Ponytail

 James loves my ponytails.  He will run his hand down it while I hold him on my hip in store lines and will push it to the back if it happens to fall over my shoulder.

 Since his hair is getting so long I could resist giving him his own ponytail.  At first he loved it.

 It stayed in about 10 minutes before he started yanking on it.  But I managed to get in a few pictures.  He looks like some kind of Pacific Islander or Sumo wrestler to me.

Love that firecracker hair!

The Zoo

 After doing basically nothing "fun" all week with James and having two days of being stuck inside because of the rain James and I were thrilled to be invited by Christi and Elsa to go to the zoo Friday morning.  James was naming animals he would see at the zoo on the drive there "lion!  Ostrich!" and then something like "peenk mango" which I finally figured out that he was trying to say Pink Flamingo.

 After I looked at these pictures I realized why I haven't had to cut James' nails in weeks.  It used to be that I had to cut them every two weeks or risk being flayed by him.  But earlier this week I was trying to remember the last time I trimmed him and it had to be mid-January.  Since he is such an oral kid- STILL putting everything in his mouth and licking anything that comes within a half-inch of his tongue I guess it was inevitable that he would bite his nails.

 James anticipating the train ride.  Third winter for him, third owl sweater.  Every year I've thought- this one might last two winters!- but once again it doesn't look like this one will big enough next winter.

sneak...sneak...sneak...

Tim taught James the art of sneaking a while back.  It is one of James favorite evening activities to do with Tim before dinner.  Often they'll sneak up on me as I am preparing dinner.  They are actually pretty stealthy except for their whispers of "sneak...sneak...sneak" then James come around the corner with his back hunched, knees bent low and arms curled up in front of him.  Sometime he wants to be extra covert and decides he'll crawl sneak.  I just pretend I don't hear them coming and he loves surprising me.

Hiding

 James loves packing.  Often these days he'll come up to me and say "pack more books!"

 James also loves the packing materials and boxes, especially empty boxes.

 He kept asking me to close the flaps so he could hide, but he was just too long.

 Fortunately he thought hiding under the newspaper was just as good.

James in a nest

No more headstands in the crib

We will soon be putting the house on the market (again!).  We are doing our utmost to get the house in order to make it the most appealing to a potential buyer.  Tim is building us a new kitchen table and shelves, James and I are packing up all the clutter, we hired a stager to come in and give us advice on furniture placement and decor.  One idea for James' room was to remove his tall crib and replace it with a small toddler bed.  

On Jan. 31 the bed frame arrived via UPS and James and I assembled it before dinner.  James was in charge of putting all the bolts and dowels in the correct holes- and he discovered that he loves hex keys.

I had thought to transition his slowly over the course of a couple of days, but he was so enthusiastic about the bed we decided to try it out that night.   These first couple of pictures are him trying out the bed before dinner.

As you can see he is pretty thrilled.

That night he didn't want to use his new pillow (too big I think) so I removed it and he is also not used to sleeping with covers so we just stuck with his sleep sack.  About an hour after going to bed (he stayed on it!  he fell right asleep!) we heard him crying and struggling- I went into check on him and he had fallen down between the bed and wall and was kind of wedged in.  I don't think he'd really even woken fully as when I put him back in he immediately fell into deep sleep.

Then before we went to bed I checked on him again and he had turned around with his head had the footboard end.  I thought to myself 'this isn't good, he is going to fall out head first' but I didn't want to wake him by turning him around.  Sure enough about half an hour after we got into bed we heard a huge thump and then a wail.  Again when I went in and put him back (and put some pillows on the floor just in case) he fell right back asleep.  Not too much later Tim woke me up telling me he thought James had fallen again, but when I went in James was still in bed on his stomach kicking his legs while he dreamed saying "I WANT A BIG STINGRAY!!!" in an angry voice.  I guess he was having a tantrum in his dream.

In the morning we heard him talking for about 10 minutes before I went in and he was just sitting on his bed waiting for me to get him up (I had told him the night before that once we put him in bed he is not to get out.)

That morning James and I took apart his crib.

Again James loved using the hex key.

And that first nap he did great staying in his bed.  He was awake for quite a while, but eventually fell asleep.

The second night I moved his bed in an attempt to arrange his room to look like it is bigger, we borrowed Elsa's blow-up bumper and I used double-sided sticky foam tape to secure the bed to the floor so he couldn't push it away from the wall and fall between.  He again stayed in bed and fell asleep.

Since then he hasn't fallen out of bed again, HOWEVER even though for 3-4 day he fell asleep on his own for naps, since then he has discovered that he can get out of bed whenever he wants and if I don't go in to his room and sit in there telling him to stay lying down he will just play for his 2-hr rest time.  Though as his habit is to save up going poop until rest time he has also finally somewhat figured out how to open his door (I say somewhat b/c it seems like he just works at the doorknob until it finally opens.  I don't think he's connected that you just have to turn it far enough in one direction) to come out to tell me to change his diaper.  And even though he did awesome about staying in bed at night for over a week and half the past 4 nights we have seen him get out of bed and turn on his light.  Sadly I have had to give him the consequence of taking away Blue Daddy Octopus (his most beloved Halloween costume who has become a dear friend- he named him himself over Thanksgiving).  The first night I told him it would happen and gave him one warning, but the second time he got out of bed I took BDO away and you never saw such a distraught face crumple up and begin to wail in anguish.  The next night he didn't get out of bed when I reminded him I would take BDO away.  But last night he got out of bed and I had to take BDO and again James totally fell apart.  Poor Tim hearing James' sincere wails from the next room was almost as distraught himself.  I hate to truly upset James (I'd rather make him mad than sad) but I had to choose something that would actually work and we aren't the spanking type of parents.  

Overall the move to a bed has gone much more smoothly (at least at first) than I was anticipating.  He might get a shock though in a couple of weeks when we go up to the farm and reassemble the crib for him to sleep in for two weeks.  But as his room is on the second floor and we don't have a good gate yet at the top of the stairs I think it for the best.

I'll have to do a separate post about James' deep love for Blue Daddy Octopus.

Cooking with onions

James has started wanting to help me- with everything- from laundry, dishes, cooking, cutting up his food, pretty much anything I am doing (except emailing or using the computer for anything other than showing him YouTube videos of ocean creatures).

Last week James and I made chili.  So far his role has been to transfer piles of chopped veggies into the bowl.  We started with the red bell pepper and then moved onto the five cups of onions.  About half way through the onions I heard him sniffling and dripping beside me.

This picture doesn't do justice to what his face looked like when I turned to him- dripping with tears from his eyes, streaming nose and red blotchy spots all over.  But no matter how much I tried to explain to him that it was the onions causing him grief he didn't want to step away and not be able to help.

It is so much fun to cook with James!  It does increase the time it takes to actually get the job done- but so much more enjoyable in some ways.  Today we will make some oatmeal cookies which I know he will love both to make and eat.

Gu's Bistro

 Yesterday was COLD.  The kind of cold when you go outside your joints start to ache (or maybe this is me finally feeling my body aging...sigh).  I had the ingredients on hand to make chicken pot pie, but after a busy day of errands and tasks I was feeling like going out to dinner sounded much more appealing than standing on my feet cooking and cleaning.  Instead of going to one of our local neighborhood restaurants we headed to Buford Hwy to Gu's Bistro- probably the best Chinese I have ever had.

 We were very hungry and on the way began listing all the dishes that sounded good to us and upon arrival ordered way too many of them: tea smoked duck with scallions; pork, picked cabbage and noodle soup; peppers in black vinegar; Zhong style dumplings; fish with peanuts and peppers.

 Most of the food can be very spicy- it is Szechuan style- but since they knew the dumplings were intended for James they thought to serve the chili sauce on the side, and the soup and duck were just packed full of flavor not heat.  James loved the duck, pork, noodles and rice.  He really wanted the fish- every dish that arrived at the table he exclaimed "fish?!" but when it arrived it was truly hot.  He didn't seem to upset as he was thrilled to try to use his chopsticks on the noodles.

 I didn't get the best picture but at certain points he was holding the chopsticks almost correctly.

 But he didn't hesitate using his fingers to arrange the noodles on the rice.  Not sure what was going through his mind but he insisted that the noodles be on top of the rice no matter how many times I moved them to the side.

Just now while writing this post James looked over my shoulder and requested some noodles to eat.  He is going to be thrilled at lunch as we have tons of leftovers to enjoy for the next few days.

More James' Sees

 Seahorse (he was eating a french fry from Chick-fil-A, paused...held it up and declared it a Seahorse).

Jellyfish (breakfast of oatmeal: I was scraping all the oats to one side to make it easier to scoop).

Example of James with one of his manta rays.