PARTY!

going crazy, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

Sawyer had so much fun at the Halloween Party we took him to Saturday. He chased after all the bigger kids who left him blowing like a blade of grass in the wind as they whizzed by. But that didn't phase him. Seconds later he was back out in the middle of the floor dancing (I must get video of this) and running after the ninjas and transformers. I didn't realize how fun Halloween would be this year (Remember my reluctance to participate last year?) Now I can't wait for tomorrow. See MORE PHOTOS.

Look Who's Talking

I picked up a book on language development at the library the other day. My plan was to get a basic month-by-month toddler guide, but the book they had was 10 years old and flipping through it I decided it wasn't really going to be all that helpful. In the process, I stumbled across a book called "Beyond Baby Talk," and because I've decided that Sawyer communicating is the key to surviving Baby #2, I checked it out.

With the hopes of jump-starting the talking, I have been obsessively naming everything in sight in the last four or five months. Book. Cup. Spoon. Banana. Chair. To my dismay, Sawyer hasn't picked up any of these words.

His communication skills are improving, however. He understands: Go get the book. Where's the duck? Do you want a banana? But, he doesn't repeat Book. Duck. Banana. And, if I'm laying on the couch he'll grab my finger and start pulling, saying "up, up, up." Or he'll bring me his shoes and then walk to the door waving his hand and saying, "bye-bye." Or he'll ask "What's That?"or "Where's Dada?" And, bless his heart, he says "Thank you" when he hands you a piece of trash he's picked up off the floor.

The other thing - one that kinda drives me nuts - is that one of his first words (referring to the dogs) was dada. or maybe he's saying dagdag, it doesn't sound exactly like Da-da but it's hard to tell. He is clearly referring to our dogs or pictures of dogs, not his dad. I constantly correct him: No, Sawyer, that's not dada its doggie. He just stares at me blankly like: "no duh, mom. that's what I said: 'dada.'

Come to find out, Sawyer is not a "noun-lover," he's a "noun-leaver." Apparently it all has to do with style and while the noun-lover may have more vocabulary early on, the differences will disappear over time.

The book's metaphor is that on one end you have the analytical-type person who reads trade magazines and does price comparisons before shopping. These are the noun-lover types who like to label people and objects in their environment. Ball. Shoe. Girl. Foot. Car.

On the other end, you have the risk-takers, and I quote: "They're the ones who can be found bungee jumping, riding dirt bikes, snowboarding or engaging in other types of extreme experiences." Hmmmmm!!!! These babies are about actions and interactions and while they will use nouns, they are more likely to use other kinds of words, like 'bye-bye,' 'all done' and 'again' quite frequently.

Apparently the key to language development is to match baby's style (if they lean more one way or the other), which I have not been doing. I've been forcing my style of naming everything in sight. Boat. Flower. House. Door. DOGGIE, while he's been looking at the firetruck book saying "woohoo-woohoo," or hiding behind his hands and saying "pee-ha-hoo."

Point being, I'm not going to get anywhere with Sawyer by flipping flash cards (which I was seriously considering) and naming body parts. And, I'm wasting my breath demanding accuracy with the dada-doggie thing.

I'm better off teaching him animal sound "the cow says moo," and knowing that when he points at the trees and says "what's that," and I tell him, he's storing the information away somewhere but he's not likely to repeat it back to me anytime soon. And maybe its not even the trees he cares about. Maybe it's the wind.

Insomnia

Try sleeping when a three pound creature is navigating YOUR insides like a compass.

TV

tv, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

I have to give props to Scott who snagged this sunset photo just down the road from our house. We'd both been driving by this TV for a week when I said, I want to take a picture of that, and Scott said, no way, I already said that. The race was on, but he got there first and a few days later the TV was gone. There's about 100 different things I love about this picture. That the TV somehow ended up on the side of the road perfectly intact. I mean, did it fall off a truck and not break? Or did somebody carefully set it there on the edge of this random field? I love that it has dials, and dust still on top. And I love that it disappeared as quietly and randomly as it appeared. But, most of all, I love that Scott got the photo.

This is what I know

wsp -15 months, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

Sawyer turned 15 months today. Not that I'm celebrating monthly birthdays anymore. My play-by-play Baby Manual ran out at 12 months, so from here on out we're in a phase I'll refer to in future years simply as "toddlerhood."

Toddlerhood comes complete with temper tantrums. Sawyer's tantrum style actually kind of cracks me up. It's sorta Scarlett O'Hara when she "falls" oh-so-dramatically on the stairs with the ruffles of her skirt still perfectly splayed. When I don't, say, give Sawyer the baby cheese puffs, he lets out an initial wail, sprawls oh-so-dramatically on the floor for a minute and then, when he's feeling thoroughly ignored, pops back up to resume life-as-usual. Unless, of course, he accidentally bangs his head on the floor in the process, which happens sometimes. Then the tears are real; he gets ignored all the same.

Toddlerhood also comes with disobedience. Like today, when he started scampering up the stairs despite my repeated "no's." It was sheer defiance – the narrow-eyed glance over the shoulder just before takeoff. An age-appropriate time-out ensued - one whole eternity of a minute penned up in the crib. After about 45 seconds, the screaming abruptly stopped and I found him playing happily with a toy.

Toddlerhood, in Sawyer's case, comes with being "finicky." My parents swear that for one whole year of my life I ate nothing but hot dogs and peas and for the year following that I mainlined pickles. Sawyer, at the moment, adheres to a strict diet of fruit, dairy and bread-related-products. He doesn't even like pasta! Every day I add to the list of things he won't eat. I see this as my greatest failure to date as a parent, and I beat my self up over it regularly – despite constant reassurance from parents whose kids eat almost everything that my kid will be fine. Just to be sure, I poke at his ribs occasionally to check if they've started showing through the skin. So far, he's still Butterball.

Toddlerhood is good things too, like learning how to use the slide and going up and down it over and over again. And playing Ring Around the Rosie and wanting to fall down when I start singing "ashes, ashes" because, oh, it's just too hard to wait. And then grabbing my hand and forcefully pulling me up to play it again. And being able to stack the little wooden rings on the stick or put the puzzle shapes back in the right spot. And bringing me shoes while waving bye-bye when it's time to go somewhere, especially when I am getting ready to go somewhere alone. And trying to climb into the rocking chair at bedtime because that's where we read books and finally the routine we've been repeating these last 13 months is catching on.

And, more than anything, what I adore about Sawyer at this moment in toddlerhood is that, God bless it, he loves to sleep. He naps twice a day, sometimes for two hour stretches, giving me time to get stuff done around the house. And then he'll sleep for 13 hours at night on top of that. This beautiful birthday Sunday morning, when the house was cold at dawn, he cried out at little. Scott picked up and brought him to the couch, covering them both with a blanket. And they slept there, together, until 9:30 a.m. And I slept too. And it was beautiful.

Fall Arrives

Fall Arrives, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

The temperatures have finally cooled. I bought this jacket for a recent wedding but figure - why shouldn't we get some more use out of it? Okay, maybe it's a bit formal for your average playground, but Sawyer is a hip dude. I think he can pull off a corduroy blazer over striped cotton leggings, don't you?

28 weeks

28 weeks, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

It's hard to believe that I'm now in my third trimester. Just the thought of it is making me hyperventilate. The longer this baby stays in the womb the better. Right now its well fed and rested and I don't have to do anything.

In the meantime I have been receiving generous hand-me-downs from friends. I guess I never realized just how much pink girls wear. I mean, EVERYTHING is pink. I remember feeling that way about baby boy blue for a while, but there are so many colors that boys can wear - green, red, brown, grey and, my favorite, orange. Apparently if you put a baby girl in anything but pink or purple, people think its a boy. It's a little nauseating.

That said, I think I'm all set on clothes through next fall. I definitely have all I need for the 0-6 month age range, in case you are somebody who might want to shop for girl clothes (think summer 6+ months, fall 9+ months and winter 12+ months). I'm also all set on shoes until she starts walking.

In fact, if you are somebody who might be wondering what we need for the new arrival, I've started a list below. It's pretty short right now. I'll keep adding to it as I think of things. Unfortunately, its all big items - like three more convertible car seats, other forms of baby transportation and a few things to girly-up the nursery.

The other day, somebody I occasionally work with walked up to me after a meeting and put their hands on my stomach. Now this woman rightly predicted that I was having a boy last time. This time she close her eyes for a moment (maybe hummed a little) and then pronounced 'It's a boy!' It's actually a girl, I said. 'No. It's a boy!' she said, looking upset and then walking away. All I have to say is that if this is a boy I'm suing the ultrasound tech, or at least making her retrieve all the baby boy clothes I've already given away.

Punkin'

pumpkin boy, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

Allow me to break the ice. Now that October is officially here, blogging moms across the country will be posting pumpkin patch photos until we have seeds coming out our ears. Despite the fact that it was 80-degrees here today and nothing like an apple-cider sipping fall outing, Sawyer and I hit the local fall festival complete with hay ride and pumpkin patch. While this photo seems dreamy, you should know that I was trying very hard to get Sawyer to look at me, but I couldn't peel his eyes away from the two older boys playing in a big sand pile nearby. Other highlights included meeting a real horse (nothing like our horsey friend that hangs over the changing table) and a potbelly pig that seemed to alternate between wanting to run from us and wanting to charge us. Photos of the animal encounters are on Flickr.. Happy Fall!

Bye Bye Nuk Nuk

Bye Bye Nuk Nuk, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

His pacifier was by far the thing that Sawyer loved most in the world. Given the choice between having me for the rest of his life or his Nuk, I would have been packing my bags. But he wasn't given the choice. In fact, (think what you want of me - Scott calls me Cruella) I snatched the thing away from him cold turkey.

I'm a firm believer in cold turkey - coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, pacifiers - there's no such thing as cutting back.

So, one day Sawyer went down for bed and there was no Nuk there waiting for him. He tossed the crib looking for it, all his covers and stuffed animals had been thrown overboard when we went back in to easy his suffering sobs – not the 'I don't want to go down for bed' sob, but the 'my best friend was just murdered' sob.

It wasn't that he had the thing 24-7. We enforced a fairly strict, bedtime-only rule with the occasional exception for sickness or travel. When he got up from his nap, we always put the Nuk back down to sleep in the crib and waved bye-bye to it. Occasionally he managed to reach it through the slats and would wander out into the living room sucking away triumphantly.

I had been talking about strategy and timing for weeks, but first he was teething and then he had a cold. And people kept telling me it was too early. He needed to suck. He was only a year old. Even the pediatrician said the Nuk is fine until he gets his permanent teeth. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Okay, honey, have a good day in first grade and be sure to leave your Nuk Nuk in your pencil box during recess, okay? I just couldn't see how it was going to get any easier to take the thing away next month or in five months than right now. And with Five on the way, and hoping she'll take a Nuk, I decided it was best if we eliminated the competition now.

I'll admit, the first few nap times were a disaster. He basically cried for an hour straight. But he went to sleep at night just fine. And, eventually, after about a week, he'd forgotten all about it.

We did bust it out for a wedding last weekend, three weeks after its initial disappearance. A faint glimmer of recognition sparkled in his eye as Scott pulled it out of the bag. He sucked on it for a few minutes - for old time sake - and then threw it on the ground. Vindication. See! I pointed. See! He doesn't even want it.

It's still a little sad. Sawyer doesn't have another lovey. We've always put him down with a few stuffed animals and soft blankets, but he hasn't bonded with any one in particular. Which is maybe just as well since I know several adults (whose identity I will protect) who just can't sleep without their tattered little shred of silky binket.

The great debate

The great debate, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

me: everybody is always commenting on sawyer's eyes.
scott: its their almond shape. he gets that from me.
me: well at least he has my hair color.
scott: but his didn't come out of a box.
me: what about the freckle that recently appeared on his left buttcheek? that definitely came from me.
(scott shoots me a skeptical look)
me: you have to give me SOMETHING!

(This blog post is dedicated to The Godmother and anyone else who has ever noted any resemblence between me and my son.)

Learning to Spoon

learning to spoon, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

Or not. It's a messy proposition. But, he has to learn somehow, right? Sometimes its easier to just lick out those last few bites.

Australia

Pierce Posse, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

Right. I wish. Actually, this was the Australia exhibit at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. We went with Uncle Ross and Aunt Niki, who were in town visiting for the weekend. We weren't allowed to use our stroller, but the aquarium let us borrow a backpack and now I want one. We did let Sawyer run loose for a while. It's hard to say what he found more fascinating: the fish in the tank, the lighted informational signposts or the railing, which he constantly tried to climb. More photos on Flickr.