In addition to dissertation bootcamp, I also was on a wedding marathon. Two weddings in two weeks in Long Island? Sure, no problem! We drove up to NJ on April 24th and then headed up to LI on the 25th for Abhisek and Sujata's wedding (college friends) while Ryan's parents watched Hudson. Our blind faith in technology had us trust the GPS to get us to the wedding. Apparently, Onyx (the car/GPS) decided that we should see the Lincoln Tunnel and midtown Manhattan on that beautiful sunny afternoon. Needless to say, we got to the wedding an hour late and missed the entire ceremony. We did, however, get to catch up with a bunch of Ryan's fratenity brothers (including 3 of his little brothers) which was wonderful. After the wedding, we made the trek back to NJ. Our return trip took less than 2 hours, compared to the 3+ it took us to get there.
Less than a week later, we headed to NJ on Thursday April 30th. We headed to LI on Friday afternoon for Jade and Jerrol's wedding (grad school friends). Since we learned from our mistakes, we took a new route (Oynx was not in control this time). Unfortunately, that didn't help. It took us over 3 hours to get there again thanks to Friday afternoon traffic and rain. Again, we missed the ceremony. Despite of bad luck with driving, we had a wonderful time at the wedding and a much easier return trip that evening.
The following day, May 2, we celebrated Ryan's birthday (which is May 4) in NJ with his family and our good friends, Megan, Jay, and Alex. Meg and Jay brought their adorable little girl, Izabella, too. We had a great time catching up and eating TONS of food (including Ryan's Dad's famous lasagna and sangria and a delicious ice cream cake).
So, two weekends packed with travel and one dissertation proposal have affected my ability to blog. But now I'm back and have updates on Hudson....
- Well, he gets cuter by the minute (seriously).
- He's (finally) starting to grow some hair, albeit more in the back in the form of a curly rat tail.
- He's starting to pick up words. Right now he says: car, cat, ball (although this sometimes means "grapes" if he's also signing grapes), juice, Mom, Da, Pop Pop, on, up, down, shoe, owl, out, puff, banana, and apple. I was SO happy to finally hear MOM!!! For the longest time both Ryan and I were "Da".
- His cognitive development has been blowing us away too. He's been doing puzzles for a while now. I still have no idea how he learned that. He also can point out a bunch of things in his books (i.e. if you ask where the butterfly is on a certain page, he'll point to it). Again, I have no idea how he learned some of these random words like bumblebee, owl, and butterfly. Just the other day, Joyce (our nanny) told me that he was pointing out red and blue blocks when she asked. He's our little genius!! CMU, here he comes! :)
- He LOVES to kick his ball around. We're convinced that he's going to take right to soccer, although we'll probably push him to go the Jeff Reed route instead (sans the crazy hair and penchant for hoochie mamas).
- One of his favorite games is when Daddy throws him high into the air (much to Mommy's dismay as she prays to Jesus that Daddy catches him and doesn't break his back). As soon as Ryan catches him, he immediately says "UP!!" and is ready to go again.
- He's starting to want to do grown up things. I've given him a little responsibility by letting him feed the cats each morning. He LOVES it! He runs to get the scoop, puts some food in their dishes and then runs back for more. If he spills any, he picks them up and puts them in the dish (although sometimes he chooses to put them in the WATER dish). He seems so proud of his little chore.
- He's still 100% obsessed with vacuums. Thanks to my Mom, he has two loud play vacuums that he pushes around all day. But as soon as he spots one of the real vacuums he comes running and just wants to push it all over the place. He even knows that our small Dyson is for cleaning the couch, so he grabs it off of the charger and takes it over to the couch. Hopefully his desire to clean lasts through his teenage years!
- He's getting really good at going down the stairs. We tried to teach him to sit on his bum and "scooch" down. As soon as we say "scoochie", he starts to go. Unfortunately, he's getting a little too brave and is starting to go without Mommy or Daddy there to supervise or he tries to walk down. For those of you who have been to our house, you know that there are 50 stairs (literally, we counted), so this gets to be difficult.
- He loves to empty Daddy's wallet (Mommy taught him well!). He'll sit there forever just taking credit cards in and out.
- As for his sleep, I wish I could say it's great, but sadly, it's not. We did make alot of progess with our sleep training (see previous sleep posts), but we kinda plateaued and didn't move forward. In fact, it seems that we're actually regressing at this point :(
- On a better note, he is eating MUCH better. He's finally eating real food and not just crackers! Still not drinking milk, but he LOVES cheerios in milk, so we're getting some in. I think the kid could eat 2 adult sized bowls of cheerios in one sitting!
- He's mildly obsessed with dandelions. If he sees them in the grass, he will stand there and yell and point at them until you pick them. Every. Last. One. Of. Them. He's getting brave and beginning to touch them himself.
- He just had his 18 month doctor visit. He was in the 70th percentile for height, but only 20th for weight. We so glad that the summer is here so that he can wear shorts and stop rocking the floods!
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