The Small Family   

Well, I could’ve titled this blog many things. Happy New Year, perhaps! Or Cold #4 Strikes (though that remains to be seen--more on that in a bit). But I chose Monkey See, Monkey Do because that’s been Theo lately…Mr. Imitator. Everything we do, he tries to do. In most cases, this is really quite funny. I’ll give you a couple examples from this past week….

One day, I went jogging in the park, and Chris pulled up in the car with Theo in the back. He’d been going to take Theo to Lowe’s to look at some home-improvement stuff while I jogged and worked, but he decided to stop and pick me up a yummy Starbucks mocha first. So he stopped at the house, ran inside to put the drink in the refrigerator…and promptly stepped in a pile of dog poop in the kitchen. (Luna rarely messes in the house, but on occasion, when the weather is cold and wet and she doesn’t want to go out, she gets stubborn and forgets her manners.) So as he’s relating this story to me, telling me how he’s stomping around going, “Dammit!” I see Theo in his car seat, giggling away and imitating Chris’s every move and gesture (luckily, he stopped short of repeating the cuss word!). A similar thing happened when Chris, Theo, and I were driving somewhere, and I was relating how I was so mad I just wanted to “shake someone!” I pantomimed grabbing a collar and shaking, and the next thing I knew, Theo was in the car seat, laughing and imitating me. Lesson to us first-time parents: Time to start really censoring what comes out of our mouths in front of the monkey!

Another thing that Theo has lately been obsessed with is Q-Tips. This sort of baffled me until I let him get into the cabinet with the Q-Tips…and watched him carefully begin to swab at his ear with one. Ah, more imitation!

We can also see his imitation skills at work in his play kitchen. He’s very interested in putting things away in the kitchen (we seriously need to nurture that particular interest--ha!), and not only does he put away his dishes and silverware, but he does it exactly like I do in the kitchen¾he stacks the plates into a pile first and then loads them into the cupboard. One day I watched him put the plates one by one into the cupboard, and then he stopped, thought for a moment, took them back out, and stacked them…and then put them back in. Fascinating to watch! (For some reason, he didn’t lick them. When he helps me unload the real dishwasher, he feels the need to lick each plate before handing it to me. Not sure why…but thanks, buddy!)

Given that we were all sick for more than a month, there was a lot of nose-blowing going on around here (eww!), and that’s another skill Theo loves to imitate. He will take a tissue, napkin, washcloth, or even his hand (eww!) and hold it up to his nose, then blow raspberries to make the nose-blowing sound. He’s pretty proud of that skill….

Speaking of being sick…Cold #4 may be upon us. Theo got a cold in October (right after his H1N1 vaccine), and then another on Thanksgiving (right after his H1N1 booster). Just when the Thanksgiving one was almost gone, he suddenly started coughing a ton again, and his nose started running. I took him to the doctor, and it turned out to be Cold #3 (along with case of Croup #2). Yesterday, he did a few suspicious croup-like coughs…and a lot of regular coughs. Given that Cold #3 was nearly gone, we’re suspicious that this may be the start of Cold #4. His nose was running a bit, too, and he’s coughing up a storm today. So far today’s cough hasn’t sounded croup-like, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on it, as another doctor visit may be in order. (Last time they gave him a dose of something to ease the swelling in his airways, and if this turns into croup again, I think they have to give him another dose.) Poor kid! Someone told me (can’t remember who) that their pediatrician said it’s not unusual for toddlers to get four or five colds in a cold season, so we’ve informed Theo that if this is indeed Cold #4, he’s only allowed to get one more before spring! :-)

Theo’s sleep has been rather disastrous for the past few weeks, too. Often he’s up for two or three hours in the middle of the night, which is very unlike him. (Despite the fact that he’s a lousy napper and always has been, he’s always been a very good night sleeper.) But, the cause made itself apparent this week--two beautiful new two-year molars are just now poking through the top gums! We’re still waiting for signs of the bottom ones, so I suspect this may go on for awhile, but we were quite pleased to see at least the top ones start to come through. Anything that gets us back on the road to normal sleep is a blessing!

The funny thing is, despite the lousy sleep, he’s been a little prince most days since Christmas. You’d expect an overtired kid to be grumpy and fussy, but he’s really been quite good. (He had a week of being a tyrant before Christmas, but he’s been quite good since.) And funny! He’s trying out several new words a day now, and it’s funny to hear him try to say them. He’s been working on things like “backpack,” “five,” and “help” (and a ton more, but those are the ones that jump to mind). (Why five? Because he loves brushing his teeth more than just about anything, and he would walk around all day with the toothbrush if we’d let him. So after he brushes his teeth for a while, I tell him I’m going to count to five and then he has to hand over the toothbrush. Which he does…and repeats “five.”)

Our relatively non-cuddly son has also developed a great affinity for Eskimo kisses (where you rub noses like the Eskimos-es!). He will come up to me and ask for them, which delights me. He has never been one for much cuddling or hugging, so I’m happy to oblige when he feels the need for a quick Eskimo kiss!

Another recent obsession is my bra. (Apologies for the indelicacy of mentioning undergarments if this bothers anyone--but I think it’s a funny story, so I’m going to share it.) I keep it in my closet overnight, and Theo normally helps me get ready in the morning. (“Helps” meaning stands outside the shower pulling the curtain around himself, jabbering nonstop, and throwing things in the shower with me.) When I get out of the shower, he immediately runs to the closet, grabs my bra (which, along with my underwear, is the first thing I put on), and brings it to me…and seriously asks, “Wha’ dat?” to which I reply, “My bra.” So one morning this week, as I’m showering, the curtain is suddenly pulled open, and there is Theo, proudly holding my bra. “Bra!” he exclaims…and hurls it into the shower. It, naturally, gets soaked…and my other one is in the dirty clothes hamper. Crikey! I toss it back out quickly with an admonishment that bras don’t go in the shower and that he should put it “over there,” and I start to hurry through the rest of my shower. The curtain flies open again, and this time he has thrown a book in with me. A lovely, wet book. Sigh… I finish quickly and get out…only to find my sopping wet bra placed on top of the jeans I was going to wear. He did indeed move it, as I had asked…but right onto my jeans, which now had a big wet spot on them. I found different jeans and an old pre-pregnancy bra that is rather uncomfortable now, and I called it good enough!

Later in the week, Theo and I were reading a book that has some pictures of a baby dressing himself, and Theo said, “Bra!” I said, “No, babies don’t wear bras…only women wear bras!” He promptly grabbed my shirt, pulled it up, pointed to my bra, and said, “Bra!” Oh dear…please, please don’t try that in public, Theo!!

But on to other topics… Our week was fairly mellow, given that we were still recovering from Christmas chaos. New Year’s Eve was Chris’s and my five-year anniversary of our first meeting. (We actually saw each other six months prior to New Year’s Eve 2004, but we didn’t speak to each other…so we count New Year’s Eve as our meeting.) You’d think we’d do something romantic to celebrate the occasion, but not so much… Theo had been sleeping lousy, so all we really wanted to do was go to bed early and catch some Zzzzzs. And so, after Theo went to bed, we played a board game (‘80s trivia), drank a glass of sparkling grape juice, and went to bed at 9:30p.m.! Theo actually slept through the night…wish I could say I did the same. Insomnia struck, so I was no better off, really. But Chris got a good night of sleep, as did Theo, so that was a plus.

New Year’s Day, my Mom and I went to see Precious. A very good movie, although definitely not easy to watch. I really wanted to see it, though, as did my Mom…and Chris very much did not want to see it. So he watched Theo for four hours while Mom and I went to the movie and had lunch at Tower Café, and next weekend I will return the favor and watch Theo while he watches the Cowboys playoff game in uninterrupted bliss. (Much like Chris and Precious, I very much do not wish to watch the Cowboys game!)

Yesterday we decided to go to Sausalito, to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. We went there some months ago and really enjoyed it, and we had a great time again. It’s a museum solely for children--everything is hands-on and geared toward play and fun learning. The “learning” part is for kids older than Theo, but even toddlers can enjoy the hands-on nature of everything. Theo had a lot of fun bouncing on the pond (which is essentially like a waterbed), but I think he most enjoyed playing outside. His favorite seemed to be the rock box (same thing he liked last time), where they have construction equipment to haul around pebbles. Theo watched the bigger kids and quickly got the idea of how to use the shovel to move pebbles around, though mostly he seemed to like putting them in an orange construction cone and then emptying them out. At one point some stray pebbles showered onto his head from a nearby child using a shovel, and because Theo has such wild, curly hair, the pebbles stuck. Theo was oblivious (busy with his construction cone), but Chris knelt down and picked out all the pebbles…in the process looking strikingly like a monkey grooming its young! It cracked me up, so I had to take some pictures of my two “monkeys.”

After the Discovery Museum, we of course headed over the Golden Gate into San Francisco and had lunch at our favorite stop--the Ferry Building. Last time we had a very disappointing Chinese food meal, so this time we tried the Mexican restaurant and were not disappointed! I had a fish taco and a veggie taco, and Chris had two fish tacos. Yum! We also got a to-die-for peanut-butter cup from a fancy chocolatier, as well as a brownie. Mmmm!!! And then we headed home, with Theo asleep for the first 90 minutes of the drive. It was actually the least stressful SF trip we’ve done. Theo always enjoys getting out and about, but SF can be stressful even without kids--lots of traffic and crowds. But yesterday the weather was nice, the crowds were minimal, and the traffic wasn’t bad at all. Bliss!

So that about wraps up our week. Hope you all had a wonderful, safe New Year’s! Happy 2010!