No nap, no good

Today was the first day in forever, it seems, that Emmett missed his nap. I don't think there has been a time that he has missed since we arrived in New York for the July and his schedule was off because of travel. Well, today Emmett pulled a fast one and fell asleep in the stroller for 15 minutes or so, and just like the days of his infant-hood, thought that that counted for a nap. Well, he stayed up the rest of the day after we gave two attempts at putting him down, and by the end of the day he was a zombie. He was cranky like I have never seen where he was crying and throwing things. Not our child at all. It was hard to get anything done around him without going crazy. Luckily we were able to get him into bed at a decent hour and we are not hopeful he makes it through the night.

Actually, these last few days have all felt like a sickness blur. I have some cold starting up, Emmett is on day two or so of a crazy runny nose coupled with runs at the other end, and Andrea was ill yesterday. Last night Emmett was fevery and tired, and Andrea was out getting a haircut. Emmett didn't want to eat (again...he has eaten very little in the last few days), so we went to the front room around 6:00 pm and watched for jets in the sky. I sang a song or two to him and as we were talking about the jets he fell asleep in on my chest facing out toward the window. I have said this before, but it is so nice sometimes when he is feeling sick as the moments when he slows down and actually lets us hold him are coming less and less frequently. I sat there with him for about 30 minutes before taking him to bed. It was kind of funny that the first thing he said as soon as I stirred from the chair, waking him, was "jet" as if we were still in the middle of our conversation about the jets.

Da do run run run

Emmett woke early again today, but last night we did our best to be ready for it by going to bed early. Very Early. We had Emmett in bed at 7:15 and we went to bed at 7:30. Emmett is still waking a night a bit, but we are letting him cry himself back to sleep. Normally there are one or two times where he wakes screaming, but normally after a couple of minutes he falls back asleep. Rather than just crying he calls out for us, which is nicer to hear in some ways. This morning, though, he woke at 4:15 and after 10 or so minutes was still crying pretty good. I finally couldn't take it and went in to find that he had diarrhea which had soaked through his diaper, diaper cover, pajamas, etc. I, of course, felt horrible. This is the second time that we have let him cry for a bit in the morning only to find if he had pooped. I really wish we could teach him to yell something that would let us know that it is a diaper issue he is crying about and not just wanting to hang out with us.

The illness is not surprising---I had something similar that kept me in bed on Tuesday morning (mine was coupled with a fever, achiness, and nausea, which convinced ever-swine-predicting Andrea that I was a carrier of the H1N1, but I am not sure what it was), and Andrea woke this morning with similar symptoms to Emmett (I am sure she is going to love that I have now advertised this to the world---luckily few read this).

It is now 10:45 and we are 6.5 hours into our day, and we just put Emmett down for his nap. He and I went for a walk through the neighborhood this morning as we couldn't go to the park since it had rained overnight. Just before we left Emmett came across his Halloween costume and begged to have it on, so I got to escort a dragon to the store and back. If you ever want people to talk to you, walk through your neighborhood a few weeks after Halloween with a kid dressed as a dragon at 8 in the morning. I had more conversations this morning than I have had before 10 am in years, I am sure.

I am secretly glad that we are all getting sick now. We are planning another attempt at a trip to see family in southern Oregon in a week and after the last trip's last minute cancellation because of illness, it would be great to have survived any bugs that might be floating around the SF air to prevent spreading them to others.

Sleep has been improving somewhat around here. By letting him cry for a while, we have made it to 6 a couple of times in the last week or so, but are a long way from the days when seven was the norm. Emmett is napping great, though---normally 2.5-3 hours.

I don't think that there is too much new going on. With the time change and dark coming around 5, Emmett loves to now sit in our front room and try to spot the lights of jets as they fly over the city. New to Emmett, also, is the satsuma tangerine which has finally showed up at the farmers market and which Emmett can eat almost faster than I can peel the next.

Oh, exciting news is that Emmett completed his first walk from the house to the park unassisted (~5.5 blocks). That he can walk this distance is not that surprising (he has been able to for a while), but to have walked to a named destination is surprising and quite an achievement. The trick, which Andrea figured out, is to get him to push his baby stroller with the baby in it. This way he doesn't get distracted by doorbells, stairs, open shops, etc. The baby is a new thing for Emmett...he has had it for a while, but only recently has incorporated it into his day-t0-day activities. He calls it "Bob" (Andrea just explained that the name came from her repeating possible names and when she said "Bob" he repeated it again and again, so the name stuck), and he will often ask "Bob?" as we get ready to go to the park. Apparently Andrea, Emmett, and Bob were walking the other day through the neighborhood with Bob being pushed in the stroller by Emmett, and every little ways Emmett would stop, go around to the front of the stroller, and kiss Bob on the head. He gets his good parenting skills from his mother.

Emmett and Bob at the park:

Earlier trip to park as dragon with stroller (I just found some pictures on my camera):

Emmett and Juliana at the park a couple of weeks ago:

Emmett thought it was the funniest thing last night that we could see ourselves in the camera in the mirror:

More words

I have been trying to get a little deeper into understanding why the words which Andrea and I pronounce as "Malcolm" and "water" are pronounced as "aye-yah" by Emmett. I will ask him a how he pronounces a lot of words as a build-up in the understanding game. For example I will ask him "how do you say airplane?" and he will reply, then ask for ball, clock, etc. Then I will ask him, "how do you say Malcolm?" and he will reply "aye-yah". I will then ask, "how do you say water?" and he will reply "aye-yah!" as if he is trying to explain to me that he just said that word and I am wasting his time by asking him to say the same sounds twice in a row when there are so many other word sounds he can make. It is even better when I start adding in "flower" which also is pronounced the same. It is hard being 20 months and dealing with dumb parents.

All Hallow's Eve

Emmett is in bed after his first real Halloween. He was dressed in a hand-me-down dragon costume from his cousin which he loved. Andrea had him try it on yesterday (Oct. 30) at around four, took it off of him, and he begged to have it put back on pre-trip to the park for the afternoon. The outfit got two full day's use. Tonight the neighborhood shut down a couple of blocks and tons of kids made their way up and down the street getting candy from some elaborately dressed people and elaborately decorated houses. We felt a little bit like pimps, and were essentially called such in nicer terms, as it was pretty obvious that Emmett was getting the candy for us. He learned to say "trick-or-treat" and roar like a dragon, so there were lessons learned this evening.

I would really love to know what was going on in Emmett's head as he saw everything. There were some pretty scary looking people and some strange costumes. Hopefully he doesn't end up with nightmares. Things couldn't get much worse in the sleep situation, I suppose.


Yes, so the sleep. We had a meeting with our downstairs neighbor who is upset about EVERY sound, not just Emmett, and have come to the conclusion (basically agreed to by her) that she is hyper-sensitive to noise. Hopefully things get better, but she makes it sound like she is going to move out in a month or so time. That would be a relief. Anyway, after our meeting last night, we were getting ready for bed at 10ish and Emmett started screaming. We let him cry for a bit, but he wasn't stopping so we ended up bringing him to bed with us. He slept but in all kinds of crazy positions. At least twice I had to stop him continuously kicking my face. Andrea and I are both exhausted right now and are going to be in bed as soon as I am done typing.
Big news today is that Emmett peed in the toilet (I know, he used to do this a long time ago, but we dropped the EC thing when we took on a nanny and never picked it up very well again). He is communicating that he needs to have or has had action in his diaper, so I feel like we are getting closer to being out of the diapers. The other exciting news is that he was able to pass gas by choice at the dinner table for the first time tonight. He was pretty excited. I think he is figuring out things south of his belly button.

A boring video of him in his outfit in action:

An oft forgotten teaching of Confucius

Don't have a child and live directly above someone who is hyper-sensitive to noise and responds to a child's cries by banging on your floor (their ceiling) and/or blaring their stereo.

Bitter-sweet

I just got home from teaching and Emmett has just passed his third hour napping for the third day in a row. Pretty exciting. Today's is not surprising, though, as Emmett woke up screaming just before midnight and it took about 45 minutes to get him back in bed. What finally worked was to stay in the room with him and put my hand on his back while he fell asleep. I would stand there for a while, semi-bent over, finally tire, and pull my hand from his back, but he would then stand up, grab my hand, and pull me down so that my hand had returned to his back. I finally came up with a compromise solution whereby I would sit outside his crib and have my hand either on his cheek or his neck. After what felt like 20 minutes, I would pull my hand away and he would immediately wake, grab it, and return it where he felt it belonged. It would have been sweet and nice had it not been well after 1 at this point, had I not still had work to do for today's lecture, and had it not been uncomfortable on the floor with my arm snaked into the crib between the slats in the side. Finally I was able to sit on the floor with my hands in my lap and he would stand every few minutes to check that I was still there and then lay back down. This went on for some time with him checking on me and I finally left the room at 2:30ish. I would have left earlier if we lived in the country or in a separated house, but every time we tried to put him back to bed last night he would let out the worst screams which would lead to the downstairs neighbor banging on the walls. Ah, the joys of city living!

Emmett did wake again at about 2:45 and yell because I wasn't there (I assume), but he put himself back to sleep and made it to morning. 5:30ish. Hooray! Andrea was nice enough to get up with him since I didn't finish my work until 3:30ish. Sleep can't come too early tonight.

I am convinced that the way for one to make a billion dollars today would be to invent a device that would let a parent or caregiver know if the cry that is being let out is due to poop in the diaper or not. I changed Emmett when I went in last night, but am now wondering if he had pooped over the next couple of hours. His lack of settling was very unlike him, but I didn't check again and Andrea found a messy diaper when she got him. Very unlike him to do that so quickly in the morning.

Speaking of the topic, Emmett has been getting better and better about communicating that he has or is going to poop. We are still trying to push the potty seat, but he will only sit on it and hasn't taken care of business for some time.

We have returned to cloth diapers after our ~5 day hiatus. The blisters on his skin cleared and I boiled all of the diapers, and in our ~4 day return to cloth we have yet to find a new spot (knock on wood). Good news!

The list

Words that Emmett says as best we can think of and in no particular order:

bath, pasta, pizza, milk, shoe, on, off, bike, heart, pancake, cat, water, crayon, book, Elmo, Big Bird, purple, jellyfish, airplane, jet, helicopter, blimp, cup, Blah Blah, dad, mom, Belinda, park, John, Luisa, Hannah, Lesley, Laura, Jeff, Sal, up, in, please, Malcolm, duck, squirrel, hat, sweatshirt, grandma, grandpa, cup, clock, train, bowl, poop, flush, all done, light, grass, juice, apple, nose, alligator, turtle, grape, berries, banana, cheese, hi, bye bye, carousel, high, cloud, moon, grass, Augie, Anne, purple, flower, walk, owl, fish, shovel, bucket, swing, slide, fire truck, garbage truck, truck, bus, tractor, cat, eye, ear, horse, mouth, arm, elbow, diaper, and kiss.

There are probably others, but this was what we could think of. A couple of note: water and Malcolm, surprisingly are heterographs (I was going to use the word homonym here, but just learned that that homonyms are spelled the same and sound the same whereas heterographs just sound the same...you learn something everyday) and are pronounced "AYE-yah". Though this seems confusing, when used the situation makes it clear which is meant. In compiling this list, Andrea and I tried to get Emmett to say the two after one another (e.g. Malcolm's water...he can say things like dad's shoes or mom's hat, so this shouldn't be a stretch), but couldn't distinguish a difference between the two.

Andrea just walked by and said Emmett should have 200 words at this point. This post has turned into one about Emmett's shortcomings.

We met Anne, Augie, and Alex at the Academy today (I just wore out my shift-A with that line). It is pretty neat how Augie and Emmett get excited to see one another now and actually play together. I think we are inching away from parallel play.

We are struggling through the hassles of raising a child in a shared building. Emmett continues to wake at 5am each day and the woman who sleeps directly below him is not happy about it one bit. We let him whine for a while this morning hoping he would go back to sleep, but no luck. It is not comforting to think that if this isn't corrected, in a week's time when we go to Daylight Savings, Emmett will be waking at 4. I hope we cure this soon.

Good news is that we went back to cloth diapers again and everything seems to be fine. I am pretty convinced now that it was some sort of bacteria or yeast that got into the thicker diapers that he uses at night. I sanitized them all by boiling and am hoping we are past all of that. Emmett has taken to telling me that he has to poop, pooping, and then telling me he has pooped. I am hoping that we can get the potty thing down pretty soon. We offer the potty but he hasn't gone for it with full gusto yet although he will sit on it and read books for a while.