"Down" Time

Linus with Blanket #1

Linus with Blanket #2

Adam's newest development is that he likes to "pretend" Night-Night. He screams and struggles and wrestles and hides when it's "real" Night-Night, but at random times during play, he'll say, "ny-ny!" turn his head to the side and close his eyes. If it weren't for the grin on his face, you might believe he was actually asleep for those two seconds of shut eye.

Last Saturday he got to play stickers with Dad and watch Toy Story... and trust me, this kid LOVES his Daddy.

Dad put a sticker on my head!!

Watching Toy Story

Adam knows how to give kisses - the puckery kind. I ask about 20 times per day if I can have a kiss. I usually get one out of my twenty times of begging, if I'm lucky, because kisses are on his terms, not ours. Now they are starting to become more frequent . . . but the other night before I put him in his crib I asked him for a kiss, and he looked at me thoughtfully, grabbed my head with both hands, turned my face to the right and licked me, from chin to eyeball. Then he patted me four times on the side of my head. I took it.

If I were a cat, though, my odds of getting kisses may be better. Two weeks ago at my parents' house he saw their cat Cricket (the grumpiest cat we know) sitting on the couch, and went up to him with puckered lips to give Cricket a kiss. Cricket looked at him out of the corner of his eye with his ears slightly back, a little confused. We laughed. Yesterday Adam was in the kitchen and Eli came to join him. Adam patted him on the back, then got on all fours and puckered his lips at Eli. Eli walked off. Adam turned and looked at me, still on all fours, lips still puckered. I laughed and said, "awwww, Buddy, I'll give you a kiss." Adam got up with his puckered lips and ran 7 feet towards me and planted one on me instead. Yeah, I was second choice, but who am I to complain?

Last night when we were reading Are You My Mother? and we got to the part where the baby bird asks a kitten (and like he always does, since he was about 9 months old, Adam squeals "EEEEEE!" when he sees a picture of a cat in any book). I said, "Do you see the kitten?" Adam puckered up and gave me a kiss, then crawled to the other side of the couch to give Shannon one too. Then he came back to finish the book. The kitten came up again 2 pages later, and I said, "look, there's the kitten!" Adam puckered up, gave me a kiss, then one for Shannon. It appears "kittens" and "kisses" may go hand in hand.

Adam is still teething and we believe more are coming in, all at the same time . . . he chews on his gums and he's extra sensitive, but luckily he likes the Hyland Teething Tablets and doesn't fight it when I want to give him a few. And he still loves to brush his "teeth." He can be throwing the fit of a lifetime at any given moment for, say, I dunno, taking away the cap to my contact case that he stole from my bathroom or because I shut the door to the room he wanted to be in. If we say, "want to brush your teeth?" he will forget his screaming, back-arching, the-world-is-ending tantrum in a split second, then grin, stick out his tongue, and high-tail it at full speed (squealing the whole way) to bang on the bathroom door. I let him in, and he makes faces at himself in the mirror and touches everything on the counter while he "brushes his teeth." The tantrum comes back, of course, when I tell him he's done and escort him from the bathroom.

In this picture, I have turned my back for literally 1 minute and Adam has broken into his bathroom, found his toothbrush, then ran into our bathroom where he grabbed styling moose and is carefully planning his next act of robbery. The blanket in hand is making me think that Adam's alternate personalities (Professor Chaos and Linus) are starting to merge into one.

Last Sunday, Adam threw up during NFL football but he kept going, and we assumed that it was just because "milk was a bad choice," (as Will Ferrell aka Ron Burgundy would say) when he was running around playing during the day. Well, Monday morning when he woke up he was crying. I went in to retrieve him and found him covered in dried vomit and throw up all over his crib. Poor guy. I kept him home that day, hoping that it wasn't something more serious than eating something he didn't agree with. While he didn't have a fever, he certainly wasn't acting like himself and actually sat down quietly on the couch to watch 3/4 of Alice in Wonderland.

Luckily, he was feeling better and acting much more like himself (minus the teething) on Tuesday. So we got back on the fast track again.