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.

I was merely acting!

Maceo has a number of tricks. One is that he can portray some emotions on command.

Here, he is squinching up his eyes to check you out in a "suspicious" manner.

Here, he has stuck his lower lip out, evidently because he is "sad."

What is going on? Someone is very "confused."

What the...! Did you...! I mean...! So "surprising"!

This one is better in person, as he "angrily" breathes in and out at you.

Good listening skills

I've been commenting to Nick lately that I am happily surprised by Maceo's level of comprehension when I use longer commands and full sentences and it seems as though he understands my entire sentence. 

So, the other night, it's bath night and we are prepping to get into the tub.  One task we do before Macers gets in is to put his diaper and pajamas on our bed.  So, Maceo and I are in his room and I hand him his cloth diaper and say "Please go put this diaper on Mommy's bed."  Maceo looks at me solemnly, grabs the diaper and heads off to our bedroom to complete the task.

He reports back like a good little soldier and I give him his socks and say, "Maceo, please go put the socks on Mommy's bed. Thank you!"  Solemn look.  Big eyes.  Hands extended to grab his next task, you know what this looks like.  He turns and heads down the hall to complete the task and I turn to find the next item I will send him with.

When I look up again I see he's distracted so we head straight for the bath.  And there, floating in the water, are Maceo's socks.