February 2005

02/27/05

We went to Explora, the children's science museum, on Friday.  Tommy had a grand time, as you can tell from the pictures below.  Unfortunately he had a run-in with the room of mirrors at the end of the visit.  First he ran straight into the back wall because he didn't understand that the mirror was solid.  He wasn't really hurt, just startled.  I must admit, it was hilarious.  I set him down outside the mirror room and he immediately ran back in, tripped over the change from carpet to flooring at the entrance and fell flat on his face.  He gave himself a massive bloody nose and drew all of the docents out of the woodworks.  We went home after we stopped the bleeding (and the screaming) and finished filling out all the don't-sue-us paperwork.  Poor Tommy.  He has a bruise line across the bridge of his nose, but didn't end up with black eyes.  He seemed to feel perfectly fine the next day.

This is a huge Rube Goldberg-type set up that moves balls through a huge maze.  Tommy was very intrigued and kept waiting in that exact spot for the occasional balls to fall and bounce in front of him.

  Helping Daddy make a wind mill.

Bang Bang!  Touch the contacts to make the drum go boom.

He crawled around in these pipes for a while, figured out that loose pipes fit into the holes and then spent 10 minutes helping the docent clean up by putting pipes and connectors into the bin. 

02/21/05

Cool things Tommy can do...some are new...some are old things I've forgotten to tell you...

• All four 1st molars have finished breaking through his gums.  It took SEVEN weeks for all the edges to appear.  He now has 12 teeth.  Only 8 more to go.
• He gave me a kiss for the first time today.  It was totally spontaneous and one of those cute open-mouthed, no-pucker, baby kisses.  I was talking about giving him kisses and he ran at me and mashed his mouth into my mouth.  He just gave David one too, so we know it's not a fluke.
• He uses spoons and toddler sporks on his own, and gets very miffed if we try to help him.  He's really quite successful and gets at least 3/4 of the food into his mouth.
• When he wants to go outside he finds his shoes and his coat and brings them to us.  If he can't find either, he brings me one of my shoes.  Unfortunately, it's rained every day for the last two weeks (very strange for Albuquerque).  He hasn't given up though!  At least four times a day he wants to go out!  I can just see him thinking, "if only I can get Mommy to put my shoes on then I'll get to play outside!"  Luckily, taking him out in the car usually satisfies him.
• He started trying to do somersaults this weekend.  If he's in the middle of a room he goes from sitting to standing by putting his hands and feet on the floor and pushing his bottom up in the air, sort of an upside-down V.  This weekend he was experimenting with putting his head down and looking at the world upside-down through his legs so I rolled him over into a somersault.  He thought that was super cool so now he tries to do it himself all the time.  He can't quite get over yet; he just dives/rolls sideways.  We're trying to teach him that the tile isn't the best place for practicing somersaults. 
• He has a level of empathy/story comprehension/imagination that surprises me.  His favorite book right now is Hug by Jez Alborough.  It's basically a story in pictures about a chimpanzee, and the only words in the book are hug, Mommy and Bobo (the baby chimp's name).  Bobo is wandering around noticing all the mama animals hugging their babies.  Then he gets very sad because he can't find his mommy for a hug.  Eventually mommy chimpanzee and Bobo find each other.  Tommy gets increasingly upset as Bobo looks for his mommy, yells "hug!", and sits down to cry.  He grabs at me and scrunches up his face and whimpers.  When mommy chimp appears and Bobo cries "Mommy!", Tommy immediately grins and bounces up and down.  When mommy chimp and Bobo hug on the next page, he gives me a big hug and seems so relieved.  He seems to really understand what Bobo is feeling and relates it to his own experiences.  (I do go out on my own and leave him with David from time to time.)  You'd think he wouldn't want to read this book since it seems to upset him, but he must like the resolution because he brings it to us over and over again.

Practicing somersaults (while chewing on the toothbrush)

Today was the first day without rain in 2 weeks

Carefully spread rocks across the concrete 

  Then help sweep them up

02/19/05

Three indications that I am not a perfect mother...

• I finally manage to sweep the kitchen floor, but have to search for a dust pan.  When I return to my pile of sweepings the boy is squatting next to it and carefully separating the cheerios from the other bits and eating them.
• I managed to get Tommy hooked on chocolate covered raisins.  There are so many things wrong with that!  (choking hazard, caffeine and sugar in chocolate, gooey raisins that stick to the teeth, etc)
• I laugh when he brushes food he doesn't like off his tongue and hands it to me.

Two indications that Tommy, however, is perfect...

He can walk and read at the same time!

  And loves to brush his teeth 

02/17/05

Bed head?  What's bed head?

02/15/05

He has an empty travel shampoo bottle that he's decided is "lotion."  He carries it around and wants to pour some into your hands every few minutes.  Then you're supposed to rub your hands together and say "thank you."

A hammer and a basketball.  What more could an Epp boy need?

02/13/05

We let Tommy eat his first fortune cookie tonight.  His fortune, which narrowly escaped being eaten, was "ideas you may believe are absurd ultimately lead to success."  That's rather fitting since we devoted this weekend to sleep training.  Yes, I've always been against doing it.  I changed my mind.  That's all I'm going to say about that, although I've deleted paragraph after paragraph on the subject over the last three days.  In the end, what seemed like an absurd idea (to me) is starting to lead to success.  On the first night he was asleep after 40 minutes of intermittent crying (with reassurance from us every 10-15 minutes) and slept 7 hours before waking.  On the second night he was asleep after less than 10 minutes of crying and slept 9 hours before waking.  We're still working on the early morning hours, and the naps are a disaster, but those are the times of day he's accustomed to sleeping on my lap instead of his bed.  I think everything will work out without harming the boy's psyche too much.

02/09/05 -- later

What I learned today...

A raw broccoli stalk will keep Tommy entertained long enough for me to finish cooking dinner.

02/09/05

Captain Pajamas colors while eating dinosaur crackers.

02/07/05

We had Tommy's 1-year doctor visit today.  He is 31 inches tall (about 80th percentile) and 23 lbs 14 oz (just over 50th percentile).  He's long and lean!

02/06/05

We had a second First-Birthday party for Tommy today.   We wanted to do something with David and our friends since everyone was in Florida last weekend.  Thanks to Eric, Karen, Brendan, Brian and Megan for attending.  Poor Claudia Sinars fell asleep right before the party so she and her Mommy and Daddy didn't get to come.  Here are some pictures.  (The cake says Happy B-day Tommy.)

Tommy's new favorite food is blackberries.  I know, they're ridiculously expensive, but he's so obsessed with the pictures of blackberries in one of his counting/colors books that I had to buy some.

02/04/05

It's a beautiful 50 degree day today.  We played outside for a long time after lunch.  Tommy loves his new shovel.  I'm going to buy him some baby-safe play sand and a Rubbermaid bin for storage.  In the meantime though, my long defunct herb garden makes a not-so-baby-safe alternative.

02/03/05

Daddy's home!  All is right with the world.

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