Just in time for Christmas: Halloween pictures! Here we see Sean modeling the latest in designer feline stripes… actually, I’m really proud of this costume. I know it’s a fairly simple tunic, but I’m a novice sewer and it fit him so nicely! (One of the shoulders is velcro-ed to get the thing over his head — and even then it was a bit of a squeeze.)
The Thursday before Halloween, Sean’s daycare had a trick or treat party in the parking lot. Here is Sean with Laura, his toddler teacher. Laura’s been taking care of Sean since February and we love her. Sadly she’s moving to Houston and yesterday was her last day. Good luck, Laura!
The (Sun)day before Halloween, the University of Texas had a huge party for children of faculty and staff. We took Sean, not knowing what to expect. There were crafts tables and games and all sorts of stuff, but here’s what Sean liked most:
1) Climbing the escalators (even though they weren’t running) and then turning around and realizing that going down requires big steps down and there’s not a reachable railing. Therefore coming down requires Mom’s assistance. He did this a few times and tried to do it many many many more times.
2) Running up and down a hallway ramp. It was even better when Mom played, too.
3) Going out on stage where all the dancers just were. (The thing he pulls off his costume is a sticker.)
Off all the planned and offered activities, a couple did interest him. Actually, he desperately wanted to go in the police car and fire truck, and it was hard waiting in line. But once he was there, he seemed to be a bit dazed. And he was very unhappy having to come out again… back to running hallway ramps.
(Yes, he’s trying to pull out the fire axe. Of course.)
In October, we took a trip to the Austin Zoo. I’m always a bit wary about zoos, as they can be depressing places. This zoo, however, only takes in animals that are discarded from other places — the old, sick, injured, and unwanted. It actually started out as a ranch and rehabilitated farm animals. And so while its animals are a little hodge-podge and many of the big ones are lame or arthritic, I actually liked knowing that these were not restless animals that could be thriving in the wild, but rather retirement animals resting out their final years in relative comfort.
This is not a fancy-dancy zoo with fake boulders and impressing landscaping, but the enclosures seemed adequately sized for the most part, and there was some attempt at public education. I was excited for Sean to see some of the animals he’s been learning about it books. Sean knows the names of many animals. He knows more names of animals than many adults do. He can tell his emus from his kiwis and meerkats from baboons. (Of course, this is all my fault. With the help of DK’s My First Animals.) And while he knows elephants are big, that cheetahs run fast, and that kangaroos jump, he’d never actually *seen* any of these animals. (Elephants don’t actually look that big in books…)
We had a good time going around and looking at the animals. Sean was equally interested in running up and down the steps and walking on rocks as he was looking at the animals, but that’s normal. Ask him now about the zoo and he’ll say “train!” because there was a little ride-on train that we rode there, too. And there was a farm section that had a petting zoo area and lots of opportunity to feed the (already quite well fed) animals. Here Sean convinces some goats to eat from his hand. (Thank goodness for the endless appetite of goats!)
And, um, they had a couple free-roaming peacocks. (Don’t worry, we grabbed him when he actually got close.)
Back at the beginning of October we got Sean his first bike. We’d seen a Strider running bike at the park a few months earlier (which Sean wanted desperately to try out), and so I looked up running bikes(aka “balance bikes” aka “push bikes”) on the Internet. I’d never heard of them before, as they weren’t around when I was a kid. Running bikes are basically bikes without pedals. Instead of focusing on how to pedal, the kid first learns to balance. Then later you get a pedal bike and the kid already understands balance and just has to figure out how to work the pedals. In Sean’s case, they’ve got trikes at school, so he’ll just learn to pedal independent of balance. The idea is that you skip training wheels all together. Having watched some older kids with training wheels trying to learn to bike at the local park, I can say that it makes a lot of sense to me. He starts younger, closer to the ground, and with an easy foot down if he tips to the side. Also, he’s desperate to ride a bike like Mommy’s and Daddy’s.
Fast forward to October, and REI had a clearance sale. And they were selling these beautiful Raleigh running bikes that were better constructed than the Striders for less than the cost of a Strider. And the weather was finally starting to cool off enough that we actually wanted to spend time outside. So I got him one. The seat was too high still, but he delighted in straddling the down tube and walking the bike. He still does. In fact, he can now perch on the seat and have the balls of his feet both touch the ground. In another couple months I think he’ll be tall enough to actually try balancing on the seat while feeling comfortably able to put his feet down when necessary.
I’d taken Sean with me to REI to get the bike. He was very surprised when I let him ride the bike out of the store. Once we were outside he adamantly refused to get off of it so I could put it in the car. I had to show him several times that we were putting SEAN’S bike in the back of the car and that we were taking it home and that, yes, he could ride it when we got home.
After a little foray around the living room, we went up to the track to let Sean try it out outdoors. He was all grins.
This picture is from our second bike outing. I wished I’d been lucky enough to be taking video at the time. Sean was straddling his bike, walking along. He deliberately headed for the long jump pit, wanting to test his bike out in the sand. As he got to the end of the pit, he saw a mound of construction dirt that had been newly dumped at the side of the field. His eyes grew round (I imagine; he was facing away from me at the time). And he said, “Sean up mountain! Sean up mountain!” while pointing. And he started heading for the dirt pile. (Yes, that dirt mound is about three feet high and filled with sharp rocks and jagged construction debris.)
After some gentle dissuasion, he returned to biking through the long jump pit…
Sean likes his little guitar and loves music. Here’s a picture with the guitar and Mommy:
And here’s a couple of videos of Sean playing with his Daddy’s guitar (sometimes to the accompaniment of a CD…) These pictures and videos were taken back in August and September when it was still 100+ degrees out!
Yesterday Sean and I went to the park after daycare. Sean had just this past weekend made it up the climbing wall there with little help from his dad. So he immediately headed for the wall and I grabbed my camera. I love this set of three videos that capture wall climbs #1, #2, and #4 (#3 was a lot like #4), because they show how quickly he’s learning everything these days and you get a feel for his talking, too. I know not everyone can understand him as well as Ben and I can, so I’ve put a transcript below each video.
Climb #1: First Try
Transcript: “Green one, blue one. Green one. Blue one. Help! Help me! Help!”
I stopped the video there to go and help. I supported his body while he found where to put his foot and then physically helped guide him up the rest of it. He did make it to the top.
Climb #2: The Blue Route
Transcript: Sean: “Yellow one. Yellow. Yellow one. Help!”; Me: “Put your foot on the yellow one.”
Sean: “Yellow one.”; Me: “There you go.”
Sean: “Blue one.”; Me: “Blue one.”
Sean: “Another blue one.; Me: “Another blue one.”
Sean: “Another blue one.”; Me: “Another blue one.”
Sean: [not sure what he says here]; Me: “Maybe try the red one.”
Sean: “Red one.”; Me: “Oh, you got it.”
Sean: “Red one? Red one?”
I end the video here to discourage Sean from trying to figure out what I meant by “red one” by climbing back down.
Climb #3: All by Himself
Transcript: “Green. Another green. Red. Daddy do it. Right there. Climb up wall. O- Climb up wall. Climb up wall. Climb up. Climb up wall. Yay! Bumpy slide. Bumpy slide time. Bumpy. Slide. Hee! Bumpy. Bumpy. Bumpy.”
I don’t know what else to say. Except, “we’re doomed!” And, “do climbing gyms give discounts for kids under 2?!?”
Okay, I know this is totally weird, but this post is not about Sean (with apologies to those of you who tune in regularly specifically to read posts about Sean).
Back in August, I went to the Ecological Society of America meeting, which, as luck would have it, was in Austin. This is the premier meeting in the U.S. (and perhaps the world) of ecologists and I generally enjoyed watching talks about the cools stuff that is going on in ecology. There were also various workshops and field trips, but I couldn’t attend most of them because I was still in vacation in Maine (not that I’m complaining). There was one field trip, however, that looked interesting and was held the Tuesday evening of the conference instead of the weekend before it. So I signed up.
And on Tuesday, about 100 other ecologists and I took a bus for the several hour drive to the outskirts San Antonio — more specifically, to Bracken Cave. Bracken Cave is the summer roost of about 10 million Mexican free-tailed bat moms and their offspring, for a total of about 20 million bats. This is the largest congregation of bats known anywhere. We got a tour from some scientists from Bat Conservation International, which owns and protects the property, and then we got to watch the evening exodus of bats pour out of the cave. For hours. Millions and millions of bats going out for the night to eat insects. It was amazing. Here’s a taste:
The cave is huge and so is its entrance
Bats flying out of the cave
The view from on top of the cave, with millions of bats spiraling out and up
Bat bodies almost mask the view of the cave entrance at peak exodus
They spiral up out of the depression where the cave mouth is, until they’re above the treetops. Then they all head off in one direction, a river of bats in the sky.
They spread out more as they get farther away, creating an undulating celestial ribbon
Up a bit closer
And closer still
Here I photographed them just a couple meters over my head
The sound of thousands of flapping wings:
And some artsy photos, because I could.
Zoom
Backlit
Tree
Moon
And so here’s some cool ecology. With 20 million bats flying out every night, and half of them being new fliers, you might wonder: don’t they ever crash into each other or the rocks or trees? The answer is, yes, they do. Not very many, but a few get blown by a gust of wind and collide with something. And there’s a panoply of cave entrance dwellers that know it. We watched a coachwhip snake emerge and head up the cliff face to a small shrub that jutted out from the wall. It waited. We wondered what it was doing. Then a bat got snagged in the bush and the snake wasted no time in gathering its evening meal. It knew what it was doing.
Ah potty training. There’s nothing like potty training to stir up debate among parents. There are no obviously right answers to questions like when? and how? A million opinions, but the reality coming down to many versions of “it depends” and especially “it depends on the child.” Just like most other things in kid-raising, it seems.
So anyway, I was curious and Sean seemed to have mastery of all the items on the various “check-lists” of “is your kid ready for potty training?” web pages and books. So mid-September we tried out a three-day potty training regimen that mostly consisted of Sean going without a diaper and us watching for signals. (Our entire downstairs is tiled and this helps a lot!)
Well, after three days of racing Sean to the potty mid-stream, we came to the conclusion: nope, not ready yet. No big deal, we just started the diapers up again. But we all learned a lot. For example, I learned that Sean doesn’t actually pee very often, and in fact, does not pee at all during his (sometimes 2+ hour) nap. This was surprising to me, as his diaper is so often wet. I also learned that without a diaper he will not pee on me during nursing; even if he has to go, he’ll wait until he standing up afterwards. This surprised me because I know that he pees during nursing when he has a diaper on.
Meanwhile, Sean learned the potty concepts. He definitely *understood* that he was *supposed to* put pee and poop in the potty. If we asked where pee or poop go, he’d point at the potty. If we asked what went into the potty, he’d reply correctly. Whenever he peed on the floor, he’d get all agitated and say “uh-oh! uh-oh!” while pointing to the floor. He really liked using wipes. And he understood very well that after there was pee in the potty he was supposed to take the bowl out and empty it into the toilet. He did all these supporting activities very well by the end of our three days. But he hadn’t yet mastered the realization that he was *about to* pee or poop and that he should go sit on the potty before the pee or poop came out. The body knowledge just wasn’t there yet.
Fast forward to today, about a month later. (Ben is out of town at a conference, so he’s absent from this story.) It was after dinner, and we were about to go upstairs to start bedtime. Sean had moved one of the dining room chairs over to the wall and climbed up on it so he could turn the light switches on and off, with great glee. (He had just figured this trick out this evening.) I was putting food away. Suddenly Sean says, “poop, Mama!” “Poop?” I ask, as I come over to him. “Yeah.” A quick feel tells me he hasn’t pooped yet. “Do you want to sit on the potty?” “Yeah. Diaper off!” So we race over to the potty in the bathroom, and I (as quickly as I can) take off his pants and his diaper cover and his diaper. (That’s a strike against cloth diapers, by the way. As much as I like them, they take longer than disposables to take off — especially when it counts!) And he sits on the potty. We’ve done a lot of potty *sitting* in the past month at Sean’s request — usually when Sean wants to read one of his two potty books. I ask if he wants to read. Shake of the head. I ask if he wants to sing. Shake of the head. And with a look of concentration, out comes a poop! “Big poop,” says Sean. “Stand up?” He stands and looks at his poop and then immediately wants to pour it into the toilet and flush it. He does. I wipe. We wash hands. We celebrate. Yay Sean!
No, of course, I don’t have any photos. (Would you really want one?) But here’s a happy Sean photo, in case you needed one today.
