The Great Pumpkin

When we lived in Chicago, Halloween wasn't much of an event for the kid crowd since few kids lived in our neighborhood. Then in Pittsburgh, Halloween was also pretty low-key as since Squirrel Hill, our old neighborhood, had structured events that killed the trick-or-treating scene.

Our first few years in DC were somewhat different. Apparently, Georgetown is a destination for trick-or-treaters from around the area, so the first year, we were completely unprepared and ended up shutting our lights off early and hiding out from them. The second year, we had more candy, but not enough. So again, we quickly ended up hiding out from the swarms. But even still, our old street was slightly out of the way, so we didn't get innundated with trick-or-treaters.

This year, however, our neighbor warned Abby that she was always stunned by the amount of candy that she ended up giving out. We planned accordingly as we bought six bags of candy and stationed ourselves on the doorstep to hand it out. For a while, we had a grand time and things looked good - a smattering of visitors with parents who inevitably oo'ed and ah'ed over Teddy and Margaret (in her pumpkin suit.) Then, around 7:00, BAM. A huge run on our candy stock. Pack after pack of kids, all holding out their hands for candy. Looking up and down our street, you could see masses of kids going from one house to another. On the one hand, it was pretty cool since I got to comment on lots of interesting costumes and we got to socialize with various neighbors that we hadn't met. But on the other hand, we were also running low on candy. For a while Abby held out our basket to let the kids take their own candy until I pointed out that the more strategic kids were grabbing multiple items. Even after curtailing that behavior and getting restocked from our neighbors (including some from the haul that their kids accumulated), we ended up running out way too early. Something that we'll have to keep in mind next year.

What was really interesting about the trick-or-treat crowd was its composition. Two groups were particularly notable. The first was minority kids. That I understand - other parts of the city aren't very safe at night while the density of housing and affluence in G'town makes our neighborhood a good target for trick-or-treating. But the other large group involved Europeans. This group was identifiable by the languages that the parents in the background spoke as their kids grabbed candy from us along with the Coo-coo-coo's that the French women bestowed on Teddy. I have two theories about why these guys like Halloween. First, as befits European social programs, they like it when someone gives them something for nothing (or for very little effort.) Alternatively, they really like events that involve us Americans getting up off of our fat asses, actually moving around, and interacting with one another. Alas, my former French colleague has quit, so I won't be able to sort out those theories with her. (Given my first theory, that's perhaps for the best since it would clearly lead to a heated lunch discussion about European vs. US social programs.)

Our moment of fame

Well, it's not a particularly good version of the photo (nor is the picture itself very good), but here's a copy of photo from the Post (which appears to show up sometimes when one links to the article). Rob and Reese are the stroller to the left, we're in the center, and Mariesa is in pink next to us. Maddie is milling around in the middle of all the dogs.

We're famous, but are also all alone

A NEWS FLASH!!! Following up on my earlier post, Margaret and I were pictured in the Washington Post in association with a story about dog parks. Our friend Mariesa is heavily quoted in the article ("Geez, I sound like a complete loser," was her reaction) and the author does clearly point out our park's location, as we feared she might. But Margaret and I, along with Mariesa and a few friends, are pictured in a black and white photo that, in the early Sunday edition, was on pg. A4. A slightly crowded photo, but there we are with Margaret looking right at the photographer. Apparently, we'll be on the inside of the Metro section of the actual Sunday edition, but it doesn't appear that they've posted our photo online. We'll see if our photo pops up online and will buy up some extra copies and scan a copy for our many fans.

The CT grandparents left on Friday, so we are officially on our own. I suspect that we'll be able to handle it reasonably well, although some logistical issues associated with dogs walks and morning showers will have to be addressed. But after all, we're veterans at dealing with kids at this point. At least we like to think that we are. The whole experience of dealing with an infant is interesting since most people experience it only a few times in their lives, so few people are "experts" in the usual sense. However, once you realize that the kid's crying doesn't mean that he is really suffering all that much (despite the fact that the cry of an infant is one of the most unpleasant sounds in the world), you can handle them pretty easily.

And Teddy has continued to be a pretty easy kid. He fusses a bit, as any infant will, but doesn't reach the sustained levels of fussiness that his sister achieved. And, frankly, for all of the difficulties that she caused (e.g. only sleeping in the swing, heavy reliance on the nuk-nuk), she wasn't a very tough kid. Upshot is that he's been a real champ and, despite out initial concern that it was only temporary, he's managed to keep it up. Admittedly, he does wake up at night, but he's pretty quiet about announcing his presence, so it doesn't bother me too much. And frankly, that's probably the efficient outcome since while I can change diapers, there's not much point in having me do so when there's not much else I can do for him.

As for Margaret, her latest doctor's appointment put her in the 90th percentile for height and the 50th percentile for weight - still our little supermodel. Although the doctor did point out that the height-weight chart reflects lots of kids who eat lots of fast food (when she asked whether Margaret ate fast food, I quickly shook my head while thinking about Margaret's lunch of chicken nuggets, french fries, and pizza that she had the day before with the grandparents at the Museum of Natural History.)

She also has a pretty good vocabulary. Her use of words is naturally a bit rudimentary, but she appears to be using substantially more words than most kids of her age. This may be partly a result of her love of books. One of her favorite pastimes is reading books. Every night, she lies with her head on my chest as we read through book after book. "Hand hand finger thumb" (dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum - it's amazing how catchy books stick in your head) is a new favorite. After every book, Margaret will sit back and say "Bu" (book with out the "k") followed by a heartfelt "peeze" accompanied by her rubbing her tummy (the sign language for "please".) This works for a while as her pleadings are so cute that I can't deny her, but eventually I turn out the light. She'll fuss and occasionally call for Mama (as if Mama would have a different view of the situation), before settling down.

My suspicion is that Margaret will end up being like her Mama and her cousin Alex, both of whom were reading way ahead of their grade levels once they got to school. But I've also learned why Alex's parents have TONS of kids' books - it gets pretty tedious to read the same books over and over. Millions of monkeys, millions of thumbs. Millions of monkeys drumming on drums. Dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum.

Pics with the Grandparents

So the CT grandparents have been in town for the last 1+ week....

Margaret (and her brother)

So the person who is probably having the most difficult adjustment to the arrival of the new kid is Margaret. To begin with, there are physical problems that cause tension - due to her c-section, Abby can't pick Margaret up which makes it difficult to pull her out of danger in the house or at the park and also prevents Abby from changing Maggie's diaper (Papa is building up a big list of credits on this front) or putting her in her crib. We've managed to deal with this so far, but the bigger problem is probably the psychological issues that arise since Mama's time is dominated by this loud little fellow. It's hard to know whether Margaret is really aware of Teddy's demands on his mom, but she had been fussy. However, the life of an 18-month old kid appears to involve a roller coaster ride of giggling highs and screaming lows, so who knows what's driving her behavior.

We do know one thing for sure - Margaret has experienced a recent growth spurt of monumental proportions. Other than really high spots, there are few lower areas that are out of her reach. Which is the source of lots of possible problems as she finds everything to be interesting. And many of her clothes no longer fit (in fact, if you're looking to get some clothes for her, don't get anything rated for less than 2 years.) While my left arm has built up strength due to the typical "parent crook", she's surprisingly heavy to carry around. Both Abby and I have independently noted how big she is now. As you can see when she's next to her brother in the pics included below. (Of course, Teddy is still pretty darn small at this point, although he's starting to plump up a bit. He still doesn't fuss a lot, but his weight gain isn't surprising given how much he likes to eat.)

Margaret is also trying out her verbal skills like crazy. She's able to repeat almost every phrase that we toss at her. She doesn't necessarily understand what she's saying since when asked, she identifies almost everyone as "Papa." I prefer to think that she's just yanking my chain since she has to know who Papa really is (she has such a sense of humor), but when I point at Teddy or the dog and ask "Who is that?" and get a response of "Papa," I'm not so sure. She also babbles in "complete sentences" in her own special way. That is, we have a subject (of sorts) followed by some additional elaboration and an eventual "period" at which point her statement is done. All nonsense, but she's trying. Abby thinks, and I agree, that the transition to making sense will be rapid. All of a sudden, we'll have actual words and, very likely, full sentences. At which point, we won't be able to shut her up.

Some pictures

No one wants to hear my random ramblings, so here are some baby pics....

Already exceptional?

Today at daycare, we are told that Margaret walked around lifting her shirt and patting her belly while saying "Mama. Baby?" She's had some difficulties with the new arrival, but seems to be doing ok.

Maddie is spending a lot of time in the background. Her attitude seems to be one of disbelief: You mean that these things can come in pairs? Poor dog.

As for Teddy, he's still a pretty mellow kid. Unlike his sister, he spends a lot of time quietly looking around. I know that he'll get louder as he gains strength, but I can't complain about the fact that he really doesn't wake me (but not Abby) up at night.

He went to the doctor yesterday. When she flipped him on his tummy to see how he'd react to "tummy time," he promptly tried to lift up his head. "Impressive," said our pediatrician. Then today, when placed on his tummy, he managed to roll himself over which is something that kids are typically able to do at 2+ months or so.

Sigh. It's so difficult to be the parent of exceptional children.

(More photos soon.)

An initial impression

So the Cubs are gone from the baseball playoffs. Given their recent performance during September, we all had high hopes for their prospects in the playoff series. But things didn't work out as we hoped, so they're gone. As are the Phillies. Which removes the threat of an inter-family National League rivalry in the division series, but also means that there isn't a clear team to root for on the NL side of the playoffs. Arizona Diamondbacks? Colorado Rockies? I'm not sure I even know where those teams play (their general geographical affiliations notwithstanding.) Luckily, I have one remaining team for which my allegiance is clear - the Cleveland Indians. My dad's side of the family lives the Cleveland area, and my first baseball games involved trips to Municipal Stadium - the "mistake by the lake" - with my Uncle Mike to eat hotdogs and watch the Tribe play random teams in a gargantuan, but often nearly empty, stadium. The stadium was so empty that you could literally hear individual hecklers yelling. The end result is that I'll be rooting for the Tribe for the rest of the playoffs (although things don't look good after their performance earlier tonight.)

What the heck, you ask, is this garbage? You show up looking for a post about the new kid, or perhaps the older kid, and instead you get a lot of mumbo-jumbo about baseball. The Cleveland Indians? Who the heck cares?

Note first the change in the name of the blog. The web address is still the same, but now, while there is still the dog and us, we have kids. My goodness. Just a matter of time until we end up driving a mini-van. NEVER! (I recall a friend of mine from college who had long hair and vehemently, passionately, absolutely insisted, under pressure, that he would NEVER cut his hair. I saw him at a wedding a year ago at which point I asked him whether, given his current short hair, he remembered our discussion about his allegiance to his previous haircut. Apparently he did not, and he didn't seem too concerned about the changes in his world view. So one never knows.)

I have lots of stuff running around in my head regarding the recent addition to the family, but I'll pass along my current impression of him: he's pretty easy baby. He doesn't fuss much. And when he does fuss, he's not very loud. Contrast this with his sister. By the time we left the hospital with Margaret, we had experienced at least a half-dozen or so episodes of bright red screaming which we had no idea how to fix. But Teddy will whine a bit, grunt, perhaps yell just enough to let us know that he's unhappy, but then he'll close his eyes and go back to sleep. This does cause some problems for feeding since we have to tickle, poke and prod him to make sure that he doesn't doze off while eating, but it also makes for a generally more pleasant baby experience. Perhaps it's us. Maybe we know how to deal with a fussy infant and/or we don't get as concerned when he starts to wail. But I can clearly recall early episodes with Margaret in which she was howling at the top of her lungs and no one, not us, not the nurses at Sibley, no one, had any idea how to stop it. So far, Teddy has been the complete opposite. When I mentioned to one of the nurses that he didn't seem to fuss very much, she said that he did cry a bit when she weighed him. Which involves stripping him of all of his clothes, tossing him on a cold scale, and generally causing him extreme discomfort. But if that's the threshold that's required to get a fussy response from him, then I'm fine (although he's currently complaining upstairs as I write this.)

To see the difference between Teddy and his sister, check out the following video. Teddy is just chilling out in his bassinet in the hospital. In a similar circumstance, his sister would have been howling.

A pressing issue - how to order pictures

So I haven't been posting photos on Kodak Gallery lately. Unfortunately, this has deprived my dedicated audience of the stellar wit that I displayed in my descriptions of the earlier photos that I posted on Kodak Gallery. More importantly, some people don't know how to order photos.

But this is pretty easy to fix. You can order physical copies of the photos that I post on Flickr using the following procedure:

1) Create a Flickr account at Flickr.com. This is pretty easy.

2) Look for my photos by searching for Manuz1234 (that's my Flickr account name) using the "Search, Flickr members" or "Search, people" in the Flickr search.

You should then be able to see all of my photos.

3) To order a copy of a picture, after clicking on a picture, you should see an "order prints" button at the top of picture (note that I believe that you need to be signed in to a Flickr account to see this button.) Clicking this should add it to your shopping cart (you may have to choose the size, etc.), and you can then have them sent to you by snail mail after choosing all of the photos that you want.

By the way, we've ordered a few pics from Flickr and have been pretty happy with the quality. The key, from my point of view, is that Flickr is much more flexible for displaying pics on a blog than Kodak Gallery. And the blog gives me much more creative (sic) freedom than the captions on Kodak Gallery ever did.

It's a boy!!!

As everyone who reads this blog probably knows by now, we had a boy! 7 pounds 9 ounces, 20.5 inches long (both a bit larger than Margaret) with (surprise, surprise) blonde hair and blue eyes. The nurses and doctors all seem to think that he has really blonde hair, but it's not nearly as light as Margaret's was. A first in what will certainly be a long line of things at which he cannot best his sister. Oh yeah, his name is Theodore Peter. We haven't decided if he'll go by Theodore or if we'll shorten it to Ted or Teddy. Some votes have also been cast for Theo, but that reminds me too much of the Cosby Show. One nice thing about Margaret was the plethora of nicknames that went along with it, but she has stubbornly remained Margaret, with an occasional use of Maggie. So we'll see what ends up as Theodore's main moniker. The whole experience has been very different from the first time around. I'll post more on this later along with some details about the birth, but the key difference is a much lower level of adrenaline leading to less general jitteriness. At least on my part. But you're not here to read about my deep insights into our second child. You're hoping for some pics! And here they are:

Along with a bonus movie! Newborns sure are odd little creatures....

It's go time

Well, folks, we're approaching the arrival of Thing 2. I'm surprisingly calm, probably because, for all of the bruhaha last time, the doctors managed to pull Maggie out with nary a scratch. Then again, I have also come to realize that I recall very little of what it's like to have a newborn around, so I'll probably be in for a rude awakening (quite literally) at some point in the next few nights. But Grandma Mary from IL is here to keep up with Margaret, so we shouldn't have to worry about her for a while.

Posts on this blog will probably be interrupted for a week or so. Or at least will be intermittent, with the key first post being the encounter between Thing 1 and Thing 2. Unless the hospital turns out to have wi-fi access, in which case, since I'll be taking my laptop to the hospital to do some "work," I may feel the call of the blogging muse at some point.

Keep your fingers crossed for us. I'll send out a mass email at some point tomorrow with the end result. By the way, random strangers are again predicting a boy based on the way that Abby's carrying the kid. But that was such a bad prediction last time that I'm leaning towards the new one being a girl. Gentlemen, place your bets.

Practice for Margaret

We bought a doll for Margaret as preparation for the arrival of Thing 2. She generally likes it, but especially likes to spend time fiddling around with it in ways that she finds familiar. For example, last week after I got her dressed in the morning, Margaret pulled out her portable changing pad and a diaper. I couldn't figure out what she was doing until she plopped her doll down on the pad and started trying to "change" its diaper. More evidence that unexpected things are percolating in her little head.

Tonight, she and Abby dressed and undressed the doll with particular attention to shoes and socks. Margaret was very distressed (and, given her cries of despair, appeared to directly blame us) that her shoes would not stay on the doll's feet. She has no idea what she's in for (do any of us?), but at least she knows what a baby is now.

By the way, it appears that we have a name picked out for each possible gender. But you'll have to wait to find out what those might be.

And it also appears that the Cubs will go down to the D-backs as its 4-1 in the 8th with the Cubs behind. Since both the Cubs and Phillies are not making good showings in the playoffs, I may have to turn to the more successful Indians as my team.