Jumpies!

Teeth are out!

Sidney's two bottom teeth pierced through the gum today (Sunday of Memorial Day weekend). We can feel the sharp edges on our fingers. Ouch!

Oh, and this explains why he got up this morning at 4:00, which prompted Sam to re-purpose Memorial Day as the "day to remember how it felt like to be able to sleep in". Those days are long gone!

Exploratorium

"Where's Sidney?"

This morning, after Sidney threw Alex's phone down the back of the bed (thanks, Sidney!!) and kept "looking" for it, we thought we'd try another game...

So, we introduced the game of covering Sidney's head with a blanket and saying "where's Sidney??"

He immediately "got it" and smiled and laughed as soon as he could see us both again.

Toothy

Sidney and Nathan are both working on some new teeth.

After days of waking up multiple times through the night (midnight, 3AM, etc) for no apparent reason, we finally discovered that Sidney has several new front teeth coming in. We're not sure how many (more than one, for sure), but we can clearly see white dashes on his lower gums.

We had seen this before, about 2 months ago, but that turned out to be a false-alarm. We're hoping that the work Sidney is doing now on these teeth (which is in turn waking us up throughout the night) "sticks!"

The same day we also discovered that Nathan's last 2 upper molars have broken through. This explains a lot of his previous "bad moods."

We like the prospect of getting our sweet little Nathan and our happy Sidney back.

"Metrrrro"

Tonight for Nathan's bedtime story, Alex was reading "This is Paris" by Sasek. It's in English, but she was translating the text into French as she read.



When we got to the page describing the metro, Nathan repeated the word, "metrrrro" with a distinctive Spanish accent, replete with many rrrrolling Rrrrs.



It was very cute.

Lullaby...

Last night when I went to tuck Nathan into bed, Sidney was wide awake. He immediately saw me and Nathan... I expected him to cry, but he didn't.

After I put Nathan down and left, Alex crept back down the hall. Sidney was laughing and burbling, and Nathan was giggling as well.

It was real interaction... And it lasted longer than their physical interaction ever does.

Alex and I were very happy to hear them having fun together and are looking forward to many more evenings of brotherly laughter!

"Relaxed athleticism"

The feet keep bouncing, but the head is nice and relaxed.

The latest coupe...

"Jogurt"

Maman laughed when she saw his yogurt-inspired "Joker" face.

He laughed with us, saying, "Jogurt!"

Kiwi... Blech!

Sidney tried kiwi for the first time today. The look on his face for the first bite was hilarious (shocked and a little pissed off).

The second bite he just spit it out.

We tried changing the fork-mashed chunks into a puree and mixed it with cereal and we got the same pissed off look ("why are you doing this to me?!").

Nathan and his trains

Nathan and Sidney's first sleepover

Last night was the first night that we had Nathan and Sidney share their new and improved bedroom.

Alex and I had been worried about them waking each other up, but Nathan was exceptionally quiet when going to bed -- and was able to ignore Sidney when he woke up at 2A.

I'm sure we'll still run into some hiccups, but we were very happy with how things went!

(Knock wood)

I want to do a petit petit big po po

Warning: This post contains references to bodily functions. If you don't want to read about them, don't continue reading.

Tonight as I was tucking Nathan in, he said he had to go pee-pee. He had just gone about 10 minutes before and I thought he was just stalling, so I said quietly, "Nathan, it's time to go to sleep."

"But the pee-pee is coming!" he exclaimed. The urgency in his voice seemed real... so I took him to the potty and he was right!

After we did the "pee-pee dance" to celebrate a little, I took him back to his room and started the bedtime routine again.

As I was getting ready to leave his room, he said "I have to go po po."

It seemed like another stall tactic, but he had been right before... so away we went to the bathroom.

After about 10 minutes, we had almost given up. He kept telling us that he needed to do a "petit petit big po po" (little little big po po), and would put his hands in front of his face and rub his little fingers together on each hand like he was playing the smallest violin in the world, just for us. It was definitely strange and we didn't understand it, but it made perfect sense to Nathan.

Alex decided to try to move him from his little potty (pictured) to the regular toilet, to see if that would help. Well, it worked. And we went to the kitchen to do a celebratory "po po dance," and I started hearing some pretty loud farts coming from Nathan's direction.

Nathan looked at me, quite proud of himself, and said, "I did a prout (fart)."

About five seconds later, he got a crazed look in his eyes and ran towards me saying, "I need to go po po." Immediately after, he started running towards me, another loud fart was heard and his eyes got even wider as he turned and started running towards the bathroom, checking behind him to make sure I was following him.

Turns out he was right, again!

You are my tender heart...

Alex bought a few books a while back. One was "Mama, do you love me?" and the other was "Papa, do you love me?"

I instantly liked the "Mama" book... but wasn't so thrilled with the story in the "Papa" book.

In the book, there is a page where the Papa says to his son, "you are my tender heart, and I am your Papa."

Today after I got home from work Nathan was really acting out. So much so that I had to put him in several time-outs in a very short time period.

When I came back to get him after a particularly serious incident, he said he was sorry.

I gave him a hug and said "I know you're sorry, but you keep doing it. It makes Papa very sad that you do this, Nathan. What you did was mean, and you're not a mean boy."

"I'm your tender-heart" he said (audio recording of him saying the same thing at a later date, below)

Sidney is now commando-crawl enabled

Lock up your valuables!

NYC Taxi "progress?"

Petit frere... Grand frere...

Voici un moment rare que nous avons enfin capture!

Bouclette

On commence a voir des petits frisouttis sur sa meche principale...

Potty training

Since our vacation in Mexico, Nathan has been working on potty training.  We had mixed success while we were there, and continued the routine once we got home with only a few accidents.

Last Wednesday, while I was in San Antonio for work, I received a phone call from Alex.  She put Nathan on the phone and said, "Tell Papa what happened."

Of course the big news was that he went #2 in the potty, and he gave Alex plenty of advanced notice that he needed to be taken to the bathroom.

Tonight I find out that Nathan has not had an accident since then, and that he has even been "holding in" #1 while at the park in order to wait to be back at our house before going.

Definitely blog-worthy information.  Maybe not interested to our readership, but certainly  (potentially? maybe not?) something Nathan may find mildly interesting about 20 years from now.

Papa, no travaille...

With my ever-busy work schedule, I've had to endure more and more time away from Alex and the kids.

I was on the road all last week, and was supposed to be home Thursday night, but my schedule wasn't going to allow me to get back until very late.

I emailed Alex to let her know, and she emailed me back the following story...

To: Sam

From: Alex

Date: Thursday, May 07

...

I'm glad I told Nathan that you'd be home only tomorrow morning. I didn't want him to be disappointed if he didn't see you tonight.  But it's quite amazing because on Monday I had told him that you'd be back on Thursday night or maybe Friday morning (from his perspective). I explained that "he would go to school on Tuesday, then, no school on Wed, then school again on Thursday and that after his nap or night you'd be home".

Well, when he woke up this morning, he gave me a big hug and said "Papa's coming today!"

I must admit that I was floored. I just managed his expectation saying that you'd be back tomorrow morning after his night.  Such an amazing kid! We've had a good time together.

Friday morning I was up and had to be out the door before Nathan was awake, so I was only able to spend time with Sidney and Alex.  Sidney and I played and laughed a little bit... although I'm not sure if his excitementwas because he realized I had been gone for a week, or if it was just that he's a happy, smiley kid all the time.

When I got home tonight after a week of being gone, Nathan ran to meet me at the door, shouting "Papa, Papa!  No travaille..." ("no work") I was in heaven.  Lots of hugs, lots of kisses, lots of laughs.

So nice to be home.  I wish I never had to leave...

"Two more minutes..."

I called to Nathan as he was playing in the tub.

"Two more minutes and we have to get out..."

"No!" He replied. "I don't want to get out. I want to stay in for one more minute!"

Nathan is a shrewd negotiator...

Je Veux Grue

Alex has a habit of tickling Nathan and saying, "Je veux te manger tout cru" (I'd like to eat you all up (*raw)).

Nathan misunderstood and when he wants to be tickled, states "Je veux Grue!" (Or "I want crane!")