One Thousand Words

I’ve got a dual Friday Five for you, involving some of Niko’s favorite foods.

First up, we have his five favorite healthy foods:

• Apples
• Plums (even though they have A SEED)¹
• Carrots ²
• Strawberries (both fresh and dehydrated)
• Corn

Now, so you can feel superior to us and our food choices, his five favorite unhealthy foods:

• Fruit Snacks ³
• Pretzels
• Popcorn ⁴
• Chocolate Raisins
• M&Ms, also known as NEMINEMS

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I paint my nails fairly regularly, and Niko’s pretty entranced by the process because look! Color! Painting! He’s seen Nesko paint the ceiling/walls, he remembers when our bathroom used to be a different color, and my in-laws hook him up with old paint brushes and a bucket of water at their house so he can “paint” the sidewalk. It’s great! And mama does it TO HER NAILS! They are red/blue/green/orange/whatever. He asked me to paint HIS nails on Saturday and I agreed.

He wanted green but I don’t have a fast-drying green, so I offered him red or blue. He chose red, and I painted his toenails.

It was an incredible mistake.

Just like red cars go faster than non-red cars, and red shoes make you walk faster, those red toenails made him SUPER SPEEDY. It was hard keeping up with him.

We had specific plans for Saturday that we engaged a baby sitter for, and then those plans were cancelled on account of someone involving coming down with food poisoning (the horror!) so Nesko and I decided to see a movie but then couldn’t find a movie we wanted to pay money to see, so instead we… ran errands. SEXY! The babysitter took Niko to the zoo, where apparently he ran laps for most of the time he was there. Because red toenails!

She brought him back home in the evening, and he demanded (politely) that his shoes and socks be removed so he could look at his “red paintings.” I removed his footwear and he was thrilled and kept showing off his toes to everyone.

I swiped his nails with nail polish remover Sunday night so as not to shock and horrify Nesko’s parents, but the polish didn’t come off that easily and his toes look kind of gruesome now… like his toenails have been bleeding. He’s not as fast as he was, though, so that’s good.

Technorati Tags: parenting, toddler

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The weather forecast went from predicting a 40% chance of rain on Saturday to a 50% then a 60% chance of rain. A few hours before we were set to leave, the heavens opened and rain came lashing down in torrents. Thunder boomed. Lightning crackled and flashed. Niko was excited.

“Go outside? Inna rain! I put on rain coat. Rain comin down! It rain on cars. Cars all wet! Tata’s car all wet! I go outside in rain coat and splash.”

We did, in fact, bundle him up in a rain coat but then we prevented him from splashing because we are total killjoys. We took our knapsack loaded up with snacks and water and changes of clothing and piled into the car and somehow — SOMEHOW– managed to get out of the house on time. We drove through the rain and I told Niko, who was yawning and also chatting happily away at us, that we were going to do a lot of boring driving so it was ok if he fell asleep. He told me to stop fooling (actual words: STOP FOOLIN MAMA) and made fun of me a little bit, but five minutes later he was suspiciously quiet. A quick peek back revealed that he was dead to the world. Score! He slept the entire drive down, including when we pulled off at an Oasis¹ for lunch and ate in the parking lot waiting for a bit of the rain to let up.

It had stopped raining by the time we got to Union, IL, home of the Illinois Railroad Museum, and we were mere feet from the parking lot when we had to stop at a small railway crossing. Niko woke up and stretched and looked around.

“What dat? Oh. It’s a train! OH! IT’S THOMAS!” Sure enough, the train came along the track, and there was a bright blue cheerful Thomas puffing away! Niko’s tiny mind was blown.

We got there around 2-ish, picked up our tickets, hit the first tent where Niko played with megablocks and wooden trains a bit, and then walked around some. We found an area with picnic tables and Nesko told Niko that he had to eat lunch first then we would go ride on Thomas. There were a million portolets (including some baby changing portolets), and also flush toilets inside buildings. Sadly, we had no cash because we live in a bright and shining futureworld where everyone takes debit cards, and the ILRR museum grounds hasn’t reached that future yet, so we did not have Lemon Shakeups or ice cream cones or corndogs or any other fair food. Niko finished eating and we walked over to the giant snaking lines waiting to board the coaches. We got there just in time, as people began boarding, and trooped on.

Niko was a little wary of the trip. This train was very different from the ones he’s ridden before. But he still had fun and looked around a lot.

We also saw a LOT of train exhibits, walked past but did not wait 20 minutes in line for a photo with Sir Tophamm Hatt, rode a red cable car, walked some more, and Niko jumped in a bounce house for the first time.

He was super wired all the way home. I thought he’d fall asleep again, but no, he demanded and ate a bunch of snacks in the car, and then sang every single song he knew in a desperate attempt to stay awake. We stopped at IHOP for dinner (a huge mistake, the food was bland and the service was… not very good. PROTIP: when you’re serving adults and children, bring the child’s food FIRST and not LAST.) and he was a real handful the whole time, very loud, very antsy. We got him home and topped him off with some more food, then into bed.

We woke up on Sunday and asked him what he’d done on Saturday. “Snakes bite [me],” he answered. Then he claimed he’d gone to the beach. When we challenged that claim, he gave us A Look and spoke very slowly and clearly. “I tooka brown train to the BEEEEEEEESH.” ² We asked him again, and he said “I ate food an then I went on THOMAS,” and then he talked excitedly about how he rode on “a red Toby.” Toby’s a tram car and we did not ride on a tram car, we rode on a street car. Gah, small child! How could you make that sort of mistake? Anyway, it’s interesting that he lumps eating lunch with the Excitement that was ACTUALLY RIDING ON THOMAS’ ACTUAL COACHES.

It seems that he’s needed to take awhile to process what happened, because he was chattering excitedly today about seeing Thomas, and when Nesko dropped him off at Baba’s, Niko was telling her alllll about it, with great gusto.

He was pretty sold on this beach thing, though. If we’d done that instead we’d have saved about $100 or so. Something to consider.

I took about 150 photos and I’ll post them later. I’m at the point where I’m considering just installing a photo album on my webspace because I have more photos than the free version of Picasa will support. If I do that, I’ll have an album just for Thomas.

Technorati Tags: parenting, thomas and friends, toddlers

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Like a lot of parents, we are trying to inflict our own positive child hood experiences on Niko. Which means, in Nesko’s case, Niko’s learning Communist-era Football (soccer, to those of us in the USA) fight songs, and Yugoslavian pop songs from the 70s, and eating spaghettios. And in my case, that means mostly wooden trains and a million weird kids’ books and lots of making up goofy songs. (We also dress him in nerdy clothing a lot. Because he can’t stop us. HAH! this shirt offers +5 to nakedness! He has +10 charisma! He is a level 3 human! ZIIIING)

Niko is really into Russel Hoban’s “Frances” books, some of which were illustrated by Lillian Hoban (they were married, they got divorced, they kept working together; the first book was illustrated by Garth Williams). We have “Bedtime for Frances” (aka GO TO BED NOW FRANCES), “Bread and Jam for Frances” (aka NYOM NYOM FRANCES) and “A Baby Sister For Frances” (aka FRANCES HAS A BABY!). How much does he enjoy these books? So much that sometimes he asks for them instead of Thomas And Friends stories. How much does he enjoy these books? So much that sometimes in his sleep he murmurs about wanting A Red Car Toy (Lightning McQueen from “Cars”), and sometimes he murmurs something about Frances.

The books are pretty dated in some ways. In “Bedtime,” Father Badger (who is the disciplinarian) threatens to spank Frances if she doesn’t go to sleep; there’s a pretty clear division of labor among the genders. And they’re dated in good ways as well. Frances catches snakes in a pillow case and does tomboy-ish things and has a male best friend (who often wears purple checked pants), two things that aren’t seen quite as often among girls in kids’ books today (at least the ones I’ve seen, anyway). They are clever, sweet stories, very solid, and sprinkled throughout with little songs just begging to be sung.

If you grew up reading them, take another look at them. If you’re looking for something for your kid, check them out. There’s I-Can-Read versions that are edited to be simpler, but the original texts have a richness the edited ones lack.

What are some of your favorite childhood books? What are you re-sharing with your kids? I’d love to know.

Technorati Tags: parenting, todder

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We’ve hit a developmental phase that I totally hate. Some infants/toddlers never reach this, some are afflicted for a long time, some flirt with it on and off. It’s utterly horrific. I’m talking about night terrors.

When Niko woke up screaming and sobbing and inconsolable yesterday morning at like 5:00 am, we assumed it was a hold over from his recent battle with a stomach bug. Maybe his stomach hurt. Maybe he had a fever dream or something. He eventually came out of it enough that he was able to respond to our questions and we assumed it was a bad dream only, but I had my suspicions that he was only saying “yeah” to things as an automatic response and had been in the throes of a night terror.

I think I was right. This morning was the worst of them all. He’s had “night” terrors a few times before during his naps. The longest until today was 45 minutes of sobbing. Today, though, he “woke” at 3:30am and sobbed and wailed and thrashed around and slapped himself in the face until about 5:00, at which point we all got out of bed and I took a shower while Niko clung to Nesko on the couch, still whimpering gently, and watched “Thomas.” An hour later he was still on edge, clingy, weepy, and delicate.

He perked up, out of nowhere, after a bit. Nothing had changed, he just hopped down and started playing with a train. He objected strenuously to a diaper change/getting dressed, but was in pretty high spirits when Nesko dropped him off at Baba and Djedo’s.

Also: he has a rash and has been rubbing his eyes/putting things on his eyes. The rash looks like contact dermatitis (my old friend), but we haven’t changed any detergents or soaps or lotions or ANYTHING (I mean, we haven’t even opened new bottles of the same brand). It started out ringing his neck and has spread to his back and chest, the insides of his upper arms, and his face. It might be heat rash, possibly, I guess but it’s 10-20 degrees cooler than it’s been lately so I don’t know if it’s that. It might be a strawberry thing (he’s been eating a lot of them lately, and I’d cut them out of his diet several months ago because he had a rash on his stomach that seemed to come up when he ate strawberries, but then he ate strawberries more recently with no rash at all). It might be from the farm we visited this weekend, although Nesko says the neck rash has been in place for about a week, although maybe THAT was heat rash and this is something else.

I do not know.

At least it doesn’t seem to itch.

In more fun and less screamy news, we went to Wagner Farm in Glenview. We went last year, although it was later in the year (late October) and pretty cold and windy. The good bit about that was no flies, less cow poop stink. It being warm, though, meant less snotty nose on Niko’s part. He was still feeling a bit down after his stomach bug and wanted to be carried everywhere, but he had a good time. He even touched a calf! It was thrilling. If you ask him about the visit, he mentions that he saw a cow, and he touched a cow, and that the cow “making poop” and “THAT FUNNY.” So, you know. Poop jokes. Yay?

Afterward, we went to The Choo-Choo Restaurant in Des Plaines. We met our friend Brian there. We weren’t able to sit at the counter, where a train runs around delivering your food. The food tasted good anyway, although Niko was very ready for a nap. (We should have just gone home, but we’d already made plans and Brian was already on the way, and we are selfish jerks who like seeing our friend.) He didn’t eat much, and wanted to sit in this train ride like the kind you see outside grocery stores, where you put a quarter in and it jerks around, but the train jerking around seemed too much for him… it looked a bit, at times, like he was about to be carsick.

We didn’t do all we wanted to do this weekend because of his rude awakening Sunday morning and generally being out of sorts the rest of the day. But there’s always next weekend. We have plans to visit Ann Sather’s (again) and then the beach (again) with a different friend of ours from out of town.

I have a bunch of photos of the last beach trip and the farm, and hope to post them soon.

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