I realized recently that it has been almost 2 months since I posted last. I don’t really like blogging, so I’m officially giving up on it.
I am going to keep up with photos, and I’m going to write descriptive captions that will hopefully keep you updated on what we’re up to.
I’ll also keep up the the twitter at Peyton_WH
If you would like to get a monthly photo update email, email me at jenniferhuff@gmail.com and let me know!
Yesterday Peyton had quite a very culinarily adventurous day. We went out to lunch with some friends to a unique bakery. It’s cooperatively owned and widely known for fantastic pizzas, but the catch is that they only make one kind of pizza a day. Yesterday it happened to be spinach, red onion, mushroom, pine nuts, and bleu cheese. Not something that immediately jumps out at you as kid friendly, but I figured we’d go for it. It turned out great! Peyton and I both loved it, and he ate an entire piece himself.
Then we also went out to dinner to a Spanish fusion tapas restaurant. There were five adults and Peyton, so we decided we would just order a whole slew of the small plates and share. Peyton tried everything except the ribs. I think the bone weirded him out.
He tasted and loved calamari, garlic fries, vegetable empanadas, grilled asparagus, Bar-B-Q Pulled Pork Sliders, Braised Lamb Tacos, and chicken fettuccine. A lot of these came with sauces which he especially loved, particularly the smoked paprika aioli that came with the french fries. He liked the sauce more than the french fries and eventually started just using the fries like a spoon for sauce, dipping it in, sucking it off, then dipping it in again. After 5 or 6 dips the fry would get soggy so he just chucked it back in the bowl and got a new one. Ha!
We went for ice cream afterwards, and believe it or not my calamari lamb bleu cheese eating son was violently opposed to vanilla ice cream. Go figure.
On a side note, Peyton is now sleeping through the night. In the last 32 nights he has slept straight through 26 of them. During the first 19 months of his life he slept through fewer than 26 nights so as you can imagine I am ecstatic. I’m hoping a whole month is long enough that I’m not jinxing myself by even mentioning it!
I have resisted joining Twitter, mostly because I think the name sounds dumb. I just can’t bring myself to say that I “tweet”. Plus, I think I would spend a lot of time putting stuff on there that nobody cares about. “I got a new washing machine!” “I need to lose weight.” “We’re going to the park.” “Story time at the library is fun!” “The cat puked on the floor again.” Blah, blah, blah.
But I had the thought that Twitter could be a great place for Peyton soundbytes, especially as he starts talking more and more. So you can follow Peyton on twitter at Peyton_WH. Or, you can just see the updates in the sidebar to the right.
I have put a bunch of pictures up from March, as well as from our Tahoe trip.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post on this blog. I tend to get caught up in my poker blog, and since I spend a good deal of time in front of the computer working I just never seem to get around to posting my observations of Peyton.
Jen and I recently spent four fun filled days in a 7 bedroom cabin in lake Tahoe with our closest friends. As I’m sure you can imagine it was great fun for all of us. The cabin had an indoor pool, a hot tub, a sauna, a pool table, a 106″ movie screen with 9 reclining chairs, and a slew of other amenities.
Peyton had a great time playing in the snow, showing off for all of the people and perhaps most of all playing with and on the pool table. Multicolored balls with numbers on them that roll forever and go into holes is right up his ally these days.
The day after we got back Jen and Peyton left to spend two days at Jen’s parent’s house. This is not a unique occurrence and usually I spend the time that they are gone working. Normally, I put in a little extra time at the poker tables, have a glass or wine or two, watch some TV and go to sleep.
But today I took the day off. I have a major series of poker tournaments starting tomorrow and I’ll be working the next twelve days straight. I read the paper at a coffee shop, went to a movie, and spent plenty of time just sitting around. This gave me some time to reflect on my life and my family.
I couldn’t be much happier with my life. Sure I could have more money, be a little thinner, and maybe a little smarter, but when I really think about it, my life it as good as anyone could reasonably hope for. And the biggest reasons why I’m so happy are my wife and my son.
While we’ve only been married for a little less than 4 years, Jen and I have been together for 10 and in that time I’ve never met anyone who I could fathom being as good for me as she is. We fight sometimes, but it’s always about stuff that doesn’t matter and we always work it out before we go to bed. We always end every e-mail and every night with “I love you.” We still laugh about the same things we always have. I think she get’s more beautiful every year.
And then there’s Peyton. I literally could not imagine a better son. I know he’s not even two yet, but so far he is everything I could ever want in a child. He’s always happy to see me and just a little sad whever I leave. He is so good looking and cute that I am surprised when strangers don’t smile at him. He is so smart that I feel like he’s going to surpass me by the time he’s 13. There is nothing in the world like being called “Daddy.”
Jen and Peyton, I love you both dearly.
So I know it’s pretty common for little boys to like cars and trucks, but Peyton really likes cars a trucks. They have totally eclipsed balls as far as “coolest thing in the world.” When we’re walking through a parking lot he points at all the cars like we’re at some kind of car show and exclaims excitedly that they all have wheels. “Caaaa!!!! Weeee!!!!!”
Garbage trucks are all the rage, and in fact he calls all big vehicles, except for busses, “baabee gocks”
He’s been watching the Disney movie Cars with Dave occasionally and really enjoys it. Dave put Nascar on the other day and Peyton literally threw down the toy he was playing with, ran over to the couch, shouted, “SIT!” and was then totally enthralled by Nascar for the next 15 minutes. He likes that those cars have wheels and that they go round and round. Round and round is one of his favorite games, he likes running in a circle around anything, no matter how big or small.
This all seemed like pretty normal toddler boy behavior until the other day when he found the Consumer Reports 2009 car buying guide. I carry it around in the diaper bag now because he LOVES IT! All I can think of is Joe Dirt’s love for Autotrader magazine…
I like to think of myself as a crafty person. I have a Martha Stewart living subscription and actually do some of the things in there from time to time. I am crafty enough that I am totally buying this shirt the next time I’m in the market for maternity clothes. My talents are by no means universal, though, as I have recently confirmed. I am pretty comfortable with paper crafts. I like doing things that involve designing things on the computer, printing them out, cutting, gluing, etc. I’ve made a lot of invitations in my day. I also like party decorating, which works out well with the invitation thing.
Sewing, however, is a totally different story. You may recall the pants I made for Dave and Peyton. They are not as good as they look in the picture, with uneven seams and loose threads all over the place. Also, they took forever. Last week I made another attempt at using the sewing machine. I thought it would be cute to make Peyton’s Halloween costume into a stuffed dragon. It didn’t work. It’s actually quite frightening, although Peyton thought it was funny. Yes, the legs are totally crooked. I was going to sew a piece of felt over the face hole, but it just didn’t seem worth the effort at that point.
I’ve never done much with wood or painting, but I wanted to make a height chart that wasn’t cardboard and didn’t have lots of colors and animals all over it. I also wanted one tall enough to measure Peyton to adult height. So I got a piece of wood, painted it black, then painted on some measurement markings and numbers. It’s a 6 foot piece of wood and it’s 8 inches off the ground so it should be sufficiently tall. I need to get a white pen to write on it with. I really like how it turned out!
Peyton is actually 32″ tall. We couldn’t get him to stand right up against the board and that combined with him looking up makes him look a little taller in the picture.
A few weeks ago we started having family dinners. This has been a spectacular success and Peyton absolutely loves it. He gets very excited about the fact that we all have forks (pohk), napkins (papkie), and milk (muk). He’s been eating two to three times as much as he used to and he’s now willing to try anything. He loves salmon, steak and grapefruit (beep-ba). He eats half a grapefruit every morning with his breakfast and the only reason he doesn’t eat more is that we split one and I want my whole half. I think I’ll have to start cutting up one for each of us. Every time I go near the fruit basket he says, “beep-ba? beep-ba? yeah? beep-ba?”
Last night we had buffalo burgers and asparagus and decided to let him try ketchup and mustard as well. It was all a big hit!
Here is a video of Peyton doing a puzzle. I must mention that I did not teach or train him to do this. The other day he was not napping, so in an effort to encourage some quiet time I just put him in his crib with the puzzle. Half an hour later I went up and got him and we played puzzle together. I noticed that he pointed to the empty spot where the flower goes, said “flower”, found the flower piece and put it in. So I quizzed him on the rest of the spots and he knew them! Except for phone, though, I had to tell him what that piece was called. This puzzle was actually mine as a toddler and apparently phones now a days just don’t look how they did in the 80’s! He gets a little distracted at the end hiding the pieces in the couch, but you get the picture.
We’ve gone on a couple family outings lately that were pretty fun.
On Wednesday we went to see the Warriors play the Lakers. A friend of ours asked if we wanted to go and at first I was like, “no way! The game starts at 7:30, that’s way too late for Peyton!” But then I remembered how he LOVES to watch people play basketball at the park. He will watch ANYONE play, no matter how bad they are, and shouts encouraging yeahs and wows at them. I also remembered that he’s been taking forever to fall asleep lately, and usually is awake until 9:30 or so anyway. So we went and we all had a great time. It was a good game, even though the Warriors lost, and Peyton had a blast. He clapped along with the Warriors fans and Lakers fans both, and we taught him how to boo too. He thought that was hilarious! He also loved riding the BART and shouted “rie! rie!” the whole way home.
Today the three of us decided on the spur of the moment to take a trip to Best Buy and have dinner out at P.F. Chang’s. Little did I know that Best Buy was also a toddler playground! They have conveniently painted yellow lines along all the aisles which Peyton loved walking along. He did this while carrying two copies of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which he picked out himself.
At P.F. Chang’s Dave ordered the dynamite shrimp appetizer. While the taste is, in fact, dynamite, the name is actually referring to it’s spiciness, so we weren’t planning on giving any to Peyton. This was a poorly thought out plan, though, because it was the only food on the table and he was not having any of that. So we gave him some! And he loved it! He ate 4 whole spicy shrimps! I’m a vindaloo ordering kind of girl so I’m excited that he seems to be taking after me in that regard. He then proceeded to eat more than his fair share of ginger chicken with broccoli and Mongolian beef. He had a great time and even ate his fortune cookie. But get this, it had no fortune! I think that can’t be good luck, for your very first fortune cookie ever to be empty. Or maybe it is good luck. Like his future is whatever he wants it to be or something. We topped the evening off with a trip to Cold Stone Creamery where Peyton had his first taste of ice cream. This obviously went over well.
On an unrelated note, I got a new camera lens! I like it!
I have recently learned of a practice in our city called Freecycling. There is a group on Yahoo where people post things they would like to get rid of and if you want it you send them an email saying so. Then they put the item on their front porch, tell you their address, and you pick it up! Most of the stuff is total garbage. People around here are seriously into the whole recycle reduce reuse thing, and they give away things I would not think twice about just throwing in the trash. Some examples:
- A woman had laser eye surgery. She wanted to give away her partial bottle of contact solution, which she did assure people had been used under sanitary circumstances
- Expired baby rice cereal. Apparently you can make wallpaper paste out of it.
- wire hangers
- The plastic bags newspapers come in when it’s rainy. The suggestion was to use them for “doggie duty”
But there’s a few gems in there, too. In fact, today Peyton and I picked up a Fisher Price Little People Discovery City! It needs batteries, and was a little dusty, but after a good wipe down it was as good as new. And he loves it! In fact, as I write this Peyton is playing with it. I think this may be a first that I decide to do anything on the computer that requires more time and attention than checking my email or the most recent LOLcats while he is awake. It’s not that he doesn’t play by himself sometimes, it’s just that so far Peyton has not found a toy that was more fun than my laptop. If I had attempted this before today this post would look like this:
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Today Peyton also had his 18 month check up. He is now 32 inches and 27 pounds. He actually weighed 27 pounds at his 15 month appointment also, but his doctor wasn’t concerned. For one thing, he’s still in the 75th percentile for weight so it’s not like he’s exactly a skinny minnie. Also she said it was pretty normal for kids his age to alternate between gaining height and weight. There’s not really too much else to report. Peyton has 4 more teeth coming in to add to the 12 he already has. The doctor said we could get him a potty to start getting him used to it. It would normally still be a little early, but because he tells us when he poops and he intentionally pees in the tub every night before his bath she thinks he could be ready.
