Month: January 2013

Today we took a trip to visit my good friend, Claire, and her daughter, Olive. They moved up near Peekskill, NY several months ago and I hadn’t seen them since they left Brooklyn. Now that we have a car, we can take little day trips! I was excited to see their new house and to see that sweet, little Olive. Theo is always up for a car trip.

Below is the view from their backyard. An icy, foggy lake that was eerie! I can’t wait to visit in the summer.

Theo has given our car a name. The bossy mossy. Hilarious. It comes from his book, “The Lorax”, and he honestly developed this nickname on his own.

We drove Jay to work this morning on our way so Theo got some extra time with Daddy. I snapped this shot on our way to the car and just thought it was too sweet.

Jay was also home early last night since he was at jury duty during the day and him and Theo were having such a blast. Theo kept saying, “BIG tickles!”, and Jay would attack with tickles and then Theo would say, “ok, ok, ok, take a rest”, let out a big sigh and then, “BIG tickles!”. I can’t think of many things I love more than hearing him laugh so, so, so hard with joy.

Theo and I were just talking about how someday soon we’d get him an Abby Cadabby doll since I know he really likes her and, to be honest, I think she’s pretty cool. We were at our friends house yesterday and I mentioned it and she was like, “boom, here you go”. Her daughter got a second one as a gift and it was still in the box sitting in their closet. So, Theo got his Abby doll. What a lucky kiddo. Today he said, “I like her hair”. It’s sweet. She has almost join the ranks of monkey and hop. Almost.

Theo is becoming a master at playing “catch”. He has quite the arm and can really give you a good toss. We have taught him to hold his hands out and he has been getting much better with the actual catching part.

This morning I asked him to grab a book for me to read to him. He pulled one off of our shelf in the living room and said, “oh, we haven’t read this one in awhile”. What?? He’s awesome.

And, tonight, I asked him if he wanted some raisins. His response, “of course”. Of course, silly Mama. Why even ask? I watched him place a few raisins into his palm and then proceed to slap his hand up to his mouth shoving all of the raisins in at once. Not sure where he might have gotten that but very clever little trick.

We went to this Illumination Celebration at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this evening. We went for the lantern making and the moonlight lantern walk. We met our friends and their daughter there and it was a fun little change from most weekends. It was positively freezing for the moonlight lantern walk but we were bundled up and it was pretty cool. Crazy looking giant puppets and people walking on stilts flinging lanterns around. In the middle of the Cherry Eslanade, there were these guys that sounded amazing and creepy. Theo loved it. It would have been more fun in, say, summer. Pretty nifty, though.

And then we came home to learn of mice rustling around in our box of dried seaweed and our heat and hot water to be busted again. Yay for NY apartment living. Theo is none the wiser. He enjoys his evening baths in the sink.

Happy Saturday!

Theo helped me bake cookies yesterday afternoon. We have had quite a bit of indoor action this week with the chilly temps. Even he realizes how cold it is outside and doesn’t want to be out there. Brrr. He mostly had fun playing with the flour and commenting on how soft it was. By the end there was flour all over his face, his arms, and in his hair. Lots of cooking, reading, indoor play, movie watching, Trader Joe’s going in our new (old) car!, and Mama working this week.

Speaking of book reading, there has been a lot of repetitive book reading. I would say in the past two weeks, before nap and bedtime, we have read “Theo and the Blue Note” and “My Very Own Name” every single time. If you haven’t checked out the latter, you should. Makes a great, personalized baby gift and it gets a ton of play time over here. We have also been reading “The Lorax” a bunch, and some new Berenstain Bears gems, as well as “The Hanukkah Mice”.

The naps have improved. It seems as long as I, or the babysitter, lays down with him he will fall asleep for his nap. For bedtime, I have also had to lay with him more often than not. I don’t mind this terribly but I do feel a bit like we’ve regressed. He went to bed very easily on his own for ages and I’m not sure why he isn’t happy about it these days. I think it’s his new found abilities and realization that he can just get up and open the door. He says, “open door and see Mommy in the living room again!”. So, I can either put him back to bed over and over or I can just lay down with him until he falls asleep. It’s put a bit more stress on me because everything is later now and with trying to juggle some work from home it can get a little overwhelming for me to have very little time to myself. Do any parents have this? Anyhow, I’m just happy to have him napping and sleeping well.

The potty is still going decently. We took a trip to a few stores a couple weekends ago and stocked up and some big boy underpants. Besides being the most adorable thing I’ve seen in my entire life (his tushy butt in them, that is) we are learning how to take them on and off to use the bathroom! We have not graduated, by any means, to sleeping or venturing out with them on, but he has been great about telling me when he has to go when we are at home and that is wonderful.

He has been saying “yeah!” a lot lately. He says it in such a, yeah-I-totally-want-to-do-that-way, with his tone going up and down. Or, yeah-that-IS-exactly-what-I’m-explaining-to-you-Mom-kinda-way. It’s pretty cute. And he has started saying such phrases as, “oh, that’s cool”, “that’s pretty cool”, and “that’s really cool”. Not sure where he picked that up (ehem).

From our adventure to the Natural History Museum last week. The John Lennon memorial is right by there so we popped into the park for a quick visit. This was taken with our fancy, disposable camera.

And this photo below was taken by Theo. He loved these guys who obviously spend many hours and many days sitting on this bench. They were hamming it up with Theo he Theo was chasing pigeons. They told me about the hawks they see circling above. Theo has been patiently awaiting our photos to be developed by saying, “picture of guys…on the bench!”. He thought it was pretty cool to see how it turned out today. Not too bad!

We wake up every morning to, “I love you so much”. This is more than a person can ask for. Swoon.

Theo went to NJ with Papa Hankie to stay at his daughters house on Friday night for a very big boy sleepover. I was working the Vogue Knitting show at Liz’s booth on Friday and Saturday so the plan was to have Hank stay with Theo. They decided on the trip to see Allyson overnight and I think it was such a wonderful time for him. I missed my boy since I said goodbye on Friday morning and then didn’t see him again until Sat eve right before he went to bed. They had a wonderful time together and it sounds like Theo truly had a blast. Allyson has an amazing home and four children so Theo had plenty to do and plenty to eat. Allyson’s youngest is five and apparently she had a blast playing with Theo and helping to care for him. They went to a high school basketball game on Friday to see one of the boys play and apparently as soon as Theo entered the room he was so excited he took off running! Hank couldn’t catch him until he was already at half court and they got a standing ovation once he caught him. Wish I could’ve seen that! When Theo came down in the morning, he was greeted with copious amounts of eggs and waffles, and his beloved Toy Story 2 on the big screen. And, yes, I said Toy Story 2… not 1, or 3. He is very particular about his Toy Story preference. And Tristan brought Theo all of their Toy Story toys for him to play with. Isn’t that sweet? It really warms my heart when other people enjoy Theo and can tell me all about how silly and happy and wonderful he was when he was away. They did have one fall down the stairs, apparently, and Tristan and Theo wound up intertwined and crying at the bottom. But it turned into something silly because he talks about how they were “like a pretzel!”. Everyone was fine, thankfully. So Theo had a wonderful time and me and Jay had a night out after the show and a quiet apartment all to ourselves for a few hours. Yay for family!

Happy guy pouncing in the chilly puddles of Park Pl yesterday morning!

Theo has been taking a lot of morning showers with Jay lately as he’s getting ready for work. He runs around the apartment, “take a shower with Daddy!”. It’s pretty sweet and a nice bonding time for them since Jay only gets to see him in the morning and on the weekends. This morning he asked Jay to pick him up because he loves play with the nozzle. Jay said that he picked him up and Theo said, “I love you Daddy!”. How lovely is that? He’s been saying it a lot lately but something about those special moments that you really just want to savor.

Poor guy is representing quite the Cleveland sports legacy with his new sweatshirt from Aunt Carrie. He looks quite adorable in it but I do seem to get some funny looks on the street.

Anyways, today we took an awesome trip into the city to visit the American Museum of Natural History! I had promised Theo his “long choo choo” ride so I decided we would go see some dinosaur bones and the big blue whale in the hall of biodiversity. Looking back we should’ve visited The Butterfly Conservatory. I think Theo would really enjoy it. We will be back soon. I foolishly left my phone at home today so I was having some serious Instagram, and photo, withdrawal in general. I actually bought a disposable camera, which felt kind of hilarious. I’m giving Theo a good lesson in film. We are going to take the camera to get developed tomorrow and see what we captured. Theo took a picture of a couple old men near the “Imagine” John Lennon memorial so I look forward to seeing how that one turned out!

Theo was well behaved and we had a nice excursion together. He mostly enjoyed running around inside the museum, riding the elevator, and climbing the stairs in the big whale room. I think he was excited to see the dinosaur bones. We picked up a cool poster of the Solar System, too. The museum is pretty cool. There were many other areas we didn’t even explore. We had a special lunch at Shake Shack afterwards, which totally ruled. Theo kept saying, “go downstairs, thhheeen eat french fries!”. It was quite a treat.

Yesterday Theo woke up a bit cranky from his nap. He was pretty dead set on wanting to go on a choo choo. I thought we were going to blow bubbles at the playground outside our building but Theo was determined to have other plans. I promised him a long train trip tomorrow but that didn’t really suffice. So, we headed out to the shuttle train. It’s perfect, really, because it’s a block from our house and it’s this little train that only has four stops. It runs between Bed-Stuy and the south end of Prospect Park where the Zoo and Carrousel are located. It’s fun to take when it’s warm out and we can explore the Audobon Center down there, or pop into the Lincoln Playground located in the park, or go for a ride on the Carrousel. Of course none of that was happening yesterday so I figured we would just ride it for a bit. As soon as we got outside Theo just ran towards the train… “shuttle train this way!”. He was so tickled. We went back and forth and then we sat and just watched the train a bit from the stairway before we made our way back home. That’s all ya gotta do to make the boy happy.