On Comes the Light

It’s been a busy week or so for our little family. In the last 8 days I shook Alan Greenspan’s hand, went bass fishing in the East River, saw Eric Clapton at Madison Square Garden, while Justine traveled to Bean Town to attend a board meeting at her alma mater, Walnut Hill, and may have sold a new documentary about a US submarine lost in WW II off the Alaska coastline. And we traveled to the Cape to visit Great-Grandma Sylvia who just had foot surgery. But all this news pales in comparison to the REALLY BIG NEWS.

As you may recall, a short while ago Oliver signed his first word…”More.” We excitedly asked for more and he has already delivered, quickly making that major milestone yesterday’s news. First off, Oliver has two new teeth on top, now bringing his pearly-white chompers total to 8. Oh, but there’s more. On Thursday, Oliver took his first hands-free steps. Lest we think it a fluke, he has repeated the performance many times since. Suddenly, he can stand on his own and, though a bit precarious, he’ll then take a few steps. Just like that, he’s walking on his own. I give it a week until he’s racing around without having to think about it at all.

But there’s still more. Yesterday, he spoke his first word. We’ve been on the edge of our seats waiting to hear him say “Eat,” or “More,” or “Dada,” or “Mama,” or maybe even “Bella.” Instead, he pointed up to the ceiling and said, “Light.” He’s since repeated both the act and the utterance, convincing us that he knows what he’s saying. “What,” you ask? “Light was his first word,” you say? Yup. Foiling expectations, his first word was “Light.” And while I’m certain I could wrap the event in symbolic meaning (I have a talent for that and it turns out that cousin Jesse’s first word was also Light), the reality is that recently Justine has been repeatedly flicking light switches on and off for him while saying “lights on, lights off.” The game totally delights him, so much so that apparently the word just stuck.

So, wish us loads of luck. We now have an ambling, talking toddler on our hands. It’s definitely gonna get real interesting from here. Oh boy!

Please Sir, I Want Some More

Sing along. Ol-i-ver, Ol-i-ver, never before has a boy wanted more. Ol-i-ver, Ol-i-ver, never before has a boy wanted more. Yes, after months of signing to Oliver, he has finally rewarded us by signing back “MORE.” As in, “Mommy, can I have more Cheerios to feed Bella?” He did it all weekend. I think we have to say that this is his first word. (What we thought was “milk” a few months ago, seems to have been a mere hand exercise.)

And speaking of hand exercise, Oliver has also consistantly mastered the wave. He’s so proud of his new skill that he waves hello not just when you come home, but when you enter a room, or simply when he feels he hasn’t checked in in a while. He’ll just turn around and wave at you. He even waves at no one in particular. On our morning walk last Fri., he proceeded, hand held high from his stroller, waving the royal wave like the English Queen. “Hello, to all my fans out there. Greetings and salutations.”

Much to Mom’s delight, Oliver also started dancing about 2 weeks ago. Every time you sing to him, play music or bang on anything, his little legs go up and down. Not surprisingly then (and as you can see from the attached picture), Olie loves his music class, which he started a few weeks ago. Last week he was the only student to actually “play” the piano, meaning he was quite content to bang on it for a long time, while the other babies just walked away.

Oliver’s new favorite game is Lights On. Whenever he can, he likes to turn the lights on and off. Yes, pull cords, flip switches, and dimmers, we’re mastering them all. When he can’t reach, he points to the light and says, “ah, bah, bah, bah.” Which means, “Please dearest Mummy, will you kindly turn the light on?” This is particularly useful in the car when the sun goes down. Much to the chagrin of drivers behind us, I turn the little light over his head on and off, while he laughs and squeals with delight. Cory and Michele gave O a turtle that shines green, blue or white stars through its shell onto the ceiling. Oliver goes to sleep pointing up at them every night. Often when he wakes up in the morning, he immediately reaches towards the ceiling searching for his stars, and I have to tell him, “Stars only come out at night, Hon.”


And Oliver now feeds me Cheerios, too. He thinks this is a riot.

All this advancement is so much fun. Please Oliver, we want some MORE.

Pickled, But Not Poxed

It was so far merely a false alarm. The 3 odd red bumps are still present, but the massive outbreak that is chicken pox has not yet happened. Whew! Still, the incubation period is 21 days and we’re just 14 days from the exposure, so still keeping fingers and toes crossed. Oliver seems oblivious to any pending doom. He is chipper as ever, melting all who know him with his dashing six-toothed smile, his beaming blue eyes, and that transluscent white hair.

With a slight chill in the air these last few weeks, instincts direct us to that ancient Autumnal event, the canning of the year’s excess harvest in preparation for the long Winter months ahead. For me, this means it was once again time to prepare my (in)famous pickled veggies. So, on Saturday morning, the family rose and dashed off to the farmer’s market in Union Square. It was a great day at the market with many bustling stands and we bought the most beautiful fresh baby carrots and a rainbow of pickling peppers, as well as garlic, radishes, pickling cukes, green beans, wax yellow beans, and pearl onions. We then spent the day pickling in Hoboken at the lovely home of a friend from work and his wife. We four (Olie offered little help this year) spent hours trimming, snipping, peeling, cleansing, and stuffing veggies into jars, then boiling the secret vinegar recipe and, later, the bottled veggies already stewing in their brine. It was a long, hot, and laborious process, but some 7 hours later we had nearly 60 bottles of decidedly delectable looking pickles, including 2 deli-sized jars (a first for me). For those who end up partaking, see if you can detect this year’s secret new spice…

Pickling is truly a labor of love and I relish (pardon the pun) the project each year. Pickling, for me, touches on a spirituality and artistry, a missing link to the land, and I love its tangible and appetizing outcome, very much in stark contrast to so many modern endeavors. Come to think of it, raising a son touches similar chords of spirituality and artistry, though the curing of the product certainly takes many more than a couple of weeks. And, while I preserved no olives in this year’s batch, I still find new insight into why I was drawn to that name for him. So, this year’s peck of pickled veggies is dedicated to my young son, Oliver, as he rounds the corner to his 11th month. Welcome back to Autumn everyone!

A Pox On Our House

Looking very much like little Olie has come down with Chicken Pox, just 1.5 months shy of when he would "qualify" for the vaccine. Just 3 marks so far, and the doc thinks they might just be bug bites given their location and limited number...keep your fingers crossed against the pox everyone!

"Capoccione!" Noggin uses his head and goes Italian

(What with all of Oliver’s inspiring new activity, Chad and I have been quite prolific over the past few weeks. So if you’re just tuning in, you may want to scan down a piece.)

Oliver had a very rough weekend due to the appearance of yet another lower incisor (that makes 6 teeth!). Heretofore, he's been pretty unphased by teething, but with 2 pushing through at once, it's simply too much to bear. Despite his crankiness, we did have some amazing family moments, the first of which occurred on Friday.

I happened to be feeding Oliver his lunch, when I tossed Bella a few Cheerios. Oliver leaned over his high chair to watch just as Bella caught one midair. He laughed at her and then turned to look at me as if to share the joke. I did it again. Again he laughed while looking down at her and then turned to me. “Isn't she a riot, Mom?”

Later that day, Oliver and I met Chad for dinner at the Boat House in Central Park. Oliver was backlit with a golden glow from the setting sun, complementing his orange outfit and making him look like a little angel. And he behaved like one too, happily (and quietly) playing with spoons throughout the meal. Towards the end of dinner though, he did begin to unwind. At which point Chad grabbed O’s Mario Batali spoon and placed O’s rubber duck on one end of it. He then hit the other end, launching the duck into the air and Oliver into a fit of laughter. We all laughed again and again as the duck bounced around the table. I hope we didn’t give the expecting couple at the next table, who looked on adoringly, a false impression of familial bliss. But it was one of those moments that blow all others right out of the water and leave you with no doubt as to why you became parents.

Another great moment, occurred on Sunday while taking in some sun on our roof deck. Oliver absorbs things like a sponge now. You only have to show him something once or twice before he’s doing it himself. For example, by Saturday Oliver himself was dropping food off his tray for Bella. In another example, on Friday I showed Oliver how to kick a ball and by Sunday he was kicking Bella’s ball to her on the deck. It took immense concentration but he managed to do it over and over. And more importantly he seem to understand what I meant when I asked him to kick the ball. - Oh, and he "throws" the ball now, too. Bella is starting to see the benefits of having Oliver around (he was formerly known by her, we conjecture, as The Usurper).

Another new favorite game of Oliver’s involves the mirror in the front hall that is covered by a curtain. Oliver marches up to the edge of the curtain and waits. I query, “Where’s Oliver?” and he whips it aside to reveal himself, triumphant, in the mirror.

Oh, and by the way, the head banging, I read in my baby book this weekend, is something that many babies do. It’s a way of experimenting with rhythm. He had his first music class today, so perhaps he can expand this training.

Oliver is also doing very well experimenting with spacial relationships and is able to put his blocks into cups to make a rattle. Apparently, this is a big advancement.

Finally, (for now) Noggin has earned a new nickname that is very apropos. We had a nice dinner at our local Italian restaurant, Celeste, with Bella (his baby girlfriend) and her parents last night. The waiters were admiring Oliver while he was admiring the pizza-making operation. They all kept referring to him as “capoccione.” Finally, one explained that technically this means “big head,” but they assured me that in Rome it’s a term of endearment reserved for only the cutest of babies.

Pictures from Dad & Lisa's visit

Dad and Lisa discovered what I have long known. That days with baby pass more quickly when many pictures are taken.

Block Overboard

Olie at Ollie's Diner

Standing Tall (and Alone)

On a day where thoughts naturally turn to the past, I instead look back just one day to yesterday when Oliver stood on his own for nearly 10 seconds. Won't be long now before he's dancing a jig.

Thanks again to Grandpa Hand and Grandma Lisa for babysitting last week. They had to work hard to keep up with Olie, but were rewarded with plentiful, toothy smiles. And they were lucky enough to miss out on Olie's teething moodiness this weekend. He cried alot and constantly gave us the "no smiles for you" glare. Oh well, it can't all be sunshine and roses.

Gone Fishin'

I like to think that I’m the kind of person who is open to trying new things. But, if I'm being honest, I’m really the kind of person who likes the obscure, leans towards the off-the-beaten track, and revels in the undiscovered, someone who tends to shy away from the mainstream and everyday. In other words, I don’t play golf on weekends, don’t really like steakhouses, and my favorite artist is not U2, The Beatles, or The Rolling Stones; I play sports, but I don’t get why one would watch sports. By no means do I promote my ways as better. It is simply how I tend to be.

That said, every once in a while I find myself trying something that I’ve (mis-)labeled “ordinary." In this case, it was fishing. When I was a kid I used to go trout fishing with my pa and grandpa. We’d sit on the banks of Trout Lake or fish the waters of Strawberry Reservoir, waiting eternally for even a bite on the line. It was quality time with dad and with grandpa (their view, of course, as I was 10 or so), and so you might think these fishing adventures would have continued as the years rolled on by. However, as it happens, I hated eating fish, and certainly wanted nothing to do with gutting a fish. When it came time for me to eat and gut what I caught, I simply chose to fish no more. That was about 25 years ago.

Since then, I've thought about fishing, but couldn't really see the point. I still don't eat fish and it seemed to me that 4-6 hours on a boat would likely be a long and tedious adventure. Then, a few weeks back a friend talked me into getting up at 4am and heading out to sea on a fishing adventure off the shores of Harwichport. Even as I drove to the boat, I wondered how I’d gotten myself into it. But I was wrong to be apprehensive. The trip was great fun! It was a delightful, warm morning and as we motored out to sea past Monomoy Island, the sun began to rise. A sunrise at sea ain’t such a bad start to a day. Even better, the fishing was splendid…we caught 10 big fish and were home by 8:30am.

So, I’m here to tell you that keeping an open mind (or having wise friends who push your boundaries) can pay off. So many discoveries in life, but you’ve got to keep on opening yourself up to them. Even those who stay conscious still can easily miss the goodies that sit right before them. Guess I better set a good example for Olie this afternoon by brushing aside my bias, putting on some U2 and learning what I’ve been missing out on all these years!

Incisor 5 and the Boink

Lisa and I were changing Oliver this morning (this is now, preferably, a two person job) and we noticed that he has another tooth. A lower, right, incisor – that makes 5 total. Growing sooooo fast.

Oliver also weighs about 25lbs, which I’m sure puts him back in the top 10% for weight. Till now, my arms have managed to keep up with him, aka the heavier he gets, the stronger I get, and it all evens out. Now, however, he has totally outstripped me, and I’m in pain. I’m afraid we’re going to have to add regular mommy massages to the budget.

And speaking of outstripping, we can barely keep up with him now. Though not officially crawling, he does push up onto hands and knees and rocks back and forth. But he still prefers full (frontal) body-to-floor contact when it comes to moving. This doesn’t seem to slow him down much. And I can only brace myself for what’s to come when he actually crawls (walks, runs, drives!!!!!) Oliver literally hauls “tushy” (this is a family site) at an alarming rate. Rather than using sheer brute strength to drag himself forward, he’s developed a bit more finesse in his movements. Employing a lizard like side/forward motion, he’s able to at least double his speed. He sometimes looks like he’s in basic training, practicing for dangerous reconnaissance missions under tables and chairs.

He’s also engaging in what my Dad has dubbed, “calculated mischief.” (Dad and Lisa are on nanny-duty this week since Anita is on vacation.) Deliberately pushing a toy that simply must be retrieved (by him) into forbidden areas is one ploy. Another favorite is crawling to the very edge of our bed, so we have to drag him back. Hysterical.

Fun is really what Oliver is all about now. He’s so interactive and all he wants to do is play and play. He’s thrilled that he can control more of his environment, either through “calculated mischief” or other games. He laughs and smiles almost constantly. It’s very rewarding if totally exhausting.

A new favorite game is “boink.” This consists of him head butting something while you say, “boink.” He plays this against your head, or against his own while admiring himself in the mirror. He’s even hit himself in the head with books. Anything to elicit a humorous “boink.” (We’re choosing to take this activity as a sign of creative intelligence rather than wondering if he’s all there.)

Dad and Oliver have devised a new sport called “block overboard.” Oliver stations himself under the coffee table. Dad then sets blocks on the lower rung, and Oliver pushes them off. Dad considers this a most welcome diversion from studying for his Ph.D comps.

When not cruising on “all fours,” Oliver loves to walk. He’s getting quite good at it and can even do it one handed. (Meaning he only grasps one adult hand.)

Oliver has introduced a new consonant into his vocabulary: "G." We now hear lots of "Ga, ga." It's not your typical baby-talk, "gah, gah," accent on the "a." His is more of a throaty "Ga," emphasis on the "g."

Finally, Oliver pulls up onto everything. Now when I come in in the morning, there he is, standing in his crib, bouncing up and down and beaming at me. Unfortunately I also often find him thus when he’s supposed to be going to bed. He’s so proud of his accomplishments though that it’s really hard to get mad at him.

Yes, again to borrow another pithy phrase from Dad, “baby entropy” is in full force at our house. It’s great fun.