the duke goes down …

SLIDE!!!

… his new slide!

we had 70 degree weather last week so i put together nathaniel’s new playground.  of course, it being march in new jersey, the next week it was 28 degrees and snowing.  even still, nathaniel has had a few chances to get outside to play on his new slide.

as i’ve probably mentioned here before (and if not, pretend that i have) about how nathaniel walks around most of the time saying ‘outside’ or ‘outside please.’  now, he actually has a reason go go outside and play – and not just walk around the block with us.

it’s pretty amusing to watch him go down the slide.  after the first few times of us holding him as he went down, he’ll just go on his own now.  sometimes his shoes slow him down, but when he figures out to hold them up a little bit he shouts ‘WEEE!’ as he flies down and lands on his butt on the ground.  shortly thereafter he jumps right up and says ‘OUTSIDE!’  yeah yeah, we get it, he likes being outside.

i can't wait for it to get warmer!

so now that nathaniel is 19 months old, we’ve noticed he starting to ‘get’ things much faster.  the kid’s a whiz with a fork, he’s figuring out how to put on some of his clothes and he’s trying to manipulate julia and myself into doing whatever he wants us to do.

he’s always been the type of kid who would go to whomever was closest to whatever it was he wanted and latch on until he gets it.  quite often he’ll be in someone’s arms and just keep reaching to the next person down the line so he could play with the light switch or grab something off of the bookshelf.  lately, he’s been working on his crocodile tears.

why's i got to use a fork for pizza?

he does, however, love pizza.  pizza, meatballs, pasta – he loves it all.

i’ll be honest, at this point, i can’t even remember what it’s like to eat a meal together with julia, where both of our meals are hot and we aren’t cutting up half of what’s on our plate to give to nathaniel.

something tells me it’s going to be a long while since i get that back.

again, it’s a damn good thing this kid is so cute.

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stupid rookie mistake

my new pillow

last week nathaniel was sick.  this past weekend he was getting better.  monday, he was back to his normal self, enjoyed his day at daycare and was having a grand ol’ time at home.  that’s when he was laying down with julia enjoying some milk when he decided that an encore performance was in order.

julia stayed home with nathaniel on tuesday and i was home with him on wednesday.  after a conversation with the doctor, we realized that we put him back on to solid foods and dairy just a bit too soon for his ailing stomach.  with that knowledge dropped on our faces, julia ran out to get some more pedialite and nathaniel pretty much had oatmeal for breakfast and dinner and about 70 bottles of apple juice or pedialite a day.  of course, just when nathaniel was getting in to the whole sippy cup thing, he gets sick and refuses to drink from anything other than a bottle again.

my new nap buddy

on thursday morning after nathaniel was done with his waffles, we got him dressed and ready for the day.  i was attempting to get his jacket on him (about 50% of the time he decides he doesn’t want to wear a jacket and runs around the house trying to escape it) when i came up with an idea.  i asked him ‘nathaniel, are you ready to go to daycare?’ his response? ‘YAY (as he ran in circles clapping)!!!!!” that was when he let me put his jacket on and get him out the door.

as you can probably tell from the new pictures, nathaniel and pickles have been doing some more bonding.  it’s going to be a sad day for me when pickles decides he wants to sleep in nathaniel’s room instead of ours, but i think it’s only a matter of time.

sick baby = sad parents

i don't feel good, so i dressed like derek

i had forgotten how awful it was when nathaniel gets sick.  lucky for me, nathaniel didn’t want me to forget completely about it.  thursday i got a call from daycare around 2 saying that nathaniel had just thrown up and i had to come pick him up.

when i got there to get him he just looked so sad and miserable.

shortly after i got home, julia pulled in as well (i gave her a call to let her know not to go get him at daycare and she said she’d leave as soon as school was done).  we weren’t sure what exactly to do for him.  he barely drank anything at daycare and when he finally ate something it made him sick.  we figured that if we gave him some cheerios it may help to settle his stomach a little bit.

oh how wrong were we.

what came forth from our child was a mess the likes our living room has never seen before, and hopefully never sees again.

i gave a quick call over to nathaniel’s doctor just to find out what they recommend us doing for him.  they told me that there has been a stomach bug going around (confirmed by daycare when she said that another little boy was sick thursday morning) and said the most important thing to do was keep him hydrated.

pickles put food on the floor. i'll put it back in his dish for him.

julia made a run to the cvs to get some pedialite and some of the pedialite popsicles for when (if) he ever wanted to eat again.  we were affraid to give him to much that he would be sick again so we were sort of filling about 3oz for him to drink at a time.  he loved the grape flavor and kept asking for more.

after a long night’s sleep thursday into friday, he was still a bit down, but feeling more like himself again.  he took a nap friday morning and a second nap (hooray for second naps!) in the afternoon.  when he got up from the second nap, he was almost completely back to his normal energized 18 month old personality.  he ate a full dinner, drank a bunch and then decided to pass out completely around 7pm.  you know how we knew he was better?  he was adamant about eating some of julia’s pizza she had for dinner.

today, he’s back to normal and we are much happier about it.

we have, however, created a monster.  well, i guess i should blame the nice weather for this one.  all day nathaniel will stand by the front door, pointing, saying ‘outside.’  if you try to move him away from the door he has one of those awesome tantrums little kids have.  what remedies this?  holding him up so he can look out the windows at the outside world.  today, we ended up taking him on two walks around the block because he just wants to be outside.

i guess there’s no denying it.  our kid will end up a hippie.  he hates wearing shoes and he loves to be outside.  i’m going to lose it if he asks for dreadlocks.

there has to be some limits.

every day i write the book

i'm ready to go outside now, guys.

so every day i try to teach nathaniel at least one new word.  when he was younger he would point at anything and everything and say ‘that’ or ‘this.’  now, when he looks at something, points and rambles on in mostly words i cannot identify i’ll tell him what the object is he’s pointing to.  then i’ll repeat it to him until he starts saying it back to me.  most of he time he gets close enough to the word that you can understand what he’s saying, but there are still a bunch of sounds he can’t quite form yet.  he can point out some basic shapes, lights, lamps, windows, doors, cars, etc.  he also semi counts with us.  i’m not sure he knows the odd numbers, but if you alternate counting with him, he’ll get most of the evens up to 10.

this of course brings up the entire new issue of julia and i having to watch not only everything we say around him, but also what ever happens to be on the tv if he’s in the room.  he hasn’t attempted to say anything bad, yet, but we don’t want him to be that kid at daycare.

helping mommy clean the house

one great thing nathaniel loves to do is ‘clean up.’  when he’s done eating, after julia or i wipe his face to make sure he’s actually clean, he’ll take the towel and wipe his own face and hands, and then wipe off the surface of the high chair table.  the other day he took it to the next level while julia was doing some cleaning.

julia was cleaning the living room and i heard a thumping coming from the hallway.  i went to check on what it was and i see nathaniel walking towards the living room with the broom.  he was attempted to sweep the floor as he walked, but the thing is about 2 feet taller than he is and he wasn’t able to quite get it together.  instead, we grabbed him the little hand broom and he went running into the living room to help his mommy with the cleaning.

hopefully this is something that he will continue to enjoy throughout the rest of his years living with us so he can keep his room clean without us having to yell at him daily and then giving up and putting it all in trash bags and threatening to throw stuff out unless he puts it away.  not like that ever happened to me, but i’m just saying.

 

(oh, i changed the layout of the page if you got confused.  figure it’s been 18 months with the old one i’d give it a new look for a bit.)