MommyBlog

We just returned from a quick weekend trip to New York.   Casey’s parents watched Kenny on Saturday, and Casey and I  had a grown-up night on the town: drinks at the swanky W Hotel  lounge in Times Square, dinner at Swizz  with his brother and his girlfriend, and then fantastic seats at The Lion King on Broadway!   A whirlwind weekend, and an early Christmas present!

The highlight of the weekend for Kenny, though,  was  the early Christmas present from Gramma and Papa: a real rocking horse, complete with saddle and stirups, springs and a harness.   He took to it like a one-year-old boy on a plastic steed.

Wait… he is a one-year-old boy, and it was a plastic horse…

Anyway, he loved the imaginary gallop through the living room, with Papa safely holding onto his belt buckle, and Gramma singing “Pistol-Packin’ Kenny” two hundred times in a row.   The strange thing was that the horse is almost exactly the same size as Dudley, and as we had to leave the horse in New York (they will bring it down on Christmas day), I’m a little concerned that Kenny might really try to ride Dudley in the interim, now that he knows how to hold on tight and ride like the wind.  

Unfortunately, on returning home, Kenny has the wicked cold that I had last week: runny nose, raspy voice and dry cough.   It looks like we may be spending the morning at the pediatrician’s office again, instead of finishing up our Christmas shopping and going to his gymboree class.   He’s sleeping now, but with a definite murky snore.   My poor, sweetest little guy.   He didn’t get sick at all the whole thireen and a half months I nursed him, but it seems like he’s been battling a perpetual cold / pink eye / ear infection / flu ever since.   Then again, it is wintertime, he is involved in more “social” activities and we are still victims of an overtime renovation…

Thank goodness vacation is just around the corner.   As long as we can make it through the germs on the plane, we should be home free in the sunny south pacific!

For the past two weeks, Kenny has discovered the joy of saying a word and repeating it 368 times, as loud as he can.   In the car yesterday, our conversation went something like this:

“Papa.   papa.   papa… papa… papa… papa…” (multiply that by about 50.)

“Yes, Honey, I know you love your Papa.   He’s at his house in New York…We’re going to see him on Saturday…”

“Ryrun… ryrun…ryrun…ryrun…” (again, times 50)

 “Ryan’s at his house in Boston…”

“Duddee!   Dudee!   Dudee! (this one times 75)

“He’s in the back seat, sweetie.”

“Hep, hep, hep, hep, hep…”

“You like to help when we walk Dudley, don’t you?”

“Papa?”

“In New York.”

“Ryrun?”

“He’s in Boston…”

“PAPA!   PAPA!   PAPA!    PAPA…” (and on and on for five or six minutes with no pause)

There comes a time when I wonder, does he really want me to continue a conversation about the person he’s bringing up, or is he just delighting in repeating the name until his vocal chords falter?   Do I ignore him, or try to engage him?   Is he practicing his vowel sounds, or does he really want to hear more about it?

Ah, the mysteries of living with a one-year-old!

Not all of it is maddening or mysterious, though.   Kenny is absolutely the best hugger I could ever have imagined.   He will wrap those skinny arms around my neck so tight it’s like they’re glued in place, then lays his head on my shoulder and hum, “Maaaaaaaaaaaa….”   His hugging is not limited to his Mama, though.   I think his favorite hug target is poor Dudley.   Anytime that sleek grey ghost lays on the floor, or curls into a chair, Kenny pounces like a cougar and climbs on top of him, hugging and singing, “duddee!!!!”   Yesterday, Dudley stood up so gently that Kenny actually remained on his back for a moment; the Lone Ranger on his trusty steed.

Maybe I should get him a saddle for Christmas…

A typical  morning in our house goes something like this:   We wake up anywhere between five and six, depending on how hungry Kenny wakes up.   His first word in the morning is either, “Nack!” (snack), “Waffle!” or “Lay-lay” (banana…. I don’t know how banana becomes “lay-lay,” but it is what it is…).   Oh, and sometimes it’s “WALER!” (water).

So Kenny and I traipse downstairs where he devours a banana while I fix my coffee  and put a waffle in the toaster.   As soon as he hears the toaster *pop* he  reminds me  that it’s ready with a gentle, “WAAAAAAAAAAAAF!” and then wanders around the living room with a waffle half in each hand while I wait for the caffine to hit my brain.   Near the end of his whole grain treat, Dudley wanders down the stairs, lured out of his warm bed by the scent of food being waved around by a small boy with a tendancy of giving him a bite or two.   As I swat the crafty canine out of Kenny’s path,  Dudley remembers that we still haven’t taught him how to use the toilet, and he darts out the dog door to water the azaleas.   Kenny thinks that the dog door is really cool, and will bee-line over to it, waffles still in hand and call, “DaaaaaaDEEEEEE!” until Dudley crashes back through, at that point usually winning whatever waffle pieces might be left in Kenny’s hand.

As the chaos begins its crescendo, I will hear the shower start; Casey needs his shower like I need my coffee first thing.   While the water runs, I pour my second cup and chase Kenny around the living room in an attempt to take him back upstairs to get him changed and dressed.   Me too, as we have had contractors at our door by eight most mornings since October!   I balance a cup of coffee for Casey, my own mug and  a wiggling one-year-old up the steps, all the while hearding Dudley and trying not to trip on the belt of my robe.

Getting Kenny out of his pajamas and into clean clothes is roughly similar to wrestling a wet seal in a tub of jello.   Enough said.

By quarter to eight, we are usally back downstairs to make breakfast (my first, Kenny’s second) and make a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich for Casey to take on his commute.   Kenny helps me find what to fix…

 

 

…  getting him back out of the refrigerator is like convincing Dudley to drop  a t-bone.   Enough said.    (Again.)

And Dudley, byu this point tired of watching  us make and eat food without offering him any, takes a short nap until we remember to feed  him…

 

Casey comes downstairs, and Kenny runs over to greet him, them points to the stereo for his Rodney Atkins fix, and Daddy and son dance to “These Are My People” while I finish making breakfast.

I have to move fast, though, because as soon as Kenny sees me pull out my cereal bowl, he starts tugging on my leg and calling, “bow!   bow!”    until we strap him into his highchair and take “my” cereal over to the table (always the same: Kashi Go Lean, soy milk and plain yogurt).   I hand Kenny his spoon (“POON!”) and put my bowl on his tray, so that we can share.   And the kid can eat: I typically eat less than half of the hefty portion; my growing boy manages to scarf down the rest.   Dudley likes to watch:

 

We race to the last bite (ok, I usually let Kenny win), kiss Casey goodbye, and greet our contractors.   Kenny is facintated by them, and waves with excitement when he sees the foreman.   Dudley is also facinated by the workers, though he hasn’t learned the fine art of waving hello, and instead seems to think that the crotch-sniff is the prefered greeting the men with toolbelts.   So with Kenny in my arms, I grab Dudley’s collar and we head our for a walk before he gets too antsy…

All of this by 8:30 in the morning.   Who says stay-at-home Moms don’t get anything done??

Casey and I, after a full fifteen months, finally left Kenny for a whole  night.   It’s about time, right?   My parents stayed at our house;  we went to Casey’s company party, then stayed downtown in a nice hotel, slept in (ok, 7AM feels like sleeping in when you share a house with a baby and a weimaraner!), ordered room service and then picked Kenny up at my parent’s church after service.

There was only one thing wrong with the experience:   Kenny obviously didn’t miss us at all.   My parents said that he went to bed perfectly, didn’t cry once and ate breakfast like a champ.   He did seem  super excited to see us, and he give me an extra long hug when I swooped him up, but then it was back to eating his bagel and flirting with the ladies in the church narthex.

This can mean only one thing:

It’s time for Casey and I to go away to Paris for a  weekend.

Yesterday and today, Kenny and I spent at least a cummulative two hours looking through the big picture window in our master bedroom, waiting for airplanes to fly by.   Kenny would sit on my lap, wired with energy, softly whispering, “Aa-pane,” and staring outside.   Oh, we also noted the birds flying by and  the ducks swiming in the water; we sang songs, and patted Dudley.     But when our patience was rewarded with a Southwest jet flying overhead (we are in one of their flight patterns), Kenny would snap to attention, bounce on my lap and try to stand on the window sill, and shout, “AAAAAAAA-PAAAAAANE!”

This was cute enough by itself.   What amazed me was his desire to talk about the airplanes; that is, he initiated conversations about them long after we finished our jet-gazzing.   Tonight when I rocked him before bed, he looked up at me and said, “Aa-pane, Mama.”   I almost said something like, no there aren’t any airplanes in here, when it hit me: he wanted to talk about them, and about what we had seen today.   So I recounted all the airplanes we saw, and then just talked about them for awhile.   I usually sing to him before putting him to bed, but tonight the mini-conversation seemed to hit the spot.   After ten minutes or so of me telling stories about our day watching airplanes, with him occasionally adding an, “aa-pane!” or “sky” or “i-ney” (shiney), he wrapped his arms around my neck, cooed, “Mamamamamama,” then pointed to his crib and said, “Nigh, nigh.”   What a kid.

It gives me pause, though, to remember the importance of talking to Kenny, and not just to narrarate the day.   There’s a little brain working inside that fifteen-month-old.   A little character growing; a tiny person with preferences and passions and interest.   He’s taking it all in, watching and listening and learning.   It makes me love him all the more, and makes me all the more excited about seeing him grow.   Part of me is eager for him to really start talking so that I can learn more about what makes him tick!

We are still not living at our house.   We “moved out” last Friday so that the construction crew could essentially “move in.”   The dust was getting to us, the chaos was getting to us and Kenny was starting to become a little too attached to the vacuum in my desperate efforts to keep things clean.

You have to understand, this was supposed to be a quick and easy minor renovation.   This was supposed to take a few weeks, maybe two months tops.   But it’s been going on since September, and last time I checked, it was already December.   It’s not our foreman’s fault; he is a gem of a contractor, kind and considerate, hardworking and attentive to detail.   The fault lies in the fact that our house was once a summer cottage, and through the years has been added on and altered by at least a dozen different owners.   Not all of them were apparently eqipped for this, as is evidenced by this artifact we found buried in a cinderblock wall in the bathroom we gutted:

 

 

(Do you think we could put this up on Ebay??)  

 All complaining aside, we have been amazingly blessed with the generosity of our families in taking us in.   We stayed for three nights with my parents (who are also housing my sister’s family during their renovation) and we are currently staying with Casey’s Aunt and Uncle, Dorrie and Charlie.   Not only did Dorrie and Charlie take us in, crazy weimaraner and all, but yesterday morning, Dorrie spent some five hours taking care of Kenny while I snored in bed, trying to get rid of the sinus infection / flu / laryngitis that has overtaken me.   And Kenny was happy as a clam when I finally pulled myself together enough to venture into the living room.   She taught him new songs, as well as how to march!   Thank God for sweet Aunts like Dorrie!   Kenny is also quite taken with Charlie, and can say his name quite clearly.   The biggest treat of all, though, was that yesterday his Gramma Ruby and Papa George showed up, on their way up the coast from Florida!   Kenny practically shivered with excitement when he saw his “PAPA!” walk through the door.

So life as a nomad isn’t that bad.   We will definitely be glad to be back at our house tomorrow, but it has been fun to spend extra time with family.   Kind of like an extended Thanksgiving, right?

 

Yesterday I mentioned that Kenny has a talent for transforming his 23 pounds into more like 50 when he wants to.   Imagine a frantically writhing fourteen-month-old who has no fear of aiming his head, torpdo-like in a dive, twisting his body and throwing his entire physical force down to the floor when he wants to WALK and not be carried somewhere.   Or transforming into an octopus when it’s time to get him dressed in the morning.   Or scatters away like Spider Man during a diaper change, clinging to the edge of the bed and giggling wildly at foiling Mommy again.  

Do I sit on him?   Duct tape him to my waist?   Or do I calmly and cheerfully allow his antics and label them “highly energetic and creative?”

 

This renovation is starting to make me sick.   Literally.   In fact, I’ve completely lost my voice, as a result of the mountains of dust floating through  the air.   No amount of vacuuming or dusting seems to help, and even Kenny has developed an irritated cough.

Laryngitis is never a picnic, but imagine trying to explain to your one-year-old son why you can’t sing or read or even talk to him.   Today we moved into my parents’ house for a few nights, and during the car ride over, Kenny kept calling, “Mama?   Mama?” and I couldn’t answer.   During our playtime today, I couldn’t sing when he kept asking for “Row Row!” and I couldn’t make the sounds to read “Swim Duck, Swim!”

So aside from feeling like my vocal chords have been ground into sausage, and aside from the fact that I can’t yell, “Dudley, drop it!” when the stealthy canine trots by with Kenny’s sippy cup in his mouth, all is well.   Kenny continues to develop into more and more of a little ham every day.  

His  latest comedy routine involves torpedoing his wiggly body away when I’m trying to change his diaper, dress him, put his shoes on or wipe his face.   He can throw his   mere twenty-three pounds into a kinetic fifty, easy.   Today, while trying to change him on the bed, he writhed away, crawled to the head of the bed, stood up on the pillows and cackled triumphantly, bottom proudly and defiantly bare.   When    I lunged at him, he scooted  away with the finess of an eel.   I  nearly had to sit  on him to get the huggies firmly attached to his behind, and when it was all over, we were both covered with desitin.   Only then did he lay passively and sweetly, as if to admit defeat, and reach up to to touch my face and coo, “MaaaMeee.”

If only I could answer him back…

The construction continued today at our little abode… the difference was that we had to stay here and experience it all.   You see, yesterday, the foreman found a whole mess of termites.   Today, Terminix spent two hours scouring our house for the little buggers, and planning their course of action.   The inspector, a sixty-ish, way too chatty salesman, wanted me to follow him around and “be in the loop.”   Yeah, that was fun with three other guys jackhammering the cement slab in the guest room, Kenny squirming to be free  in my arms and Dudley wrapped around my waist on the leash.   The doors to outside were wide open, the heat was off, and the dust was billowing.   At one point, I put Kenny in the highchair, in his winter coat and hood,  so that I could sign the necessary papers for extermination, and he looked at me with those huge, liquid eyes as if to say, “Mommy, this stinks.   Can’t we go someplace warm and quiet and safe?   Don’t you love me?”

Ah, but the day got a whole lot better at 5:30…   we actually found a babysitter for the evening, and took off to Roy’s for drinks and appetizers (and a sinfully sensual chocolate lava cake).   This is only the fourth time in the last 14 months that someone other than a relative has taken care of Kenny so that we could go out.  

Thank goodness, because it looks like another noisy day of house arrest tomorrow, as there is another “service-type guy” coming between 8 and 12 (how’s that for a window?), and we need to be here to meet him, in spite of the fact that there as 3 other construction worker-types here tearing apart our house.   I wonder when they are going to start putting it together again?   What are Kenny and Dudley and I going to do here all day?

Note to self: When this is done, No More Renovations.   Ever.

Today Kenny and Dudley and I were ousted from the house again, due to the increasingly noisy and extremely dusty construction work that has taken over the better part of our downstairs.   We piled in the car and drove out to my parent’s house where we had the place to ourselves (they were spending the day out – Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!)… well, mostly to ourselves: Madison, the crazy, one blue eye, one brown eye Cavallier King Charles Spanial (her breed name weighs more than she does) and Rusty, the wild and often panting, yet lovable and loyal  Golden Retriever were there to greet us.

The sun was shining and the air was warm when we arrived, so we played outside for awhile before going in.   Dudley and Rusty ran laps around the house, and Madison ran laps around Kenny.   My parents have the ideal yard: lush green grass on a flat acre, with the Chesapeake Bay right across the street.   Beautiful.

After some playtime, I plopped Kenny into the stroller to walk the big dogs down to the park at the end of the neighborhood.   Kenny and I counted horseshoe crab shells washed on the shore of the Bay while Dudley and Rusty sprinted back and forth, trying to catch the geese and herons landing on the rocks.   When we got home, we puttered around the house, had gingersnaps and cheese for lunch (ok – I’m usually fanatic about feeding Kenny healthy food, but he was starting to get ornery and I couldn’t find anything else on short notice), then played “naptime” for about thrity minutes.   That was not as fun as it sounds.  So we traipsed back outside, got Kenny back into the stroller, Dudley back on my left and Rusty on my right, and did a slow loop around the block until Kenny fell asleep.   That’s when I noticed that the left tire was completely flat, and it looked like the axle was bent.   (Did I mention that I backed into the stroller with the 4-Runner last week?   Details…)     We bee-lined home, and I parked Kenny on the front porch in the sun, and with the three dogs frollicking in the yard, sat in a rocking chair with an enormous pile of my Mom’s magazines, nothing to do but wait for Kenny to wake up.

The most amazing thing happened during those two (yes, he took one of his rare two hour siestas!) hours.   I became the leader of the ad-hoc dog pack in the front yard.   I noticed it first when I got up to use the restroom… all three dogs, who by that time were worn out and napping in various spots in the sun, got up and followed me in the front door.   When I opened the bathroom door, there they all were, sitting like perfect statues, watching the door with eager anticipation.   Then they followed me in a perfect line back out the door and onto the porch.   I peeked at Kenny, and as I walked away, one by one they went up to the stroller and looked at our sleeping boy.   I sat down for only a second, then popped back up to get a soda and a cookie.   All three of them jumped up from where they had just laid down and followed me in a line to the kitchen.   They watched intently as I popped the tab on my Fresca, then drooled in unison as I reached into the gingersnap bag for a treat.   They followed me back onto the porch and laid down in their spots again.  

I thought that was all pretty fun, so I decided to play a game of it.

I stood up.   They all stood up.   I sat down.   They laid back down.   I walked back into the house.   They paraded in behind me.   I went outside.   They trotted outside.   Ok – I’ll stop there, but let’s just say that this went on for the next hour.   I was revelling in my pack leader status.   This sort of thing doesn’t come along everyday.   The physical differences in the dogs made it comical enough to see them doing the same thing in unison, as I did things.  

I finally gently woke Kenny up – it was getting time for us to go – and when Madison and Rusty realized that they weren’t coming with us, they started howling.   Even Dudley, a veritable snob when it comes to other dogs, whined forlornly at the door when I separated them.     Kenny thought that was funny, but started crying himself when he realized that we weren’t taking Madison with us (I think he thinks she’s a stuffed animal that just happens to move and make noise).

But a great day, all in all.   From the looks of our house at the moment, I may just have to try a repeat of it tomorrow.