Friday the 13th, Part XVII

Once again, the 13th fell on a Friday, the same day of the week Kyle was born. The little guy is 17 months old now, and, despite Jennifer's insistence otherwise, he is no longer a baby. It's tough to swaddle him these days, and his legs dangle off the baby carrier. Chances are, if we put him in that carrier, he would just stand up and run away, with the seat still tied to his back. It's a funny thought, and perhaps I will try it sometime just for kicks.

Our kid has developed quite a bit since my last post on this blog. In fact, on the very day I published that post, Kyle decided it was time to start walking on his own (click here for that story). Since then, he has perfected the art, moving faster while doing other things at the same time: carrying shoes, drinking water, or programming the DVR. The following video shows Kyle's newfound walking skills, and his obsession with having closed baby gates in our home:



While he may be talented in walking, he could use a little help when it comes to being a modern-day vampire. These days, blood suckers seem to be everywhere, from TV to the movies to the federal government. The most popular of the film bunch are played by young, attractive, brooding types who apparently have spent more time at a mirror than at acting school. They're the big thing right now, and since Jennifer and I never shy away from the trendy, we thought it would be appropriate for Kyle to be a vampire this Halloween. Unfortunately, he didn't get the look quite right.

Kyle instead was one of those old-fashioned vampires, the kind made famous by Dracula and Sesame Street. He even learned the "ah, ah, ahh!" laugh the old vampires used to give after informing a victim of his doom or counting to ten. Kyle neither instilled fear nor had the teenage angst that modern vampires have. However, he still managed to put the ladies under his spell. There was a costume parade just a block from where we live, so Vampire Kyle was able go through the neighborhood and work his magic. He certainly received a lot of attention that night. No doubt his fans would have given him their necks so that he could take a bite and suck their blood. However, that wouldn't do for Kyle. He prefers to drink blood from a straw cup, with a nice bowl of Cheerios on the side. Again, he wasn't a very threatening vampire.

There are plenty more Halloween pictures, as well as other highlights from the past two months, in my newest photo album:

Kyle's 16th & 17th Months

By the way: the smaller pictures in the album were taken with my out-of-date camera phone.

Enjoy, and see you next month! Expect the next post to be a little later than usual. I will want to include photos from all the Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah/Boxing Day activities. Happy Holidays!

Sweet sixteen

We have been really working on this whole "walking" thing with Kyle, and we seem to have achieved some success. However, by "we," I mean my parents. All it took was a trip to Kyle's Pepere and Memere's for him to end the stalemate. Up until the weekend he spent there while Jennifer and I were in Maine, Kyle would refuse to walk on his feet, outside of a few instances including his first steps. He did not see the point of it, since he could get around just as quickly walking on his knees. Every time we would try to get him on his feet, he'd bend his knees and dangle his legs in the air until we'd give in and place him down on the floor. Even a nurse at the doctor's office thought the behavior was odd. The doctor himself said Kyle's just doing what comforts him, and he'll start walking once he felt like it. In the meantime, we have seen plenty of kids his age and younger walking, running, and pole-vaulting.

Then, suddenly, Kyle changed his mind. Feet are good. When Jennifer and I arrived at my parents' place to pick up the little guy, my Dad walked out, holding Kyle's hand as our son walked alongside him to to greet us. We couldn't believe it. In the two weeks since, he still walks on his knees a lot, but now all you need to do is grab his hand, and he'll get up on his feet. We practice each time we go out, having him walk up and down part of our block. We shot this video during one such stroll last weekend:



The next milestone: Kyle's first time stepping in doggie doo. Being a city kid, it's only a matter of time.

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, Kyle officially turned 16 months old on Tuesday. Kyle is now eligible to get a learner's permit for his toy train. Hopefully he'll pass his driver's test, though I must admit his parallel-parking skills need some fine-tuning. Once he masters that, I'm sure he'll be out all night with that thing, cruising for 14-month-old girls (he likes the younger ladies). I'm sure they'll dig the squeaky noises his wheels make.

As for us, we're coming to terms with the fact that Kyle is not really a baby anymore. He's looking more and more like a little person, and he's showing a lot of personality. So far, he doesn't seem like a jerk, which is a relief. Kyle still enjoys a good joke, and it's not too difficult to get a good laugh from him. You don't even have to throw socks at his head anymore. Here's another video to prove my point:



All in all, I'd say things are going well. I'll have a photo album in next month's post, including a picture of Kyle in his Halloween costume. I won't tell you what it is, but I'll give a hint: it involves blood and a bow tie.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Feelin' alright

It's been three months since Kyle's birthday, which means it's check-up time. Yesterday I took Kyle to his pediatrician, and I got him to go along by pretending we were going to an amusement park. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized that, instead of going on the ferris wheel, he was going to be poked, prodded, and shot in the arm. It was a good laugh... well, for me at least. Kyle didn't do much laughing, especially after feeling the needle.

I am happy to report that the little guy is in good health, which is welcoming news for us, considering a few days earlier he had a fever with a temperature that shot over 104 degrees. A week before that, he threw up for the first time. Jennifer and I were a wreck over both instances, hardly sleeping through the night, listening for any sign that things were getting worse. Kyle took it with stride, acting perfectly normal after the heave-ho, and still drinking plenty of fluids through the fever. While I feared the worse (an infection, the plague, premature cooties, etc.), the doc pretty much said that these things happen to kids, and after inspecting him, determined that Kyle was completely healthy.

The doc also addressed another concern of ours: Kyle's behavior. As the picture to the right may or may not reveal, Kyle has been a bit more rebellious lately. As many of you know, he's been giving us lots of trouble during meal times. He's also starting to do things we thought we had successfully convinced him not to do, such as touching the radiator, crawling into the bathroom, and gambling on baseball. The doctor said that children at this age like to play the "no" game, and that telling Kyle not to do something only entices him to do it. Basically, we have to either not make a big deal about something, or we have to move him away from the "bad" spot and distract him with something else. Eventually we will be able to get him to behave by telling him "no" or flushing his toys down the toilet, but that time has not come yet. The doc also gave us some pointers on getting Kyle to eat more foods. Apparently he won't eat other things because we're making him full by giving him too much milk. So it looks like I will have to return the cow. We'll see if that works.

In other news, I have put together yet another collection of photos for your viewing pleasure:

Kyle's 14th & 15th Months

Hope you enjoy them. See you next month!

The heat is on

It's August, and you know what that means. It's hot out. The temperatures have been rising almost as fast as the Red Sox have been falling in the AL East. The humidity is making everything wet and sticky, and the searing sun has toasted the skin of any foolish person to walk outside unprotected, like myself. Kyle has been wearing plenty of sunblock - he's a smart kid, taking after his mother.

Staying cool hasn't been easy on these scorching days. Kyle and I have tried to beat the heat by drinking plenty of milk and iced coffee (I won't say who drinks what). But often that's not enough, and after a half-hour or so of walking outside, my shirt is soaked in sweat, and Kyle is partially melted. At that point we go back inside and worship the air conditioners.

"Oh, great and powerful air conditioner," we say, "How you rumble with the power of a thousand armies! Your cold air dances from your mouth, showering us unworthy servants with a cool breeze that has become extinct in the outside world. You suck our electricity with no restraint, but we will gladly forfeit our suppers to pay the power bill and keep you satisfied, oh mighty one!"

We have two glorious air conditioners in our apartment: a window unit in Kyle's room, and a floor unit in ours, and each one receives the proper respect each day. I'm not saying that we have turned completely pagan. We understand that these are merely appliances, and outside of the occasional animal sacrifices, we don't really do anything extraordinary to pay tribute. Often it's just a simple gesture, as Kyle demonstrates in the video below...



Since that video was taken a couple weeks ago, Kyle has perfected his worshipping skills, doing them much faster, much more frequently, and with less support from the bed. The air conditioner has seemed to appreciate the attention and gladly sprays him with more cold air. The practice has given Kyle strength, while keeping him from developing smelly armpits. Of course, this will all come to an end shortly. The heat waves will end, September and the fall will arrive, and cool air will return outside. The air conditioners will shut down for the season, and the one in the bedroom will once again become just the annoying obstacle that I stub my toes on in the middle of the night. By December, Kyle won't remember the air conditioner's generosity and will likely ignore it or deface it with a crayon. Such is the circle of life.

It's been a busy month for us, and we actually took a good amount of pictures (see DaveWeekly.com for stories of our vacation, beach trip and crib recall). However, I'm sticking to the "every other month" schedule with the slide shows because I don't want to spoil you... and I'm also just too lazy to put together an album with captions right now. I blame the heat for that.

See you next month!

Sleepless in New York

I love nap time. Beautiful, wonderful nap time. The apartment is silent, except for maybe a little bit of music, and there are no objects (stuffed animals, pieces of food, toasters, etc.) flying through the air. This is the time when the world is still, the baby monitor is on, and the dad can feel like his own person again. This is also the time when I sit down and get serious about the blogs, crafting a lot of bad jokes for them.

Alas, a threat to my sanity has been building. Kyle has turned 13, and like the weather in the northeast, he has suddenly changed. Granted, we're talking about 13 months here, but he's definitely showing the traits of a teenager. He's rebellious. Though he's been working on giving kisses, he's no longer giving them to Jennifer on her way out the door. When I try to rock him, he fights any effort of mine to put his head down on my chest - he now wants to face forward. He now crawls into parts of the apartment that have long been off limits, looking back to see how long he can get away with it. He has refused any solid foods we've tried to give him, looking at us with an expression on his face that reads "this is what I say to your food" as he flicks it onto the floor. He has stopped posing for pictures. He's embarrassed to be near me, and wants me to stop the stroller several yards away from the swing set so none of his friends could see me as he crawls to meet them. Worst of all, he no longer wants to take naps.

For nearly a few weeks now, he's been crying every time I put him in the crib for his morning and afternoon snooze sessions. We had been following a routine that has worked for a few months, but for some reason he no longer likes it. It's not that he's not tired - believe me, he's tired. He rubs his eyes. His eyelids are droopy. He nods off mid-sentence. Yet, as I try to slowly lower him down to his bed, he feels tug of gravity, and that sets off the alarms. He wrestles to a sitting-up position, wrinkles his face and drops his lower lip, and shatters the windows with his cries as his face turns Elmo red. I try to calm him down but with no luck. Sometimes, if I leave him alone, he pauses for a second, realizes that he is, in fact, tired, forgets what the fuss was all about, and then falls asleep. Most times, though, it's war. It's a battle between me wanting him to go to sleep, his body wanting him to go to sleep, and his mouth saying "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" (or, in other words, "I don't want to go to sleep"). At least once a day I still win, but a lot of times his mouth takes the victory, and after about an hour of trying, I give up on the effort, and Kyle and I go for a walk outside. The crying ends, and suddenly Kyle's back to being his happy, talkative self, smiling at bus drivers and flirting with old ladies.

Now, don't get me wrong- I'm nowhere near my wit's end yet. As I've said before, I worked in news, so I've experienced a lot worse. It's just something I have to get used to. At some point, I'm sure he'll push me to the brink of insanity, but considering that I spend much of my day snacking on his food and speaking in baby talk, I may be already there without realizing it. I know this is just a phase. I'm sure he'll eventually back down, since I'm really the boss, and - oh no - I think I hear him now. He sounds angry. I hope I didn't do something wrong. Dear me. I gotta go.

Here's a new photo album:

Kyle's 12th & 13th Months

Enjoy... and have a great month!

Year One

On Saturday Kyle celebrated his first birthday. There were balloons, there was cake, and there was a little guy crawling around, laughing and entertaining his guests. He's a far different person than the tiny baby above, who rested next to Jennifer just hours after his birth. So much has happened to us in the past year that at times it feels as if an eternity has passed since those early days, and yet I can remember them as if they just happened.

Kyle, as you may remember, was a bit hesitant to come out of the womb. His due date was June 10, but he had no intention of coming out then. Since Jennifer's doctor wanted the little guy out before he hit puberty, she scheduled an appointment for the 11th for us to go in and be induced. That was a bizarre day. Jennifer and I went to Baskin-Robbins to pick up an ice cream, and later that same afternoon we went to the hospital to pick up a baby. There was no dramatic water break, or me rushing around to pack a suitcase. It was an oddly typical day leading up to this major life-changing event. We even were stuck in traffic for a while. The day stopped being average once we were given a delivery room and nurses hooked Jennifer up to several tubes and monitors. By the time we were woken up in the middle of the night by a woman in another delivery room, shouting "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" as she gave birth, we had fully entered crazyland. You could say the nervousness started to kick in at that point. About 24 hours later, our little guy arrived, and we haven't had a "typical" day since.

Now here we are, one full year later, still learning the ropes of parenthood. Every day there's a new lesson, as Kyle tests his boundaries, and finds new dangerous places to check out, places I didn't even realize existed in our apartment. I've discovered that the little guy loves to take long naps on beautiful days, and then can't sleep at all during days of horrible weather, when going outside isn't a very good option. He tends to sleep through the night, except on days when Jennifer works really late or I'm not feeling well. On those days, he wakes up at 4:30 am and can't fall back asleep before breakfast, no matter how hard we try to coax him. Occasionally he sleeps late into the morning, too, but only on workdays. Our kid is ticklish, enjoys making silly noises with other people, and is a fan of exploring things, though at times certain objects have caused him to scream for no apparent reason. Among those are car keys, candles, and a disturbing toy my brother gave him for his birthday, which makes noises and spits out plastic balls. Apparently, he also has a problem with cake. Those of you who read my other blog, DaveWeekly.com, know the whole story. For you Baby Beaudry readers, here's a special treat: the actual video.

Of course, Kyle isn't sour on all foods. He's a big fan of sweet potatoes, squash and the "chicken and rice" meal by Gerber. He loves his toast, Cheerios and banana puffs... that is, when he's not throwing them on the floor. Kyle also enjoys long walks outside, the swings, and sunsets. And he doesn't spit up much anymore! So, ladies, this is one guy you don't want to pass up.

Next month I'll put together pictures from his 12th and 13th months. For now, you can check out this photo album of his special day:

Kyle's First Birthday

Enjoy! See you next month.

Almost one

It's about time Kyle accepts the truth: he's getting old. Last week the little guy hit the 11-month mark, which means we have less than a month to go until his first birthday. It's an important milestone. Even though we'll probably still refer to him as a "13-month-old," "18-month-old," or "55-month-old," beginning next month we can also simply refer to him in years, which will be the preferred measurement. That means the "monthies" are nearing an end. Kyle's five-month-old and six-month-old friends are already harassing him about it and sending him "over the hill" cards and black balloons. In the meantime, Kyle's trying to enjoy what's left of the monthies as he reflects on life and questions whether it's too late to follow his dreams.

This was quite an eventful month for Kyle. His 11th month included his first Easter, his first Mother's Day, and the first time he could refer to his mom as an "esquire." He's eating more, crawling more, and demanding more from his dad, who finds himself worn out most evenings, after spending the days chasing the little guy around. I am finding myself drinking more and more coffee. College didn't do this to me. A stressful job didn't do it. Even the overnight shift didn't do it. No, the one thing that is pushing me into the pit of caffeine addiction is a little guy who can't even walk yet. Incredible. At least he still sleeps from time to time.

Anyway, I have a new photo album for all of you to enjoy:

Kyle's 10th & 11th Months

That's about all I have right now. Time for me to start preparing for a birthday!