A, B, C, Easy as 1, 2, Mama!

Maceo has three go-to songs he enjoys. One is "The Wheels on the Bus", and he can add a variety of sounds to each verse. He especially likes the baby on the bus going, "Wah, wah, wah"; the horn on the bus going, "Honk, honk, honk"; and the dors on the bus going, "Open and shut." Another of his oeuvre is "Jingle Bells" which consists of him being quiet as you sing the chorus until just before the end, where he comes in early with a happy "Hey!" Finally, there is the Alphabet song.

Ho Ho Ho!

As has happened for the last three years, we realized, we came up with various plans for what we wanted to do during the vacation, ranging from going to San Francisco to going abroad, and then ended up chucking those complex ideas for a nice simple trip to Amherst and the McMurrers's.
The trip actually isn't that simple. It's about an 8 hour drive, so for the last two years with Maceo, we've broken it into two legs. This year, on the way up, we spent the night with the Abrams, friends who live in Philadelphia. They have a huge house and three absolutely lovely kids; Oliver is 7, Evan is 5, and Josie is 3. Maceo likes them all, though he doesn't really get any of them. Oliver is very nice and thoughtful; Evan is incredibly articulate and creative; and Josie is a good-natured little sister who follows and plays with the two of them, as long as they let her. From Philly we drove to Amherst where the McMurrers are.
For the past few months, Maceo has been a dream to put down to sleep at night. He snuggled right into bed, occasionally whining for all of 30 seconds at the most, and then he would awake early, but go back to sleep and not get out of his crib until 5:45.
However. Since we were in a house with others and we didn't want to disturb them (Nick's mom and her husband Maurice (or Monie, as Mace calls him)), we would take Maceo into bed with us when he began to cry. At 5, then 4:55, then 4:45 on successive nights. This was not fun. The rest of the days and nights were loads of fun, though, so it pretty much balanced out. There was biking, which was great.


There was singing, which was super cute.


While not everyone showed up in pictures, there were good times had with all the relatives! Thanks so much to the McMurrers for hosting us and doing so with such aplomb!

Slumber Party

This is Kate's first night away from Maceo. She has gone off to San Francisco for work, leaving Wednesday, coming back Saturday. Maceo and I are on our own! So, Wednesday afternoon, I get a call from daycare that Mace is sick and I have to come get him. Well. That puts a damper on boys' night in! I go and get him and bring him home, and the rest of the afternoon is essentially spent with me on the armchair and Maceo just limply lying on me. He slept pretty well through the night, but because he had had a fever, he was not allowed to go into school the next day. Truthfully, it seemed his whole face was leaking Thursday morning--rheumy eyes, runny nose, and drool. He's a good-looking kid, I swear. Very luckily, Mami was able to come over and watch him for the second time this week. According to her, the day was spent sleeping for 3 hours, eating applesauce, and insisting they go outside. Here's hoping that tomorrow, he's able to put in a full shift at school, and then I can put in a full shift, too. Also, here's hoping his cold is in retreat, and he feels better!

Manoloewens discover the Photobooth feature of an iMac

A Summary of Your Skills at 18 months

In keeping with tracking your development every six months or so, we dedicate this blog entry to you, Mr. Macers, with a somewhat all-encompassing list of your skills, talents, words, sounds, and musings about life.  Let's begin, shall we?

1. You weight approx. 30 pounds and are _______ inches tall.  What you feel like to me is a big ol' sack of rice.   A sack of rice that is putting on weight more quickly than I am gaining upper body strength.  I can see we are going to hit a wall soon. 
2. You can facially express the following emotions:  suspicion, sadness, surprise, anger, and confusion.  No, you don't know how to use them in context yet but tonight when I was about to give you teryaki tofu yet again, I briefly caught you giving me the suspicious face. 
3. You love, love, love pistachios.  I don't even know how you got me to give you pistachios in the first place but it happened and now you have a food addiction.  There is an exponential increase in your level of happiness when I grab the jar and ask if you want pistachios.  I find it hard to say no to you.  And feel relief that it's not sour patch kids you are addicted to instead.
4. You're a jumper.  I'll rephrase:  You are testing out your ability to jump.  About every 20th try, you actually get both feet off the ground at the same time and this surprises everyone.  Sadly, you don't do your surprised face but in referencing point one we know you don't know how to use the sad face in context yet. 
5. Your Mami believes there's a Bermuda Triangle in our house which makes you spontaneously fall.  It's the area where the living room transitions into the dining room. I don't disbelieve her.  There's no variation or unevenness in the floor.  You must work on smoother entrances and exits of rooms.  Take note, young man!
6. Words you can now say in some recognizable way or with just the right context:  ball, truck, flower, cheese, cat, car, dirt, quack (duck), and buh-boh (which is either uh-oh or boo-boo or both!), momma, and poppa.  You learned the last two words last.  Yes, it slightly hurt our feelings but we forgave you in the name of long term investments.
7. You, like many male children we know, have an obsession with emergency vehicles and construction vehicles, construction sounds, and construction workers.
8. You have an uncanny ability to spot airplanes in the sky when seeming to be looking at the ground.  
9. You want Tups to like you as much as you like him and don't understand why cats don't hug back.  
1. You don't hold it against Tups when he scratches you.  No grudge-holding for you!
2. You are not 100% sure we have a second cat.  
10. You have a healthy hesitation toward new situations, strangers, and unfortunately, flavors, textures, or anything that is not a fish nugget or cheese.  Or pistachios.
11. People think you are kind of a chill little dude.  You most definitely did not get this from your mother.
12. You play well with others and don't seem to mind when little kids take your toys.  Or, rather, if they try, you have a steadfast resolve, a  grip of steel and an unflappable demeanor that means there is no way in hell that toy is leaving your hand.  
13. Being your parent gets to be more fun every day.  We say this not to be cloyingly sweet but because it's true.

Flying acrobatics

Morning time

For a while, post France, Maceo was waking up consistently at5 or so, sometimes earlier, sometimes a little later. Then we got him a little owl nightlight, and he stays quiet till 5:40 or so, sometimes later! It's great! Then the ritual is to bring him in to cuddle till he wants to get down. He then wanders the upstairs for a bit, coming back in to check on us and to pet Tupelo until we get up. On the weekends, only one of us gets up and the other sleeps in. When he and I get up on the weekends, we go downstairs and he sits on the counter for 10 minutes or so, playing with the toaster oven and drinking some milk.

We play some more and when it's light enough out, Maceo insists that we go outside to play. He has a little car he really likes to push around, so we bring that across the street to the school's parking lot/playground/field,

and he can push to his heart's content and our neighbors's displeasure.