Reading!

We managed to capture Sebastian reading a book by himself on video. It's been extremely hard to take photos and videos lately - as soon as he sees the camera, he stops whatever he's doing and comes to see the picture. In this case, we were trying to encourage quiet time - he woke up after only napping for an hour, and Steve was trying to keep him in his crib for another 30 minutes. Steve set up the camera on the dresser in Seb's room, and then left.

There's some crazy climbing (who knew!) before our boy settles down to the real business of reading his book (at minute 2:30, if you want to skip ahead). The book is about a boy and a younger girl who are waiting at the school bus stop. The girl keeps asking "Is that the bus?" and the boy keeps answering "No, that's a taxi/tow truck/ice cream truck/fire engine/garbage truck." Until finally, of course, the school bus arrives. So wait for it...

Reading! from B. Avery on Vimeo.

playing at home

the cute phrase phase

It's been so long since I blogged! Argh!

There are a couple of reasons. We haven't taken any photos since our return from Phoenix, partly because it's been January, and kind of blah, and partly because Sebastian now knows and recognizes the camera, and will not continue to play/speak/be cute when the camera is pointed in his direction. He just wants to see the picture, and manhandle the camera, and really no photo-taking happens. And in addition, work has been pretty busy for me, so I haven't had the usual free moments to blog in the office.

We have, happily, entered the extremely cute phrase phase of childhood. Sebastian mimics us, and invents things, and comes up with words that we didn't know he knew, and amazes us with his correct use of prepositions and plurals and pronouns. We are easily amazed, it's true, and we are suckers for our boy. But for my own future self, here are this month's fun phrases:

"I so cute!" (This is clearly something I say to him too often.)
While fingering a coat in my closet: "That's a nice blue."
"Have a nice day!" (He doesn't say this to us - he says it to vehicles, for the most part.)
Avi Coffee - this is Sebastian's nickname for Avi, who owns the Hastings Station coffee shop.
"We go on abenture" - on weekends, when we're all going out as a family, we talk excitedly about the adventure, and Sebastian has adopted it.
"Don't miss the turn!" - he often asks to go visit the trains, or go through the tunnel in Irvington - I used to ignore the request and then say I'd missed the turn. So now he starts reminding me very early to not miss the turn!
"I know!" (With a tone of happy, and fake, surprise.)

And in a different category - the mispronunciation file - when Sebastian says "kitchen" it sounds more like "chicken", and diaper is something like "butder".

He came home from daycare two weeks ago and suddenly broke out into the Happy Birthday song. (Completely without tune - he's obviously inherited our tone-deafness.) I was really surprised. I asked at daycare the next day and no one has celebrated a birthday for weeks, so I'm not sure what led to the sudden outburst of song. He's since followed that up with Jingle Bells. :)

tench froast

Sebastian's new favorite food is french toast, but he transposes the consonants, so he runs around yelling "I want tench froast! Tench froast, mommy!" Daddy's tench froast is the best, and 'Bastian got to eat it all weekend long.

We ran around the city on Saturday, checking out the fancy new playground at Union Square, and drove out to LI to visit Grandma and Grandpa Raab on Sunday. And on Monday we did some Metronorth joy-riding. It was tough to return to work and daycare today.

new foods

Sebastian has always been a pretty good eater - he loves his pasta and bread as much as any toddler, but will consent to eat other things as well. And he eats enormous quantities. He's been known to pack away three scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, and half a banana for breakfast, and come back for a second breakfast two hours later.

But while we were in Phoenix he suddenly became adventurous and accepting in a whole new way. He ate all kinds of things that he had previously shunned, including edamame, french fries, nuts, broccoli, Thai pork satay, and chicken shawarma. He did still refuse some of the usual suspects - hummus, guacamole, most vegetables. But we were impressed nonetheless! And just last weekend he continued with the newly carnivorous trend, happily downing pulled pork at Q BBQ restaurant in Port Chester. That's our boy. :)

Sebastian and Danica

Phoenix trip

We went to Phoenix for 10 days, meeting up with Carl, Kim, and Danica, and with my mom and dad (aka Popo and Bompy - Seb's new moniker for Grandpa). It was a glorious vacation - warm and sunny weather, two cousins who were thrilled with each other's company, a festival of activities - and the joy of seeing my far-flung family.

We visited the Desert Botanical Garden, the Phoenix Zoo, the Natural History museum, the Children's Museum, and the fantastic Heard Museum of American Indian art and cultures. We hiked up Usery Mountain to a cave, climbed the rocks in Papago Park, and went for a long hike up Siphon Draw in the Superstition Mountains. And in between, endless games of chase in the hallway, crazy dancing to the Boynton dance book and Sesame Street, and lots of truck, train, and car games. I've posted over 200 pictures in the Picasa web album. Hopefully I'll blog more about our adventures in the next week or so.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10!

Sebastian counted to ten! The whole way! We were so proud, and so was he.
(What did he count? Trains, of course...)

things I've been meaning to blog about...

My brother Carl just had this same title for a blog post, and it was so perfect for my laundry list of things that I had to steal it. Thanks, bro!

For the last two weeks, Sebastian has only taken showers. Every night, we ask him if he wants a bath or a shower, and he always picks shower. I'm not sure if it's the novelty, or because mommy and daddy shower and he wants to be like us, or if it's because he gets to take the shower with us, or just that he prefers to have choices, but he loves it. And so do we, as it's removed a source of daily conflict (the screaming as we dragged him into the tub...). He has also learned to wash himself - I rub some soap on him and then he uses his hands to scrub himself down. He names his various body parts as he cleans them, which is really cute.

We had our first snow of the season a few weeks ago, and it was magical to take Sebastian out in it. It's clear he doesn't remember it from last year, so he was amazed to see these big white flakes falling from the sky. We wandered around outside for a while, talking about how cold and wet it was. :) It's also been even more fun to read him books about snow, now that he's seen it. I can't wait until it sticks and we can go sledding and angel-making.

Seebastian and Pipe: Seb is still struggling with the short i sound. So big is beeeg, for example. But he's recently been trying to say his whole name, not just the latter two-thirds, and of course it comes out as Seeebastian. (Our Seabass...) To add insult to injury, his doll's name is Pippin, or Pip, and he can't say that either - he calls him Pipe.

One of Seb's favorite friends at daycare is Nathan. They call each other Nay-nay and Bas, which I just adore. At dropoff the other day, we peered into the room and didn't see anyone (they were down the hall in the infants' room). Sebastian said, "Where'd all the friends go?"

I had to replace Sebastian's shoes the other day - they'd been feeling a bit tight when we put them on, so we went to measure his feet at the shoe store. I was once again mortified to discover that I'd been putting him into shoes that were decidedly too small. He jumped from size 7 to 8.5. But he hates the shoe store, hates new shoes, and hates trying on new shoes. He fussed and cried and threw himself on the floor. So I bought the shoes he's been wearing - the exact same ones - in a bigger size, and just replaced them at home. He didn't notice a thing. I don't know what we'll do next time if we can't find the same ones again.

And finally, Sebastian has discovered the joy of tickling. We tickle him, and he comes after and tickles us (usually at the instigation of the other parent). He'll try to creep up on you and say "Tick-tick-tick!!" while burrowing his little fingers into your belly. It's awesome.

Reading to Pip

Reading to Pip from B. Avery on Vimeo.