Last week Dave decided to take a day off and the three of us went to the zoo.
It was fun! All the animals had Christmas trees in their habitats. The elephants were carrying them around and eating them! Peyton liked the elephants a lot and made lots of elephant noises. Elephant was actually one of the first animal noises he learned to make.
He also really liked the monkeys and the rabbits. We watched the vervet monkeys for a long time while we ate lunch and one of them climbed way up to the top of the cage and played peek a boo with us behind a wooden beam. Peyton still remembers this and if you ask him about the monkeys he says, “up up up!”
We got a membership and it turns out that two of the other moms in our group have memberships too so I think we’ll be going there pretty often.
That’s all I have to say about the zoo. This is a pretty boring blog post, so I’ll throw in some pictures.
Cheeeeese!
You can see in this picture that we got our hands stamped. That was another of Peyton’s favorite parts of the trip and he was pointing to all of our hands long after all the stamps had washed off.
On the Carousel
I’m normally not much of a baker, primarily because I would eat all of everything I made. Dave will have one cookie, or a tiny sliver of cake and be satisfied, leaving me to eat 15 cookies in a day. And I would do it. I’m not exaggerating.
Recently due to various circumstances I made two cakes. They turned out pretty well so I wanted to share them with you.
Over the past few years our friend Jake had often mentioned that he wanted a life sized statue of himself standing triumphantly atop the earth. I told him he should have a cake made in this image as a groom’s cake for their rehearsal dinner. This turned out to be prohibitively expensive to get from a cake maker, so ambitiously I said I could do it. I quickly ruled out the possibility of making Jake out of cake, but I figured I could make the earth. It’s actually kind of hard to do! you can find cake pans in the shape of castles, weird bumpy domes, bears, and flowers, but a simple sphere is rare. I finally decided I would just do half the earth and got Betty Crocker’s Bake ‘n Fill pan set. I made the half sphere and thought it seemed pretty sturdy, so I went ahead and made another one, stuck them together, frosted them up, printed out a picture of Jake standing triumphantly, glued it to some poster board, and viola!
This picture was taken by the wonderful wedding photographer, Soummya
The cake eventually wound up triumphantly all over Jake's face.
I suppose I will use this post as an opportunity to talk about Jake and Chrissy’s wedding, since according to my poll 4 of you wanted to hear about it. It was in Monterey at the Monterey Plaza Hotel. On Friday night after the rehearsal they had a great casino night featuring blackjack, pai gow, craps and pyramid dice. There was also a buffet which Peyton loved. He ate as much tortellini, gnocchi and duck as I did. That’s right, Peyton loves duck!
My mom was kind enough to come up to watch Peyton, and my sister and her boyfriend, Matt, were also in attendance so that was a huge help. The four of them stayed at a neighboring hotel so while Peyton was playing with them Dave and I were free to spend Saturday morning getting ready. From what I heard for the guys that meant watching TV in the hotel room and hanging out at the hotel bar and then, oh, yeah! I guess we should put our tuxes on! We ladies took a little more time and started the hair/makeup process in Chrissy’s room at 11. Jake and Chrissy also gave us some great attendant gifts. This summer Dave and Jake will be taking a class to get certified as level one sommeliers. Chrissy gave me a beautiful necklace/earring set and footie pajamas! We’ve been talking for awhile about how Peyton’s jammies are so cute, so this is not as odd as it may sound.
They had a beautiful ceremony and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. It was 70 degrees! Outside! On the coast! In January! Peyton did a great job as ring bearer. At the rehearsal he held the flower girl’s hand, but she was having none of it for the ceremony because she needed to throw her petals. So hopefully Jake and Chrissy didn’t mind that my sister acted as an impromptu ring bearer attendant. He turned the corner of the aisle and waved at all the people, said, “Hi!” then pointed up in the sky and said, “Bir!” This went over very well.
During the cocktail hour we had a great view of the moon rising, and it was huge!
Peyton stayed long enough to enjoy a few bites of chicken finger, but he was a little overwhelmed by the day so he headed back to the hotel with my mom. The rest of the evening was a ton of fun. We are all terrible dancers so the dancing was predominated by things like the sprinkler, the chainsaw, and the one where you’re pushing a grocery cart and pulling things off shelves. We also did “The Safety Dance,” which is not what many of you may be familiar with but is in fact a dance Jake made up many years ago that just involves randomly punching in various directions. He claims it’s the least safe dance. This then turned into people doing other less than safe dances, like running with scissors, swimming after eating, not wearing hardhats in construction zones, and living in the 14th century. Somehow we then all ended up doing a Robot Conga line to Flight of the Conchords’ The Humans are Dead.
The reception ended at 10 and the plan was to go hang out at the hotel bar afterwards. But when we went over there to our astonishment we were told they were cutting everyone off because there was a fight! What happened was that there was a couple, not affiliated with the wedding, in the lobby. The guy was totally drunk and started beating on the girl! A friend of Jake’s saw this and tackled the guy to get him to stop. The police were called and they told the hotel they couldn’t serve any alcohol to anyone. Crazy!
So we decided to hit the streets of Monterey and found ourselves at Cannery Row Pizzeria and Karaoke Bar. It was so much fun! I’m not a singer, and as a matter of fact I don’t think anyone in our group was. But that didn’t stop us! Dave and I got things going with the most terrible rendition of Endless Love you’ve ever heard. I believe it included some spoken word and a few asides as to the fact that the singer did not, in fact, know the tune of the song. We had the whole place enthusiastically singing Enrique Iglesias and then Queen. I am sure Chrissy never imagined she would end up in a karaoke bar in a wedding dress, but it sure was fun.
I made a second cake! I saw this cake and thought I’d give it a try. (I did not use her fancy weight watcher’s recipe, I just used the plain box recipe.) This was conveniently the day before our friend Charlie’s 100 days birthday party, so I thought I’d bring it along. As it turned out this was fortuitous because they’d run out of time to make dessert! It turned out very pretty and was super easy!
The tough thing about not posting for two months is figuring out what to write about. I can’t write about everything Peyton has done, so how do I pick? I think every move he makes and every word out of his mouth is adorable and priceless, but what do other people actually care about? Well, I’m just going to go for it, so don’t expect much in the way of structure or anything.
Peyton’s favorite words are Hi and Bye. He says it to everyone we see on walks, in the grocery store, or wherever we are. He says “Hi!” to his flash cards, then he turns them over and says, “Bye!” The other morning he had a bit of oatmeal on his hand, gave it a big smile and said, “Hi!” Then he turned his hand over so he couldn’t see it anymore and said, “Bye!” He repeated this process about twenty times.
Another favorite game is the “P, Mama, Daddy” game. A side note, Peyton refers to himself as P. He does this either to indicate that something is his, or he would like it to be his, or he wants to do something he sees someone else doing. If he’s particularly excited about whatever it is he says it with great feeling, a strong, guttural, “PUUUUHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” So anyway, he loves to assign ownership to things. If all our shoes are sitting out he’ll point to each in turn saying, “Mama! Daddy! P!” over and over again. If we’re eating together he’ll do the same thing with forks. He likes to look at everyone’s feet and tally up who’s wearing “huocks” That’s the best spelling I could come up with for how he says sock, but it really has a throat clearing quality to it that you just can’t properly convey in writing. He’ll do the same thing with hats. If he sees someone wearing a hat he points at them and exclaims, “Hat!” Then he points to my head, says in a rueful voice, “hat” and shakes his head. Then he points at his own head and says the same. He’ll go back and forth with that for awhile.
We have two supporting beams by the front door and somehow one has becomes “P’s Post” and the other is “Daddy’s Post”. When Dave’s around Peyton will run over to his post and say, “P!” then point to the other and say, “Daddy!” Then they play a Simon Says type of game where they put different body parts on the post. It’s very cute.
Head on the Post!
Peyton is a regular parrot and tries to repeat everything. As I was going through the looooong process that is putting him to sleep these days I tried to count the number of word I’ve heard him say. I thought of 105 and I’m sure I’m forgetting some. Included on the list was “poo bag”. That’s right, poo bag! We have well entered the time where we need to watch what we say around him and thank goodness Dave didn’t choose choicer words to describe the bag of dirty diapers.
So the sleep isn’t going great. We’re working on it. For some reason it’s taking him literally hours to fall asleep at night. And he wants me to be in the room with him the whole time. Up until a few months ago he would always fall asleep while nursing and now it’s just not doing the trick. I think he doesn’t know any other way to fall asleep, though, so that’s giving him problems. He’s only nursing twice a day, at nap time and bed time. He still falls asleep easily at naptime and I’m reluctant to try to make him fall asleep then without nursing because if it takes hours to fall asleep for his nap he won’t wake up until 5 and then he won’t go to bed at night until midnight. Even though it doesn’t put him to sleep he still seems he wants the bedtime nursing. I really think it’s more out of habit than anything, though. I am totally ready to wean, but at the same time this low level of nursing doesn’t really bother me much so it’s hard to muster the motivation to go through all the trouble it would be to stop. When it comes down to it, the main reason I’d like to stop is that now that Peyton is 18 months old I’m a little self conscious about what other people think about it. (What better thing than to write about it on my blog, then, right?) Since I know that I shouldn’t worry about what other people think when it comes to what’s best for me and my family and that the health benefits supposedly continue through 2 years I ultimately feel comfortable continuing for now. I can’t justify the obvious stress and unhappiness it causes Peyton to refuse him when he’s still not able to understand why now I’m taking something away from him that he’s been doing every day of his life. I feel like to him it just seems random and mean. And maybe this pseudo night time weaning he’s doing is the first step of self weaning, which would just be great for everyone.
Another thing affecting his sleep is that I think his brain is going a mile a minute. We’ll be rocking in the chair and I’ll think he’s starting to fade and then his eyes pop open, his finger shoots up into the air, and he says, “bird! caw caw! up up! bye bye! Daddy! work! wait!” or just “Ellllllboooooow!!!!!!”
Peyton loves Elmo. This started long before he’d ever seen him on TV because we have this book. It was his absolute favorite for weeks. Then I put Sesame Street on the TIVO season pass and it was all over. He calls the television remote Elmo. What is it about that guy? So he usually watches some Sesame Street during his afternoon snack or while I’m cooking his dinner each day. At first I was kind of paranoid about him watching too much TV, but Sesame Street really does seem good. He dances during music segments and talks about the animals he sees on there. He really likes anything about letters, too.
Peyton is definitely cuddly and loves hugs and kisses. Sometimes Dave and I will sit on the floor across the room from each other and Peyton will run back and forth between us giving us big hugs. Like most kids he likes to get kisses when he hurts himself, but when he’s really upset about something he also likes to give kisses, which is adorable. He will also fake hurt himself just to get kisses. Several times I’ve seen him walk up to a wall and very very slowly touch his head to it. Then he’ll make and exaggerated fake cry and say, “bunk” (a hybrid of bump and bonk) while pointing to his head. Once he did the same thing with his heads after gleefully banging them on a pillow.
Well we’re off to the park now. We’ve been going almost every day in an attempt to wear him out so he’ll fall asleep at night!
We just got back from a Thanksgiving week in Maryland. We were really busy and had a great time.
Peyton got to see his cousins Corey and Mason a lot, and I think watching them run around really motivated him to practice his walking. He went from pretty wobbly to practically running over the course of the week. He spent a lot of his free time just doing laps around his GaGa’s house. He also made great strides in his talking. I can’t even say how many words he says now because you can say any word to him and he’ll try to repeat it. He also learned the sign for more and is shaking his head yes and no with great enthusiasm. Especially no. I have to get out of the habit of asking him if he wants to do something when he doesn’t really have a choice. He was playing one night and I asked if he wanted to take a bath. He shook his head no so hard that I just had to let him keep playing! Today at naptime I did the same thing, asking if he wanted to take a nap, which he did not. When I took him upstairs anyway he was less than pleased, so I’m going to try to remember to change my wording in the future for things like that.
We had Thanksgiving dinner at Dave’s Aunt and Uncle’s house along with 30 other people. Besides being afraid of the dogs, Peyton did remarkabley well surrounded by so much commotion. And dinner was delicious!
Dave’s 10 year high school reunion was the weekend after Thanksgiving as well as an engagement party for one of his high school friends so we got to see a lot of his old friends. I actually knew a surprising number of people at the reunion so it was pretty fun.
On the plane ride home I discovered that two of Peyton’s molars had come through, bringing his tooth total to 10! He has not given any indication that he’s been teething. We feel really lucky that it doesn’t seem to bother him much.
I’ve finally caught up with Month 16 pictures!
At one week shy of 15 months old Peyton is still a little young to care at all about Halloween. The sweetest things he eats is still fruit and his walking skills are still not up to cruising around the block. We could have skipped the whole thing, but what fun is having a baby if you don’t get to dress him up like a dragon and eat all his candy?
We started the day by going to a Halloween edition of music class with Peyton’s friends. It was almost the exact same group at last year’s Halloween get together. It’s so amazing how they’ve grown!
2007
2008
We spent Halloween night at our friends Jake and Chrissy’s house. After hanging out for a bit we headed out trick or treating. At the first place Peyton was pretty unsure, and when the guy at the door held out the candy he did nothing. So the guy handed some to him and Peyton pushed his hand away. He caught on quick, though, and by the third house he was double fisting in the candy bucket. His favorite part by far was ringing the doorbells and organizing his candy after we got back. He spent about 20 minutes putting the candy in and out of his treat bag. He would also periodically tentatively put it in his mouth, like he knew that it was meant to be eaten, but he just didn’t get why we would want to eat something that tasted like paper.
After trick or treating we had a great dinner prepared by Jake (or Cupcake, as Peyton will be calling him). It was Peyton’s first experience with both salmon and ribs. He loved the salmon! I’ll have to start cooking some more seafood around here.
Jean, EB, and Charlie also joined us for Charlie’s first Halloween! Nothing like a 2 week old baby to make you realize how huge your 15 month old is!
You can see all of the Halloween photos here, and if you’re feeling nostalgic the ones from last year are here and here.
Tonight Peyton decided to start walking! He just got up and went about 15 steps, then did it again. Once we got the video camera he didn’t want to go more than 5-10 steps, but you can see his cute sashaying style!
The 60’s:
The 70s (Peyton took two pictures that year):
The 80s:
80s again:
Further evidence of Peyton’s Basketball prowess
