Boys will be boys

Well, what's the answer?  Are boys and girls, men and women, really different?  Do they develop differently, play differently, learn differently?  The nature-nurture debate is one that has fascinated me for a long time, and it has come up in a personal way at regular intervals throughout my life.

As a teacher, I am still reminded every so often by the powers-that-be that boys and girls learn differently, and we have to make sure to include lots of different teaching methods to reach both genders.  Yep on the different methods, not so much on its being related to gender.  In my experience, everyone learns better if you mix it up a bit, include multiple senses, and try to engage as much of the brain as possible.

Yet there is a persistent belief among elementary teachers that it's a lot harder to have a class that is heavy on the boys.  That class will automatically be presumed to be more active and contain more behavior problems.  The class that is heavy on the girls is sighed over with relief.  This makes me profoundly sad, for all of us.

But it's hard - as a parent or as a teacher - to deny that there seem to be differences between the boys as a group and the girls as a group.  So I've often wondered what caused it.  Are we just born with differences, or are they socialized?  The centrist in me wants to just nod at the middle ground and say that it's surely a combination.  That's probably still my official position.

Then I became a parent, and it's been a whole new perspective for me on the gender debate.  We let the sex of our first child be a surprise, and it was incredible to me how hard it was to find neutral items - clothes, gear, etc. - to put on our registry.  I don't have any particular love for yellow and green, but we were showered with quite a lot of those colors.  I think people were probably relieved when Sebastian was born and they could just go the easy route of getting "boy stuff."  Even I found that I loved dressing him in the new "boy" clothes because they were a change from the pastel neutrals, and blue is my favorite color anyway.

I'm thinking, though, that clothes and nursery decorations don't make much difference.  It's really our behavior toward our kids and our reactions to the little people they already are that contributes to the nurture side of this gender story.  It's the research that showed that people treated the same baby differently depending on what s/he was wearing.  They jiggled and bounced the "boy" more, talked to and cooed over the "girl" more.  The same exact baby!  So you can't say that it was some innate thing about the child him or herself that caused the adults to act in a certain way.

Now there is more research coming out that contradicts our notions of innate traits.  Girls talk sooner?  Turns out that mothers talk significantly more to girls than to boys, and we already know that the more you talk to and with a child, the better his or her language skills will be.  Boys are more active and less verbal?  That's a lot like saying that girls aren't as good at math, and anyone who knows me knows what I think of that drivel.

So how does that come back around to me as a parent?  Well, I'm finding it hard lately not to be frustrated at how difficult it is to find traditionally girl toys for my son that don't look girly.  It took my family a long time to find doll accessories (bed, high chair, stroller) that were not pink.  Play kitchens and dollhouses that are gender-neutral are typically the wooden ones that cost way more (though I love wooden toys, and like to tell myself that I'd be buying those even if I had a girl first).  It irks me, but I'm not willing to be deterred or to fill up my house with toy vehicles.

Lo and behold, my son was cooking pancakes and strawberries the other day.  {No, I don't cook strawberries, but he loves them right now, so if you ask what he's cooking, that's usually his first answer.}  He spent ten minutes giving a baby a bottle of milk at a friend's house the other day.

And here he is, helping his little dollhouse people go "up, up the steps, sit down, and go wheeee down the swing."

However, the centrist in me is unable to deny that most of his fascination with the kitchen is opening and closing doors or turning knobs; with the baby doll he mostly likes to push the (empty) stroller around; the dollhouse gets used mostly as he pushes the little wheelbarrow all around each floor and opens and shuts every little drawer or door on every little dresser or closet.  

I also confess that at the library the other day, the books I snatched off the shelf quickly before he emptied the shelves were pretty much all about cars and trains.  He loves those topics, so they were a safe bet.  There was one called Daddy Hugs, too, but it honestly hasn't been given nearly as much love as Hey Mr. Choo-Choo, Where are You Going?  

So, research aside, the answers to these questions will still remain a mystery to me.  Are boys and girls different as a group?  Do we treat them differently just based on their sex or gender?  Are we reacting to the preferences they are showing us?  

I don't know the answer to the first question, at least not in how it is by nature, but I think the answer to the other two is a resounding yes.  If that's true, then is it always a bad thing?  If it's a bad thing, how do we counteract it?

I've decided that if I give him a fire truck for his birthday AND stuff for his baby doll and just let him play with each as he chooses (and encourage both), that's the best I can do right now.

I have a feeling I'll be revisiting this, as the questions get harder than just which toys to buy or how to decorate the new nursery...

Meanwhile, here's a question to ask yourself:  When you read the title of this post, what did you think it would be about?

Riding along

It's amazing how many things we let our children do, even though it terrifies us.  For example, we encourage them to learn to walk, even though they are a lot closer to the ground when crawling and in far less danger of hitting their heads on every sharp corner we never saw when we were babyproofing.

Not only do we allow these moves toward independence, we celebrate them.  "Yay, first steps!  Good job, you walked up the stairs without holding my hands!"  And we try to crowd out that he's not a baby anymore feeling  or the what have we gotten ourselves into? feeling with one of pride.

That's how it felt when I was watching this moment happen:

He was listening so carefully as his daddy was teaching him about pedaling, trying to figure out exactly what this contraption was supposed to do.

He looks like such a big boy now, and being able to ride a tricycle means all sorts of other dangerous possibilities.  Yes, I need to go buy a helmet, but even with that I am envisioning the first of many skinned knees and elbows this summer.  But that's life, and we want them to live it, no matter how much we wish we could keep them safely in the stroller forever.

And just look at how proud he is once he gets the idea (not of pedaling yet, but of steering, which is exciting, too)!

It's hard not to catch that enthusiasm.

Jealous Much?

I'm going to cheat a little bit for All About Me Monday...




...and link up to a post I wrote last fall about this very topic.

http://teamrasler.blogspot.com/2009/11/taming-green-eyed-monster.html

What I'm jealous about changes a bit, but my struggle with this issue remains, much to my dismay, fairly constant.  Maybe if we write about this again in a year I'll have figured out how to beat this green-eyed monster into submission.

To read more posts, visit Mommy Brain!

Medically Uninteresting

Two years ago (or was it three?), I had a problem with my eye.  It was kind of gross, so I won't go into details now, but the point was that I was referred to a specialist who was captivated by my condition.  It was not a sty like my family doctor thought, he told me, and it wasn't even the normal version of whatever it was it ended up being (Canaliculitis, for those who are wondering).  

As he did the examination, he told me that my problem was very interesting.  I, a bit nervous about having my eye so closely examined, replied, "Well, I guess that's good."

He immediately sat back away from me and said, "Oh no.  Interesting is never good in a medical context.  What you always want to be is medically uninteresting."

I've never forgotten this.  In fact, it became my motto when I got pregnant the first time around.  I was fortunate in that I pretty much had the most medically uninteresting pregnancy there was, and I've since heard so many other stories about difficulties with pregnancies, births, and infant illness that I count my blessings every day for being boring.

And so I am here to report that after failing the initial glucose tolerance test and having to sit through the three-hour version, I am back to being medically uninteresting.

Translation:  I don't have gestational diabetes!

Here's hoping that my boring streak continues.

Tot Spot Café

I never had a chance to write about last week's Friday Field Trip with everything else going on.

{Note:  I should find out today whether I have gestational diabetes, but at least I discovered that I could handle the four blood draws yesterday morning more or less calmly.  Whew.}

Anyway, my good friend and I drove a loooong way north to Woodinville to go to a place we'd heard was The Place to take your kids and meet up with friends.  Tot Spot Café is basically a big playroom with couches and tables all around it so you can order your coffee (or in my case, chai tea) and food and sit together while your kids wear themselves out.

First of all, it's a brilliant idea, and we're not sure why one of these places hasn't opened up a lot closer to us.  Second, once our boys got over how crowded and bright and busy the play area was...

they had a good time and so did we.

But the main attraction was this fabulous climb & slide that they had gotten installed 2 days prior to our visit.

This thing was a turning point in our lives.  Up until now, Sebastian has loved slides, but wanted help to do them.  Even the small ones.  He was capable of climbing up, sitting down, and sliding without my help most of the time, but he would get anxious and since my hand was always nearby, it was easier to grab it than to sort it out himself.  Also, I confess that I hadn't let him do the really big slides at the playgrounds by himself because there were always spaces on the play structures with open holes (usually with ladders for bigger kids to climb), and it made me nervous having him up there by himself.  He's still not entirely coordinated.

But as I get bigger, it's getting harder for me to climb up and slide down with him, and these tube slides are out.  I told him he could go on the slide if he would do it himself.  I climbed up and sat on the ledge, and my friend stood at the bottom for the first two runs.  Then I declared that was it, and brought my large self back down to the ground.  Well, that was NOT going to be it for my little slider.  Somehow he believed that I wasn't going to help him this time, and you know what?  He figured it out.

Sebastian went up and down this contraption so often that he got all sweaty and had to change into a t-shirt.  He came down smiling, singing, laughing, and having the best time of his little life.

Since then, he's been doing slides at every playground like a champ, big ones and little.  {Yes, I found a park that had a big slide without all the scary holes between the steps and the slide itself.  More on my favorite parks for toddlers in some future post.}  The point is that both of us needed the nudge to let go.  I think this is the beginning of a pattern for how our second child will force some much-needed independence.

As for the Tot Spot Café?  It's fine, but not worth the drive for anything other than a field trip.  My girlfriend and I spent most of the time dreaming up ideas for our own place that we would open closer to home, have more organized, and certainly serve better food - or better yet, set up shop next to a place that served great food!  

This is what he looked like at the end of this very exciting morning...

Cute, eh?  Too bad he slept 20 minutes in the car and then didn't sleep again until bedtime.  Sigh.  

Today's Field Trip is to Dizzy's Tumblebus in Bellevue.  If it's good, this may be a place that Sebastian frequents next year, as it is close to Bellevue College where I hope to take the infant class with our little one once a week!

Anxiety

For as long as I can remember, I've had a needle phobia.

And I'm trying not to freak out about tomorrow.

I cannot watch people getting shots on television, and you can imagine that ER was never my favorite show.  I refused the standard IV when I was in labor.  I'm fine with blood and scrapes and most other sorts of injuries, but no needles and no scalpels, thank you.

Adding to this, I have fainted twice while giving blood.  The first time was in high school, and it was the first and last time I ever participated in a blood drive.  I hadn't eaten much for breakfast (big mistake), so even though I knew not to watch while they put in the needle, I still had to be rushed over to some corner of the gymnasium where they made me lie down and then drink juice.  Apparently my sheet-white face freaked out some of the guys there to give blood that day and they had to be assured that this is very uncommon before they were willing to sit down for their turns.

Since then, I've begged off the blood drives, figuring that was a sign from above that I should steer clear.  Then I got pregnant.  And let me tell you, they LOVE taking your blood and testing it when you are pregnant.

Which leads me to the second time I fainted while giving blood.  I informed the lab tech that I don't do well with needles and to please feel free not to tell me what he was doing but just to do it while I looked the other way.  He proceeded to explain that he was going to use a smaller (butterfly?) needle, etc., all while I tried not to freak out.  I looked away, he got the ball rolling, and I told him I was feeling a bit odd.  The next thing I knew, I was sitting there with my head more or less between my knees and the guy was apologizing profusely.  The reason?  When I had fainted, the needle had popped out and blood had spilled all over my pants.  Awesome.

So now I have a protocol.  I go in, I inform them that I faint when I give blood and must lie down.  I INSIST that I do not want to hear anything about the freaking needle and I say, as kindly as possible, "I would really rather not hear any more, thanks," when they inevitably forget.

Last week I had to go get tested for gestational diabetes, which I didn't have the first time around.  It had been a rough night before that and I hadn't eaten much for lunch.  So it should come as no surprise that my blood sugar level came back slightly elevated.  They referred me to the hideous three-hour test, which I am taking in the morning.

I was advised to eat a meal at 10 p.m. that has protein, which I did (a turkey quiche I got from PCC - yum).  Then I have to fast until 8 a.m.  They take my blood four times, once before I drink the disgustingly sugary concoction, and once every hour thereafter for three hours.  FOUR TIMES.

I am trying to remain calm and attempting to look at it as a three-hour break in which I am forced to do nothing but read and relax.  But relaxing is going to be difficult.  I may spend a significant time repeating the mantra I've had for almost two years now, "If you can survive natural childbirth to an 8-lb. baby after 21 hours of labor, you can survive anything."  I don't know how long that will sustain me, though, because pain is obviously something I can handle.  Needles?  I'm not so sure.

So... yeah.  I'll find out whether I have gestational diabetes on Friday, but by noon tomorrow I will have some results on the level of my own inner strength.

Wish me luck.

Wanted: Sleep

I'm already having one of those days, and it isn't even 7:00 a.m. yet.  I am exhausted, and I've learned that sleep is the key to pretty much everything else related to my physical, mental, and emotional health.

I don't remember being this tired when I was pregnant with Sebastian, or at least, not until the end.  Was it because I just had to get up and go teach every day?  I will say that teaching is not as hard as being with an infant (or two!) all day, but it is harder than being with a toddler.  (I'm talking about the physical work, though, not all the rest of it.  Overall, being a mother is still the hardest job I've ever had.) Physically, though, Sebastian can do a lot by himself and he (usually) takes a 2-hour nap.  Though I try to get things done during his nap, play with him during the day, and do hoist him up and down and chase after him a lot, I still get to sit down a lot more than I did when I was teaching.  He also plays by himself for longer stretches now, which lets me remember how tired I am.  When teaching, I was pretty much always "on" so I sometimes wouldn't realize how tired I was until lunchtime or often until the end of the day.

Not so much this time.  I wake up multiple times a night due to discomfort, restless leg, upset stomach, or just a busy brain.  It seems like the days when I try to get things done during naptime, Sebastian takes a nice, long one.  The days I think I should just give in and take a nap?  He wakes up after under an hour, crying his eyes out.  He'll calm himself down within a few minutes, but it's the end of the nap - his and mine.

I've been sleep-deprived before, of course, many times within the past 2 years.  But somehow this feels different, perhaps because it feels more pointless.  There is no infant that needs to eat throughout the night, no baby that needs to learn how to go to sleep on his own, no one who needs me to be awake 20 hours out of every day!

And the restless leg syndrome just feels like the universe is mocking me.  Just when I think I am finally in bed early, cuddled up with my Snoogle (full-body pillow - thanks, D!), and going to get a good night's sleep, that's when it hits.  That relentless urge to move that left leg.  And it's not like moving around or changing positions is particularly easy these days, so I usually get up and walk around downstairs for a while, thereby missing the window in which I would've fallen asleep quickly and then being awake for another hour or two...only to have the restless leg strike again the first time I wake up and need to use the bathroom and try to go back to sleep.

Seriously, it's maddening.

I have lots of other posts to write, like what we thought of Tot Spot Cafe last Friday, toilet training, the fun flannel/felt board project  I made yesterday, and about a crazy idea I had for what to do with my life, but... no.  Nothing else can seep out of my brain right now until I get some SLEEP.

Which I can't at the moment because Sebastian is upstairs talking about going to Chicago, opening and closing the garage, needing to pee, and being careful.  Look out, Uncle Bill & Aunt Jen:  if I don't get some rest soon, he may find his imaginary trips to Chicago become a reality.

A few of our favorite things

As I watched Sebastian play with his "laptop" yesterday for a half hour while I folded and put away laundry, I began thinking of which wonderful items have been or are our favorites. Knowing many other parents out there, I thought it would be fun to begin a list that might help people with kids who are younger than Sebastian, or inspire those of you with older kids to let me in on which are your child's favorites.

I confess right up front that Sebastian has too many toys. I have an addiction to consignment shopping that means we get great items for very low prices. He also has lots of loving relatives and family friends who buy him cool things. He has loved and played with almost all of them, but here in the Toy Hall of Fame, I'm only including items that have really stood the test of time. He played with them consistently over many months. As I went through the pictures (which was the fun part of writing this post), even I was surprised at how long he'd been playing with some of them - over a year in some cases!

Anyway, here are a few of the items that have given Sebastian hours of joy...and his parents hours of time to get things done or just have a short rest!

Fisher Price Rainforest playmat.  I don't think I would have survived those months of watching two babies without this.  They both loved it.  The best part was that it played music if you nudged one of the four sides and flashed lights that were enthralling, but whether the boys were on their backs or their tummies, it was always good for at least 10 minutes of time to deal with the other one!

Baby Einstein jumper.  To be honest, I'd love to trade this in for a Fisher Price jumperoo, which I think is a better product.  The creepy frog eyes in the seat scared me away from it, but they make a cute one with a monkey seat now that I'm going to look for in the next half year for the little rasler.  But I will say that this jumper still was big fun for a long, long time.





The Bumbo chair and this fabulous lion toy from an Eric Carle line that my mom found.  He loved both of these items.

Stacking/nesting cups!  We love these so much that we have several sets - in the living room, in the bathtub, in the water table, at Gramma's house... This set is the best, but I can't figure out right now which brand it is to tell you.  I'll try to figure it out later and update this post.  The main thing is that it has cute designs on the bottom to use in the sand or with Playdoh, as well as little holes that make it fun to use in the bath.  It is also nice because it has 10 cups, so for a while we kept five in his room and five downstairs.  The only bad thing about this one is that if you lose one in the middle (which I did for a while), it doesn't stack properly all the way up.

Wooden train set.  This set began as a Thomas train starter set and has grown as I've found more and more components at consignment sales.   He loves the bridges and tunnels the best.

This is a bus with MegaBlocks inside (and a driver).  This is one of the toys he's had and loved for over a year.

This Little Tikes truck with a handle is brilliant.  It came with some farm animals that can ride on it, too that aren't in the picture.  They have others in the set like a fire truck, garbage truck, etc.  The handle is what makes it so great, as well as the cute face on the front.  Another toy he still plays with after a year.

LeapFrog Learn & Groove table.  He began playing with it when he was much shorter and not even walking yet.  I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful this toy is.  When he got bored with the English, we switched it to Spanish (which has a much catchier alphabet song, too, btw), and now he can flip all the switches himself, announcing, "This English.  This Spanish." It has songs, the alphabet, numbers, colors, instruments, and lots more.  The legs are removable, too, so it can just sit on the floor when they are really small.  This may be one that he will have to share with his sibling pretty early on!

This V-Tech baby laptop is fabulous, too.  Sebastian got it for a first birthday present and, as you can tell from how this started, still plays with it for long periods of time.  He knows what each button does and can tell me which one to press to hear a particular song on the music setting, e.g. blue sfare (square) play bingo song!

More great LeapFrog products.  We have the Fridge farm set as well as Fridge Phonics.  Seriously, I don't know how else I could get dinner on the table some nights if he weren't playing with these.  He knows all these animal sounds and every single one of his letters.  Thank you, LeapFrog.

We got him the Bubble Wash vehicle set that we are saving as a present from his little sibling this summer.  Figured we should start off their relationship on a good foot.

I think this one is another Fisher Price, but the main attraction is that you push the red bird on top of the elephant, and it makes an elephant trumpeting noise, then rolls along the floor, pulling some other animals behind it if they are attached.  The genius of the product is that it turns slightly as it starts to go each time, so Sebastian has spent hours overall following the thing around as it goes unexpectedly under the table or chairs in the kitchen.  Good fun.

The only other Baby Einstein product either of us really love is this color game.  If you squeeze one of the colored handles, it tells you the color and plays a little song as it flashes that color on top (epileptics beware: it flashes fast!).  If you press two of the handles, it does the secondary color (e.g. blue and yellow becomes green).  It does this in three languages, too!  Plus the songs it plays are pretty fun classical pieces like the Can-can.

I can't remember what brand this little car is, but it's pretty great.  Sebastian used it to learn to walk and still loves to push it.  It can also sit down to use as a riding toy, but he is now too tall for it, so it's back to being pushed.









Other low-tech items that I don't seem to have pictures of Sebastian playing with (probably because I was getting something else done while he was busy), but that he has loved all the same:
Fisher Price stacking rings, 
shape sorter, and almost all of his Haba wooden toys, especially this brilliant stacker than can also be a pull toy:The Haba stuff is ridiculously expensive, but I get it all used, and since it is wooden, it looks pretty much brand new.































Two final notes:  First, all of these toys have also been tried and loved by many friends of similar ages to Sebastian, so I think they're pretty safe recommendations.  Second, I was in no way paid to endorse any of them, though I wouldn't mind getting a call from someone from Fisher Price, LeapFrog, or Haba!

Friday field trips

I know, it's not Friday (just wishful thinking), but I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks now.

A while back, I wrote about how I hate Fridays now that I stay at home full time. After writing that post, I decided to take my own advice that I used to give my students on a *very* regular basis: Solve the Problem.

One way to take back my good mood and enjoy the fact that I am with my son all the time is to take advantage of the opportunity to take him places. I get pretty tired of the same old haunts, so I came up with the idea of doing Friday Field Trips. Each week, I would take him somewhere that we didn't usually go. These could be places that are a bit too far away to go regularly, or maybe cost a little more than I would want to pay every week. They might be somewhere that wouldn't typically show up on a list of what to do with a toddler, but could be entertaining for both of us.

Our first Friday Field Trip was to the Children's Museum in Seattle. I'd been there once before with my visiting cousins, but it was Sebastian's first time. I would call it a minor success. He didn't love it as much as I was hoping he would because he's not quite into pretend play enough to really dig the mini-city they've got there. But he was still entertained for a long time, and just getting downtown and walking around Seattle Center was a wonderful break from our routine.

Rookie mistake: not bringing the stroller. I figured I could park close enough and Sebastian would enjoy walking around outside that day. True enough on the way into the museum... not so much on the way out after he'd been running around for 90 minutes. Oops.

Our second Friday Field Trip was to Kidzbounce in Preston, which turns out to be only about 15 minutes east of us. The description of it states that it's for kids over 2, so I hadn't really considered going until a few people in our parent/toddler class mentioned it the week before and how much fun their munchkins had. So off we went. There was one open space for bouncing that wasn't an enclosed house or a big daunting climb up to a slide. We spent our entire time there. Sebastian can't jump yet, but running and somersaulting were a big hit. See for yourself:

This place is going to be big time fun in another year or two!

Last week we went up to BC to celebrate our nephew's birthday, so we did our field trip on Saturday instead of Friday. My sister and I took the two boys to a place called Go Bananas in Langley, B.C., which like many of these places is more designed for older kids than toddlers, so again it's going to be a lot more fun in a few years. However, Sebastian and I did discover The Slides. We had to climb up a whole bunch of twisting steps to get to the top - he could do the bottom ones himself and then needed boosts for the upper ones - and it was a bit of a tight squeeze for my pregnant belly, but...

The Slides! So. Much. Fun.

I think we went down them about 15 times. Good workout for the mama, big smiles from the toddler. He even said, "whee!!!" as we flew down them. We were having such a good time that I didn't take any pictures, but you can probably find photos of the place itself on its website.

So far we are 3/3 on Friday Field Trips, and I'm hating Fridays less and less.

This week we're headed to the Tot Spot Cafe in Woodinville! More about that on Friday.

Happy birthdays

Yesterday my nephew turned two years old.  It was the first time I was at the hospital when a family member was born and the day I became an aunt.

My cousin is in the hospital right now, getting ready to or having just given birth to her first son.  We are all waiting eagerly for news of their health, the baby's name, and of course for pictures!

Today is also the birthday of my father-in-law, who was born in Toronto, and was telling me a few months ago all about how it was different when he was growing up.

It is the birthday of my older cousin, who was the oldest in his family and is now the proud and happy father of two children.

Finally, it is the day my own mother became a mom - to my lovely sister, fellow new mama, ice cream partner in crime, and best friend.

I have always loved birthdays.  But in the past two years, they have taken on more meaning for me, as I became part of the birth stories themselves, either personally or through hearing the retellings.  Now every birthday reminds me that on that day not only was someone born, but someone became a mother or a father (maybe not for the first time, but I'm starting to think that you become a parent all over again with each child).  Someone else became an aunt or an uncle, a cousin, a grandparent.  Others waited breathlessly by the phone or computer for the news.

Someone looked at that tiny face and said, "Welcome home."

In a lucky family like mine, everyone else wiped away happy tears, cheered, and said, "You're one of us now."

So a very happy birthday to all the wonderful people in my life who were born yesterday or today.  And a happy day to all the parents and family and friends who welcomed you into their lives and hearts, however many years ago that was.

First contact

I'm not entirely sure how or when we planned to tell Sebastian that he was going to become a big brother.  I know that a week is an eternity to a toddler, so I didn't think it would really come up much until we got a lot closer to my due date.

However, other people in our lives started talking about it pretty openly around Sebastian this past month, referring to the fact that there was a baby in my "belly", and I decided I'd better make sure he understood it from us rather than from everyone else.  Also I noticed a disturbing trend of Sebastian's to use my belly as a pushing-off point when getting on or off my lap.  So I made sure to give him a few facts and refer to our baby here and there (like showing him our baby's new crib, which he loves to roll around in.)

These days if you ask the munchkin where our baby is, he will point to my round self and say, "inaire" (which means "in there" in Toddlerese) or "in Mama belly."  If you ask him what the baby is doing, he will reply, "kicking Mama" or "moving."  This would always conclude our conversation about the baby, because he rapidly lost interest in something he could neither see nor hear nor play with.

Until yesterday.  Yesterday we had First Contact.

Sebastian was sitting next to me on the couch and put his head and hand down on my belly, which is now large enough and at just the right height to be a natural pillow.  Within a minute or two, the baby gave a little kick.  And you know what the big brother-to-be said?

"Again."

The baby then kicked again.  I asked Sebastian if he could feel the baby moving and he repeated, "Again."

Little Rasler obliged with a few more kicks, Sebastian was satisfied, and he slid off the couch and began playing.

I asked him if he had felt our baby moving around and he smiled and said, "Yes."

It was like they had had their first conversation, and it had gone pretty well.

I'm taking it as a good sign of things to come.

My little helper

As life moves at a crazy clip for most people, I read a blurb in Real Simple today about one way to slow down:  take a walk at a toddler's pace.

It's true.  My life really has slowed down to Sebastian's speed.  This is one of those realizations that makes me happy I've chosen to be home with him this year.  He can take 45 minutes to eat breakfast with his daddy if it suits them, 15 minutes to get into the car, or an hour to walk once around the block (ok, we often stop at the little playground to swing and slide, but still).

The main reason why everything is slow these days, though, is that Sebastian wants to do everything "all by himself."  Here are some of the little tasks that he manages to do (or "help" do) at every opportunity:

~Turn on/off lights
~Open/close doors
~Help pour his Cheerios and milk for breakfast
~Put away his toys
~Put his shoes on/take them off
~Zip up every zipper on any hoodie or jacket he is wearing
~Put on the lotion after his bath
~Push in his chair after he has a snack

and the all-time favorite, the one with which I can bribe him to get him to do anything else (like change his diaper) is:

~Press the button to open and close the garage!

Seriously, I need to take a video of what the boy looks like when he even thinks he is going to get to open the garage.  He will then talk about it randomly throughout the rest of the day.

"Sebastian help Mama open garage door goes nnnnnnnn!!!"
"Bastian open garage door white button, close garage door silver button!!"
(and many, many variations on this theme)

I'm encouraging this helpful nature as much as possible.  Right now I am living in the Land of Wishful Thinking:  instead of asking when the baby is leaving, perhaps my little helper will instead fetch diapers, burp cloths, or my water bottle whenever asked!

Stop laughing.  No bursting my bubble.  It could happen.