Walking, Climbing, Getting into Trouble

This past week, Kai officially passed into toddlerhood. He's walking around with a stiff-legged, drunken sailor gait, keeping us in suspense with each step. Will he fall? Will he drop to his knees? No, he manages to stay up for ten, fifteen, twenty-five feet.

He's not content with just moving horizontally. He continues to scale chairs, boxes, our legs, the cat. This behavior is new for us as parents--Xander was not a scaler. I'm dreading the day when I look in and Kai has climbed the bookshelves.

Kai, at 14 months, pushed the chair over, scaled it,
and grabbed the skin cream bottle,
all before we noticed what was going on.

Xander and Kai in a bouncy chair that they are both way too big for.

Xander looks on (and Mommy does, too, with a camera)
as Kai  flings himself out of the Lego box after
a failed attempt to get up on the table.

We've quickly adjusted to Micah's new commute schedule. To avoid traffic, he leaves late and gets home late. We share morning childcare, and Micah drops Xander off at school. I race home at 5:00 to pick up Xander at school and relieve Clelia, the nanny, at 5:30. As long as I've got dinner prepped, I can get the kids fed, bathed, Kai asleep, and Xander in p.j.'s and ready for stories by the time Micah gets home at 8 pm. Two to three hours of driving a day for Micah is not great, but for now we're managing it.

Things get all messed up, however, when we don't get enough sleep, and that has been happening a lot lately.  We play musical beds, with both boys often ending up in our bed, snuggled up as close as humanly possible to me. I frequently jump ship and sleep in Xander's bed or on the sofa, unfairly leaving Micah to deal with the half-asleep squirming kids.

Observe Kai after a night of squirming and fussing:

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gnawing on Mommy's finger.

Observe Micah and Lauren after a night of Kai squirming and fussing in between us:

Micah after no sleep. (Dramatization)

Lauren after no sleep (not a dramatization)

Speaking of sleep, it's 11:03 on Sunday night, and I will be closing this now.

Valentine's Day

Life was too hectic this week to plan for a proper Valentine's Day celebration. Fortunately, I did have some time to help Xander make hearts for everyone in his preschool class. When I dropped him off today, kids were making heart-shaped sugar cookies in preparation for the school party.

Xander with friends at school Valentine's Day Party

At dinner tonight, Xander told me the Question of the Day was "love." "What is love?" I asked? Yes. See Xander's response below.

What is love? Answered by 3 and 4 year olds.

Man, these QoD's are great. Yes, love is flowers and scissors and that's all I can think about.

And Kai? He's toddling/crawling/kneewalking all over the place. He has this crazy sideways crawl he does when he's playing "chase me!" Every day with him is a little Valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Phase Changes

A quick lesson in parenting science. As noted in Wikipedia:

When a substance undergoes a phase transition (changes from one state of matter to another) it usually either takes up or releases energy. 

More specifically, when something melts, it takes up--you could say uses--energy.

Case in point: the phenomenon of baby melting. Infants as young as 6 months old have the ability to use up energy in a concentrated burst and melt out of a baby-handler's arms. Kai is an expert phase changer, and recently permitted us to catch him in action. Exhibit A: Kai as a solid state baby.

Exhibit B: Approximately 8 minutes later, after being told he could, under no circumstances, crawl out the front door, down the porch steps and onto the sidewalk while we were in the kitchen cooking breakfast, we observe phase change from solid to liquid state.

While the phase change is easily observed, the exact mechanism by which the child becomes physically impossible to hold is a mystery. This phase change is typically accompanied by a dramatic increase in weight, itself the topic of several ongoing experiments.