The Terrible Twos Already?

As I've been trying to get back into the swing of attempting to post regularly (apparently hopeless), I realized that I hadn't posted any Ethan pics since my very first post back in June, and that picture was from the prior October when he was only 4 months old! I've obviously been completely derelict in my duty as a doting father.

In an attempt to rectify the situation, here are three more pictures of the little tyke. They are, respectively, from March, 2006 (9 months old), May, 2006 (11 months old), and from September, 2006 (15 months old; just two days before I was rushed to the hospital).



If you'll recall, a while back I had begun attempting to teach Ethan the word "No." It had, of course, been a spectacular failure, but I had persevered. Over the last few months, he has definitely learned the meaning of the word. He still isn't really obeying it, but it's progress of a sort. That recently come crashing down as we apparently entered the universally-feared Terrible Twos six months early.






Just like any other toddler, Ethan has an insatiable curiosity. This is, of course, a good thing until he begins exploring things that are dangerous. For example, one day a few weeks ago he suddenly became enamored of an electrical outlet which had not previously been a problem. Granted, the outlet was completely outfitted with safety plugs but they were the cheapie plastic kind that you just plug into the socket and Ethan has begun displaying a remarkable ability to get into just about anything. With something this dangerous, I didn't want to take any chances. In my most authoritative Stern Daddy voice I said "Ethan, No!" Knowing his name, he immediately turned around but as he saw nothing interesting he went back to work. I tried again. "Ethan, come to Daddy!" This time, I didn't even get the backwards glance. It was clearly time to resort to brute force. I walked over, picked him up, and deposited him about four feet away while again saying "Ethan, No!" No go; he made a beeline back to the outlet. This time when I picked him up and moved him, I turned him around in addition to again telling him "No!" so that he was no longer facing the outlet. This time, he finally stared at me for a minute. Then he promptly turned around, walked back to the outlet and stopped about a foot in front of it. He looked back at me again and then proceeded to stick out his index finger until it was about half an inch away from the outlet. He then left it there while again looking back at me, this time with a huge grin. He didn't have to say or do anything else. The words "So.....now what are you gonna do?" were already clear as day. All I could do was say "Ethan, No!" yet again, go and pick him up, and move him to another room all while attempting (unsuccessfully, I'm sure) to suppress the grin that I'm positive was appearing on my own face.

The other "incident" occurred several days later. One of the few things in my in-laws' house that Ethan is not allowed to play with is the dishwasher. When it's open, it has fun things like knives in it and, when it's working, it has a disturbing tendency to shoot out fairly hot steam towards the floor during the drying cycle. Ethan is well aware that he's not permitted near it. Ethan waited until he thought I was safely preoccupied trying to eat dinner when he walked over and began playing with the controls. We then proceeded to go through a song and dance that was eerily similar to the one outlined above. This time, I even tried moving him out of the room. I swear, this back and forth lasted for over fifteen minutes! All the while, of course, I'm getting more and more frustrated while trying desperately not to let him know that he's getting to me (not to mention the fact that my food was long since ice-cold). I'm sorry to say that, finally, I'd pretty much had it. "Ethan...do NOT touch that! Don't touch it!!" He clearly heard something different in my voice as he immediately turned around and gave me that stare again. He then got that exact same grin, walked two feet to his left, reached out his finger to touch a cabinet door and very clearly said "Touch it." He walked on to the refrigerator and touched that repeatedly. "Touch it. " Touch it" He then proceeded to walk around the entire room touching every single thing he could find, other than the dishwasher, saying "touch it" each and every time. It figures that he had chosen this particular moment to be the first time he had ever put two words together.

And my wife wants a second one.

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Turkey Day

Well, Thanksgiving was nothing overly exciting; the usual mix of too much food and too many relatives. It was, however, particularly nice to see that our niece - who just started college this year - has turned into the thoughtful and mature woman that we had expected. Not overly surprising as she was always "three going on thirty," but nice to see nonetheless. We also got the exciting news that she is now planning to transfer to an even more prestigious university than the one she already attends, such as Brown or Tufts. Given that she's on one of the athletic teams and still managed to pull in mid-term grades in the mid to upper 90's in a pre-med curriculum, we're guessing that she won't have many problems.

On to Ethan (why should this post be any different?). I am sad to say that he has now reached that stage where I am no longer merely someone to cuddle, laugh with, or come to when he's upset or hungry. I have been transformed into someone who can help get him places. Granted, I became used to this job as soon as he arrived, but that was because he wasn't mobile and I had no intention of letting him crawl across the cement from the slide to the swing in the playground. I'm also still used to doing it around the stairs and when getting into cars, booster seats, etc. But that's because I want to do it; it's not like he thinks he needs any help getting up the stairs, and he certainly has no intention of ever climbing into a car seat voluntarily. Somehow, I didn't really expect the "Daddy as ride" syndrome to kick in until (at least) he began doing things like Pop Warner. Naive, I know. In any event, it's happened.

Ethan recently learned the joy of turning on and off a light switch. Earlier in the day on Thanksgiving, we had been holding him up to a light switch so he could make it go on and off while he smiled (and while the grownups all cheered him on, of course). After dinner, he decided that he wanted to do it again. He made a beeline for the light switch and reached up as far as he could, trying to reach it. Apparently, he actually thought he might make it. Granted, he's tall for his age, but still no go. Because he's seventeen months old, and it was getting perilously close to bedtime, he quickly became frustrated. He looked around and....Lo and Behold, there was a Daddy! I can climb up him! Which is, of course, perfectly good toddler reasoning. He promptly walked over to me, looked up with a grin he rightly assumed was irresistible, and reached up with both hands in the universal toddler code for "Pick me up!" What's a Daddy to do? And so, I was transformed into an Ethan-chair for as long as he was interested in watching the light magically go on and off. (Or at least until my arms got tired).

I better start getting used to it.

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Goin' to Carolina....

It's definitely been one heck of a month so far. Only one third finished and our entire lives have been turned upside down. Things can pretty much be summed up for me by the chorus from James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind":

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind

For some time now, my wife and I had been kicking around the idea of moving to Atlanta. While I wasn't overly enamored with the idea (nothing against Atlanta, I just didn't really feel like tidying up the house I had spent eight perfectly good years turning into a pack rat's dream, and moving all of it a thousand miles away), it had been slowly but surely become where we were headed. My wife wanted the warmer weather, we both wanted the cheaper real-estate costs and lower property taxes, etc. My wife works for a large, financial corporation which has an office in Atlanta, and she was told that she could simply transfer there. We had spent significant amounts of time researching on the net, talking to people (apparently they still come in the original "living" variety as well, and they're surprisingly good at answering questions), and had even gone so far as to contact a real-estate agent in Atlanta and begun reviewing properties. Alas, this was not to be.

Last week, without warning, my wife was informed by the company she works for that they were closing her entire facility as of June 30, 2007 (they have two other facilities doing similar work elsewhere in the country). Approximately half of the employees were simply summarily laid off, while the rest were given a choice: you can either receive a severance package (based on salary and tenure with the company), or you can move to one of their other offices. My wife was one of the lucky ones who were invited to stay on. Unfortunately, they did not mean to any one of their other offices; they meant to a specific office, and it was not in Atlanta. It's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And, "Oh! By the way....you need to make a decision by the end of the month."

So, sometime in the next eight months me and my entire family will be uprooted and moved across the country entirely at the whims of Corporate America. Please don't get me wrong...I have yet to hear even a single negative thing about the Winston-Salem area (or about NC for that matter); we simply would have preferred to have had something approaching a choice in the matter. We can't possibly afford to take the severance package and hope that my wife is lucky enough to find a new job before the cash runs out.

Ah, well. At least Winston-Salem has what is typically described as a "world-class" medical facility (Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center). Considering how superb my luck has been regarding my health this year, this is probably a very good thing.

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In a Single Bound

We've really got to stop reading those parenting books that tell you "what to expect" from your child at different ages. I remember back when he was ten months old and he was trying to climb up onto the sofa, but couldn't quite make it. He'd try for a couple of minutes and then get very frustrated. It was very clear how he felt; he had annoyance written all over his cute little face. Whenever I mentioned it to my wife she kept telling that he couldn't be frustrated, that "all the books" said he was too young. Then he tried his climbing act in front of her one night. When he finally gave up trying, he slid to the floor, screwed up his face, and picked up one of his smaller toys and threw it. Apparently he was frustrated after all. We should have thrown all the books out then and there.

His most recent escapade? We found him in his playpen. Only we hadn't put him there. He had been playing with a toy and we turned our backs for a minute (yeah, yeah, I know). We turned back, and there he was happily sitting inside his playpen. (The other odd thing is that whenever we put him in there, he howls so loudly you'd swear we were torturing the poor child).

A few days earlier, we had had another one of those "he can't do that" conversations. One morning, when I went in to get him out of his crib, I found him jumping up and down on the mattress. My wife was adamant in her assertion that he was too young to have the coordination to jump. I gave the universal male response of "Yes dear," and went on my merry way.

Then came the playpen incident. We've known for a while how good a climber he is (he was climbing long before he was walking), but we were still left wondering exactly how he had managed it. A playpen is pretty high compared to a sixteen month old and doesn't really have any natural handholds or footholds. That's pretty much the point of having a playpen.

The next day, we found out. He was about eight feet away from the playpen when he began to trot towards it. He built up speed and took a flying leap at the side of the playpen. He jumped high enough that his hands actually reached the top. This time, he wasn't able to find enough purchase for his feet and ended up sliding down the side a minute later. But we were pretty darn sure how he had managed to get in the last time.

The safety instructions that came with the playpen had said it could be used up until twenty four to thirty months. Apparently we should throw out the age guidelines to equipment along with the books.

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