Stuff

My family is finally starting to adopt Skype. Yes, a bunch of early adopters, it's true. My "older" sister got her first web camera and this is what she decided was appropriate for her first video conference. That's Oma off to the side!


The life of a scientists' child.


Richie was enjoying Shabbat with his play-set!


Yes, it's Mardi Gras season! We finally figured out what we're doing with the 50 pounds of beads we've been moving all over the country. We're going to donate them to the library! (It's bad luck to just throw them away...aparently)



He napped for two hours in this position!


I mentioned before the Richie's vocabulary has really exploded. Although he still refers to himself as, "Baby." He is able to say his full name...well, in babelish.


There was a Zydeco band that played at the library in celebration of Mardi Gras. Richie got to try out the violin afterward! He seemed to enjoy the music, although he did not dance nearly as much as we have seen him in the past. And there were two young adult women dancing all alone. Usually, he steps right in there!

Fame!

Some of you may know that Richie enjoys going to Tot Shabbot at the Baltimore Jewish Museum of Maryland. Well, at the last event, they took some pictures and Richie made the Home Page! Follow this link (yes, GG, click here) and scroll down to see Richie!

Gasp!

You mean....two posts within 24 hours of each other? How could that be?

Well, Richie's Birthday party pictures just could not wait! We had a small gathering of Richie's play group plus some family friends over. We got a cupcake pull-apart cake from a shop around the corner. Although we were expecting Richie was rage after the chocolate, he (and I) preferred the "Sinnabon."


Here you can see Amy with her newest addition. Richie looks like he is running away from Dan's legs. But, I think he was just running.


In the middle and two the right are our neighbors (C.J. and Patricia) who are expecting in about 4 months. We thought the party would get them warmed up for their future! On the left edge is Dan...one of Richie's babysitters, who also happens to be a private practice pediatrician. So is his spouse, who is Richie's other babysitters. No, we do not worry for Richie when we go out without him.


And! There's the other doctor-spouse/babysitter, Naomi. Next to her is Christopher (or Kyle as I prefer since their other son is Kenny). That's Kiki's youngest son who is 2.5 years old and the person from whom we used to get all of Richie's clothes. Unfortunately, Richie out grew Kyle (I mean Topher), and clothes have started flowing in reverse.


We'll start with the stray videos which are too cute to pass-up. (GG, from here on-down, these are all movies.)

As you saw in the last post, Richie is back in Music Together. Each session they give you a CD full of folksie music that is also played in class. We have really taken to the new CD and there is a song called "Driving in the car." Which Richie really likes! He'll go sit on his green Train engine (Seen in the movie below) and drive around the room. There's a part of the song where the lyrics go, "Sleep. Sleep. Sleeping in the car. Sleeping in the car all day." And, the movie shows you what he dose whenever he hears that part of the song!


We had another snowfall/ice storm on the 22nd of last month. Richie has really started getting into sledding, so we took him out for some sledding in the back driveway.


Such a cute smile! It reminds me of his cousin Sammy's smile.


Okay, finally, here are some clips from Richie's birthday party!


He had no interest in his cake. At least initially...


But he did eventually warm up to the idea!

Missed Feburary

Well, we all got better and now we're getting sick again. Oops! In the mean time, stuff has happened! I have not had the chance to unload the birthday party pictures off of the camera. I'll get to that later this week. (Famous last words.) Here are some pictures and movies:

Here is Richie playing at Tot Shabbot. Richie was fortunate enough to get a Shabbot set like this one for his birthday! (GG: This is a MOVIE! Hit the little arrow button at the bottom-left of the movie and it will play. It has sound, too!...apparently GG has been missing out on all of the movies.)


Here is Richie as Fruit-Striped Gum!


It's started already. We found Richie looking for private time in the bathroom playing with his phone.


In late January, we took Richie to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum! He did pretty well. (Better than I did when I was his age...actually, older.) He enjoyed it, too. I'm waiting to see if his interested take him to dinosaurs or geology. Either one would be fine, but I'll be honest, I've been looking forward to learning more about dinos. :-) But, I can be happy with trilobites.




Here is a MOVIE of Richie walking down the largest set of stairs he's ever tried in his life. He was determined to do the entire set with minimal help.


In early January, we started to get cabin-fever. So we picked the warmest day, which was in the mid 30's, and went to one of the Baltimore county parks! Actually, the first park we went to was on fire...literally. We arrived just before the fire trucks. So, instead of giving Richie lung problems, when drove about 10 miles to this park!


He enjoyed his first tire swing!




We went for a walk along one of the trails. Unfortunately, it got dark a little more quickly than we expected.




He just picked up the stick and started walking with it. Must be from Oma!




He is a natural master with that walking stick. (GG, this is also a movie.)


We started going to Music Together, again. Now that he's older, he really gets involved.
Can you say Tambourine Monkey? (Richie can say Monkey, now!) (GG, this is also a movie, too!)


That probably the item to close with: in the last two weeks, Richie has had an explosion of words: purple, red, green, lellow, (I mean yellow), monkey (which is ironic given the above movie), cookie, and gorilla just to name a few. He has started saying the names of the animals for which he has sounds like cat, which before he would only say "meow." And he is picking up new words left an right! (No more bad words when you're talking to him on speaker phone.) :-)

Sorry for the delay. I hope it was worth the wait.

Sick....Very Sick!

As the name implies, Richie is VERY under the weather. He sounds like a 60 year old man with a two-pack-per-day smoking history. It started last Saturday with a little cough than blossomed into massive amounts of snot and coughing of sputum to the point where he made himself vomit five times yesterday and last night. We decided it was worthy of a trip to the doctor to see what they thought. I was thinking it was a viral URI since the highest fever we'd measured was 100.6F. But, the doctor found an ear infection, too and that is still treated presumptively with antibiotics until age 2. So, even though that was not my intent, we started them tonight. I was worried that he was going to get worse over the weekend and I wanted to have had him seen before Sunday rolled around and we were spiraling down hill. Hopefully the antibiotics will help and, if not, a tincture of time will certain do the trick.

He lost his voice for the first time, but when he's covered with Ibuprofen or Tylenol, his throat must not hurt badly because he's babbling up a storm. I think he likes the way it sounds. Also, when he's treated well, he is bouncing off of the walls but when the medications wear off, he is miserable....utterly miserable. But, that's all a good sign. He's drinking plenty of water even without us having to remind him, but he's not all that interested in food. Again, not too surprising. ML stayed up with him most of the night last night and did a pretty good job napping with him. When you clear him out with a suction bulb, he can sleep for about an hour. Although, with this cold, he has learn to blow his nose! So, we may not need the bulb too much longer. Although, I will say that it still is able to get a lot of junk that he is unable to force out of his nose. If we could just keep him from puking. He covered ML at least 3 times yesterday. Actually, today has not been as pukeolicious, fortunately.

In other Richie News: We were listening to NPR weekend before last (actually we listen all the time because we don't have a TV) and there was a competition going on for a temporary replacement for the announcer for the Michael Feldman (on Whad'Ya Know) and Richie walks towards me in the kitchen and says, quite clearly, "Michael!" He doesn't as clearly enunciate it when you ask him to say it, but he was looking right at me and right next to me when he did say it! If I could get him to repeat it consistently, I'd call in!

Richie has also started saying "bagel" and "beagle," and he knows the difference, too! Actually he started with bagel and we taught him beagle. Then we taught him the difference...for a few hours, they were the same thing. He's also saying "me" and "baby." Although baby usually comes out with a French accent, "Ba'Be'" I guess French is really Bebe, but his sounds more cute. He's flying upstairs these days and doing very well going down stairs. He's doing a good job holding our hand while he walks places. And, amazingly, he's still letting us keep him rear-facing in the car without having a fit about it!

Bed-time is rapidly approaching for me, so here are some pictures from last December that I have not had the chance to post...

This is the infant/toddler section of the science center. The age limit is 2y, so his days are numbered. Fortunately, he is starting to take advantage of rest of the childrens' room.


Strike a pose!



I think we'll miss this place as much or even more than Richie. The water bed area is a really fun place to relax. And express your frustrations with your partner!



He really enjoys the water-table. So much so that we have to bring a change of clothes!



We visit the dinosaurs before we leave. I really hope he gets into dinosaurs because I'm really looking forward to it!


The hair is getting long! I'm starting to wonder if we should cut it. I'm also wondering if we should donate it.

Happy New Year!

Millions of blogs all with the same title!

We took Richie to the MD Science Center for New Years at Noon! We were joined by our friends from Annapolis, too!

Here we are getting read for the ball to drop!



Here's the ball dropping!


Glitter as the group Milkshake plays in the background. Well, really foreground. It was kinda' loud!


Richie is still having some difficulties sleeping at night. Normal, according to his pediatrician, but it does not make us happy. Well, I suppose I am happy that it's normal but I wish he would show some signs of improvement. We put him to bed at normal time tonight, but he's already up crying. Bummer. Especially because we're going to wake him up at midnight to go see the fireworks. Can you say, "Back to square one?"

Here is a recently discovered picture from Ning-ning's recent visit.


Happy New Year!!

December

Oh boy! Everyone with their underwear in a wad because I haven't been posting.....
It's been quite a busy month!
We convinced Ning-ning to come visit this month, which is the first time she has been out of Florida during the winter since our Wedding reception in Atlanta 8 years ago. Did I mention that it snowed in Atlanta during that visit? It snowed on the morning of her arrival, fortunately it had all melted before she disembarked from the plane. I was a little worried that morning, however, because there was no prediction of snow. Actually, they're so bad with predicting the weather that while we were watching it snow, we were listening to the weather report which said, "Partly cloudy with highs in the 30's." No mention of snow, even while it was coming down! Must be a government plot. Unfortunately, I think those pictures are still on the camera.

And, I suppose, before that visit, was a visit by Papa-Nat and Honey! We got to go to the aquarium and take lots of new movies, which is all Richie wants to watch. You know, I think he enjoys watching the movies of the aquarium that we take better than the aquarium. I suppose that may be because he gets to sit on Dada's knee when we watch them instead of being herded around.

Last night, when we were putting Richie to bed, out of no where he said, "Me!" We asked him who Me was and he through up his hands saying, "I don't know?" So we taught him that was him!Then we taught him how to say Mommy...which he picked up quickly. Well, on skype this evening, which Dada was reciting "But not the Hippopotamus," Richie suddenly blurts out, "Baby!" And quite clearly, however, we could not get him to repeat it...nope, not a trained monkey.

Yesterday, we opened up some presents from Mommy's family. We also opened up the sibling stocking stuffers with the crew in Florida via skype. It's such a nice little piece of software.

One of Richie's playgroup kids recently moved away and they had a little going-away party. I know Richie is on the left and Milo (the child who moved away) in on the right. I think Shiri is next to Richie and I've lost track of who is sitting next to Milo. Maybe Mama will log in and correct all of this...
\

Three generations of Gozansky men!


There's a little bird sanctuary in the aquarium, and this was a good shot.