The Small Family   

I couldn’t resist a pun in this week’s blog title. It has been unseasonably cold around here lately, and inspired by the cold snap, we decided to serve chili at a small party we had on Friday night. And so, we’ve had some chilly/chili days around here lately!

Well, I mentioned snow in last week’s blog post, and I’m sorry to say that we did not get to see it. I have a few friends who saw it snowing in the very early hours of Monday, but by the time we got up at 7am, it was all melted. I woke up around 2am and peeked out the window, but there was no snow then, either. Sigh… We did, however, get to “enjoy” 22-degree temperatures…BRRRR! It doesn’t often get below about 40 degrees here, so that was pretty chilly for us California wimps.

Mr. Theo got cabin fever from being cooped up until I could get him a warm jacket, so he was not a happy fellow for a few days this week. It’s crazy how difficult it is to find a warm jacket for a toddler boy! Target had a lovely array of girls’ jackets and not a single boy one. Walmart had one unisex jacket, but it was camouflage, and although I’m not particularly picky about clothing, I’m not really a camouflage fan. I finally found a nice blue and black jacket on sale at Old Navy, and you’ll see Theo modeling it in this week’s album. (He hates it.  I don’t think he can move around as well as he’d like in it, so he gets rather feisty when I make him wear it. But at least he’s warm!)

I’ve been lagging on my Christmas shopping, in large part because, like a typical little boy, Theo is NOT a fan of shopping. He loves to go to the mall to play at the play area, and he likes being out and about and watching people, but if you dare stop his stroller for more than 30 seconds to look at something, there is hell to pay. And so, I generally avoid shopping with him (which probably saves us some money in the long run…never a bad thing!). However, Christmas shopping for Chris had to be done without him there to help, so I roped Grandma Diane into going to the mall with Theo and I on Wednesday. I had a few ideas in mind for Chris, and the two of us were able to make quick work of picking those up while keeping Theo occupied so he didn’t loudly protest being forced to shop. He was, of course, rewarded with a trip to the play area, which he greatly enjoyed, as well as some McDonald’s French fries, which he happily shared with Grandma Diane and me.

To continue the trend of Christmas activities, we took Theo to see Christmas lights on Thursday night. There’s a street near our house (maybe two miles away) where almost every house does a big light display, so you get to see maybe 40 houses lit up. We go every year, and this year, Theo was old enough to enjoy it. He sat straight up in the stroller and pointed to various displays, yelling “That! THAT!,” which is what he says for pretty much anything he can’t put a name to. He seemed particularly enamored of Pluto (the Disney character, not the former planet), which is perhaps not surprising, as Pluto is a dog-dog, one of Theo’s favorite things. We’re debating a trip to Disneyland around Theo’s second birthday, and although he doesn’t currently recognize any of the Disney characters, I think he will be pretty excited to see Pluto if we go.

The big event of the week was our chili party on Friday evening. We rarely get to see our friends from Sacramento State anymore--it’s difficult to coordinate everyone’s schedules, and many of us now have children, which makes it even more difficult. (Our group of friends is actually informally known as TAT, after our online Yahoo group “Talking About Teaching,” where we share ideas and such. I’m no longer teaching, but they haven’t kicked me out of the group! Anyway, the group’s kids are thus known as TATer Tots!) So, Chris and I decided an easy way to get to see everyone would just be to have a little gathering at our house, and we invited everyone over for chili, conversation, and a “bad book” white elephant…with TATer Tots welcome to come share Theo’s toys. We had a pretty good turnout, too. Most of our TAT pals were able to come at least for a bit, and Theo had three TATer Tots to play with: Belen (age 3), Ella (age 1), and Benson (age 9 months). Unfortuantely, Lizzy (age 2) was sick and couldn’t come, but her mom, Rachel, came over for a bit to join us.

It was really neat to see the kids playing. They all played really well together, and Chris and I were delighted by how well Theo did. When Benson and Belen first arrived (within a few minutes of each other), Theo just sat in the hallway and played by himself for a few minutes while Belen and Benson were in the living room. Knowing that he can be a little slow to warm up sometimes, we just let him do his thing. Sure enough, within about five minutes he had toddled back into the living room and was playing with the same toys as Benson and Belen were, with no signs of being possessive or unwilling to share. Belen was really sweet about showing the littler kids how things worked (and singing for us!), and Benson, who is a crawling machine, really seemed to enjoy being down and playing with the other kids. Ella arrived a bit later, after most people were about to head out, but Theo took a liking to her right away. He actually interacted with her more than any other kid I’ve seen so far…they seemed to be playing a little game of “I’ll flirt with you and then play hard to get” with each other. Very funny to watch! Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of the two of them together. Wish I had--they were adorable together.

It seems our little boy is becoming much more outgoing, and Chris and I couldn’t be prouder of him. As a tiny guy, he would sometimes panic and freak out in large crowds of people. And so, we have worked really hard to get him out and among people and to help him socialize…and wow, what a great job he is doing! He still tends to mostly play on his own, but he no longer gets rattled by other kids (unless they come right up and bear-hug him, as one little boy recently did at the mall--then all bets are off!). We are just so pleased with what a sweet, friendly little boy he is. And so far, very good at sharing. Actually, sometimes it’s kind of sad…when he’s around other kids, there are often a few more aggressive ones that won’t share. This wasn’t the case with the TATer Tots…they all played very well together. But sometimes at his Little Gym class or at the play area, he gets “pushed around” by more aggressive children. And it makes me sad, because I don’t want to see him pick up that behavior, but unless it is really over the limit, we just stand back and let him fend for himself…it’s something he needs to learn to do as he grows up, and we’re very conscious of not “helicopter parenting” (a.k.a. hovering over the poor kid). And so far, we’ve been really impressed by how Theo handles himself. He has yet to shove back or grab a toy from another child; instead, he stands back, waits until they’re finished, and then takes his turn. I have no doubt that we’ll reach an age where he suddenly doesn’t want to share--I’m sure that’s a part of toddlerhood. But so far, he seems to have a very sweet natural inclination to share. I guess if he retains that sweet, pacifist nature, he’ll probably get bullied in school…I know I sure did. But I’d rather that than have him BE the bully, any day.

As for the adult part of the party, that was a lot of fun, too. I ended up with a lovely war-time romance as part of our “bad book” white elephant, and Chris ended up with a rather amusing Bill Cosby advice book. Our contribution to the exchange was a large-print romance my Grandma read, with the amusing title of “Lord Mumford’s Minx.” Rachel ended up taking that prize home…enjoy, Rachel! And as it turns out, Chris is a pretty mean chili maker! I printed out two recipes from the Internet (one veggie, one beef), but Chris was the one who ended up putting them together. And they were really tasty…especially the meat chili. Seems my husband can cook a lot more than just spaghetti and scrambled eggs well! :-)

Saturday was a gloomy, rainy day, so we decided on an outing we’ve been wanting to do for awhile--a trip to the Railroad Museum in downtown Sacramento. This is our third time there now (Chris’s company had a holiday party there a few years ago, and we took Theo last year around Christmas), and we enjoyed it all over again. It’s really a very cool museum. Neither of us are really big traditional museum fans--we usually prefer more interactive activities. But the Railroad Museum is really a neat place to visit. The exhibits are well done, and it’s very kid-friendly--even the hands-off parts of the museum are set up in such a way that you can let your toddler wander around and look without stressing too much about them destroying anything. Lately, Theo is obsessed with vehicles and things that go vrrrrrrooom, so we figured he’d like it. And indeed he did, though I think for him it was mostly a “room to roam free and stairs to climb” museum, rather than a railroad museum. His favorite parts seemed to be the small model trains they had set up and running--he really enjoyed those. Maybe next year we’ll have to set one up around our tree…. I took most of the pictures without the flash on, so they’re slightly blurred, but you can get the idea of what a neat place the museum is. (I try to avoid using flash when I can…I don’t like the “harsh” lighting that sometimes results from it. But the tradeoff is that sometimes the pix taken without flash are a little blurry in dim conditions.)

Afterward, we stopped at an Indian chaat café for lunch, which was a tasty treat. There aren’t too many Indian food restaurants in Roseville (and the ones that are here have rather slow service--not a good thing with an antsy toddler), but this café was quick and casual, and we really enjoyed the food. Theo shared samosas, a chicken tandoori wrap, and a paneer wrap (with none of the paneer, since that’s cheese!). The only thing he didn’t seem to like was the cucumber salad Chris had on the side of his. Go figure…he liked the semi-spicy Indian dishes, but NOT the relatively plain cucumbers.

Theo’s language explosion is ongoing, much to our delight. He seems to come up with a new word every day. A few from this week are glasses, bread, and giraffe. And I’ve realized he actually knows a lot more words than he can say. We were looking through one of his Baby Einstein books that has lots of objects in it, and I was asking him things like, “Where’s the sun? Where’s the cat? Where’s the milk? Where’s the apple? Where’s the wagon?” He was getting most of them right, even for words he can’t say, so I realized that he actually knows a ton of words now! This should come as no surprise to me, though…he’s been incessantly asking “Wha’ dat?” about things for weeks now. We repeat the same answers over and over (“It’s a bush. A bush. That’s a bush. It’s a house. That’s a house. It’s a house…”), and I think he’s just been verifying the words and solidifying them in his mind, even though he can’t verbalize them yet. Fascinating to watch!

The other fascinating development of late is that our son is becoming quite the scam artist. He’s allowed to watch a minimal amount of TV, in the form of 30-minute Baby Einstein DVDs no more than once a day. He has several different Baby Einstein DVDs, and he LOVES them! (We’ve actually tried a couple other things--Sesame Street and The Wiggles--and he shrieked at them. Apparently he prefers Baby Einstein for now…) Well, he’s realized that his Baby Einstein books have a logo on them that matches the logo that pops up when the DVD starts, so he now brings us Baby Einstein books, points at the logo, and says innocently, “Wha’ dat?” When we say, “A Baby Einstein book,” he gets all excited and runs to the TV happily. Alas, he is often in for disappointment, since he often has already had his Baby Einstein allotment for the day and thus cannot watch it again. And there are then tears and tantrums, which do not work, and then he turns back into Happy Theo and brings another Baby Einstein book up to us minutes later and starts the same thing over again. Ah, child, do you really think your parents are that easily fooled?! We’ve tried playing dumb and saying, “Oh, you want to read a book!” but he sees right through it and continues to press his point. Stubborn little fellow, that boy of ours….

Yet another fun new development is Theo’s emerging musical tastes. He has always really liked his musical toys, but now he’s starting to react a lot to music we’re playing. But not all music…leading me to think that he has specific songs that catch his ear and that he likes. So far, he seems to like The Proclaimers (I posted a video of him “dancing” in his car seat to that a few months back), two songs from the Glee soundtrack (“Don’t Stop Believin’” and “Bust a Move”), and a 1980s heavy metal song by Danzig. That last one surprised us. I recently finished editing a book called The 50 Most Influential Metal Songs of the 1980s, and there was a chapter about a Danzig song that I was surprised Chris didn’t know. So we downloaded the song onto his iPhone to hear it, and Theo started dancing the minute it came on, and he dances every time we play it. (Turns out we both kinda like this particular metal song.) Um, are we raising a tiny metalhead?! Well, I’ll take that over rap, actually…can’t say I’m a big rap fan! Anyway, it’s fun to see which songs catch his ear. This morning I had “Don’t Stop Believin’” playing in the car again, and he just went nuts, “singing” along with it, kicking his feet, and laughing! Good taste, boy. Journey never goes out of style….

Sunday we did something I’ve long been anticipating with much excitement: Christmas shopping for Theo! Grandma Diane watched him for a couple hours while we went out for a “date” lunch of sushi (yum!) and then headed over to Toys ‘R Us. We decided to shop for him in one fell swoop--if we picked up things here and there, it’d be FAR too easy to go over budget. So, we made one lovely trip to Toys ‘R Us, budget in hand, and were very happy with the results. His “big” present is a play kitchen, which we’ve been told pretty much every kid loves. Since Theo’s very much in the “mommy’s/daddy’s helper” phase, we figured this would be the perfect present for him…a place where he can play pretend with all those “help” skills he’s been learning. We also got a few little presents for him, so I think he’s going to have a fun, fun Christmas. Lately he’s been obsessed with flashcards, and we have two more packs of those to go in his stocking.

So, a fun and eventful week in the Small household. Hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday season thus far!