28 June 2009

Runny nose and teething?

Aaron has a clear runny nose today. About a month ago, he had a clear runny nose that lasted a week or so and he never developed other symptoms. He was irritable and didn't sleep well. It coincided with when we switched from a sleep sack to blankets, which made it hard to know what was going on.

Last night he was hyper and really fussy, which I assumed was from being over-tired. And when his nose started running this morning, I figuerd the fussiness yesterday was due to a cold coming on. But now I'm starting to wonder if it could be teething. He has one molar left to come in. The last three molars he got came in relatively close together, but still aren't fully through the gums.

So I was googling teething and runny nose and it sounds a lot like the fever/teething issue I blogged about previously. Some people say a runny nose is never caused by teething, but many, many moms provide anecdotal evidence otherwise. My fever and teething blog post has generated the most comments I've ever received - all from moms I don't know who found my post via Google. So I think the topic of symptoms caused by teething is one of great debate among parents. I'm hoping others will see this post on whether a runny nose can be caused by teething and add their thoughts.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep an eye out for that final molar. If his clear runny nose doesn't develop into a full blown cold, I'm going to suspect teething rather than illness.

I'm just disappointed that this runny nose has cancelled Rebecca and Jessica's plans to visit Aaron today. I hadn't told Aaron that "Becca" and "Jessa" were going to visit since I've found that play dates can often be canceled last minute due to illness on one side or the other, but I was looking forward to it on his behalf. But if I was their mom, I would stay away, too. Kids get enough illnesses unknowingly without intentionally exposing them to kids with cold symptoms.

Helping

Aaron loves helping. Or at least thinking he's helping. He's been helping with various things for awhile - putting dirty clothes in his hamper, an empty milk jug in the recycling bin, or handing items from the grocery cart to the checkout lady at Trader Joe's. But we are finding more and more ways for him to help out. Like putting washclothes away in the bathroom when I am folding his laundry. Or helping put clothes from the washer into the dryer.

But Aaron's definition of helping extends to other tasks as well. One day, I was changing his diaper. As I was unfolding a new diaper, he grabbed it from me and then handed it back and said "Helping Mama!" Or when I am reading a book to him and he knows a word that is coming in the story, he will call it out, sometimes in the right place, but not always. And then he might add "Helping!" meaning, "I'm helping you read the story!"

Although in those cases, it might be a stretch of the imagination to say he is actually helping, there are other times when he says he is helping and I have no idea what he is talking about. One day, when Larissa was babysitting, I was waiting for my computer to install updates and reboot (with Windows Vista, I knew this would be awhile). So I decided to go outside and walk through the yard, possibly picking some tomatoes and peaches if they were ripe. Larissa and Aaron decided to go with me. As I was examining the garden, Aaron led Larissa down into the orchard towards the drainage ditch (which he likes to walk down). As he walked away, I heard him say "Helping Mama!" I'm not sure how he was helping me, but I smiled just the same.

27 June 2009

Playing with Grandma and Grandpa

I took this video in my parents' backyard on Father's Day. Aaron had been leading Grandpa around by the hand for awhile, but then he decided to take Grandma for a walk. She shows him her owl whose head turns to scare off critters who might be trying to eat their food (he also used to hoot, but my Dad is trying to fix that). Then she disappears to, I believe, show Thom the hanging tomato plant on the back of the house. So Aaron runs back to find Grandpa and convinces him to walk around some more.

Playing with Papa on Father's Day

I took the following video at the end of the day last Sunday. Thom was on his hands and knees to form a "tunnel", which Aaron likes to crawl through. He'll crawl from front to back, then turn around and crawl through the other way. When he is coming through in that direction, Thom will capture him on his way through and hug him. But of course, when I got out the camera, Aaron lost interest in the tunnel game and started playing with his eggs.


The eggs are from Easter. My parents hid 7 colored eggs for each grandchild who came over for Easter. Aaron's eggs were yellow. We only found 6, even with Dad's help (he's the one who hid them). But somehow, we only managed to get 5 of them home. I happened to have a 1/2 dozen egg carton and I had put the eggs in there for his play kitchen. It has troubled him to no end that there was a missing egg. I told him that it was at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I assured him that we would look for it the next time we were over there and I silently hoped they had an extra yellow egg at their house.


So on Father's Day morning, Aaron was playing with his eggs. He pointed to the empty spot in the carton and said "Grandpa. Missing egg." Meaning, the missing egg is at Grandpa's. So I said we would look for it at Grandma and Grandpa's house later that day. Driving down to their house for dinner, we coached Aaron to say "Happy Father's Day" to Grandpa. He had already learned the phrase that morning for his own father and was able to say it, but I wanted him to tell Grandpa when we saw him. When we arrived at their house, I asked Aaron "What are you going to say to Grandpa?" To which he promptly replied "Egg missing!" We laughed but reminded him that he should first say "Happy Father's Day!" But it didn't work. The first thing he said upon seeing Grandpa? "EGG MISSING!"


Fortunately, my mom found an extra yellow egg in a bag of plastic eggs in the garage. When we got it home and put it back, Aaron was so pleased that "Egg missing no more". Shortly afterwards, I discovered that his little Duplo people fit perfectly inside the eggs, so I filled them all up. In the video, he is playing with them. At one point, you'll hear him say "Funny people." as another person falls out of an egg. I had tried to put the Duplo doggy in the egg, but it wouldn't fit with it's ears. That's why at the end of opening the eggs, he's talking about a doggy and then goes to look for more people in the little house (an advent calendar, really, but it makes a good Duplo people house).



The video ends with Aaron climbing on his Papa and then running away (to play another game in the other room).


P.S. Although I took this video with my Kodak Easyshare, the file size was about 240 MB, which was too big to post. My Dad told me about a free Flash converter he uses for his website. This video converted is only 8.2 MB.

Father's Day


On Father's Day, we had a low key morning. Thom took a nap in the afternoon and after Aaron's nap, we drove down to see my parents. They had volunteered to host Father's Day this year with a cookout starting at 12:30 and including lunch and dinner. Since Aaron goes down for his nap around 1-1:30pm, we decided to go down for dinner so we could spend more time with them. Unfortunately, we missed seeing all the cousins and aunts and uncles who had left by the time we arrived, but Aaron had a good time monopolizing Grandma's and Grandpa's attention. His favorite thing was taking them by the hand and walking around the yard.

I have some videos I want to post, but they are very large and I need to figure out how to reduce the size before posting them. But here is a slide show of photos I took. Click on the slideshow to go to the Picasa web album to see larger images.

25 June 2009

Story time

Last night during story time, I decided to test out our new Kodak Easyshare in an indoor nighttime environment. So while Thom read Russell the Sheep (a gift from Aunt Janine and Uncle Bruce that is favorite - he loves counting the sheep along with Russell) I slipped off the couch and snapped a few pictures.


They aren't too bad, although I had to correct for red eye on the second two, which is expected since I used the flash. It's not a huge improvement over the old Canon, but at least the pictures aren't blurry, which was a big complaint I had with my indoor night shots.

I still need to post Father's Day photos (and a video or two), but that will take longer. Maybe this weekend.

20 June 2009

Anatomy Lesson

Aaron has become quite interested in gender and anatomy already. He is still learning the difference between boys and girls, and sometimes calls himself a girl to see what we say. Most of his playmates are girls, primarily because most of my local mom friends we have play dates with have girls. Although we haven't explicitly explained the anatomical differences beteween boys and girls, we will correct him if he calls a boy a girl or vice versa.

When it comes to anatomy, we have made the decision to refer to body parts by their proper names. So he knows he has a penis. Only he pronounces it "peepis". At times, he will say "Aaron peepis. Dada peepis. Mama peepis." as if cataloging who has penises in our house. So we correct him and say that Mama doesn't have a peepis (yes, that is how we pronounce it now, too).

He is still young enough that he sees me naked sometimes. So this morning, when I was getting dressed and he saw me naked, I pointed out that I didn't have a penis. I then asked him if I did. He quickly pointed to my inverted bellybutton (yes, it already sticks out and I'm not even 6 months pregnant) and said "Peepis!"

19 June 2009

New Pool






We bought Aaron a bigger kiddie pool this year so his friends can join him when we have play dates. It's been overcast and cool most of the month, but today was warmer and we decided to put some water in the pool for him. We left it in the sun to heat up, but he saw it when he was outside and wanted to go in about 20 minutes after we added the water. I had Larissa put him in his rash guard which has UV protection and a swim diaper, but didn't bother with swim trunks since no one was here to see him but us. The water was a little too cold for him, so he avoided sitting down. He walked around and squated to play with his water toys.

15 June 2009

Kicking

Before I forget, Thom felt Baby 2.0 kick for the first time Saturday morning while we were lying in bed listening to Aaron chatter in his crib. I've been feeling the baby for weeks now, and s/he is definitely getting more active. When Thom felt a definitive kick, I said (in a quiet voice) "Kick Dada" which is what Aaron says when he is kicking Thom. He thinks it is funny, but we always tell him "No kick Dada" or Mama or whoever he is trying to kick. I thought I had spoken softly enough, but a second after I said it, we hear Aaron down in his room saying "Kick Dada. Kick Dada." over and over. He's got some good hearing.

14 June 2009

Visit from Friends

Some friends of ours drove down for a visit yesterday. We also invited some local friends to join us for dinner. On the swing are all of our kids - Luka (almost 3), Talia (almost 5), Jessica (almost 7), Aaron (2), and Rebecca (almost 11).

Aaron had a hard time adjusting to two new kids taking over his play area, but seemed to enjoy Talia and Luka's company nonetheless. He had a nice long nap while they were here and was ready for more entertainment in the evening.

Rebecca and Jessica joined us for dinner. All day long he was looking forward to seeing "Becca Jessa". (He doesn't use "and"). They are like big sisters to him. He leads them around by the hand and they play with him.

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa

On Friday, Aaron and I met my parents at a local attraction. Due to my paranoia about online privacy while blogging, I try to avoid posting photos from local attractions. I put the photos in an unlisted Picasa album and sent an invitation to my parents. If you know me and would like access, just send me an e-mail and I will grant it.

We had a great time. Aaron got to ride a bus and hasn't stopped talking about it. After having lunch with my parents, we headed home for a nap. It was nice for me to have Mom and Dad help out with Aaron and I think he really enjoyed seeing them while being out and about. I think we'll be doing it again.

08 June 2009

Cuts and scrapes

Aaron got his first serious scrapes on his knees today. I guess we are lucky it took this long. He's had minor cuts and scrapes (and plenty of bruises), but nothing bad enough to warrant a Band-Aid until today.

He and Babu were outside walking around and he fell on the gravel we have bordering the driveway. In shorts. His right knee was cut and scraped right on the knee and the left leg had an abrasion just below the knee. He wasn't crying much when Larissa brought him in, but he started crying hard when I was cleaning the scrapes, applying antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids. I'm glad we were both here to help restrain him. I'm not sure I could have done it on my own.

Fortunately we had a sample pack of Trader Joe's Cats Cookies to promise him during the trauma (not that it calmed him down much at the time). Snacking on the cookies afterwards helped him recover more quickly, though. Poor little boy.

Hamming it up

Aaron was having a snack at the table when he put on a wonderful little smile staring out the window. Hoping to catch him doing it again, I grabbed the camera. Of course I couldn't catch the spontaneous smile I'd witnessed earlier and almost couldn't get him to smile at all. He saw the camera and wanted to see pictures on it and fussed when he couldn't. Although the Canon also lets you preview photos, the Kodak has a much larger view screen and he enjoys seeing the photos on it. So I convinced him that he had to let me take pictures first and then he could see them (while they were previewed for a few seconds). I took the following series of photos.

Eating some of Daddy's cantelope.

Cantelope is yummy.

Eating a "hop hop" (aka Annie's Yogurt and Green Onion Bunnies)

Responding to my request for a smile - sort of.

06 June 2009

Farm co-op

Just a quick note to mention I started a blog dedicated to recipes incorporating the produce I'm getting from our farm co-op. There is a link on the right-side of this blog if you are interested. It is called Adventures in Community Supported Agriculture.

Cooking and making up new recipes is a hobby of mine and I wanted to preserve some of my new recipes for future reference, so I thought I'd do it in a blog.

New Sandbox

Thom and I bought Aaron a sandbox last November or December. Costco.com had a good deal on a nice 4'x4' wood sandbox with a cover that doubles as a sun shade when in use, so we ordered it while it had free shipping. We decided to put it next to the patio so we could see him from the porch swing. The only problem was that there were dozens of agapathus plants in the way.

Thom took off all of Memorial Day week to get some things done around the house, including getting the sandbox installed. He spent Monday clearing out the plants and leveling the ground. Tuesday he bought some rocks to put down under the sandbox to help with draining. And I believe he even assembled the sandbox that day. It took most of the day because the directions were not clear, not all of the holes were predrilled, and some things did not line up requiringThom to use a chisel to knock some pieces of wood off to make it work. On Wednesday, he bought sand and filled the sandbox only to find that he had to address some joints where the sand was flowing out.

In the end, though, it came out looking beautiful. And Aaron loves it. I posted a series of photos taken during his first time in the sandbox, starting with him tentatively reaching in with his hand until he's completely sitting inside. You can see the photos here or watch the slideshow below.

In the following video I took, he is so focused on what he is doing, he can't even answer my second question.


By the way, these photos and the video were taken with our Canon, not the new Kodak. You'll see in the still photos a pink hue creeping in from the left. I've been noticing that in my outdoor shots since Easter. One of the many reasons I wanted to get a new camera that takes video AND still shots.

Playhouse

On Memorial Day, we attended a BBQ at our friends Mark and Jill's house. They have a cute little playhouse out back that Aaron loved.

04 June 2009

New camera

For Mother's Day, I told Thom I wanted to finally get a better video camera. I've been filming video with our 4 MP Canon PowerShot for the last 2 years. It's OK, but you can't zoom in and out while filming and the video is fairly small. So Thom researched various options, looking at a couple of dedicated video cameras that were compact and high def, but after watching sample videos from them on YouTube, I wasn't impressed with the image stabalization (i.e. the picture was very shaky, especially if the videographer was moving at all). Then Thom found a point-and-shoot camera that takes HD video (during which you can zoom in and out) and takes 14 MP photos.

It is the Kodak Easyshare Z1485 IS. It has optical image stabalization which is supposed to be better than digital IS and is lightweight, easy to use and has a few options for batteries, including using 2 lithium AAs. It came with a non-rechargable battery pack, so we also ordered rechargables for it and an 8 GB memory card. I like that it takes still photos, too, so we don't have to lug around 2 cameras. And best of all, it was well under $200 on Amazon.com.

The photo above is my first test shot, taken during Aaron's lunch yesterday. None of the photos here have been cropped or reduced in size. Usually I do both before posting photos here, but I wanted to show the camera's capabilities. (You need to click on the photos to see them in full size, as blogger does reduce in this posting.)

Here are a couple of photos of Aaron's playdate yesterday with some neighbor girls, one in the sandbox, and one inside playing doctor.


Here are a few shots I took just to test out the camera.


I did play around with the video capabilities, but none of my test videos were worth posting here. I'll post some in the future. I was pleased with the quality of the video so far.

I also want to test out indoor shots at night. My main complaint with the Canon was that my indoor night shots were coming out blurry and full of red eye. Depending on how the Kodak Easyshare does, I may still want to get an SLR camera, one with those big lenses that take great pictures. But since I'm not a great photographer anyway, I didn't want to spend big bucks on a camera that I still may not get good results with. If I go that route, we'll try to find a used one to save some money.

03 June 2009

Transitions

Aaron is beginning to undergo some of the many transitions he will be making by age 3. Besides the obvious one in October, he'll start potty training this year, he'll be switching to a "big boy" bed, and I expect to ween him off his naptime and bedtime pacifiers.

In preparation for switching from a crib to a bed, we have transitioned him from sleeping in a sleep sack to using blankets. He's been using a sleep sack since we stopped swaddling him - I think around 6 months. Since they don't recommend blankets in babies' cribs, we used a sleep sack once he outgrew swaddling. And since the sleep sacks to up to size 2, I never had a need to stop using them.

But now he is starting to outgrow the largest of his sleep sacks and when he's in a bed, he'll be using blankets, so we decided to switch to blankets now. At first we started telling him he was getting too big for his sleep sack. Then for a few days, we put a blanket in his crib with him. He called it his "new blanket", although it is one he's had for 2 years. He seemed to like it.

Then last Monday, I had Kim put him down with just a blanket, no sack. He didn't seem to mind at all. He even went to sleep that night easily without his sack. But last Tuesday, he wouldn't nap at all. After an hour of fighting him, I just got him up. Larissa arrived shortly afterwards and he was pretty much a monster all afternoon - doing anything he knew he shouldn't do and giggling. He was so tired, that when Thom took him along to drive Larissa home, he fell asleep on the short ride back. But after dinner, he perked up and cried when we put him down for bed (although he did go to sleep pretty quickly overall).

That's when I started to realize that the lack of sleep sack was contributing to his sleep problems. Although he didn't mind the novelty of using a blanket on Monday, perhaps he didn't think it was a permanent change. There were several nights of fussing and crying after we put him down. And then unfortunately it coincided with him getting a cold last week, which didn't help. But finally, he has become accustomed to the change and is once again going to sleep without much fuss at night. He still talks about the sack sometimes, but we remind him that he is too big for it and that he now uses blankets like a big boy.

I think we are both dreading the transition to a new bed. He loves his crib. He's never tried to climb out and he often doesn't want to get up after a nap or in the morning. He likes to play in his crib after waking up. I hope this translates to playing in his bed, but I anticipate him getting out of bed on his own and coming to get us. Or not staying in his bed when we put him down at night. But we are trying to prepare him by pointing out his friends' big boy or big girl beds, which he seems to enjoy climbing into on his own.

In other respects, telling him what is coming seems to ease transitions, so hopefully this will help. For example, if we unexpectedly tell him it's time for bed while he's playing, he rebels. But if I warn him by saying "After we do this puzzle, we're going to change your diaper and get in pajamas." then he sometimes even goes along willingly. And despite the rough week when he transitioned from sleep sack to blankets, overall, it wasn't too bad. If he can adjust to sleeping in a new bed within a week, I'll be happy. Surprised, but happy.

02 June 2009

Eat doggie poop

This is not a phrase I expected to hear from my 2 year old. Maybe when he is 3 or 4 and in love with all things disgusting. But yesterday, after his nap, he was playing in his crib (he is rarely ready to get out of bed when he first wakes up) and he put the hat of his toy elephant in his mouth. I said "Don't eat the elephant!" in mock surprise. To which he replied "Eat doggie poop" and giggled.

I wasn't sure I heard him right so I had him repeat it and then said "Eat doggie poop?" To which he replied "Yeah!" and laughed some more. When I asked him who said that (not expecting him to have come up with such a clever idea at this age, or at least not expecting him to know what doggie poop is) he replied "Kim!"

I called Thom at work and said "Do you know what your son just said?" and told him about Aaron's new joke. We had a good laugh and joked that we'd have to talk to Kim about this.

Kim laughed today when we talked about it and said seriously "Aaron, we have to talk." They were at the park yesterday and there was a lot of dog poop which she was warning Aaron to avoid. He was good about recognizing it and avoiding it. But when she said "Ew, dog poop. Yucky", it reminded him of when she says "yucky" when he tries to drink the bath water. He has already decided that it is funny to say "Yummy. Drink." about the bath water when Kim tells him it is yucky. So when she called the dog poop yucky, he realized it would be funny to pretend the opposite and said "Eat doggie poop!" Of course she laughed, letting Aaron know this was funny and making him repeat it to mommy.

I guess we are already at the stage where disgusting things are funny. Who knew it started so young?