TRAIN!?!

I'm part of a local mom's group that does a zoo meetup every month through a mommy meetup program at the zoo. We meet two or three zoo representatives at 8:45am (before the zoo is even open!!) and they walk us through a special program they have set up for us. Each month's program has a different theme and includes an exhibit, zoo keeper talk and a story. Last week the theme was "The three R's and the train". Not sure how the train relates to the whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing, but hey, the kids were stoked.

Well, Johnny had never been on a train before and TOTALLY dug it. It was the only thing he could talk about the rest of the day. Here's a conversation I would have with Johnny:

Johnny: "Train?"

Me: "Yeah, we went on the train today."

Johnny: "Fun!"

Me: "It was fun, wasn't it?"

Johnny: "Train? Zoo?"

Me: "We won't be going there for awhile, honey."

Johnny: "Train?! TRAIN!!"

Me: "We're not going the train again today, but you can tell Daddy all about when he gets home."

Johnny: "Daddy? Train!!"

And over and over.

So, I decided that we would go on the train this past weekend so Daddy could see the look of exhilaration on Johnny's face.

TRAIN!

Waiting in line with Daddy

Choosing a seat

Squirming around waiting to get going

Unhappy toddler face

The second John gets off the train, he looks at me and says, "You lied to me. He HATED the train." Oops. I guess Johnny was squirming when they sat down and he kept saying, "Down! Off! Down! DOWN!", but I told John to just ignore it and he'd get over it when the train started moving, because that's what happened last time.

Well, he didn't get over it. Apparently he cried the whole time and embarrassed the heck out of John.

So then we get Johnny some food and put him on his bike to leave when he says, "Train? Fun!"

Toddlers are so weird.

Ode to the second child

Everyone always jokes about how the first child has thousands of pictures and albums devoted to just them, while the second child has fewer pictures and albums and each subsequent child has even fewer than the second. When I was pregnant with Hank, I told myself that I would do my best to keep that from happening.

Fail.

A couple of weeks ago, Hank rolled over for the first time. And I missed it. Hank was doing some tummy time while I was trying to keep Johnny occupied so he wouldn't keep pulling on Hank's head trying to get him "up". The next thing I know, Hank is lying on his back, watching Johnny and me wrestle. At first I felt a little guilty, especially as I remembered how stoked I was when Johnny finally rolled over. There were facebook posts, videos captured and pictures taken to memorialize the event. For Hank? Nada. Sure, I've tried to catch him rolling on camera, but he just won't do it.

This isn't the only thing he won't do when someone is watching... I swear he crawls when I'm not around. I (I mean, Hank) mentioned this is the 2 months old post and while he's not moving around with his belly raised and hands and knees moving in a coordinated fashion, he seems to be moving. Though I'm not sure how.

Here is the story.

I left Hank doing tummy time naked on his towel in the nursery. He was safely away from any potentially dangerous items, like furniture. As seen here:

I went into Johnny's room to get him up and dressed for the day. While putting on Johnny's shorts, I heard some crying from Hank's room. Not the I'm-sick-of-tummy-time-dammit crying, but the Oh-my-God-something-is-really-wrong-save-me! crying. So I go in there, and this is what I see:

Reenactment

Somehow, he had pushed himself off the towel and crammed his head under the ottoman. He was 8 weeks old when this happened, much too early to be this mobile. I was counting on him not walking until he was AT LEAST 9 months... looks like I'll be needed leashes much sooner than anticipated.

Note: No babies were harmed in the publishing of this blog.

Serious wingspan

This kid has THE longest arms I've ever seen... proportionally that is. I'm sure LeBron James's arms are longer than Hank's, but I'm also sure that in terms of arm to torso length ratio, Hank would beat out LeBron.

I took this one by holding my camera over my dad's head... not bad for a blind shot.

The Halfway Point

Remember when I said I was pregnant with the next baby? Yeah, well, I'm HALFWAY THERE! Holy-freaking-moly. 20 weeks along and 20 more to go. 20 more weeks and I'll be a mother of 2. How is that possible?!

I had the "big" ultrasound last week, where John and I got to see the baby and I have to say it was unreal. I don't feel particularly pregnant and it's weird that I'll be having another child when I already have one at home... weird. We aren't finding out the sex this time, just so everyone knows. We enjoyed it being a last-minute surprise with Johnny, so we're looking forward to it again with this baby. Sorry, no buying gender-specific baby clothes before the big event! Or maybe you can just get girl clothes since we have PLENTY of boy clothes between Lisa's baby and Johnny. :)

OH THE SCREAMING!!!!!

Johnny has learned a completely obnoxious delightful new skill. Shrieking at the top of his lungs. I'm not talking about sweet, excited, happy shrieking that children will resort to in order to convey their pleasure at some game. No, I'm talking about WHY-CAN'T-I-HAVE-THAT-RIGHT-NOW-I-HATE-YOU-MOM kind of shrieking. There is no rhyme or reason for this screaming that I can figure out, he does it when he's happy or frustrated or bored or just downright pissed when he can't have his way. Initially, I tried to give him what he wanted to quell the screaming; for instance, if he was reaching for something on the counter, I would hand him each object in turn to figure out what he wanted. This did not help the screaming situation. Now, I just ignore him when I can. I've decided that worst thing I can do is give some kind of reaction to the screaming so that it is justified, right? Or maybe I just need to give up on that until he learns some words and can communicate more clearly... or something.

All I know is that he learned this horrific invaluable skill right before we have to take a 5 hour flight to the East Coast. Thank you, Johnny, your timing couldn't be worse.

I'm working on a video of the screaming just you can share in this terrible special experience.

Hayseed Dixie

Johnny has another tooth! This time, it's not so flattering though.

See, last time, when his bottom tooth grew in, the one next to it grew in at the same time. This time? No dice. He's got one huge honkin' tooth on the top with no sign of its buddy on the left growing in. To make matters worse, the one on the OTHER side (the right side) is starting to come through. Have I mentioned that I have issues with symmetry?  Oh well. I guess he'll still be cute even though he looks like he should be playing the spoons in a bluegrass band.

Do you have dip in your mouth young man?!

One of Johnny's new favorite things to do is chew on his tongue. Weird, I know. He's not teething or anything yet (still too soon) but man does he love his tongue. It's so funny because half the time it looks like he's dipping . . . which I guess isn't funny since dip causes oral cancer and all of that, but whatever. I tried to catch him doing it on camera, but unfortunately, he's catching on to this camera stuff and is quite the ham (he's my son after all) . . . so I only managed to get a little video of it.

Click here to see video on YouTube.

Belly Button Morphology

Johnny's belly button has been a bit of a shape-shifter lately. Originally, he had a super-outy belly button, as can be seen in the photo below:

This is a picture of Johnny's belly button around 3 weeks of age, which is why it looks a little scabby. But, as you can see, it has its own shadow, therefore, it is most definitely raised.

Then, John was getting Johnny into his jammies for bed when he said, "Hey Kelly, look at this! His belly button changed!" I took a look and sure enough, it was different. It looked like this:

Definitely looks different from his 3-week-old belly button, right? Looking at the side profile you can see that it is now flatter; not exactly an inny, but certainly not the super-outy it was originally.

Then the next morning, I took off Johnny's jammies and here is what I see:

 

Back to normal! Weird, no?