California Vacation, part 1

Late last month was our ten year college reunion, which is a little crazy to think about. There was never any question of our going to the reunion - even with a toddler in tow. But since traveling with Gavin is something of an undertaking at this point, we decided to extend the vacation and visit some family in Southern California, rather than just do a long weekend.

We flew into San Diego, where Kevin's sister and her husband recently bought a house. We spent a few days with them, visiting and exploring San Diego. We visited a few breweries, ate Korean BBQ, and went to the San Diego Zoo. But Gavin's favorite part of the trip was their three cats.

The cats were skittish at first, running away as soon as Gavin spotted them. Gavin spent a lot of time wandering around the house, looking for the cats or following them from room to room and softly calling out "meow, meow". It was incredibly adorable, especially when he'd spot a cat only for it to dash from the room and Gavin would sadly say, "bye bye meow".

One by one the cats eventually warmed up to Gavin, much to his delight. I was impressed with how good he was with them. He didn't grab them or poke at them,just gently patted their backs. Once the cats realized that he quickly lost interest after a pat or two, they'd just wait him out.

Gavin was also a big fan of their keyboard. He loved climbing up on the stool and hitting the keys to make noise. He also liked watching other people play and playing along with them. Kevin has been idly wanting a piano as long as we've lived together, and it's starting to look more likely that we'll actually buy one.

We also tried to spend a day at Mission Beach, riding some rides and going to the beach. Unfortunately we timed the trip abysmally and Gavin was cranky and tired the whole time. He wasn't interested in the rides or the ocean. He's not generally a fan of the beach anyway, but the conditions were awful for helping him get over that - windy and cold. We didn't end up staying very long.

After a few days with Kevin's sister, we went north to Santa Ana to have dinner with my aunt and cousins. With my aunt working full time and both of her girls involved in multiple extracurriculars, it can be hard to get together with them. I was really glad we were able to carve out a few hours to visit and see all the improvements my aunt has made to her house in the past decade. It's hard to believe I hadn't been there since college.

The next day we went to the Santa Ana Zoo to see the animals, because we couldn't check in to our AirBnb near campus until late afternoon. The Santa Ana Zoo is much smaller than the San Diego Zoo, but I ended up liking it better. It wasn't as crowded and it was a lot easier to see the animals. They had a whole bunch of monkeys, which are always fun to watch. And we saw a sloth and a very fat squirrel who had figured out how to steal food from the birds. We also took Gavin on the train and the carousel, which were both more successful than the rides at Mission Beach. It helped that we got on the rides well before nap time.

Sick

Do you know what's worse than throwing up in the shower? Throwing up in the shower shortly before your toddler wakes up while your husband is out of town. Oh and it's also the first day of your period.

Gavin got this bug on Sunday. He woke up and proceeded to vomit three times in under an hour. During that time he also pooped more than his diaper could hold, causing a slightly more contained, but no less gross, mess. I comforted him. I did laundry. I mopped and scrubbed and somehow also managed to eat and drink my tea, because problems like these loom so much larger when I have no food in my belly and no caffeine in my blood. By 8:00 we were chilling on the couch with a pile of books, and it was like nothing had happened.

I should have been expecting it to hit me, because every time Gavin gets sick, I get it, too. And I often get it worse. Or maybe it's that it's just that he's got this combination of stoicism and cheerfulness that makes it hard to determine how sick he actually is. The only time Gavin truly seemed out of it was when he had a fever that brought that glazed look to his eyes. But even that barely lasted for twelve hours.

So of course I got his stomach bug. And of course I got it worse than him. Or at least it took me longer to recover. I finished rinsing the conditioner out of my hair while sitting in the shower. Then got out, got dressed, and slowly and deliberately went about my morning routine. Gavin was only sick for an hour, and I was already feeling better, so I was actually planning to go to work. I ate a single bite of my buttered toast and drank two sips of water before I started to worry about my ability to keep food down.

But the thing about parenthood is that you just keep going. You find these reserves of strength that you never knew you had before. I'm sure if Kevin had been around I would have collapsed right back into bed for another hour. But Gavin was waking up and Kina was whining to go outside and even if I felt comfortable calling someone at 6 in the morning it's not like they'd get to my house quickly enough to actually help me.

I got Gavin up and dressed and gave him his cheerios. I fed Kina and let her into the backyard. And then I realized that I didn't have the wherewithal to walk Kina. So I put on some Sesame Street and hoped Kina would pee before I had to bring her back in.

Twenty minutes later, Gavin and I were in the car. I had my tea and my lunch, still planning to go to work. I was teetering on that knife's edge between wanting to collapse on the couch and being sure that I'd feel fine in another hour. Also, my Fitbit was nearly out of battery and I'd left my charger at work. Then again, Kina may very well poop in the house since she didn't get her morning walk.

I finally decided to just go home. I couldn't stomach the thought of my tea, nothing at work was pressing, and I knew I'd need all my energy for our weekend trip to Boston. Plus I had thrown up in the shower not two hours earlier. What kind of idiot even contemplates going to work after a morning like that? (No, seriously, I cannot figure out what was going through my brain.)

Kina got to spend all day in the backyard, and I got to watch six straight hours of television. By the time I had to pick up Gavin from daycare, I was feeling almost entirely better. We had a fun evening together, and I ended up feeling like a good and successful mom when all was said and done.

Kevin's going to be out of town for another month, and I'm sure it'll be a long month (Gavin asks "where's daddy? five-ten times a day). But after this mini-crisis I feel like I can get through anything. Though I do wish I'd stop getting sick so often.

18 Months

Eighteen months is proving to be a very fun age. I think it's my favorite age since ten months, which is the last time Gavin made a big leap forward in his ability to interact with us. Then it was all giggles and play. Now it's a positive explosion of words. Gavin talks all the time. He learns new words every day, and he's starting to figure out sentences. He can ask for what he wants now, and he can definitely understand most of what I say.

It's so much fun to watch him turn into a person and start to discover his likes and dislikes. He has recently become obsessed with Elmo. He often requests that we play the theme song to Elmo's World and then dances and sings along to it (sort of). If the song comes on unexpectedly he stops whatever he's doing and gets excited for Elmo.

We ended up buying him a stuffed Elmo, and he's been sleeping with it every night. This is actually something of a relief to me. Up to now he hasn't shown any interest in stuffed animals or blankets. He doesn't insist on carrying them around or sleeping with them or anything. He likes books and has his favorite toys, but he hasn't gotten particularly attached to anything long-term. He still forgets about Elmo half the time and is content to leave him behind when he wants to do something else, but it's nice to see him snuggling a stuffed animal.

He also getting better at a whole slew of physical activities. He's learning how to use a fork (which often results in a lot of frustration, but he's getting better). He can almost go down stairs on his own now, so long as he doesn't get distracted by anything. He can climb up on our couches and continues to love jumping and anything that involves him being upside down.

But he balances all this physicality really well. He's still a very observant and deliberate baby, who will often watch for a while before jumping in on his own. And he still loves to read and will happily hang out in my lap with a stack of books for as long as I'll let him.

It is so much fun watching him grow up and start to be more independent. I have to rein it in a little here and there - Gavin is pretty upset that I don't let him walk the dog on his own. But it's mostly exciting to see what he can do and how much he's willing to try.

Words

Gavin is currently going through a bit of a language explosion, and it's a ton of fun.

A few weeks back, the only world he really solidly knew was "no". He said it to everything. He would shout "mama" if he was very upset, but he wouldn't say it on command. Everything was just no, no, no.

But now he's picking up words like it's his job. And the best part (to me) is that it's so tied to books. He's not reading yet, but this is certainly a sign of early literacy. So here are a few of the words Gavin knows and the circumstances he says them under.

• Runs into the kitchen saying "nanana" and pointing towards the fruit bowl. This means he wants a banana.
• In the kitchen, points to the island and says "ma ma", which means a teething biscuit (the brand we get is mum mums"
• Points to the fridge and says "ma ma". This means milk. The pointing is the key distinction.
• Opens a book to a picture of a cow and says "moo". This works with two or three different books that I know of, so it definitely recognizes cows.
• In Jimmy Fallon's "Mama" book, Gavin recognizes and says "ball" on the page with the soccer ball. He also identifies his own soccer ball as ball. It's unclear if this extend to other types of balls yet.
• In the same book, Gavin will point to the picture of the owls and say "whoo".
• In "Go Dog, Go", Gavin knows to say "dog" on the first page. He loves dogs. He knows that Kina is a dog, and he can almost always identify dogs and call them such
• I think he may also know "duck", but it sounds exactly the same as "dog" at the moment. But he will point to pictures of ducks, say "duck", and laugh when I quack. The goal is clearly to make me quack, so I think he knows the difference between the two words. He just can't quite articulate it.
• I can't transcribe this next one. It's about five or six syllables long, has lots of p's and t's in it and means "blow bubbles". He may also be able to say "bubble", but it sounds a lot like ball and he'll only say it about half the time. I don't know where this came from or why this phrase is three times as long as it needs to be, but it is very clear what he means.

This is all I can think of for now. It's so exciting to watch my kid figure out language. He still has trouble communicating sometimes, and more often than not it seems like his tears are because of his frustration about this. But he's getting there, and it won't be long now before he can express himself. He definitely understands almost everything Kevin and I say, and now it's just about figuring out how to do that himself.

Anticipation

Every year I donate to Pat Rothfuss' Worldbuilders annual fundraiser for Heifer International. My motivations are probably equal parts charitable altruism and anticipatory greed. Every $10 donated gets you entered in a lottery for thousands of fabulous prizes. Companies donate books and games, as do authors and individuals. This year the prizes also potentially included jewelry and collectibles.

Usually I don't win. This is my fifth year donating, and I've only gotten a book once. It ended up being a lackluster book. But there's always a chance that I would win a complete series by an author I'm interested in, or the collection of everything Del Ray published over the last year, or an autographed first edition of something cool. So I keep donating and being mildly disappointed when April rolls around and I realize that once again I haven't won anything.

Not super disappointed. I still donated a chunk of change to a good cause, and that's something to feel nice about. But prizes are nice, too.

This year, I got an email in late December letting me know that I'd won something but had forgotten to fill out my mailing address and could I please provide that. I got excited, sent off my mailing address and settled in to wait.

This is a long process. I cycled around from wondering what I had won to wondering if I'd been taken in by a phishing hoax to wondering if I'd even remembered to fill out the form or if I'd just been meaning to and forgotten about it. The organization finally announced that they were beginning to ship out prizes, and I resigned myself to the fact that I hadn't won anything after all.

Until my shipping notice came.

This is a new feature this year, and it's nice, because it pushed my anticipation right back up. I have no idea what I won, but I won something. And it will be here sometime in the next month (with all the prizes they ship out, they use the cheapest, slowest shipping available, which I can't even fault them for).

I'm incredibly excited to find out what I won, even if it ends being another book that I'm only lukewarm about. But maybe it'll be something exciting. It's a bit like Christmas, except I don't entirely know when my present will get here. This anticipation will probably be more exciting than the prize itself, so I'm going to savor it.

RIP Camry

Our Camry died last week. I knew it was coming. The Camry's been acting up for a while, and we've been putting off maintenance because we knew we were going to replace it soon. I was hoping it would make it through the safety inspection this month and last until September, because that's when we'll finish paying off the Elantra. But there was no such luck. While Kevin was driving home from work, it died. We knew we weren't going to pay to get it fixed. The tow truck driver accepted the car in lieu of payment for bringing Kevin home and presumably went to dispose of it.

It's a little sad. I bought that car not long after I moved to Virginia. It was the first car I ever bought on my own, and it even came with a free bible. But, like I said, we knew this was coming, and I've been looking forward to getting a bigger car for a while now.

We have some time before we need to buy a new car. Kevin's mom is leaving town for a month, so we can borrow her's. Then Kevin will be out of town until mid-March. So we have six weeks to do some research and figure out what we want. Which is good, because right now all we really know is that we want something with 3rd row seating, to accommodate our growing family and our kids' future friends. And the dog. It'll be so nice to have a car that Gavin and Kina can both fit in at the same time.

So now it's time to do some research and figure out our budget. I'm excited to get something shiny and new, and I hope it's not too hard (or expensive) to get what we want.

Tumbling Class

At fifteen months old, Gavin is now enrolled in his first class. We've got him attending a weekly tumbling class at a local gym. Part of me still thinks he's a bit too young for structure like this. But another part of me wishes we'd done this months ago.

Gavin is growing into an incredibly active kid. Ever since he started walking, he's been unstoppable. He runs and bounces, and worst of all he climbs. He can get up on most couches and chairs at this point, and he loves climbing up and then jumping. Or just standing close to the edge. He's completely fearless, so I'm carrying around double my share to make up for it.

We enrolled him in the class in the hopes that it would give him a safe space to burn off some of this energy and start providing structure so he's less likely to injure himself. It's been somewhat successful, though I probably shouldn't hope for results after only two weeks.

The class is a good mix of structure and free play. Gavin absolutely hates the structured parts, and he often goes running off to climb on the mats when he's supposed to be walking in a circle or singing a song. But that's to be expected with toddlers, and even if he's the worst at paying attention the instructor never seems too put out by it. I hope that in a few more weeks he'll get more into the rhythm of the class and have fun doing things with the other kids.

He loves the free play part. There are mats to climb on, rings to hang from, and a whole big room to run around in. The instructor brings out balls or bubbles or other things for a few minutes at a time. Last week Gavin loved running around under the parachute, which brought me right back to my elementary school days.

Gavin also loves the various flips and rolls we're learning to do. And even better, some of them are safe to do at home. It's a nice ace to have up my sleeve when he's on the verge of melting down.

We're only a couple of weeks into the class, but so far it seems like a success. I don't know how long this will last - if Gavin will ultimately become interested in gymnastics or not. But it's nice to have a thing to do with him and a place where I'm lass worried about him cracking his head open every time the urge to climb takes him.