11.14.08
some random pictures
i feel so remiss with the pictures, here are a couple random ones from my phone…
11.11.08
18 months (about a month late)
so we had bryce’s 18 month checkup last month and he checked out all healthy. still skinny (21.6 pounds = 5th percentile), but now apparently slightly tall (33 inches = 75th percentile). head average. so that was all good news. the pediatrician got to see exactly how active bryce is, so that, with his picky eating, completely explained his skinniness. so she wasn’t too worried about the complete lack of weight gain.
i had a bunch of anecdotes that i wanted to write a month ago, but then we were having problems with the blog again, and I never got around to writing, so now i have to see what i remember…. time just really flies these days with bryce, so maybe i’ll just tell you about a few of his current favorite things and call it a day (or at least call it a blog entry).
the biggest current obsession is with cooking. bryce always loved his wooden spoons and other kitchen utensils, but now kitchen play has taken on a whole new level. we have pots and pans, concoctions of all sorts of little toys, stirred together to make something “yummy”, and even a make-shift stove that is involved (he’s getting a kitchen set for christmas, but for now he makes due using a small kids stool as his stove, sliding things under the seat and saying “hot”). cooking can fascinate him for hours, but he usually expects the adults around him to participate at least somewhat in the process, and usually he has strict ideas about exactly how we are supposed to participate (and where we are supposed to sit, etc.) the biggest treat is cooking at grandma’s house, cause she’ll pull out the real spices and let him dump some in his cooking pans. i’m not brave enough for that level of mess right now. i haven’t been cooking too much real food lately, so he only occasionally gets to help cook “for real”, but luckily, right now, both seem to occupy him and entertain him fairly well.
bryce still has his girlfriend, m. everytime they see each other, they run towards one another screaming with joy. luckily, the open mouth kissing has seemed to subsided, especially as cold and flu season are upon us, but she still likes to give him lots of kisses on his head or arm — most of the time, the kisses are tolerated, but he’s also been fighting some of her advances. i guess having an older girlfriend makes him a little more aggressive about some stuff– he’s had to learn to fight for his toys and yell “mine” back at her when she tries to take advantage of his good-naturedness and steal a toy he’s been playing with.
bryce still loves music and singing, and has also now become quite fond of books and will usually pick several that he has to read before bed. he loves spinning in circles until he gets so dizzy that he can’t walk straight (and usually falls over laughing, only to get up again to repeat the spinning). he is into animals in theory, if not always in practice. he loves the cat next door and does the most adorable meow (still). but has also added quite a few more animal noises to his repertoire.
it’s getting to be dinner time, and the play-doh play is losing bryce’s interest, so i think that may be all the anecdotes for now… hopefully i will have more soon!
09.27.08
an outdoor kid
the weather has been absolutely beautiful lately, so we’ve spent as much time as possible outside. today andy and i were digging up the roses in the backyard in preparation for our spring-time train garden re-do. anyway, bryce started out playing with his neighborhood friends (who are, on average, 8 years older than him); but then wanted to be with us. we hoisted him over into the current train garden and he spent an hour or two, happily playing by himself with the sand box, rocks, and weeds that were back there. it was quite adorable to watch. unfortunately we did not get any pictures, as andy and i were both inundated with dirt and thorny branches. i just love how happy and calm bryce is when we’re outside playing.
09.25.08
quack quack meow
yesterday my mom was over visiting and bryce did some animal sounds for her… it was really cute. i was changing his diaper, and she had given him a duck to hold and he started saying quack, quack. i think we then asked about a cat and he did one meow then, but then we went to visit the cat next door and he meowed a couple of times — and it was so cute, because each time he would meow, he’d close his eyes while doing so.
i’ve tried several more times yesterday afternoon and today, but so far, no repeats of the animal sounds. it’s almost like, yeah mom, i did it once, why would i need to do it again? you know i know it, isn’t that good enough?
in other update-type news, he’s still babbling a lot in sentence like structures and new words pop up every now and then, but he doesn’t repeat them a lot… i think he’s just practicing them once and then waiting again until he can use them in a full sentence or something!
he’s getting more and more proficient at climbing. last week it was onto the dining room table, this week it was getting more daring on the older-kid climbing structures at the park. and he even learned how to hang on the monkey bars this week (i have to lift him up, but he can hang for quite awhile!) fun fun. i just can’t believe how active he is (or how many random people comment on how active and busy he is when they just see him for a few minutes!)
09.20.08
bryce’s girlfriend
so i wanted to write about this last week when it was fresh in my memory, but the login for writing to the blog had gotten messed up and it took us awhile to get around to fixing it. (and yes, i probably could have typed it up to be copied into the blog, and even thought of doing that, but didn’t).
so bryce has a girlfriend, we’ll call her m (in case her parents don’t want her true identity revealed on the internet). m is an older woman (she’s 2), and she seems to be as taken with bryce as he is with her. i knew the two of them got along fabulously — last week I watched her one morning so her mom could get some stuff done, they hugged, they shared food, they laughed and had all sorts of fun together. that afternoon, they took their relationship to the next level at costco…
costco has these nice double-wide carts, so bryce and m could sit next to one another in the cart. things started at innocently enough, a little hand-holding, some sharing of food, and them m initiated a kiss (the real thing, a nice slobbery, open mouth kiss). once m made the first move, bryce lost all reservation and kept open-mouth kissing her, rub their noses together, putting his hands on her face and all those good moves — it was really quite adorable. her mom and i weren’t sure if we should stop it or not, but they young and innocent, so why make a big deal? right?
since then, they’ve had several more playdates, and so far the relationship has seemed to hold up. they don’t kiss on EVERY date, but they have kissed a couple times since the costco trip. i’m pretty sure bryce has even said m’s name a few times in anticipation of seeing her. it’s the real thing.
08.25.08
bryce in tux
i took bryce to the photo studio this week to get some pictures taken in case bryce couldn’t visit grandpa in the icu while he started his IL-2 treatment (we found out today that bryce will be allowed to visit). ang had given us back the tux that we bought for sanjiv to wear when andy and i were married, and it basically fit bryce now, so we got some really fun pictures:
08.22.08
Grandpa’s fight against melanoma
we’ve added a link under “blogroll” to grandpa k’s new blog, but since our page is a little crowded, we wanted to highlight it here too: Knotes from the battlefield
for those of you who don’t already know, grandpa was first diagnosed with melanoma in 2004. he underwent treatment at that time and was fine for about 3.5 years, but last month the doctors found a tumor on his lung which turned out to be melanoma. so he’s now has Stage IV Metastatic Melanoma and starts the first part of his treatment in the ICU on monday. please keep us all in your thoughts.
08.16.08
time flying by (an update of everything)
so i just noticed that it has been a month since my last post…. and i really can’t believe it. sorry to all you bryce fans out there who haven’t gotten your “fix”. but as i said in my previous post, bryce is such a whirlwind of activity that i barely have time to myself. especially now that he’s transitioned from 2 naps to 1 nap but hasn’t yet extended the 1 nap to a longer time period… so there just hasn’t been much time. but enough excuses. let’s see if i can fill you in on all our doings.
summer has been lots of fun for us — we spend most of our awake time outside. bryce is full on running now, and sometimes his body can’t keep up with how fast his legs are going. so, as you can imagine, he constantly has scraped up knees and legs. most of the time bryce is great about falling — he just gets up and “brushes it off” (which usually just means brushing his hands together, irregardless of where he actually fell and got hurt). occasionally we get real tears, but so far nothing a grape, blueberry or other piece have fruit hasn’t been able to “cure”.
bryce loves music. he loves it when we sing, he loves having the radio on, he loves concerts and he loves making his own music. he drums all the time (with spoons, drumsticks, or whatever stick-like tool he finds) and has even figured out how to play his flutes and harmonica. pretty much every thursday this summer we’ve headed over to the local mall where there’s been an outdoor concert in front of a kid’s run-thru water fountain — so bryce can splash in the water, or more often than not, stand in front of the stage and dance. his little dance moves are so incredibly cute. his favorite “move” is just bending his knees and bouncing to the music; and unlike me (or andy, i think) he has a great sense of rhythm and can really keep the beat.
he claps for himself a lot: “wow, i found that toy mom asked about”, “wow, i made it to the top of the slide”, “wow i ate that carrot”, or whatever the occasion might be. he’s also partially learned to snap. he doesn’t actually get a snapping sound, but he makes the movement (we have a book that includes snapping, so if you say “snap”, he’ll try it). he loves climbing, and will try to scale or climb up any surface that looks vaguely climbable.
he’s still not the greatest eater, but he is really good at feeding himself and trying “difficult” textures. he has no problems with whole grapes (or shoving several grapes in his mouth), and loves eating whole, round fruits (peaches, pears, apples, etc).
i’m not sure how to describe his verbal abilities. he “talks” a far amount now, but i don’t necessarily understand many of his “words”. most of the time he tries to string together whole sentence-like things, so it can be more difficult to decipher. he definitely says “there it is” and “what’s this” or “what is that” — both pretty complicated structures, i think. in addition, i’m pretty sure i’ve at least heard the following words on various occasions:
bunny (usually accompanied by a vigorous hopping motion with his hands and arms), dog, balloon, mom, dad, auntie katie, grandma, grandpa, highchair, bird, book, read,”put on” (for shoes), juice box, and shoes. i’m pretty sure there are more words, but it’s not something i keep track of very well — cause usually things are strung together in sentences and there are words that it sounds like he says that fit the context, but what can i say, i sometimes remain a little too skeptical — i’m not one of those parents who swear their 4 month old said “protoplasm” or whatever.
however, the amount of things he understands constantly astounds me. when he’s in a good mood and wants to obey (which isn’t always the case), he can follow pretty much any command i give to him: bringing me various items, turning things on and off, etc. and even though i’ve never been the most consistent with my use of sigh language, bryce has picked up and uses on a regular basis the signs for more, all done, eat, and sometimes change.
his sense of humor also seems advanced (at least to me) — he’ll “trick” me by offering to feed me and then taking it away and laughing, and he makes up other fun little games. bryce definitely has a personality that just shines through in pretty much everything he does.
okay, is that enough of a bryce fix for now? i know, pictures… and what do i always say about that? soon. i promise. complain to andy about that. we didn’t take any pictures for awhile, but i have been doing better the last little bit; it’s just that andy has this whole weird setup for organizing them that he keeps wanting to change so he never wants me to just do it. but we have them. and i just downloaded a fun new program for making web albums, so maybe soon we’ll have some really good stuff. there’s always hope.
07.16.08
What is Success?
“To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
and the affection of children;To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
just a little something that caught my eye again recently, and since it’s from one of bryce’s namesakes, i thought i’d include it here.
nonstop activity
so bryce is just a little whirlwind of activity. sometimes its really hard to keep up! from the moment he wakes up until the moment he crashes into sleep, that boy is on the go! my house constantly looks like a tornado has been through it!
the other day a new neighbor stopped by who has a daughter who is one day older than bryce. the little girl is starting to talk a lot and the mom asked me what new tricks bryce was up to. i had a hard time answering… because i’m with him all the time, it’s hard to say anything is exactly “new” because usually the milestone type things are gradual changes. he is “talking” a bit more, but i don’t always pick up on the “words” he uses (my mom tends to hear a lot more “words” when she’s over here). he signs more with me, but again, it kind of seems like he does it and then i gradually pick up on the fact that he’s communicating.
yesterday we went to the pool with auntie angie and her gang, and as bryce was happily splashing around in both the baby pool and the big kid’s pool, ang remarked on how adaptable bryce is — that he seems to revel in new experiences and they don’t faze him, he just plunges in with both feet and is ready to explore. he’s totally curious about everything and is always ready for any new experience (well, with the caveat that mom or dad is there, cause attempts at day-care have been disastrously unsuccessful). and yeah, that’s bryce. active, ready to explore no matter what.
so new tricks? maybe not so much… bryce is just ready to take on the world. i’m sure he’ll be speaking sentences in no time and then i’ll have to keep up with his thoughts as well as all his activity!