit me when, as the high temperatures finally edged up into the high teens, low twenties, it actually felt warm.

As you can perhaps tell, this was not a very exciting week for us. Dan spent some extra time at work, which meant I spent some extra time with Andrew: Wednesday night Dan stayed at lab until nearly four in the morning to try and finish a project, and Friday night he had to go schmooze with the potential lab manager who will take over after Andy leaves. The most exciting thing we did as a group was go out to eat at Hoss's--sort of the local equivalent of Sizzler's. I don't think it would have occurred to us to go on our own, but a generous client at the Writing Center chose to express her gratitude for my help in getting her to graduate (I don't know how many hours we spent on her master's paper!) by buying us gift cards. It turned out to be pretty perfect for Andrew--the salad bar was free for children under five, so he chowed down on macaroni and cheese, cottage cheese, fruit, ham, eggs, etc. If the food itself wasn't gourmet, it was reasonably good, and it meant that neither of us had to cook!

Our other excitement of the week came from Andrew's doctor's appointment on Friday. Every couple of weeks the Children's Heart Group in Hershey sends a doctor up to Boalsburg (near State College) for rotating appointments, so we took Andrew in to get his heart checked out. (This was a follow-up visit to his visit to Hershey in August). He had to have another echocardiogram (an ultrasound of his heart), which sorely tried his patience--the only time Andrew voluntarily stays in one spot for more than a minute or two is when he's asleep. The doctor tried to distract him with a portable DVD player with an Elmo video, which, while doubtless enthralling to his more discerning cousin Julia, held no such interest for Andrew. At last, however, they succeeded in getting the information that they needed, which was basically that there's been no change since our last visit--Andrew still has a mild case of pulmonic stenosis (which means a slight narrowing of his pulmonary valve), but the doctor said that, unless it gets worse, it shouldn't hinder him from any of the normal activities of boys (little and not so little). Even if it does get worse, there's apparently a fairly straightforward balloon procedure that they perform that will correct the problem. So it seems that's he's doing fine. They want to see him again in six-months, as a follow-up. Andrew also charmed the nursing staff by wandering into their on-call area (anywhere he could get to, as a matter of fact), a procedure that his mother found more exasperating than charming. (He'd already managed to try to empty all of the kleenex boxes in the waiting room, try to empty the garbage can, and push around the wheelchair they kept in the corner for patients). I'm just glad that we don't have to spend more time in the doctor's office!

One more note on the Andrew front: for some reason our house seems to have shifted (we're not sure if it's the cold weather, or what). This means, among other things, that the only indoor door that seems to latch properly is the bathroom door. Our bedroom door, in particularly, does not! Andrew has since discovered that this previously forbidden zone (it's the least baby-proof of all the areas in the house) is now his at the push of his hand. So, we spend an obscene amount of time chasing him down the hallway and out of our room. One of his favorites is to wait just inside the doorway until he's sure we've seen him, and then with an impish giggle he'll shut the door (where he proceeds to either pull our phone off the hook, strew Dan's ties around his closet, or commit some other form of mayhem, if we don't catch him quickly enough).

As usual, we'll close with a few shots of Andrew, including a close-up that only a mother could love. (And even then, maybe not always her!).

Pooper Bowl

In honor of the sporting frenzy that will no doubt have millions of Americans riveted to their TV screens later this afternoon/evening, we have dedicated our blog to things that rhyme with "super." In no particular order we give you:

Pooper: This accolade, not surprisingly, belongs to Andrew, who was the pooper extraordinaire this week. For four days running (we have yet to see what today will bring), he has had a minimum of three bowel movements per day, often within a 3-4 hour time period. On Friday, while running some errands at Target, he made his characteristic red face. Since he seems to have a tendency to do this at inconvenient times (like almost every time we go to Target--what can I say? It brings out the best in him), I had come prepared--or so I thought. When we got back to the bathroom, I realized that this was a blow-out of monumental proportions and was best dealt with at home. So, less than ten minutes into our venture and with no purchases made, we headed home. And today, just after church, Andrew rewarded his father with another pleasant surprise. Luckily, we had a spare set of pajamas in the diaper bag and Andrew was changed forthwith out of his soiled church clothes. (Also luckily, this happened just before we intended to leave, as opposed to just after).

Stupor: This one is mine, for potentially sending a number of graduate students into one at a workshop I gave this week on writing personal statements for applications. I caught at least one student napping during the presentation. Actually, I think I did pretty well, given that this was an evening workshop. I think I only really bored the students for part of the workshop, and I actually got them to laugh a couple of times.

Scooper: Dan won the honor of scraping (scooping) off our car and sidewalk for perhaps the first time this season, as winter seems to have definitely settled into State College. It was a balmy 9 degrees as we left our house this morning to drive to Huntington for church. We also had a couple of snow storms that actually left more than a trace of snow. Andrew seemed somewhat bemused by all this white stuff, not having been exposed to much of it in the few short months that his memory encompasses.

Blooper: Dan's boss, Andy, managed to fall off his roof this week. (He was trying to remove a stray shingle so that his house, which is shortly to go on the market, would look better for the real estate photographers who were coming by). He was lucky to have only cut up his face (requiring stitches in several places) and dislocated his finger. Dan is lucky that his boss didn't die--which would have made finishing his dissertation just a bit more complicated than Andy's proposed move to Sweden.

Souper: Our new branch, perhaps in the spirit of the Super Bowl, today hosted a "Souper Bowl" after church in order to break our fast (since, as the first Sunday of the month, today was fast Sunday). Several people volunteered to bring soup and bread. We didn't sign up to bring soup, but nonetheless felt compelled to bring something. So, we thought we'd make a corn chowder that I particularly like and that is easy to make (frying bacon is the hardest part of the whole procedure). However, in one of our less intelligent moments, we decided to put all the ingredients in the crock-pot overnight. When Dan got up at 3:30 to check on Andrew (who was crying), he also checked on the soup and discovered that our crock pot, which is pretty lame anyway (it burns most things, even on low), was boiling over the side and spewing liquid all over the microwave. Dan also realized, in the rational light of morning, that the reason this soup works is that you first make a roue, mix in the milk and cook till the mixture thickens, and then turn down the heat. Since we didn't do that, the resultant soup was, in Dan's opinion, inedible. (We didn't test the soup beforehand--it wasn't until Dan sat down to eat that he discovered that the soup wasn't so great. He promptly hid the rest of the soup in the kitchen so that no one else could witness his culinary mishap. I think it hurt his pride more than anything else).

Alley ooper: (Thank goodness Dan knows more sporting terminology than I do!). Instead of imbibing of the football spirit prevailing these days, we've spent our days enjoying Andrew's burgeoning basketball skills. He has progressed from merely carrying the ball around to actually putting it in the basketball hoop his Grandma Patti provided for him. Sometimes, of course, he still needs a little help from his dad. Naturally, we have pictures! (After all, it wouldn't be our blog if it didn't have pictures, now would it?)





Grouper: And as our final tribute of the week, we close by posting this fish face of our son.