Underparenting, Part II

One brief anecdote I forgot from our recent trip to Nana and Gong-Gong's house:

Whenever we go somewhere new, or somewhere we haven't been for awhile, like most kids, it takes Bry a little while to warm up to his surroundings. The same was true during our recent visit. At first, Bry stuck close to Steve and I, but soon enough, was off exploring on his own. Back when Bry was prone to sticking anything and everything in his mouth and was a little less steady on his feet, we had to be really vigilant at other people's non-babyproofed houses in order to ensure that Bry didn't choke on a train wheel or fall down a flight of stairs. As Bry has gotten older, more dexterous, and less orally fixated, we've worried less about constantly watching him like a hawk.

So it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when, on our next to last day in Wisconsin, we heard a faint "Mama!" coming from what sounded like overhead. I was in the living room, Steve was in the kitchen, my mom was walking down the hall, and each of us had assumed that Bry was with a responsible adult. Turns out he was stealthily making his way up the stairs in the front hall until he reached the landing, which looks out over the living room, without any of us being the wiser. Score one for Bry's independence and zero for Bry's parents' parenting skills.

Another Walk in the 'Hood

Walking to the library this morning, Bry was excited to see the "pictures!" So we got out and looked a little more closely.

It's pretty impressive art, close up.

Mama! Bush! Hold you!
Translation: Mama, this ground is covered with giant, potentially man-eating plants. Pick me up, stat!

Me-me!
Translation: Excuse me, large weed, I'm trying to get through here!

See! See!

Owl! Tweet! Tweet!

Visiting the Grandparents

This past weekend, we packed up the car to make the trek to Wisconsin again, this time for Aunt Dana's baby shower. From Bry's perspective, the shower was nice and all, but the real highlights were helping Gong-Gong water the flowers and sitting captively in front of Nana's pots and pans, as if he were gazing at Blue's Clues, or whatever it is that kids watch these days.

The reason I don't have any pictures of Bry watering the flowers with Gong-Gong is because I was wise enough to convince Bry to do this activity without my presence, as it occurred at about 5:30 am. The above photo was taken at about 3:00 pm, a much more acceptable time for being awake and dressed and whatnot.

The master gardener, hard at work "pretend watering."

Also, helping the glass butterfly stay hydrated.

Nana's pots! Two! A lot! Big! Neat!

Please also enjoy one random picture of Bry locating his tummy, solely because I think it's cute.
Now you see it.

Now you don't.

Don't Worry, It Came Out

Tonight at dinner, Bry was enjoying the delicacy we like to call sqrice, consisting of pureed butternut squash mixed with rice. He usually starts out very civilly scooping the sqrice out of the bowl with his spoon, but sooner or later, he gives in to his desire for quicker food delivery and just starts shoving fistfuls of the stuff in his mouth. As you might imagine, this gets quite messy.

Squash usually gets smeared all over his face, in his hair, on the table, etc. Today, however, Bry was especially enthusiastic about shoveling in the sqrice, and managed to shove a large grain of rice right up his nostril. Now, this is not the first time that he's gotten pieces of food up his nose. Most of the time, I just pick it out and all is well (and now every non-parent reading this is completely grossed out). But tonight, the rice had traveled a little too far north for me to fish it out, so I went to plan B: the nose sucking bulby-thing (you know what I'm talking about). When Bry was an infant and prone to congestion, he hated the nose sucking bulby-thing with the heat of a thousand hot suns. It proved to be pretty much worthless. As he matured and his father began to instruct him on the humor of things that come out of his nose, Bry started to find the bulby-thing hilarious. Steve would clean out his nose, declare "EW!" and Bry would collapse in giggles. We haven't had to pull out the bulby-thing in awhile, but tonight when I got it out of the closet, Bry started giggling and did what he always tries to do any time I get near his face with it: shove it in his mouth.

When I finally wrestled him into a position to try to remove the rice, I discovered that the bulby-thing is also next to worthless in extracting food from a child's nose. It is good for shoving food further up a child's nose, however.

So, plan C: Q-tip. Result: see result for plan B.

And on to plan D: hold the other nostril closed and blow as hard as possible into Bry's mouth. Now, let me just say that plan D wasn't borne from any sort of "ah-ha" parenting moment of genius (not that I don't have those on a regular basis). Rather, one of Steve's friends had recently told us the story of her sister taking her toddler to the ER after she had shoved a pea up her nose (the toddler, not the sister). Apparently the ER doc described this technique to the mom and made her do it right then and there to demonstrate the amount of force needed to dislodge a foreign object stuck up a nose: a lot. At the time, Steve and I found this story hilarious, and luckily filed it away for future reference. And that is how at 5:45 this evening, Steve found himself telling Bry to look at the ceiling, pinching his nose closed, and blowing into his mouth three or four times until the rice was ejected from Bry's nose and somehow, defying the laws of physics, ended up in Bry's mouth. I'm not sure how Steve ended up being the one to do the blowing; all I know is that I wasn't volunteering. Bry also found this process hilarious and ten minutes later said: "Ceiling!" "Nose!" which I interpreted back to him as, "Yeah, daddy told you to look at the ceiling and then he cleaned out your nose." Bry smiled and looked expectantly at Steve. Steve did not volunteer to repeat the process.

Walking through the Neighborhood

For the past week and a half, I've been trying to go running with Bry in the stroller every few days. It's a good workout, and Bry always ceases any griping (which has been ample of late) as soon as the stroller wheels start turning. This morning I was feeling too lazy to run, so we loaded up the stroller instead and went for a long walk through the neighborhood.

We found some neat things:

Alley near Instituto de Cultura y Educacion

Bry playing in what mama initially thought to be a pile of rocks.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be discarded charcoal and ashes, with a few cigarette butts thrown in.
Awesome.

Bry, not noticing the mural of cultural revolutionaries behind him because he is fixated on the garbage truck down the alley.

Bry, also not noticing the "om" symbol in the background.

Bird!

Chillin' at Nokomis Cycle

Standing outside Sister Sludge coffee shop, really wanting to play with the BIG! ROCK!

Putting on his "What are you talking about? I never gripe" face

All was well until the skies turned decidedly ominous and I could hear the low rumble of thunder when we were still about a mile from the house. So I got my run in anyways as we hightailed it home just as the big, fat drops were starting to fall from the sky. Bry thought the thunder and lightning were hilarious. Mama, not so much.

In Lieu of TV

This is how we have been spending our time:

Excavator knocking down a house.

Rowing excavator.

Excavator ballet.

Sensing a theme here?

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog

Whew, it's been awhile. We've been off cavorting in Wisconsin, visiting Nana and Gong-Gong for the past week and a half. Now that we're back and the laundry is done, I figured I could settle in to do some blog writing. The only problem is that pesky "real" work keeps getting in the way. So it goes. I figure I'll make up for lost time with this post and just ramble on about a mishmash of stuff that has happened over the past few weeks.

First things first, Bry had his 18-month well checkup just before we left for Wisconsin. He measured in at 32.5 inches (60th percentile) and 25.5 pounds (50th percentile). I've lost track of his head measurements at this point, but I think it was in the 60th percentile too. I feel OK about not documenting this one piece of trivia about Bry's life, because unlike everything else on this blog, I can't imagine that knowing his head size at 18 months is really going to help him out down the line. Information like this, however, is quite useful.

Bry had a blast in Wisconsin, once he acclimated to his new digs. Gong-Gong apparently spent about 6 hours creating blackout shades for Uncle Tim's room (where Bry slept) out of a bed sheet and garbage bags the day before we arrived. They were quite effective. At night, I couldn't see three inches in front of my face. And surprise of all surprises, Bry continued to sleep through the night while we were there, though he managed to wake up between 5:00 and 5:30 most mornings. Although Bry's naps got all out of whack while we were there, he mostly did OK with sleep, which makes me want to (very cautiously) say that we seem to have rounded a corner regarding Bry's sleep. He gets it, for the most part. Finally. After only a year and a half of waiting for him to figure out the very simple equation that many 6-month old babies have mastered: more sleep = less cranky + more fun + better rested, more pleasant mama and daddy.

But enough about sleep. We pretty much had wall-to-wall fun while visiting the grandparents. A trip to the zoo, a visit to the children's museum, playing in the sandbox, swinging, running through the sprinkler, and hours upon hours watering the flowers with Gong-Gong and cooking with Nana rounded out our time in Wisconsin. Steve and Gong-Gong refurbished a play kitchen that my mother's father had built for her when she was little, and that I played with as a child as well. After verifying that it was lead paint free, Bry went to town stacking all kinds of things in the cupboards and cooking up a storm on what technically was the counter. But that's what an imagination is for, right?

The highlights of the zoo visit included petting Omar the camel, feeding the goats (the quintessential childhood zoo experience), watching the penguins and seals, and pointing out every single sprinkler on the zoo grounds. I gotta hand it to the kid - he is dedicated to the pursuit of noticing water in any form (rivers, lakes, sprinklers, puddles) and insisting that he go IN! IN! The disappointment that follows our usual response, for example, "Um, no Bry, you can't go in the seal tank" is monumental.

Along the lines of all things liquid, Bry also finally figured out how to use a straw for the first time in the cheese state.* Random, I know. But significant in that following his discovery of differential pressures, Bry has become crazy about straws. This is nice, in that he can just drink from our water cups if we don't have a sippy cup for him. This is also disastrous, in that he always wants to drink from our cups at such a rate as to inevitably lead to coughing, sputtering, and spilling of water everywhere. Also, less water for us. Amusingly, Bry believes that there are only two beverage options: water and milk, since these are the only two that he has ever had. (I tried juice twice. The response was an emphatic no.) So he identifies soda as water and beer as water and so on. We have yet to disavow him of this notion because it prevents the unsightly scene that is sure to follow when he discovers that we have something (e.g., soda, beer) that he can't have. For some reason, one night when we were having dinner, Bry locked in on the fact that Aunt Dana was drinking from a red cup and Uncle Ryan had "green water" (Mountain Dew). In the days following that dinner, he continued to identify any red cups as belonging to Aunt Dana and all Mountain Dew as belonging to Uncle Ryan. I think Uncle Ryan got the better deal out of that exchange.

So anyhoo, that's about all I remember about our trip. I think any remaining memories were wiped out by the torturous drive home during which Bry napped for one hour and then pestered us to get OUT! OUT! for the remaining 4-5 hours. Good times.

*I don't care what anyone says, California is not the cheese state.