Month: October 2012

I’ll have to write about it another night because I’m exhausted. The sign we are standing in front of actually reads, “I survived Sandy’s Storm and we share our energy with all who need it.”

The sun came out today. We are feeling very lucky to have made it through the storm mostly unaffected. We never lost our power and I haven’t seen much damage around here besides a couple of trees down and whole lot of branches and leaves everywhere. Since we live in Prospect Heights (aptly named), we are on a hill, and also not super close to the water. It’s definitely a protected area when it comes to this type of storm. It was a spooky, very windy, light-flickering kind of night. It is very sad and scary to see the damage sustained in NYC, NJ, and other surrounding areas. We know several people without power/hot water who left/are leaving the city to stay with family elsewhere because they don’t know when power will be restored. A couple of Jay’s coworkers are displaced in Red Cross shelter, etc. His office has also been without power all week and they don’t know when it will be back on. Fortunately Jay has been able to do some work from home, which will allow him to still get paid a bit, but as a freelancer the no work situation is not a great one for us. Theo has been tickled pink to have us both here all week, of course. He didn’t even really notice there was a storm. We told him on Monday a storm was coming and we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. He didn’t mind. He was in bed by the time the weather really picked up, so he slept through the worst of it. In the morning I told him the storm was over. “Storm over! Not raining!” he said. “Choo Choo train ride!”. Oh, no… I told him we wouldn’t be able to ride the subway for awhile. We did manage to get out yesterday morning for fresh air and visit our friends nearby.

We brought bagels and the kids got to play together. Theo just keeps say, “Dada, no work again!”. People were out and about with their kids and their dogs. It is surreal to see the images on TV and know that is actually happening right here when it looks very normal in our neighborhood. This huge city completely shut down… subways, buses, bridges, tunnels, airports, freeways! And the fires? Did you hear about the 80 houses burned to the ground while being flooded in Breezy Point, Queens? And NYU hospital that needed to be evacuated because their back-up generators failed? Hundreds of patients had to be evacuated in the midst of the storm, including twenty newborn babies in the NICU. Images of ambulances lined up around the block transporting patients to nearby hospitals. It’s unreal. The subways are still shut down (some are working above 34th street, I think), JFK and Newark airports have reopened but LaGuardia is still closed. The Holland and Brooklyn Battery Tunnels are still closed, too. I imagine it will be weeks, months before things get back to normal for many people. I know this storm was far-reaching, and our family and friends in Cleveland have also been impacted with loss of power and never ending rain. I hope everyone is getting things back to normal and I hope this great city can back on its feet as quickly as possible.

This is a sentence we hear around here a lot. He wants to hop up on Daddy’s office chair and “work hard” with his mouse. Now he likes to get his paws on my laptop. Obviously we do keep this out of the way, and don’t generally use it when he is awake. On occasion we give him a few minutes to play around. This morning he said, “Theo work hard recipe”. I asked him what recipe he was working on and he said, “tortellini!”. He loves that as an answer.

Theo has also been very interested in talking about backwards and forwards. And also front and back. When he’s in the bath he will go on his belly, using his arms on the bottom of the tub, and move himself backwards and forwards telling me which way he is going. Pretty cool, I thought. Recently he started saying it as we were walking down the steps. He attempted to turn himself around and said, “backwards”. I said, “oh no no, we don’t walk down the stairs backwards, only forwards!” So, now he will pretend for a second, look at me, smile, and say “not backwards, forwards”. And, forwards it is (thankfully)! He is intrigued with lights on the back and front of the train so we talk about that a lot, too.

He is a sweet, little lamb and we are having a nice time holed up in the apartment waiting for the storm to hit. We have all that we should need in the event of a power outage and we are basically just hoping it passes quickly with a big wind and rain storm. The news is pretty outrageous with their drama so here’s to hoping everyone is safe and sound tomorrow.

As stated many times before, Theo absolutely loves musical instruments. At a friends birthday party recently he came in contact with a harmonica and he was smitten. He has one of those cheap-o echo mics but he got his hands on Jay’s real microphone the other day as he was prepping for the Halloween Bash haunted house. He has been carrying it around everywhere, including the grocery store. I snapped the above shot as we were getting ready to leave yesterday for some more storm preparations. I caught some amazing video of Theo singing into the mic, and playing his guitar, while we were listening to music yesterday but it turns out I had my hand over the speaker! What a jerky. Going to have to try that again soon to capture the adorableness of it all. For Christmas this year we are definitely thinking about getting him a keyboard and a harmonica to round out his collection.

And, PS – How about that amazing jacket he is wearing?? Our friend Anna just gave it to us. It was her boys’ and she passed it along to Theo. He is equally excited about it. “Rainbow! Colors!” Wait until you see the back of it. It is the coolest coat, ever.

Theo’s Aunt Cori and Uncle Scott decided to have a 1st annual Halloween Bash at their place in Bay Ridge. It was mostly older kids… Will and Sam’s friends from school and a few other adult friends and kiddos. Jay built an awesome haunted house in the back bedroom/bathroom, which the kids found to be spoooky! I took Theo through for a very tame version. Theo was quite overwhelmed with the party, initially. Jay was busy setting up the haunted house, there were so many people and kids running around, he wasn’t having a great time. He only wanted “uppie” and he kept asking for “Dada” over and over. Once most of the kids left and it was just us and a few other close friends, Theo became much more comfortable and happy. It was already our normal bath time by then but we wound up staying awhile because that is when we were able to really hang out and visit with our people. It’s amazing how well he does in that situation. He was so happy and content, despite it being way past his bedtime. But throw him in a big, crowded group and he’s like, ahhh! Sounds familiar!

We are supposed to go trick or treating on Wednesday with a group of our local friends. Hopefully this hurricane business is over by then and Halloween isn’t cancelled. Theo was absolutely thrilled when he tried on his costume for the first time. He was silly and giddy and ran into the bedroom to see himself in our full-length mirror. On the subway ride down there yesterday he was talking incessantly (about a million different things, really) and he would say, “Aaaaaalvin!” I think he pulls off the costume quite nicely and it was a cinch for us to put together.

We went to IKEA last week with my friend Becky and her baby. We were in a car! It was glorious! Seriously, though, it was a fun little adventurous trip for Theo. “IKEA!” “Elevator!” “Garage!” It’s a long story (isn’t it always with IKEA?), but, we went back today. This time on public transportation. There’s a free shuttle that leaves from Park Slope every 30 minutes. So, although, a bit of work for me to schlep the nearly 30lb sweetheart, he savored the bus trip. Here he is getting ready for departure.

It was actually a huge charter bus, which was kind of weird considering there were about 3 people catching the ride. On the way back we were back on the “normal” shuttle bus. This time Theo and I were sharing the oh-so-delicious $1 ice cream cone.

The trip was pretty noisy and bumpy and, therefore, Theo proceeded to babble the rest of the evening, “a little booompy!” He has this adorable accent I wish everyone could hear. I need more video so I don’t forget.

Between the trip last week and today, the big boy now has his very own pillow (instead of the one he stole from me) and a new comforter. Of course, we still don’t have the big item that I was supposed to get.

Why is finding a preschool in Brooklyn like applying for college?! It’s $50 per application, I have to tour each one, probably call back and schmooze, and then hope I get into one of them. And I really better hope we don’t leave a deposit for one and then get into another that we liked even more at a later date! Then you’re just SOL. We have two tours and two applications sent already. I have another tour this Wednesday, and then another one in early November. And this is for him to begin the 3’s program in September. A year in advance to find a preschool! I can’t even start to think about elementary school process. For now, we will continue to enjoy our mellow days with the great outdoors, our cozy apartment, occasional train and bus rides, and our upcoming music and swimming classes. Relishing this time and also looking forward to the learning that is ahead for this curious, determined little guy.

Thanks to my friends over at Popsburgh, I am now able to bring you more media blitz of Theo than you can handle. Here’s where you shout, “yay”! So, those of you that follow the blog, and don’t do Instagram, now is your chance to have many, many daily photos of Theo that may or may not end up on the blog. The good news is that you can see tons of photos of Theo from the past several months (and these will continuously be updated daily via the Instagram app on my iPhone) and you won’t be bogged down with my sappy sweet nothings and various updates. I know, I know… you do really love those, too, but, hey! now you can just scroll through nearly endless images of Theo day after day. I was looking back last night at pictures as I added them that go as far back as, I believe, Jan/Feb of this year. I think that is when I began using Instagram. And (surprise) Theo looks so much more like a baby! Anyhow, head on over to Theo InstaPop and check back on a regular basis for all of the daily goings on in the Big Apple. Also, I am continuing to fine tune this new look of the blog so there may be a change, or two, here and there. If you look to the sidebar, there is also a link to Theo Instapop there. And here and here. 😉 Scroll down to the very bottom for the most recent… I started uploading those first and then realized I needed to work backwards. Oops. Luckily I caught it quickly.

I was thinking about some other perks now that Theo is in the toddler bed. He used to wake up cranky and groggy from his naps. Not always, but often. I would think it was when he didn’t sleep enough. It seemed if his nap was 3 hours then he would wake up in better spirits, but that wasn’t always true. And the opposite, sometimes he would be chipper after a less than 2 hour nap, which I found shocking. Anyhow, since the toddler bed, he wakes up in some very cute fashions. It seems to either be that he wakes up and walks over to the door, which I then hear rattling like a cat is scratching, I hear little whimpers, “Mama open door!”, or something like that. He hasn’t quite perfected the knob turn so he is always stuck in there, technically. Or, if he sleeps 3 hours, and it’s after 4pm, I usually open the door and peek in there to make sure he hasn’t escaped somehow 😉 Most of the time he is already sitting up, or walking towards the door. He gets super excited and shouts, “Theo wake up!” and “Mama open door!” This time he is just remarking on the fact that I opened the door. This naturally makes me smile and I promptly kneel down and ask him for a hug. We give big hugs and smooches and all is right with the world. Any irritations that may have crept up during his nap time, or residual frustrations from something that might have happened in the morning, are usually washed away. I’m not sure whether there is really a connection. Seems silly and far fetched. When we still had the crib, I had recently started carrying him around after his nap asking him about his dreams. This seemed to help get him out of the groggy zone. We would look out the window and I would say, “did you dream abooouuut the playground? did you dream abooouuut bananas? did you dream about Dada? did you dream about Elmo? did you dream about trains?” you catch my drift… He absolutely loves this. This tradition has carried over to the toddler bed and it’s just a sweet time for us to be silly and talk about dreams and his interests. It sure beats when I was having to hold him while he whined for nothing that seemed to soothe his crankiness. Sometimes I would put on Thomas the Tank Engine and that would help bring him out of the zone. I would put it on, grab some snacks, and wait for my sweet guy to return. I’m sure all of the above will happen again. For now, I’m happy that he is napping well and that he is happy with his bed! At least until the middle of the night…

I know I’ve said it here many times before but this sweet boy lights up my life like I never could have imagined. He is mine, all mine and I don’t want the time to go too quickly. I know he WILL grow up and, eventually, not want to give me amazing smooches, hold my hand, and tell me how much he loves me all the time. I am relishing in this so much right now, especially since the “I love you so much!” is a new sentence Theo has been throwing around a lot lately. He is just such a big kid these days. So curious and so quick to learn new words, phrases, and concepts. It’s amazing and exciting and also so easy for me to look back and picture that tiny baby in my arms. I get choked up every time I think about bringing him into the world and just every little thing that he has learned to do and say.

I think this photo really encapsulates his spirit. A beautiful, glowing smile but also a bit of shyness and modesty. I hope he grows up to be a sweet, thoughtful, intelligent, aware, and loving man. I hope we can instill those attributes in him.