Big Changes

A strange thing happened recently.  I was performing my usual post-Elliot-bedtime ritual of scouring my laptop for photos of Elliot to post to the blog.  And I tried to post some, and Google told me that I had used up all my allowed storage space.

What????? I thought Google owned the world.  I thought that us allowing them to own the world was the price we paid, so that they would let us share one small glorious piece of it.

But apparently there is a limit to the portion of Google-scented Glory each Googlezen (amalgam of Google-citizen or Google-denizen, you choose) is allowed to partake.

My time on this blog runs short.  Weep not for me.  Like a phoenix this blog shall rise again.

You might think that Google, with all the smart people they employ, wouldn't allow me to just open another blog and starting uploading more photos and videos.

But you would be wrong.

So head over to the next incarnation of Elliot, his toddler years, at ebpage2.blogspot.com.

Another 1 GB of videos here we come!

(cross-posted to ebpage2.blogspot.com)

Kate and Elliot

Or:  Book v iPhone

(Treadwell, NY, Thanksgiving 2012)

Christmas Cookies

Emily brought her three awesome kids (Liam, Zara, and Aramis) over on Christmas Eve.  There was much rollicking fun, but most of it was not caught on camera.  Christmas cookies, however, are indisputably photogenic.

(Yes, that's a Christmas elephant.)

 (And yes, that is a fistful of sprinkles exploding from his tight little fist...)

Merry Christmas to All

We had a nice Christmas here in Ann Arbor.  Elliot got some great books, some cool shirts, an awesome unbreakable camera, and a tower of ramps for his toy cars that is truly intoxicating.  Kate made a delicious souffle for brunch, and then duck with mushroom risotto for dinner.

Tomorrow we may head out to see Dan's place (which we've been hearing about for quite a while, so I'm excited).  And then in the 27th Ami with come over with Ezra, which will be fun.  Plus that's the day I'm heading to prison to visit someone I'm helping Deb with.  (Yes, that's all very vague, but there may be privacy issues here so I edited that sentence down to nearly nothing).

Photos soon!

My Christmas Eve Eve

If I hadn't flown to Michigan this morning, this would've broken my heart....

Kindle

This could be a pretty good ad for it...

Treadwell, NY.

Alan and Elliot

Thanksgiving Day, 2012.

Variations on a Theme

When Elliot first learned the phrase "Thank You" he associated it with the giving and taking of objects:  sharing.  Logical enough.  Someone gives, you say thank you.

But the precise relationship between "thank you" and the sharing of objects was never quite nailed down.  So Elliot started using the phrase as a way of alerting us that he wanted to share with us. In other words, it was  a way of saying "Here, you take this."

Hence, car rides with a chirpy "Thank You!" emerging from the backseat, and us looking around to find him handing us a toy.

And then a funny thing happened.  Instead of "thank you" he started saying "you're welcome".

So yesterday we're cleaning up the living room and I hear "you're welcome, Daddy" and I turn around and he's handing me a crumpled up paper towel.

I'm sure we will repeat this ad nauseum with books, napkins, bananas, bottles, etc.

Some updates

What's been going on?  We all went out to Joanne and Drew's wedding last weekend.  That was a super-quick jaunt through Michigan (I was there for almost exactly 24 hours), and we got home not-so-rested and had to start a whole long week again.

Plus things have been brutal at the hospital lately.  Lots of patients, lots of consults.  It's tougher living an extra 10-15 minutes out on the subway, even though that seems like a tiny difference.  Hannah has been working from home because her office got flooded during Sandy, and that has its own set of challenges.

Kittens!  They are growing.  We still have all three, but we are definitely going to give away one, maybe two.

So if you know someone in the New York metro area who wants an adorable kitten, have them get in touch with me.  I should probably throw a few photos of them on the blog to whet your appetite, but I don't have any right now.

Anyway, today we moved the kittens from the first floor bathroom --- where they have been frolicking and shredding shower curtains and stinking up the place something royal --- to the back two rooms of the first floor.

Since these back two rooms also currently serve as Hannah's office, it remains to be seen whether the shredding will continue, with Hannah's documents taking the place of the shower curtain.

Albie Mose

In case you're not hip to it, Aaron and Daria have a great blog going for their son Albie Mose Page.

And even if you're just a pure Elliot-o-phile, right now the Albie blog is featuring a bunch of great photos and videos from Thanksgiving, so the entire clan is included...

Pinecone catch

At Two Oaks, Alan and Michelle's farmhouse in Treadwell, NY.

Anna Novick's Holiday Party

Which was awesome, by the way.  I spent most of my time having fun, which is why this is the only video clip from the event.

The unexpected effects of a home renovation

We're going a little nuts with this renovation right now.  We're sleeping in what will one day (hopefully in 2012, or at least early 2013) become an office.  Our bed right now is located about 20 feet from Elliot's crib.

At first this didn't mean much.  For the months of September and October, Elliot slept the way he did before --- all through the night.

But slowly.... slowly he realized that he could get us to come in and pay attention to him at night.  We were close enough that we couldn't just ignore his cries.  And so he began to cry more, and we, wanting sleep, began to hop up and get him a bottle to bribe him back to quiet.

It's gotten to the point where he now wakes up every single night, without fail, and demands a bottle.  He cried for half an hour last night, coughing and gagging he was so worked up.

The point of all this is:  we need our own bedroom.  With a door that gives us some space from him.  Here's hoping it will be here soon.

As you may or may not know, the walk signs in New York City are colored orange and white. 

The Don’t Walk signal is an orange hand.  The Walk signal is a white figure walking.

The unfortunate upshot of this is that when it’s time to cross the street, I say to Elliot, in my cheeriest voice, “Okay, let’s go!  The white man says we can walk!”

At Thanksgiving

Obama

Elliot's bedtime noises

I realize I haven't posted much video of Elliot talking.  I just got our camera up and running again, so hopefully you'll be hearing it soon.  Consider this a warm-up.  For those willing to listen all the way to the end, he's got a pretty good vocabulary:

Prospect Park Pond

Happy Thanksgiving!

Doctor check-up

We went to the doctor recently.  She’s our favorite!  An orthodox Jew who practices in Park Slope, she is no-nonsense but still fun.  Kind of like I imagine Nancy Pelosi would be if she were your doctor. 

Anyway, everything went fine.  Elliot started out quiet --- he’d seen her 6 months earlier and was trying to place her face.  By the end he had warmed up a lot, was smiling at her and saying a few words here and there.  

As she departed, Dr. K said “Bye-bye.  Can you say bye, bubby?”  

And Elliot said, clear as day, “Bye Bubby.”

Trick-or-Treating

A bedtime

We went down and had a halloween candy, and I let him watch a Blues Clues.  Then we came upstairs and changed into a fresh diaper and PJs, and I said, “Okay, let’s go get a baba and go to sleep.”

And he freaked out.  Just lost it.  Started crying, sobbing, wrecked.  Standing there in his little footies in the middle of the living room.

“What’s wrong?  It’s bedtime.”  He couldn’t reply.  He was adrift.  What was this?

He stared up at me, unable to formulate.  Then he pointed at the grownup bed.  “Snuggle,” he said. 

“You want to snuggle?”

He nodded emphatically. 

“Okay, we’ll go down and get a baba, and then come back and snuggle for a few minutes before bed.”

While we were downstairs at the sink, I said “Do you want to read a book while we snuggle?”

“No.”

“No book?  Just snuggle?”

“Just snuggle.”

So that’s what we did.  Snuggling means lying next to each other in bed under the covers. I plopped him down and lay next to him, and for a few moments we stared at the ceiling silently, listening to the sound of milk burbling through the rubber nipple.  

“Dada.”

“Yes?”  I looked over at him. 

He waved his impossibly adorable hand at me. “Hi dada.”

“Hi Elliot.”

We listened to the sound of the milk for a bit longer.  “Milk,” he explained. 

“Yes.”

He pointed at the ceiling.  “Light bulb.  Light bulb.  Light bulb.” 

“Yeah, there are light bulbs in all those sockets.”  He nodded seriously. 

“Okay, time for bed.  Are you ready?”

“No.”  But he let me lift him without protest, and kissed me as I put him down in his crib. 

I don’t know why he wanted to do this.  He’s never asked for it before.  But it meant a lot to me, far more than I might have expected. 

Why is it so touching to me that my son would want to hang out for a few minutes before bed?  I don’t know.  

But that’s parenthood I guess: you can’t explain it to someone who hasn’t experienced it. 

Elliot is Cool

Or at least he wears cool clothes sometimes...

While eating my morning muffin

God, I get so desperate for a little Elliot-time after a long day of work.  It's been brutal at the hospital recently, leaving for work at 6am and getting home after 7:30.  And to walk in the door and see Elliot pretty much ready for bed is heartbreaking.  I run over and hug him and read books to him, and I want to play with him and tickle him and grab him by his little legs and wrestle with him all at once, all in the fifteen minutes I have before he goes to sleep.

What's so mind-blowing about this hunger to spend time with him is the change from when I spend all day with him.  When Hannah went to Oregon for the weekend it was tough to spend the whole day with him --- not just keeping him from killing himself, that part has become second nature.  It's the emotional demands he takes on you.  He constantly wants you to give of yourself, to play with him, to jump with him, to explore with him, to be curious with him.  He knows when you are faking it, and he will not tolerate it.  You can't phone it in, if you're playing legos with him you have to REALLY get excited about the legos or he'll just move on to something else.

And the fact that you can't fake it makes caring for him exhausting.  An 8-hour day alone with him in incredibly draining.

But I'd much rather have 8 hours than the 15 minutes I got yesterday.  And that I will probably get today...

Red Hook Farm

We have some friends who live in Red Hook, so the weekend after the storm Elliot and I headed over there to see if we could lend a hand (Hannah was off being a good friend to Liz in Oregon).

 It turned out that our friends were already taken care of, so we wandered over to the Red Hook Community Farm, which is a MASSIVE plot of land, like two football fields.

A big chunk of it is asphalt.

And it's right next to Ikea. 

Elliot tried to contribute, with his art.

And his general adorableness.

Just stuff

Not interesting stuff.  Just stuff. 

1) Someone screwed him up with shapes.  He's been (for months now --- in fact maybe I already blogged about this?) pointing a circles and saying "oval."  I have to gently correct him.  And he doesn't take it well. 

I'm blaming someone at Bumblebee Daycare, because when he was at Sunflower he was between 6 months and 10 months, and that just seems too young.  

Regardless of who is responsible, it's been an intensive, brutal, punishing corrective process.  But slowly those monsters' grip is loosening, the toxins are leaching, and our lovely child is returning to us. I've missed him so!

2) He skips 5.  We've been doing a lot of counting, and somewhere along the line Elliot decided to go straight from 4 (as in 1...2...3...4)  to 9.  

It's not that he doesn't know 5 comes after 4.  If you stop him and say "No, what's after 4?" he will think about it and say 5. 

What's happening, I think is that he has learned that ten is the goal.  And what better way to get to ten than skipping to 9?

When he actually does this skipping thing, it makes perfect sense to me.  We're reading a counting book, and we start counting pears or something.  He starts slowly (1...2...) but quickly accelerates (3, 4) and somewhere around the number 3 I can hear the excitement enter his voice.  By four he's fired up, brimming with anticipation, and the next number out of his mouth? Nine.  

If I were a better writer I could find some way that all of us adults do something exactly like this in our adulty lives.  But the analogy, if it exists, refuses to come to me right now.

If you think of one, leave it in the comments. 

Storms

It's been a crazy few weeks.  Hurricane Sandy had barely moved through before we got word of another storm shaping up.  The NYC marathon was canceled.

On Tuesday Obama won reelection (Yay!) (Elliot can now recognize photos of Obama, and he shouts "Obama" (which is a perfect word for an infant to pronounce) whenever he sees him).

Then yesterday this second storm hit us, a Nor'easter they called it.  I was trying to finish my compost bin and the wind was getting really strong, and then it started raining.  Hannah and I pulled the compost bin down into the basement, and an hour later when I came upstairs it was snowing.

Not the nice calm Christmasy snow, big flakes drifting onto your parka and such.  This was blustery swirls of ice pellets stabbing you in the cheekbone.  Not fun.  It took me half an hour to drive 10 blocks to pick up Elliot.  And I was wet from the 15-second run from the house to the car.

This is our backyard a day later, and it's been pretty warm so some of the snow melted:

That's our compost pile, which will soon be binned...

Elliot is smart

Can I just do that thing where I talk about how smart my kid is?  Do you mind?  Great.  Thanks for pretending you don’t find this incredibly irritating. 

We were reading a halloween themed book, and he pointed at a spooky castle and said “House.”  I explained to him that it was called a castle, which was like a house but a lot bigger.  I left it at that --- an explanation of the feudal system of governance seemed like it would be beyond both him and me.  

We finished the book and started another.  This was a train book, and on one page the train wound its way through a city.  

Elliot pointed at the skyscrapers.  “Castle,” he said.  

“Oh!  RIght, well, actually --- Yes, that is a really big house, but it’s different than a castle.”  

He looked at me suspiciously.  I realized I would have to be more specific.  

“It doesn’t have turrets.  A castle has turrets, and little spires and cupolas.”

He was skeptical. Should I be learning from this guy?  I plowed on.

“Also castles are made out of stone, and buildings are steel or wood.  Or, well, I guess buildings can be from stone too.  But castles are always really old.  Unless you built a new one, which almost no one does.”

He stared at me.  There was a pause. 

“Read Lowly Worm!”

Birthday at the Daycare

Birthday trip to the Zoo