No It All

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Jakey started calling us Mom and Dad.  And he wouldn’t stop begging to drive the car.  Apparently 2 is the new 16.

Today’s Natesy’s 9-month birthday!  I can hardly believe how fast he is growing up.  Happy Birthday my adorable baby… or should I say big boy?!

It seems he’s just become horizontally mobile and then… last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, he pulled himself up into a standing position.  I just about fell over into the fetal position.

Maybe it’s all this talk of the Greek debt crisis.  Maybe it’s just that “back to school” time of year.  I’ve come to a distinct and indisputable truth… I’m the only girl… living in a frat house.  And my fraternity house is called Sigma Zu.

Case in point:
* Cars and trucks parked haphazardly, everywhere.
* Every week is rush.
* Someone threw-up in the bathroom.  Claimed it was milkshakes.  For all I know it was mudslides.
* Constant late night partying, yelling, whimpering.
* Heavy drinking.  Every three hours.
* Force-feeding new pledges.
* Wrestling.  Non-stop wrestling.
* Hours of required reading.
* And many a night I’ve woken-up wondering who is lying next to me.

I’m thinking of running for President.

Jake only knows the name of one place in the whole world.  And I’m pleased as punch to report that once place is…  Santa Cruz.  I’m so proud.

Lately he spends a lot of time telling us about “his work.”

“Mama, I need to get my jet shoes.  I forgot them at my work.”

“Where’s your work?”

“In Santa Cruz.”

His work also has a fire pole, big jet, horses, a broken computer, and all kinds of good food.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think maybe Jake’s landed a job at Google?

Last week Natesy turned a corner.  Literally.  One minute he was alone in the bathroom, and the next minute I heard him in Jake’s room with his daddy and his big brother.

Nathaniel has never liked being alone.  He wants to be where the action’s at.  And now he doesn’t have to complain about his station in life.  He’s tasted freedom.  And he’s not going back.

Now you can find Nate pulling himself around the house, dragging his little legs behind him… a path of destruction in his wake.  Last weekend I put him on the floor of the dining room while I did a little catch-up work on the computer.  I turned around and he had plundered the paper recycling bag, pillaged the Tupperware drawer and opened a cupboard door to begin rifling through untold baking treasures.

Our new favorite game is for Jakey and me to be in one room and then Jacob to report on Nate’s location and progress.  “Mama, Baby Nake is coming!”  We scream and giggle as we hear him inching down the hall.  Then his little fist comes into view around the door frame.  “Mama, I see Baby’ Nake’s hand!”  Then Nate peaks his head around the jamb and grins… his big two-toothed smile.

Arrr, there’s me mateys.

I’m happy to report, with quite a sense of relief I might add, that Jake is not color blind.

It’s been touch and go for almost two years.  His father is a graphic communication major who once aced a test where he had to put 98 colors in the correct order… yes, I know, a husband who can easily articulate the difference between cyan and turquoise?  Don’t be jealous.  And of course I’m a girl so somewhere along the way I was conditioned to learn the fine nuances of color.  But, from the age of one to two, when asked what color something was, Jacob only answered “Green!”  We were a tad bit worried.

Then, over the course of several months, when asked what flavor ice cream, cupcake, cookie he wanted, he switched from green to “Pink!”  He still either orders pink or chocolate.  Then one week, not so long ago, he added white and brown to his daily vocab.

“Mama, you’re brown.”  Given my pastiness, I was back to thinking maybe he was color blind.  Pink, brown and white.  I’d expect a little boy to point out blue, red and yellow as his first colors, but we’ll take it.

Finally, over the last few weeks, his color recognition has skyrocketed.  “Look Mama.  That fire engine is red like your shirt.  Mama, that pumpkin is orange.  I see a fire hydrant.  It’s white!”

We put him to the ultimate test earlier this week.  No, it’s not an official color blind test, it’s more of a candy blind test.  After dinner he gets to pick one piece of his Halloween candy.  Every night he chooses the little pack of M&M’s.  “OK, Jakey, now before you eat them, you have to put them in little piles by color.”

Without fail, he sorts them into brown, red, green, blue, orange and yellow.  If he grows-up and his clothes don’t match, at least we’ll know it’s just a lack of style.

When I was in junior high, my friend Melanie and I babysat at my standard weekly gig and ended up with hand, foot and mouth disease.  I swear she’s still kind of mad at me about that…  Thank goodness we weren’t in England.

Now that I’m a grown-up, I figured I was safe from all of those childhood diseases, right?  Uh uh.

At Nate’s school, every morning, we pass through what I secretly call the “Doors of Doom.”  The glass doors leading into the three infant/toddler classrooms are the posting site for “Exposure Notices.”  So far, in the last two and a half years, I’ve gotten innumerable colds, impetigo-induced strep throat twice, pink eye and the croup.

This week there was a notice for some unpronounceable rash I’ve never heard of as well as a post that my child “may have been exposed to lice.”  Great.  Nate isn’t quite the cue ball Jake was– though his hair is still somewhat hard to see if the lighting is bad.  I’m hoping this will work to our advantage.

I really, really do not want to add this to my list of the ickiest childhood illnesses I never had till I was a grown-up…

On Thursday, Nathaniel’s school form came home with the following note: “Nate loves plain banana.  I didn’t add cereal.  He ate most of it without complaint.”

I’m happy to see he’s become so adventurous.  Now his diet consists of:

milk
wooden train tracks
paper towels
tin tea cups
bananas

This weekend we gave him a french fry and foccacia bread and he actually held them in his little chubby fists and ingested them.  Now that’s progress.

As I’ve often declared, we are not above toddler bribery.  And so far, it hasn’t failed us.  Why just the other day I was shocked when Jake was enjoying “two treats for trying” and said “Three more, Mama.”  I was stunned, “Whoa!  That was actual math.”  I’m glad Jacob’s first mathematical calculation was determining the number of treats he was missing based on the current market valuation of using the potty.

I remember the days when anytime you asked how many or how much it was always “Two.”  And then it changed to “Seven.”  Now he’s been sprinkling conversations with “A huuuun-dred.”

Last weekend James was working and it was up to me to come up with an exciting and productive excursion for the kiddos.  I decided we should visit “The Hammer Store” a.k.a. Lowe’s.  I had no idea it would be such a wild success.  They had an entire aisle of blow-up Christmas decorations for your lawn, miniature lighted villages and a forest of fake holiday trees.  Not to mention every tool known to Handy Manny.

Nate fell asleep so Jake and I spent a good half hour in the blow-up decorations aisle.  Jakey was completely mesmerized by a blow-up outhouse where Santa opens the door every ten seconds, pops out and waves.  “Santa going potty?  Why?”  My sentiments exactly…

After I let Jakey hold different hammers and screwdrivers and measuring tapes and other familiar tools, we drove our Lowe’s cart across the parking lot to split a chocolate milkshake at In N’ Out Burger and watch the planes take-off and land.  Natesy was still happy to just sit in his car seat and relax.

Inspired by Santa, Jakey actually requested to use the bathroom.  This may be a first.  Unfortunately stage fright got the best of him, but it was notable nonetheless.  As we enjoyed our shake outside, gazing at Norman Mineta International, we had one of our many mealtime conversations.

“So JJ, how old are you?”

“I’know.”

“You know.  You’re two.  When someone asks you  how old you are, you say ‘two.’  K.  Let’s try that again… Jakey, how old are you?”

“Forty seven!”

This must be that new math I’ve heard the kids talking about.