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Some of Lane’s recent accomplishments and antics…

The other day when I picked Lane up at daycare they told me he had spent much of his time outside near the fence bordering the parking lot, saying “hi” to all the cars coming and going.

We have been teaching Lane his “pleases” and “thank-yous” lately, and he’s pretty much got it down by now. On Friday night, planning to visit the zoo with his grandparents over the weekend, I said, “Do you want to see Mackie and Grandpa?” Lane nodded and said, “Yes, please.”

Last weekend was really hot, so we broke out the kiddie pool, inflated it, filled it up, and watched as Lane first hesitantly tested the water, and then within 15 minutes or so was splashing around like … well, like a kid in a kiddie pool. That night, for whatever reason, Lane had a hard time falling asleep, and was really crying. As I walked in to deal with it, he immediately stopped crying, stood up in his crib, and said, “kit-tie-poo.”

Vocabulary is expanding by leaps and bounds. I call him noun boy, he so loves to identify things. However, he now refers to the master bathroom as “mommy pee,” and my phone as “call daddy.” Despite his expanding ability to communicate, when he really wants something, he just grabs your hand and drags you to it – to the garage for a trike ride, to the kitchen for a “sack” (snack) or “ca-ca” (cracker), etc.

Two-word phrases (“mommy car,” “more waffle,” or today’s new one, “move, grandpa”) have been mastered. The colors blue, pink, and sometimes yellow can be identified with reasonable accuracy. Poopy, and sometimes wet, diapers are occasionally reported (once or twice by the hand-grab method to drag a parent to the changing table).

After waking in the middle of the night the other day, I thought we had a communication breakthrough. Lane explained his night waking by exclaiming, “Hot!” But then a let down when he next said, “Cole! cole!” Oh well. But as I changed a very wet diaper, he then said, “wet da-pa!” Well, I could figure that out for myself, but it’s a step in the right direction.

I haven’t posted in a long time, I know, and I have tons of things I could post about, but in the interest of time I think I’ll dive in with announcing a baby naming contest! Sort of. Tad & I already have some ideas, including a couple that we really like, but we haven’t settled on anything yet, so I thought it would be fun to get some suggestions from friends & family, see what ideas you have. I’m not sure it’s technically a contest, because we may pick one of the suggested names, we may not; and I haven’t thought of what the “prize” might be (you get to babysit? ).

Send your ideas to me via email (erika at gallistel.net). The deadline is sometime before the baby is born (due June 26). We’re still no more sure of the baby’s gender (80% girl), so both boy & girl names are welcome.

Here are some of our thoughts on baby naming in general:

I’ve stopped updating Lane’s dictionary because I just can’t keep up with his one-word vocabulary, it’s growing so rapidly. A couple of weeks ago I was thinking that although he says a lot of words (and understands tons more), he isn’t really using them to communicate – if he wants something, he still whines for it instead of saying its name. Well, this is rapidly changing. In fact, he has now learned to say the word “yes” (actually “yah”), and uses it – along with “no” – appropriately, so you can actually ask him yes/no questions and get fairly reliable answers.

Just this morning, Lane & I had a great “conversation.” I got him out of the crib and changed his diaper, then put him on the floor. As I was cleaning up I asked him if he was ready for breakfast. Instead, he ran over to the couch where there was a stack of books and started to “read” one. I sat next to him on the floor while he paged through and pointed out the “moo” (moon) and the “girah” (giraffe) in the story.

“Do you want to wear your slippers?” I said.

“Yah, pers,” Lane said. (Yesterday he didn’t want to wear them, instead he insisted on two different shoes, one on each foot.) So I put his slippers on.

“Do you want to sit here?” I asked, patting my lap.

“Yah,” Lane said, and climbed up. “Dah?” he asked, and I handed him his floppy dog that he sleeps with (he’s not much on using the last consonant in his words.) I read another book to him. “Twash,” he said, pointing out the trash cans pictured with the garbage truck in the book (of course it was a book about trucks).

As we finished the book, I told him we were having banana French toast for breakfast. “Anana!” he said.

“Are you ready for breakfast now?” I asked.

“Yah!” he said as he got up. Just before rushing down the hall, he turned to the books now back on the couch, waved, and said, “Bye bye.”

I’m sitting here having breakfast with Lane. He’s pretty much done, but didn’t eat much of his fruit. So, to encourage him, I stuck his little fork into a piece. He picked up the fork and sort of held it out. I said, “Do you want to feed Mommy?” He smiled up at me and immediately offered the piece of cantaloupe to me. I took a bite. “Mmm.” Lane carefully speared another piece with the fork, yelled “More!” and held it up for me again, and again, and again. Sometimes the tables get turned… (Then Lane took one more bite, and with that, I think we’re done.)

The week before last I had jury duty. I’d already rescheduled it a couple of times, and although it would be extremely inconvenient for me to get called onto a jury, there really is no convenient time for this. So, Tuesday morning shortly after 7am I headed out toward the Old Town trolley station to start what would be one of the worst days I’d had in a really really long time.

First of all, I didn’t give myself enough time. With less than 15 minutes to get to the courthouse, I walked up to the trolley ticket booth to buy my ticket. I don’t ride the trolley very often, and the ticket booth doesn’t have a very friendly UI. Between being late, my train sitting right there ready to go, and some guy waiting to use the ticket booth, I was flustered and couldn’t figure out quickly enough what “zone” I needed to go to – and the train left. It didn’t matter anyway because I only had a $20 and the machine didn’t take either that or credit cards.

So, in frustration, I drove downtown. I assumed that the self-service lot on the corner of Broadway and Pacific Highway was cash only, so I parked at Horton Plaza ($6/hr!) intending to come back at lunch to buy something, validate my parking (3 hours of it), break a $20, and move to the self-service lot. My day started looking up then – I got a good spot in the jury lounge with an outlet and no trouble getting on the EV-DO network.

Come lunchtime I headed back to Horton Plaza. I knew Lane needed some pants, so I made my way all the way up to the back of the mall on the 3rd floor to the Baby Gap … only to discover that you don’t need to purchase anything to get the parking pass validated. (Of course I went shopping anyway.) Next, I got my car, figuring I’d pay in cash to break my $20 … but managed to get in a “no cash” line. Finally, I arrived at the self-service lot, only to discover they did indeed take credit cards! Grrr!

Finally, my logistical troubles over (although much poorer than I started), I headed back to the courthouse. By 2:30pm, thinking I might be scott free … when they called my name. 40 of us headed up to the court room. My name was toward the bottom of the list, and I thought my luck might hold out, but one by one, the attorneys dismissed jurors, sometimes for absolutely no obvious reason whatsoever. The prosecutor only dismissed a few people, but by the time the defense attorney was picking off maybe the 10th juror, I was developing a real bias against her, and the trial hadn’t even started.

The case concerned someone driving under the influence. Lots of people were dismissed because they knew people who were involved in drunk driving accidents – I never thought I’d wish I knew someone who got hit by a drunk driver before! But, alas, I don’t, and I also don’t know any meth users (the “influence” in this case). So, with no biases or other limitations, I got on a jury for the first time in my life. My awful day just got a whole lot worse.

On Wednesday we didn’t have to be downtown until 9am. With smaller bills in my wallet and a bit more time on my side, I headed to Old Town again … only to find a completely full parking lot. Back to the PH & BWay parking lot.

So, jury duty was shockingly, mind-numbingly boring. Remember in Airplane, when Ted Striker was retelling his Vietnam travails to his fellow passengers, and they each killed themselves in various ways? Yeah, it was like that.

There were four charges against the defendant: driving under the influence, being under the influence of meth (which is illegal whether you’re driving or not), falsifying registration (he had a color photocopy of the registration tag, Scotch taped onto his license plate), and driving without a license. There was no question that the guy was high. The question was whether or not he was driving, since he’d already “pulled himself over” when the cop arrived. The testimony hinged on whether you believed the arresting cop, or the defendant’s wife. (Tough one.) The story was that the wife was driving the car and it broke down on a busy off ramp. They walked home from there, had dinner (fried chicken & salad), and came back to get the car 2 hours later. Um, yeah. After two days of testimony we deliberated for 30 minutes before finding him guilty on all charges.

After the trial we chatted with the lawyers in the hall. Apparently the defense attorney had spent most of her time with her client trying to convince him to take the plea (no jail time). Well, she certainly wasn’t preparing for the case – glad she wasn’t my lawyer. Oh, and the worst news of all? The prosecutor told me now that I’ve been on a jury that came to a decision, I’m more likely to be picked again. Lovely.

19-week ultrasound above. Here’s another other pic of her arm.

Well, apparently they are 80% sure, anyway. This morning we went for the 19 week anatomy scan ultrasound. Everything was fine—two arms, legs, four-chamber heart, etc. She was squirming non-stop, so they couldn’t get any good pictures, hence the blurry one above with her hand over her face, and the linked one with just her arm. But they had a hard time determining the gender because she was keeping her privates private (knees shut tight!). They are 80% sure it’s a girl because of the lack of any boy parts; but they couldn’t confirm because they also didn’t see any girl parts. We’ll have them confirm it in a future ultrasound, although that probably won’t be until much later in the pregnancy. I think we’re going to stick with the girl theory—80% is good enough for me.

Of course I don’t really plan to do anything with this information. I wanted to know for lots of reasons, mostly because somehow she seems more real now that we know she’s a she. I also wanted to know because we can now pick names (topic for a future post) and we can tell Lane all about his baby sister. But, I don’t plan to run out and buy any pink pajamas or redecorate the nursery or anything. She’ll be perfectly comfortable in her big brother’s hand-me-downs!

Christmas pics are now posted on Phanfare. I know I never got around to doing a Christmas posting … As you can see from the pics, Lane had a great time although is still a bit young to get the idea. He really liked undecorating Christmas trees.

Last weekend was our sixth year participating in the January orienteering event in Anza Borrego desert. We left early Saturday morning and arrived in the desert at about 10am. 2 hours seems to be Lane’s tolerance for a content car ride (not that we haven’t pushed it much longer); as we were pulling off the road he was making the “all done” sign.

Normally when we orienteer, if we don’t have a babysitter, we take turns. But, considering the length of the course and the fact that I’m pregnant and not exactly in shape right now, Tad & I decided to do something we haven’t done in years: we went together as a team. Orienteering is less fun this way – Tad is so good at navigation that I end up just following him. But Tad is patient and it’s a good opportunity for me to learn something, and in this case we really didn’t have an alternative.

We strapped Lane into the Kelty backpack and onto Tad’s back and headed out. Day 1’s event was in an area with lots of cliffs, so as we approached a control (marker), if the footing was gnarly, I’d go get it. It worked out, but I can’t believe how out of shape I am. I had trouble keeping up with Tad – who isn’t exactly a star athlete either – and he was carrying a 25-30 lb squirmy kid on his back!

Saturday night, we waited till about 9pm to put Lane down to sleep – between the late hour and virtually no nap we hoped that he might actually sleep better than he normally does in the Sportsmobile. So, we read him some books, gave him some milk, popped him in his Pea Pod, and retreated out of sight to the upper bunk. It worked ok – he cried for about 15 minutes but then fell asleep. (It helped that there were no other campers around to disturb.) All was well until about 1am when he woke up screaming. After a little cuddling and some more milk, I tried to get him to lie down beside me (figuring he’d protest going back into the Pea Pod). Lane had other ideas. First he crawled out of bed and stood in the middle of the floor, crying – as if to say, “Where the heck am I?” I got him back into bed, and he quieted down, but wouldn’t lie down. He just sat in the dark and stared off into space. So, I wrapped my arms around him and dozed off, until I felt him wobbling a bit. Finally, after a good 15 minutes, he laid down and fell asleep. It was slightly weird. Other than that it was a pretty good night for the van, in a relative sense. (Tad slept through all this on the upper bunk.)

Sunday morning we had a lazy morning. Tad made bacon & eggs. We again ran the course together. Sunday’s course was longer but with less rugged terrain. It was pretty fun, and Lane was a really good sport. I think we did pretty well – Tad’s navigation is really good (if he got faster he’d be pretty competitive!). It was fun watching him “in action.”

We left Sunday afternoon and concluded our weekend the way we have every year for the past six years: with a trip to Outback Steakhouse. Mmm, steak!

12-week ultrasound above. More here & here.

I’ve been meaning to do a post about being pregnant the 2nd time around, but after a brief post-holiday lull, things have gotten crazy again – I have a big project due Tuesday that I worked on all weekend, and this project has nothing to do with the 4-day trip I have to take to Reston next week. Ugh.

So, I’ll be brief. We decided to start “trying” shortly after Lane turned a year old. I want the two kids close in age for a couple of reasons – partly I think it’ll be more fun for them, and they’ll be interested in similar activities which will make trips easier. But partly it is also selfish. I am an anti-procrastinator. I hated being pregnant with Lane, and I didn’t love the first 10 months of babyhood. So I want to get all that OVER WITH. Four years of pregnant-nursing-pregnant-nursing and I get my body back!

Much to Tad’s disappointment, it didn’t take very long , and by the end of September “we” were pregnant. My first trimester was about the same as with Lane (i.e., awful), although this time I actually did barf once (on Thanksgiving day!) which I never did with Lane. The one thing that made it much harder than before was having a thrown-out back. That was NOT fun, dealing with “morning” sickness while flat on my back and having to be careful about pain killers. Now that I’m in the second trimester, things are better – as they were with Lane – with a couple of exceptions. This time around, I’m having headaches. Tylenol helps, but it’s still pretty annoying, and there’s really nothing my OB can do. I’m also having the wildest dreams. That happened with Lane too but they’re even more vivid this time – I wake up in the morning exhausted from being so busy all night. (Last night I dreamed that my dog – and no, I don’t have a dog – was seeing a dog psychiatrist. His art work looked suspiciously like Lane’s daycare artwork.) So yes, I’m pretty much hating pregnancy as much as I did the first time.

I’m showing sooner, which is typical, and I’m pretty sure I’ve felt the kid move already, which is also typical – both of these things happen about a month sooner with the second kid. Right now I’m in week 16. We won’t know the sex for another couple of weeks. The due date is June 26.

As you may have figured out from this post, I never quite got around to sending out Christmas cards this year. I got as far as selecting the above photo (well, Tad picked it out), uploading it to Snapfish, and cleaning up my address book. But I didn’t like any of the card layouts (they were all landscape, and this pic needs portrait), and then had to walk away from the computer, and … well, that was that.

So here it is, our Christmas card … just in time for the 12th day of Christmas.

The weekend of December 15th we went on a road trip along the Mojave Road in the Sportsmobile. I had some misgivings about this trip, to the point where I almost decided not to go. However, I’d wanted to do the Mojave Road ever since I met Tad, so it was about time. It’s remote enough that you really want to do it with at least one other 4WD vehicle, and our friends were going, so we went.

I was nervous partly because I was not ready for Christmas and could really have used the weekend. But mainly I was nervous because I thought Lane would hate it. First of all, he tends not to sleep too well in the Sportsmobile, so two nights in a row seemed like it would be pushing it. Secondly, a road trip can’t be that interesting to a little toddler strapped into the back seat of a bouncy van.

Well, he did surprisingly well. The drive on the freeway (5 hours) was hard, but once we got offroad he actually did fine. I guess the bumping and bouncing made things a bit more interesting. I like to think he was enjoying the view, but that might be pushing it. We had fun stopping for hikes along old ruins, and checking out nifty petroglyphs.

And he slept ok. I think he’s starting to get used to the van. It was cold (20s), and the top bunk where he sleeps is particularly chilly, so he did eventually wake up and we moved him down with us, and we slept fine for the rest of the night. That was the second night. For some reason I can’t really remember the first night – I guess I was tired!

So, the trip was pretty fun. The Mojave Road, originally a Native American trade route, was used in the mid-1800s as a military and mail route. It followed the springs and water sources through the Mojave Desert. The highway that replaced it instead followed the easier topography, allowing the Mojave Road to be preserved. The road itself was not too bad, only a few gnarly spots, which made it more fun. We started near Needles on Saturday morning (arriving on Friday night) and made it to Kelso by Sunday afternoon. Another day (or a faster pace) would have gotten us to the end of the road, but I think we hit the high points. A highlight of the trip was climbing into a lava tube – Lane’s second ever cave trip!

But I certainly wasn’t able to get any Christmas shopping done that weekend …

Talk about a hectic Christmas. Note to self: don’t take a vacation for a week at the beginning of December, and then go away for a weekend in the middle of December. Especially while (big news) pregnant. Especially while work is crazy. It made for quite an exhausting holiday season. I did virtually all my Christmas shopping on Saturday, and wrapped on Sunday & Monday morning, just in time for the festivities to start. Some people will get their gifts in January, and if we get around to doing Christmas cards I guess they’ll be New Year’s cards. The good news is that after Christmas was over, I got to nap a lot – having Mom here to take care of Lane’s every whim was lovely (and Dad was here too ).

So, now you know why I haven’t blogged in a while. I certainly have lots to blog about. Soon I will have a Mojave Road Trip posting, and I can talk about Lane’s 1st Christmas – ok, it’s his 2nd Christmas but the first one barely counts since he was only 4 months old and pretty darn oblivious to the whole thing. And, of course, I’ll have a posting shortly about kid #2 who is in the oven (due date June 26).

Last week we went to Rhode Island to visit our New England friends and relatives. A sampling of pictures are up on Phanfare.

We were originally supposed to fly out at the end of October. We chose that date because it was right after my brother Gus’s son (Gus III) was born, and it might not be too late to see the foliage. Well, three days before our flight was to depart, I pulled my back out. So we rescheduled for early December. Which is ironic, because I hate going to New England in early winter, and typically go out of my way to avoid it. With temperatures in the mid-20s and ice on the ground instead of snow, I was asking myself, how did this happen??

We arrived on Friday night, 11/30, in Boston. Mom & Dad picked us up and we went to John, Kymm, and Amelia’s for dinner. Lane’s head just about exploded when he saw all the wonderful toys that Amelia has! He literally did a 360 before diving in. It was good to see John & Kymm, who were leaving for Florida the next day – they had a long night of packing after we left.

On Saturday we visited Tad’s sister & her family, Beth, Jon, Erik, and Sophie. They have a beautiful house in Connecticut only an hour from my parents’, and since the last time we were there they finished their basement, which is now a wonderful kids’ playroom. Lane had lots of fun playing with his cousins and their pets – and of course climbing up and down the stairs. Later on Saturday evening, my cousin Joshua and his husband Dan came by for steamers and seafood. It was great getting to know Dan a little better.

Sunday was a big day because we had several guests come over for a casual dinner. I got to meet my brand new nephew Gus (aka Little Gus, Gus Gus, or G3), who was adorable and looks a lot like his daddy (although there is plenty of mommy in him too). Beth and family came by, so we got to see them twice; and my Uncle Karl and Aunt Gail came by. It was very pleasant.

We mostly relaxed during the rest of the week. On Tuesday Tad, Lane and I drove up to visit Andrea, John, and Olivia for lunch – old family friends. Elisabeth drove down from Maine to join us. One day during the week we drove in to Providence to go to the Children’s Museum which Lane loved. I wasn’t sure if he would like it, since most of the exhibits are aimed at children older than his 15 months, but he had a blast. We were there longer than I expected. We did a little shopping and did stop by Thayer St., but it was freezing cold so we were all perfectly content to stay home and listen to Christmas carols.

On Thursday evening, Gus, Stefanie, and Little Gus came back for steamers and lobsters. Unfortunately I was coming down with a cold so I didn’t get to hold him this time. Oh well. We tried to take some family portraits but Lane was not very cooperative; he only sits still for so long!

Lane was a good little trooper and handled the travel fairly well. It was our third time flying with him and definitely the most challenging trip. On the flight out, despite being very tired, he didn’t fall asleep till the wheels hit the runway in Boston. On the way back, the flight was very long (6.5 hours!), and he did sleep for about half of the flight, thank god. We did not buy him a seat but got lucky and had the whole row. I think the next time we fly, even if he is not yet two years old, we’ll be buying him a seat – I can’t imagine what it would have been like with a stranger sitting next to us. Otherwise, though, he got used to his new environment pretty fast, napped well, and slept through the night pretty much every night. I’m sure it helped that by the end of every day, with so much going on, he was pretty wiped out! Lane had a really good time playing with his Grandma, whom he definitely had wrapped around his little finger. If she was in the room, no one else was good enough to hold him – and Grandma had no problem with that!

This Thanksgiving we spent at Jack & Caroline’s beach house up in Oceanside (pictures). It may not have been Lane’s first Thanksgiving, but it was the first one where he got to partake in the feast, and he took to it with plenty of gusto. But more exciting than the good eats were the steps! We don’t have a staircase in our house, so whenever we go somewhere with one Lane will spend hours going up and down and up and down. These steps were more fun than most because of a glass wall between the steps and Lane’s audience. He had a great time pressing his face against the glass and generally leaving fingerprints and lip marks about two-feet high up the stairs. When he wasn’t doing his step workout, he was making good use of his new favorite word, running to the window and yelling, “Ow-side!” until Uncle Charlie & Aunt Julia took him outside for a walk on the beach.

On Friday we went camping in a little mountain town called Idyllwild, near Mt. San Jacinto. We decided to go there simply because we’d never been. Our routine lately is to leave the house after Lane’s nap, so we headed out at around 4pm and arrived shortly after sunset. We had dinner in the van and settled in. When Lane’s bedtime arrived, we followed our usual routine as much as possible – pajamas, books, milk – but Lane would have none of it, he was having far too much fun. And he kept having fun. Fortunately for our neighbors he didn’t cry that much, just wouldn’t settle down. It wasn’t until about 11pm when he finally passed out in my arms, after several more bottles of milk. But it wasn’t over yet – 4am rolled around and Lane awoke, presumably from the unfamiliar surroundings. I got up with him and we let Tad continue to sleep. Lane resumed playing with everything he could find while I read a magazine, until the sun came up, when I bundled us both up (it was in the 40s) and went outside to keep Lane occupied. Eventually, at a reasonable hour, once Tad was up, the three of us took about a mile walk to the nicest restaurant in town, Café Aroma. Of course within minutes of being in his stroller, Lane was out cold. After our lovely breakfast (omelet of the day: mozzarella, prosciutto, and tomatoes) we wandered around town, stopped by the craft fair, and headed home.

Camping with Lane has gotten harder as he’s gotten older. When he was very small, we just put him in the same Moses basket he slept in at home. As he got older and moved into his Peapod, it was a little harder, but he still wasn’t really aware enough of his surroundings to complain. Well, the last time we were out, he screamed for over an hour in the middle of the night. And this time, he slept for about six hours when he normally sleeps for 12. So, Tad has an idea: from now on, about once a week, we are going to sleep in the van in the driveway! We’ll see how that goes.

We have discovered an amazing new product. Actually, I don’t think the product is new, but it’s new to us. With kids, there are so many things you can buy, and you are constantly faced with the decision: Is this necessary? Or is it just another piece of crap that we really don’t need? Well, the Munchkin Snack Catcher isn’t exactly necessary, but it certainly was worth it. Tad saw it on the shelf at a local baby supply store and thought it was worth a try. We got it home and filled it with crackers … and it occupied Lane for the entire time it took me to make dinner! He is usually a little peckish when we get home from daycare, so handing him the snack cup with a few crackers in it does the trick. The rubbery lid is cut into sections that keep the crackers in the cup, but let little hands in to retrieve a couple. This container is so cool we’ve talked about getting some for us adults to use in the car!