things PC is saying and identifying

at the ball park

PC cannot articulate lots of words well just yet, but he's showing increasing ability to match our words with the correct objects. He knows where to find teeth and the tongue, he can find the clock in any room, and of course, the fan. He has some sort of magnetism with fans. In  the past few weeks, in addition to mastering "so big" (hands in the air, as if you don't care), he also learned to high-five and low five, and to blow on hot tea and coffee. Yesterday I asked him to "get the ball," and he walked directly to it, grabbed it, and turned back to me with satisfaction. His favorite food is bananas, and he will occasionally say "nana" in reference to one, but more often, he just points at it. Who needs words when the adults get you the banana (or anything else) when you point at it?

family reunion

PC's great-grandmother was the sixth child in a family of thirteen--neatly sandwiched between five brothers and sisters. She grew up in a big house in small-town Illinois in a farming family, at a time when folks might have been motivated to have eleven kids for the sheer reason that a big family could make farming easier.

We found out these things and all sorts of other interesting things about C's side of the family during a trip to Illinois for a family reunion last week. That Uncle Stub has been the most (re)productive of the eleven brothers and sisters, with 33 children and great-grandchildren. That the wildest of the bunch was probably Craig, who once challenged a local boy to a duel with a boy and arrow, and after the other boy missed, calmly shot an arrow right the other boy's bicep. That Uncle Bernard, who is in his late eighties, still lives on the family farm with 2000 acres of corn and soy beans, and that his brother, Larry, lives 300 yards down the road. Which is dirt. If all of this sounds exotic, you're probably not from the Midwest, or you don't know any farm families. Like many farm families, only a few of the eleven chose to follow their parents into the business, owing to the trend toward corporate farming and to the desires of many baby boomers to move to cities. Many of Great-Grandma Desyl's siblings still live in Illinois, but others, like GG Desyl, stayed in California after their families left Illinois in the fifties and headed west to find work.

About 130 people showed up for this reunion, which is held every five years at a Legion Club in Reynolds. The format was potluck, and when we got there slightly before the designated starting time, noon, people were already drinking beer and talking. The food selection was a delight for me--diced potato/cheese casserole with corn flakes on top, lots of deviled eggs, fruit salads, potato salads, other mayonnaise-based salads, and fried chicken, which was very popular. This didn't seem like a terribly stereotypical spread of Midwestern food, though I am not an expert on such things. Of particular pride for us were the tomatoes, 50 of which PC's Grandpa and Lola transported from Richmond, cut up, and served. Several in the family commented that they were better than the tomatoes anyone else was growing in the Midwest, even on the farms. (PC--your grandparents know something about gardening.) When the food was finished, C's uncle Don turned on the Legion's PA system and invited people to share their talents, a tradition at the gathering. The highlights here were a boy of twelve or so who sang a version of Amazing Grace that was beautifully clear and stylistically advanced, a great aunt who played accordion, a teen who rattled a few adults with his electric guitar, and C's cousin Becky, who absolutely killed with a couple of jazz and blues tunes.

Clearly, entering into your spouse's family network of 130 can be confusing. Carla commented that she did not know most of the attendees. But the name tag system (pictured above) and a few hours of eating, drinking, and sharing talents went a long way toward helping us understand where PC comes from and where his family has been. And we only scratched the surface.

pic update

So we maxed out our second free Flickr site. They should love us and give us free space forever, on account of the jillion hits this blog gets, but whatever.

The fabulous cousins--first time all together

early 'wrasslin potential (WWE type)



that's cracker on my eyebrow




ah-dah!



how many people wipe out on the alpine slide and end up with a scar in the shape of a heart? My brother does.

five strategies for plane trips with a 14-month-old

1. snacks (crackers these days)

2. naps (hope for one)

3. books (works for PC)

4. videos on the iPod (didn't have to play them, but we were prepared)

5. seat neighbors who give your kid a matchbox car

PC's first trip on the plane went very well. Squirmy as he is, he remained interested enough in the newness of it all that he was pretty much content the entire 3-hour trip. That was awesome, and more than we expected.

And so was the end of the flight, when the middle-age soldier seated behind us, decked out in the full-on desert camouflage, came around our seat and gave PC a cool little matchbox jeep hilariously emblazoned "Bad Mudder 2" on the side. Sweet.

it's whose party?

PC and Sahara enjoy the simple pleasures of the kiddie pool

We set a socializing record last week--two birthday parties and two baby showers over a period of four days. Overall, it was great to see our friends, and to celebrate the arrival of or mark the occasion of the arrival of the little ones. One of the showers was a surprise shower at a pool on a 95 degree day, so there was that nice bonus of taking PC into the water, which, if you've seen the pictures we posted a couple weeks back, is about as close to nirvana he has yet discovered.

The birthday party scene for kids is somewhat confusing and unsettling. As I talked with my friend as his daughter's third birthday party approached, a sense of dread passed over him when he mentioned the expectations brought on by parties for kids that age. I had heard about "goodie bags"--every kid attending the party walks away with a nice little stash of gifts. At a party last month, PC came back with two necklaces, a bracelet, and a matching shirt and shorts outfit. This is so kind, so generous, but I couldn't help but think, whose party was this anyway? Goodie bags are apparently the expectation now. And more. D sends his girl to a nice preschool, and the kids' parents there do things like rent those awesome "moonwalks," hire live Barbies to come over (that would freak me out) and the like. I said, does this mean you're going to hire someone to blow up balloons and twist them into the shape of animals? No, he joked, because he knew how to do that. And he would juggle, too. No kidding.

You can see where all of this is going--these parties are incredible expenses, there's a lot of fuss and posturing, and there seems to be a good deal of effort to displace the attention from the birthday child and make sure every kid feels like its her birthday.

Fortunately D's party and the other one we went to were not overdone parental competitions. At one, we ate chicken nuggets, ran through the sprinkler, and played in a cardboard box decorated like a castle. The kids had a freakin' blast. The goodie bag was tastefully done--color crayons and coloring book, a fruit rollup, and an organic granola bar. At the other, no goodie bag at all. Some pizza, a couple beers, a kiddie pool, and pleasant adult conversation. Granted, that kid was only one, and this makes a difference--there's much less need to entertain the kids at that age.

But our friend circle tends to lean toward lefty-types skeptical of commercial culture, and I'm left wondering if we'll be able to resist the pressure once the kids get older. It's strange to imagine a child's birthday party as something that has to be tolerated, but from what I've heard, some of these parties would make me want to stay with PC at home.

hook, line, and sinker

Tina Fey and Elmo talk like pirates

On our summer schedule we take in a little Sesame Street most mornings as a way to extend our sleeping a few minutes. Not surprisingly, the Prince is totally engaged. I know, I know, some of the experts frown upon television until the kid is two. But in limited use, TV is great. And the "experts" are usually MD types, and rarely are informed by media studies scholarship of any kind (a simple search on TV and toddlers on the American Academy of Pediatrics website, for example, urges you to try a search on "media violence" too. wtf? I'm sorry, what's the connection?)

Prior to PC's arrival I had heard from other parents about the success of shows like Sesame Street in appealing to parents and kids at the same time. This interested me as a person who studies rhetoric--how does a show manage to interest such different audiences? From what I can tell, PC pretty much just needs Bright Shiny Things to become interested. Which means either we adults only need Bright Shiny Things, and have been fooling ourselves thinking we were more sophisticated than that, or that PC is so unbelievably advanced that he already understands the adult references embedded in every Sesame Street. Though I'd like to believe the latter interpretation (I mean, this kid is Perfect in Every Way) it's actually a lot simpler.

Sesame Street succeeds because it does some of the same things parents of toddlers are supposed to do--introduces a lot of vocabulary and excellent music, for example. And for the adults--it brings us our favorite parent/entertainers. Just in the last week, we've seen Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, Diana Krall, and Alec Baldwin. Aside from the fact that I wish Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin were making more episodes of one of our absolute favorite TV shows, 30 Rock, these episodes have been outstanding. Tina Fey dresses up as a pirate and leads the kids through an imaginative play. Jon Stewart (from the set of the Daily Show) preaches on the importance of practice to becoming good at something. Diana Krall sings a fabulous and simple ditty called "Everybody's Song" and has a total blast doing it.

Yikes, I just wrote positively about Alec Baldwin and parenting in the same paragraph. Not so sure about that. But keep the awesome Sesame Street coming. There are good reasons this show has been around for almost forty years.

a year gone by

PC's one-year visit to the pediatrician was quite eventful. For the first time, he fully resisted the whole thing--do NOT try to measure me, do NOT try to weigh me, or look in my ears, or my nose. We're still in the Very Tall range, and all other measures of health are good. The behavior, however, was quite challenging. He pretty much showed the MD the same attitude he has been showing us the last five months, when changing a diaper went from a relatively easy procedure to one that can require two people and can involve chasing and misplaced feces. Remind me to tell you sometime what I stepped on the other day in the living room :)

For every little hassle that comes along with a more squirrely boy, there are the joys of seeing the world through his eyes. Preparing for the birthday party C bought four balloons. While carrying them, PC, and a bagful of other party favors into the house, though, three of the balloons detached from the others and floated away, slowly above the house, then beyond the hundred-foot trees, to that place where balloons go to die. PC watched the whole spectacle with awe and wonder--those things float? It was a bit difficult for me not to see the symbolism in all of this--balloons flying away as loss. The last time I remember seeing balloons float away was at my dad's funeral, four years ago, when each of my nephews and nieces released a balloon after the service and before the internment. At the same time, watching PC watch balloons was pure magic. He gasped, he babbled something at them, he reached to bring them back. He didn't take his eyes off them. It made him smile, and it made me appreciate balloons, all over again. And the one that we managed not to lose is still providing laughs, two weeks later.

@ the pool

so big

Today was a big, big day. The day of PC's first birthday party and the last day of Grandma A's highly anticipated fly-in from MSP.

Hats off to momma for executing the perfect birthday party. There were delicious little quiches and crab cakes, the classic midwestern offering of meats and cheeses, lola's amazing lumpia shanghai, and a John Deere Tractor cake (half chocolate/half white: we're people pleasers). For the kids in attendance, we had a kids picnic table with bubbles to blow, a lot of lemonade, and the big hit, tadpoles. PC's grandpa, the magnificent knower and seeker of the natural world, told the kids about how to raise the tadpoles, should they want to take one along with them. It looked like they ALL accepted this challenge. Brilliant!

Grandma's first visit culminated in storybook fashion, like it would happen in a Danielle Steele book if Danielle Steele wrote about things like grandmothers visiting their grandchildren. Grandma taught PC to patty-cake and throw his hands in the air when we yell SO BIG! He caught on fast.

And Grandma A also was able to witness the incredible quantum leaps in walking PC is making right now. Two days ago, all the walking was in these rare episodes, and the record for steps taken with a witness was eight. By yesterday he took about 20 steps and today, every single time he has been given the chance to walk (usually toward something he wants) he has responded with a multi-step burst of wild walking. Four, five, twelve steps--like he's been able to do it all along. This is still precarious pedestrian-hood, of course--in the attempt to balance his arms flail and swirl above his head in a pose reminiscent of a tight rope walker.

robot parade

"...why are we so fascinated by this thing?"