wild*life

Yesterday Natesy laughed for the first time.  First when Daddy was giving him kisses, and then later on when Mommy was giving him kisses.  Most people don’t like being laughed at when they go in for a smooch, but we don’t mind one bit.

My friend Kristen loves to read Us magazine.  Unfortunately I’ve ruined one standing feature for her which is the “Stars– They’re Just Like Us!” page.  Apparently, up until I pointed it out, she’d never noticed how ridiculous the “Stars drink coffee– Just Like Us!” captions were.  Luckily she’s a good sport and now it’s a running joke.

I think maybe Baby Nate has been sneaking celebrity trash magazines.  He seems to be significantly more vocal than Jacob was at this age.  How that’s possible given the chatterbox we have from dawn till dusk is still beyond me.  In any case, Nathaniel has been telling me a lot about Lady Gaga.  I can’t quite make out everything she’s been up to, but he knows all about her.  I’d venture to say that he is predicting her next showstopping dress will be made of bubbles.

Jake loves being a lion… or yi-yon as he puts it.  More on lions sometime in the near future.  This is an important detail as I relay one of James’ latest stories. 

A few weeks ago we were bicuspid deep in our ten day biting phase.  James picked Jake up at school and was driving the car and talking to him about good manners and playing nicely at school.

“Jacob, why do you get so mad?  Why are you trying to bite people?”  He looks in the rearview mirror at Jakey in his car seat in the back.

“I have a yi-yon inside Daddy.  Yi-yon inside.”

My mom likes to reenact my preschool days by telling the story of when I was bitten at Joan’s house.  To hear her tell it, I informed her 10 times a day for the first 10 years of my life that “Matt bit me on the finner.”  (finger)  Apparently I was “mothering” him.  I do remember Matt, and I do remember that he was adorable and had a blond bowl cut.  I’m sure he was as irresistible as a doll baby.  How could someone not mother him?  In any case, that was my first experience with biting.

Over the years, I’ve had a few additional run-ins with biting including a “time out” inflicted by my grandmother, Sweetie, for latching onto my brother’s face.  This is probably most memorable because I didn’t grow-up with time-outs… I grew up with The Wooden Spoon.  Then there was the incident in fourth or fifth grade when my then best friend, shockingly, bit me while we were playing Nintendo.  I still have no idea why.  I was like, “WTF?!”  Only in more G-rated fourth grade language.  And I clearly remember my mom wrestling with my little brother as she attempted to put hot sauce on his tongue for biting.

Now… this entire preamble is leading up to, unfortunately, my present-day experience with biting.  It all began during Jake’s Sanibel week o’ meltdowns.  He was just so off-kilter being in a new place with no clear routine and spotty naps.  He bit my clothes two or three times that week and I had flashbacks of holding my little brother’s forehead while he snapped at me like a two-year-old pirahna, trying to bite my arm…  I think Jacob knew that biting skin is completely unacceptable and so he took his anger out on my apparel.

Then, that first week back from Florida, the unthinkable happened.  We were told he had “tried” to bite another child at school, but only bit their clothes… a daycare desperate working parent’s worst nightmare.  Fortunately he never got written up because no damage was actually done, but those weeks were pretty touch and go.  When asked, Jake was quite forthright, “I bite.”  “I bite Jhad.”  Emphatic nodding.  The teachers won’t tell you who bites who, but the kids sure will.

It’s been several weeks since the daily nail-biting conversations, “Jakey, did you have good manners at school today?”  It seems the negative reinforcement of “no Handy Manny if there’s been biting or hitting” has done its job.  Hopefully this was just a short two-week phase… and wouldn’t you know it, Jake actually likes hot sauce.

If Jakey says something to you that sounds like “paintballing,” he’s actually referencing his favorite hobby outside of catching butterflies and fishing poles… and that hobby is: skateboarding.  He asks me to leave his socks on so he can slip around on the hardwood floors, “Skateboarding, Mama.  Skateboarding.”  He says Miss Suzy taught him this game.  She claims innocence.

Every day I like to ask Jake what he ate for lunch at school.  Sometimes I mix it up and inquire about what was on the menu for breakfast.  I always get the same answer:

“Ummm, baaanaaanaaas, coookies…”

Mommy & Natesy’s last day of leave

Will we ever get four smiles?

New house colors: just this side of daring

The yummiest baby neck ever…

.

Jakey lounging at Happy Hollow

I can hardly believe today was Baby Nate’s and my last day together… just us.  No schedule.  No chores.  No lists.  We just went about our business… Hot tea and the Today Show (sorry Meredith, we won’t miss you), Oller Brothers, Home Depot, soccer jersey drop-offs, dry cleaning pick-up, Buy Buy Baby store visit (the store that will help me keep my promise to never set foot in Babies R Us again), special lunch with Daddy, Jakey’s second real hair cut at Baby Buzz, and shopping and dinner at Santana Row.  Whew… what a day!  Baby Nate and I are quite efficient… he even lets me try clothes on… unbelievable, right?

Our time together has been completely precious.  I miss it so much already.  It was almost as precious as his smile, which is the cutest thing ever and still almost impossible to capture on film.  There’s something about the camera lens and flash that brings out more of his startled, flared nostril self.

It’s now the beginning of a new era.  Baby Nate and Mommy on the choo choo… wish us luck.

It began with Mama’s “hot tea.”  Every morning I have one cup of tea and it is heaven.  Tazo’s Awake tea… even better than those expensive British brands.  In any case, it required significant Jakey training as he has always been highly prone to jostling, bumping, crashing, and spilling.  All of which are highly incompatible with stain-inducing, scalding hot liquids.  Jake knows to give me and my teacup a wide berth, “Hot tea!  Mama’s hot tea!”

We did have one cringe-worthy incident, probably about a year ago, when I was drinking hot water with lemon… perhaps that time when Jake’s infantigo (impetigo) gave me strep throat, twice, and I thought I was going to die.  Jake tried to climb into my lap, fiery-hot liquid went flying in a lava-like arch, a bit of which made angry red marks on his little baby arm.  I cried for half an hour and Jacob cried, only because I was crying.  One of my lowest Mommy moments.  Right up there with the 1-month-old Baby Nate’s baby thumb fingernail clipper incident.

So, “hot” is a very important and oft used word in our house.  Steam, fog, at times a shaft of sunshine, are all worthy of pointing and a cautiously excited, “Hot!”

We then added “cold” to the repetoire.  And finally “warm.”  I remember it was bath time and Jakey was in the tub, looking up at me with those big hazel eyes and he says, “Hot?”
And I say, “No, not too hot.”
And he says, “Rum?”
“What?”
“Rum?”
I’m thinking, what is he talking about?  All I can think of is the roaring 20’s and bathtub booze or something…

“Ahhh.  Warm.  Yes!  Waaaarm.”

Now his declarations have become less inquisitive and more dictatorial.  “Too hot!”  “Too cold!”  Last night, after ingesting five pieces of brakiki (broccoli), the next piece was, all of a sudden, “Too hot!”  It wasn’t even kind of hot.  I’d say it was lucky if it was room temperature.

“No Jakey, it’s not hot at all.”
The latest phrase, “Yesth it is!”

There’s just no arguing with our little Goldilocks.

Baby Nake drinking “hot tea.”

Our little Baby Cillos… am I seeing double?