the adventures of a costumed toddler

Seriously, people, where are the holidays going?  Before we get to Thanksgiving...wait, what? We've already passed that one, too?!  Okay, before we get to Christmas, I'd better post some pics from Halloween.

It's funny, thinking back over the past three years.  I remember being pregnant and one of the things about parenthood I was most looking forward to was experiencing the holidays anew through the eyes of my kid(s).  But the thing you don't really think about, as obvious as it is, when all you have to take care of is your baby bump is that it takes years for kids to develop the kind of long-term memory necessary to anticipate the arrival of a birthday or holiday.  Anticipating birthdays and holidays is not, in fact, an innate thing.

That said, it seems for Elias at least, that once they get the idea of special days, they run with it.  As I mentioned in my last post, while Elias still didn't seem too excited about dressing up and trick-or-treating (the candy he gets but why do we have to put on such a show in order to get it?), he was very into the idea of decorating, pumpkins, and special visits to our usual weekend spots. In fact, we had such a packed weekend, by the time Sunday evening trick-or-treating rolled around, I was sufficiently Halloween-ed out.  The weekend started with our usual Friday "mommy day," which included music, to which Elias wore the hat and mittens from the puppy costume Grandpa Dale gave him last year (that he never had a chance to wear since our Halloween weekend visit was rescheduled, last minute, to Thanksgiving instead).  After music we stopped at Michael's for some last-minute decorations and from there hit IHOP up for their free "scary face" pancake, which wasn't scary at all (unless candy and cookies on the biggest pancake ever is scary to you). 

On Saturday, we attempted to get Elias into his official Halloween costume, this year going as the French comic book character, Tintin.  The costume was simple enough: highwater khaki pants, white button down shirt, blue sweater.  Key details included a plush version of Tintin's dog, Snowy, and the spiked 'do.  Elias was fine with the clothes, and of course excited for a new stuffed animal, even with the added instructions to carry him around all day, but threw a tantrum when I tried to add product to his hair.  Hair that we grew out especially for this costume (and hair that still hasn't been trimmed due to another tantrum...I'm hoping I can remedy that next weekend).  I still think it was Tintin-esque, and I'm sure next year he'll have an opinion about his costume and so will hopefully be a little more enthusiastic about making it happen.

After throwing in the towel on the possibility of getting his hair to look anything like Tintin's, we went to Piedmont for their annual festivities along the main drag of shops and restaurants.  We missed out on the free cartoons this year but headed straight to the special Saturday story-time (my favorite in the area), followed by a parade and trick-or-treating along Piedmont Avenue.

 
After a rare nap that afternoon we ambitiously set out to carve two of our three pumpkins.

I do believe the successful carving of the pumpkins was directly related to the fact that Elias, magically, napped that afternoon.  Neal took a classic approach while I tried my hand at a spider web.

And then posed with the pumpkins.

 

On Sunday we went to Fairyland.  I remember thinking last year that going to Fairyland on Halloween was a bit overrated since all Elias wanted to do was ride the jolly trolly and going on Halloween only meant we got to wait in a much longer line to do so.  But this year was different.

We once again opted for the "plain clothes" modified puppy costume and spent several hours hitting up all the treat stations, riding the train, and enjoying a healthy lunch of corn dogs and nachos.

As I mentioned earlier by Sunday evening we were, well, kind of done with Halloween.  We weren't sure what to expect in our new neighborhood and since Elias is still a bit young for trick-or-treating (we'll send him out on his own next year...just kidding!) we decided to call it a weekend.  Turns out we had quite a few visitors and passed out our one huge bag of candy within the first hour.  Next year I think we'll plan the weekend accordingly in order to save some of our energy for actual Halloween evening trick-or-treating.

In other news, they don't call them terrible 2s for nothing, do they?!  In typical Elias fashion, the past few months, our first few months in our house, have been very two steps forward, one step back for Elias in a lot of ways but overall certain things have improved.  Elias continues to nap very sporadically, even throwing in the occasional no-nap day at daycare where he usually sleeps for an hour and a half or two.  He's napped better the past couple of weeks but for example right now he's singing away in his crib when he should be sleeping.  As I told a friend recently, the afternoon nap ritual has become a bit like a sham marriage.  We still structure our day around it and go through the motions even though we all know it probably won't happen.  It's hard to officially throw in the towel.  I'm really at a bit of a loss as to how to get through the long, long day with no afternoon break.

On the other hand, nighttime sleep (knock on wood) has improved.  He still wakes up occasionally but overall I think it's safe to say the good nights outnumber the bad.  For now. He had a particularly hellish stretch a few weeks ago before, during, and a bit after he was sick.  The after part additionally morphed into a sudden wave of separation anxiety which included a week plus of daycare drop off sobbing.  When will I learn that getting over an obstacle once doesn't mean we've conquered that particular challenge forever?  With a long break over Thanksgiving I was worried this past week would be equally hellish but he seemed to be over his brief and unusual attachment to me and settled right back into his usual routine.

Needless to say, when people ask how old he is and respond with, "Oh, what a fun age!" I usually assume they either don't have kids or had them so long ago they don't remember what this age is like.  But now I think what they're focusing on is the language and general personality development. Because that part is indeed pretty rad.  Elias is such a little character.  It's still hard to converse with him, as talkative as he is, but it's fun to listen to his constant chatter, to hear him singing bits and pieces of songs, or telling me about a book, or something we did together "last day" (his words for "yesterday," usually used to describe an event that happened weeks ago).  Neal was helping him put his vest on a couple of weeks ago.  He put his arms through so that the vest was over the front of him instead of over his back.  When Neal commented that he had it on wrong he said, "not wrong, just different."  Kids really do say the darnedest things, don't they?

October

As I mentioned last time, October turned out to be a crazy busy month of mommy me-time, beginning with my first craft sale the first weekend, my birthday the second, a solo trip east for a family event we couldn't all make it to after that, and my second (and last?) craft fair the fourth weekend. I'll get to Halloween in another post.  For the record, I kind of like having my weekends off.  I won't lie; I do like the occasional time alone at home that I get from weekend to weekend when Neal takes Elias to the playground or to run errands for a couple of hours.  But it's a real drag to work all week and then have at least half of your weekend occupied by standing on your feet for 7 or 8 hours straight with no break, smiling and repeatedly explaining and pitching your craft.  Even when I worked retail one year in grad school, at the very least I enjoyed a half-hour break in the middle of each eight-hour shift.  I gotta hand it to the hardcore crafters out there (although, not surprisingly, I've yet to meet many craft fair circuit types who have young kids at home). But, like anything, I had to try it to figure all that out. 

We did manage to sneak in some family time last month, however, with a birthday weekend trip to the pumpkin patch.  It's interesting as Elias grows to witness his interest in holidays and special events like birthdays develop.  Ever since his birthday, he's been pretty excited about each subsequent celebration: his Dad's soon after, a couple of buddies over the summer, and mine last month. 

He totally gets the whole cake, candles, singing, and gifts thing and seems to dig it all.  But holidays are still a little abstract.  I'll write more about Halloween weekend itself in my next post, but I will say, leading up to the holiday itself, he was pretty interested in pumpkins, decorations, and books about the event, beginning with our visit to a pumpkin patch in Livermore, about a half-hour drive from home.

Compared to last year's pumpkin patch field trip, which lasted all of five minutes and the pumpkins we got remained un-carved until they were tossed post-Halloween, this year's outing turned into an all-day event.  We chose the Livermore location from the round-up of local pumpkin patches featured on the 510 Families site.  I couldn't really find what I was looking for any closer than Livermore and it was definitely worth the drive.  In addition to scoring a couple of perfectly "plumply dumply" pumpkins, we enjoyed a corn pit, a wagon ride, a brief height check-up, a cow train ride (a bit random but, hey, cows!), and a picnic lunch sitting on bales of hay before our return home via a Dairy Queen detour (don't judge - DQs are hard to come by in the Bay Area...we had to).

You'll have to wait for my Halloween wrap-up to find out what we did with those pumpkins!

September...

...is, in a word, a blur. I cannot believe it's been over a month and a half since my last post!  October has been the month of crazy busy "me-time," way busier than we ever aim to be, but more on that in a later post.  For now, I'll try to start the catching up process with a few random images from August and September.  First up, a couple of pictures of Elias enjoying Fairyland during a weekend visit with Daddy (Mommy was no doubt unpacking). 

As I suspected during our initial visits when we first returned to the area last summer, Fairyland has indeed become more enjoyable as Elias gets a little bigger (which is to say, while he no doubt enjoyed the place from his very first visit, not so fun for us were the inevitable tumbles he'd take as a newbie toddler.  For awhile there, every trip ended in tears.).

Another recent development evident in these pictures is his willingness to pose for pictures.  His smile is becoming less ominous, too!  He loves that water wheel!

The weekend after we moved into our house our new neighborhood hosted their annual street fair just a couple of blocks away.  We took the bike for a spin and then let Elias loose in the kids' zone, where he enjoyed the Sesame Street themed bouncy house and this swing, which seemed to put all the kids on it in a sort of trance.  Parents, too. But that doesn't take much...

The week after we moved in, our daycare was closed for three days.  Bad timing, to say the least, but, as kids will do, the vacation forced me to take a break and enjoy a few bonus "mommy days."  Having Elias home on a Wednesday, for example, meant we could make it to a favorite library storytime we don't usually get to, followed by lunch (and ice cream!) with a friend at Fenton's.  Can't beat that.

Elias is napping!

In his crib! Which gives me a little time to post a few images from the past few weekends.  After a recent, napless "mommy day" we headed to Rubio's for an early dinner on a Friday afternoon.

The following weekend we stocked up at Costco.

And most recently, we hit Babies R Us to look for a water table to add to Elias's limited collection of outdoor play equipment.

Yep, it's been a pretty exciting couple of weeks around here.

a day out with Thomas

Just as Elias's interest in Thomas was starting to wane (meaning he still really, really likes it, he's just no longer obsessed), we finally made it to a Day Out With Thomas event.  We considered hitting an east coast venue during our May trip to Connecticut but decided our host family would probably not enjoy it as much as some of us.  The closest location to us was the Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton, near Santa Cruz, a bit of a hike for what turned out to be a day-long adventure a week and a half before our move, but well worth the effort.  Especially considering Psycho Donuts is on the way.  I'm a big fan of ridiculous donuts (my fave so far is in Escondido, where Elias's Uncle Ryan, Aunt Kelly, and cousin Maddie live...Hey, isn't it about time for a family reunion?).

The donuts were a big hit all around but our little detour (adding to the fact that we made a "quick" stop at Home Depot on our way out) put us behind schedule and we barely made our train.  But once we got on and caught our breath, we all enjoyed listening to familiar Thomas tunes during the rather short train ride.

After the train arrived back at the station we lined up to get off and made our way from the number ten car we were in to the front where Thomas was positioned.

My main disappointment, other than running late and rushing to the train (I would have rather done all the stuff we did after our train ride, which started right around nap-time, before) was that we couldn't really get an up close and personal experience with the Thomas engine.  There was a line for folks who wanted a professional photo taken (of course) and really no other way to get much closer than this:

One of these days we're just going to spring for the official photo ops. Maybe.  After our train ride and peek at Thomas, we spent another hour and a half or so wandering the grounds, enjoying some barbecue for lunch and a photo op with a large, inflatable Percy.

Here's Elias enjoying his favorite vegetable (corn on the cob is a vegetable, right?).

Of course we had to wait in line to take a picture with Percy.

But at least it was free.

roses for Elias

And just like that, we're all moved in!  When you race to unpack and settle in, it feels like maybe you did just snap your fingers and everything was magically done, but I know that wasn't the case.  And I have a few pictures to prove how crazy the last couple of weeks have been.

Elias's old room, pre-packing, throw-everything-on-the-floor stage.

If it weren't for the fact that our summer 2009 move involved crossing a distance of 3000+ miles, I'd easily say this move was my/our hardest to date (and I've moved a lot) but at least we only had to move our stuff and ourselves a couple of miles this time around.  Moving from an apartment to a house with a toddler and a micro business was...well, it sucked.  There's no way - or point - in sugar-coating it.  The move last year was most difficult in that it involved such a distance, a distance we were able to cover in a few hours but took our stuff several weeks.  That was tricky.  The details of last year's move are already pretty fuzzy but I do remember that last night and the morning of our flight being pretty miserable.  I remember, for example, cleaning the oven at 11 p.m. that night, the night before our early morning, one-way flight.  And I remember the amount of stuff we chucked in the end and yet still had to pay for overweight baggage!

So at least we didn't have to do that.  That was nice.  But the two weeks between getting the keys to our house and moving in were a mad dash to simultaneously coordinate the few repairs and updates we did at the new place before moving in, cleaning the new place,  wrapping up business, packing, packing, and more packing, moving, unpacking, cleaning the old place, and more unpacking.  Oh yeah, and taking care of Elias.  When you're childless you treat time very differently in these situations, working 12+ hours straight to get a project done.  But when you have a kid, the buck stops at their schedule.  And I for one have a really hard time stopping work on a project when I'm right in the middle.  Most modern mamas pride themselves on their multi-tasking prowess.  I do not. I hate multi-tasking and if we had a relative we could schlep Elias on for a few days, we would have.  But we don't.  So we all had to suffer through. Together.

And to his credit, other than a poorly timed cold, Elias handled things pretty well.  He really seemed to just roll with it all, for the most part.  It was kind of like those final weeks on Big Brother, when things start to disappear and the house-guests notice something's missing.  Or when the producers suddenly reduce the table size and the house-guests wake up one day to eight seats instead of sixteen.  Elias seemed to really notice what was missing day by day but more or less accept it and understand that we were moving and that our home would be located in a different place soon.

And obviously we packed his room last (the day before the movers came, just like last year) and tried to make sure his schedule and activities were as uninterrupted as possible.  On a bonus "Mommy day" the week of the move, we spent the entire morning out and about, first at Barnes & Noble for some old-school train table fun and a snack in front of the fire (oh, Bay Area summers), followed by a play-date at the Oakland Zoo with daycare buddy Hazel.

Less than one week in, we're settling in nicely.  We have a dozen or so boxes left to unpack, mostly books, and a garage already filling up with boxes to store.  We have a long list of projects to tackle but I don't think either of us is feeling too overwhelmed just yet.  Sleep has much improved since but our first night was pretty awful - Elias wanted to go home, presumably to our old place, fought bedtime like it was nobody's business, coughed until he threw up not once, but twice, requiring some spontaneous unpacking of boxes originally intended for another day (who knew we'd need three crib sheets our first night), continued to cough off an on for all but about five hours of the night, waking up so cranky and unmanageable I kept him home from daycare (of all days).  Also, through the night I was additionally woken up by one of two crazy productive persimmon trees out back dropping fruit on the corrugated metal that covers the patio.  Either the tree has to go or the patio cover or both. Who plants two fruit trees in the middle of the yard? And who puts metal over the patio? Ah, the mysteries of a new home.

roses from our back yard

But since that first night Elias has done remarkably better, even, dare I jinx it all and say he's had a longer stretch of sleeping through the night than he's had in a really, really long time.  Maybe apartment living just wasn't a good fit for him.  Or maybe it's pure coincidence.  Or maybe he'll wake up three times tonight. Who knows. The adventure continues...

2 years

Eli gettin' his mud on.

This is the last of the monthly posts. Part of me worries I'll never blog if not for the nagging monthly "birthdays," but I think it makes sense to switch to a more event-geared blogging style at this point.  Elias doesn't change as much from month to month like he did the first 18 months or so.  It's just one big blur of getting not quite enough sleep....Just kidding!  Wait, no I'm not.

Anyway...Since his second birthday (over a month ago, yikes!) Elias has been a little more difficult than usual.  I thought he'd already flipped his toddler switch but I'm now starting to think of it more as a dimmer.  He's been slowly amping it up over the past year until he clicked it fully into the on position (I think. I hope.) right around his train-themed birthday bash.  Rather than expect things to get easier any time soon, I like to think of his second birthday as the halfway point to a time when it seems like most toddlers evolve into "big kids," and, dare I say it, thing seem to be maybe just a tiny bit easier.  Or more enjoyable. Or something.  I'm sure my readers with older kids are thinking there's a very good possibility I'll be eating my words in a couple of years, but that's my hope.  For my readers with younger kids, sorry for the spoiler alert. When they told you at your baby's miraculous birth that the first 3 to 4 months were crazy, what they really meant to say was the first 3 to 4 years.

But things have been a little calmer in the last week or so (hence the blogging...I'm also doing just about everything but packing for our move next week.  Oh yeah, we're moving.  Again.  Didn't I tell you?).  Pretty soon, seeing as how Elias is getting his last set of molars, I won't be able to blame teething.  But that's the latest scapegoat, in addition to a fun summer cold that he passed on to me.  Before I get too ahead of myself, though, let me a share a few images from his birthday festivities.

Well, I guess the birthday boy can have a cupcake before the guests arrive, can't he?

We had his party, the theme of which was very loosely based on his obsession with Thomas the Train, the weekend before his actual birthday, at one of our go-to playgrounds, Berkeley's Aquatic Park.  Other than being insanely windy that morning, the brunch bash was a success.  You can read more about the overall event design on my other blog. 

Elias gets a lesson on gift-opening from "big kid" buddy, Ivan.

Here he is getting a little instruction on opening gifts from his "big kid" buddy, Ivan (who will be 4 in September. We're counting on him to show Elias the ropes.).  It was a small party (and I think therein lies the success).  We invited just a handful of little ones, including a few friends from daycare.  Since his actual birthday was on a Monday, rather than pull him from daycare for the entire day, where I figured he'd probably have more fun playing with his friends than running errands with Mom, we picked him up early and took him to nearby Fenton's for a little birthday mac 'n' cheese and first banana split.

The amount of ice cream we left behind still haunts me.

Even ordering the "junior" version between the three of us we left a staggering amount of ice cream behind (not realizing then that you can get your ice cream leftovers to go!).  He's not a huge fan of ice cream because it's, in his words, "too cold." I'm hoping he'll get over it between now and his third birthday so that we can make this an annual tradition.

It's a train! It's a cake!

I made this train cake to take to daycare during the week for Elias and his daycare buddy, Hazel, since her 2nd birthday falls just a few days later.

Sadly, he had to wait almost an entire week to ride the much coveted tricycle he got from his Uncle Ryan and Aunt Kelly. Even though we've only been here a year as a family and I can't say I'll really miss our apartment or apartment living in general, I will miss this neighborhood, where Neal and I lived for about six years before moving to Boston.  It's been a great landing pad for our return west, with so many family-friendly destinations within a ten to fifteen minute walk, especially considering the first half of our first year back I was home with Elias full-time.  But we're also looking forward to moving into our first house and exploring our new neighborhood in a couple of weeks.  I have a few other blog posts I'd like to get to before the move but realistically I should probably bid adieu until the dust settles later this summer.

Oh, and uh, wish us luck. With just over a week to go, we have, to date, one box packed. Yep, it's going to be a great week!

23 months

The highlight of month 23, as far as I can remember at this point, was our first trip east since moving back to California last summer, to visit my brother and his family in Connecticut. This was probably our most enjoyable travel experience with Elias thus far. The flights there and back were a mix. Despite the fact that Elias is a big and squirmy toddler, we wanted to take advantage of the soon-to-expire perk that he could, theoretically, sit in our laps and fly free one last time. And in the end it was fine, obviously: we made it there and back. But of the nearly 12 hours in-flight, there were about two to three hours (on the way there, when he literally did not stop moving the entire time before finally and suddenly - and quite literally - crashing for the rest of the flight) where I think we both thought we'd made a huge mistake. But 2 or 3 out of 12 ain't bad, right? That means the other nine or ten hours were only mildly miserable, and actually he did sleep for a couple of those so that was nice. I actually got to read my new Nook, an early Mother's Day gift. I'm now only about halfway through that same book, but that's neither here nor there...

Anyway, the visit itself was very relaxing. We didn't do much other than chill out inside and outside my brother's place and I think the lack of plans was probably key to our enjoyment.They have a large play structure in their back yard where Elias enjoyed his first non-bucket swing ride:

Elias hit it off immediately with my nine-year-old niece Adriana (he was holding her hand on the arm rest of the car seat on the drive home from the airport).  He reminds us of her at this age a lot, mostly in the way he fights sleep so perhaps they sensed some sort of kindred spirit in one another.

Following are some shots from one particularly photogenic outing to a nearby playground one afternoon we were there:

A playground with a steering wheel! Elias must've thought this was the coolest place. Ever.

Scheming, no doubt.

Aww. That's a keeper.  And here he is enjoying some quality, chilling out with Daddy time:

And some quality Uncle Brian time here.  When he says Uncle Brian it sounds like "Unk Buddy," which is pretty cute, don't you think?

Neither my brother nor my sister-in-law are particularly musical but it's something they've always encouraged their kids to do so they have a lot of musical instruments in their finished basement/most awesome play room ever. Elias got to try out the recorder here with Adriana:

And he played the drums a few times with Uncle Brian:

I try to play the part of laidback mama, I really do, but I have to admit, I was a little concerned for everyone's hearing.

As far as sleep goes, Elias did pretty well.  His schedule was way off, mainly due to the three hour time difference.  The first night, for example, he stayed up until about 10, and then slept in until about 8:30 the next morning.  Every day was different and we all rolled with it pretty well, I thought, considering how structured our routine at home sometimes feels.  He tended to sleep about ten hours at night regardless of when he went down and his naps, I think (I honestly don't remember), were hit or miss.  Here he is napping with Neal on the air mattress (oh the things you do after your kids reach a certain age that you'd never do when they're itty-bitty, like, for example, sleeping on an air mattress):

So yes, sleep was not bad. And there was some eating. Oh, boy, did we eat. Here's a shot of Elias, for the little bit of time he actually sat in the high chair, at a Puerto Rican restaurant about a half-hour away from where they live. Good, but not as good as Tia Marty's cooking.

My only request to my gracious hosts, other than a few doses of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (I'm a Peet's snob, don't get me wrong, but I do miss their iced coffee in the summer)...

 

...was a little Sweet Maria's. Elias enjoyed one of the buttcream cupcakes we brought home in addition to the whip cream frosted cake they had ordered in advance to celebrate Mother's Day while we were there.

The other highlight, thanks to the fact that my brother is a firefighter in the nearby town of Hamden, was a visit to the firehouse. Elias is a lot more interested in firetrucks since the trip, but what kid doesn't like big, red, shiny things with horns and lights?

And one last shot, on the short shuttle ride from the airport terminal to the parking lot, with trusty travel companion, Scout (or Puppy Pal, as we call him):