Nick is One and Lux is an Apple
Well, we no longer have a baby in the house. Nick had his first birthday! Since his birthday was during Carnivale and two days before Mardi Gras we had a New Orleans themed Mardi Gras party to celebrate, complete with King Cakes shipped up from Louisiana, crawdad flavored potato chips, gumbo, Abita beer and Hurricanes for the adults and chocolate coins and jester teddy bears for the kiddies. Nick found the baby in his slice of King Cake, so he gets to buy next year’s cake!He handled the crowd of 50 quite well, although he seemed quite perplexed as everyone gathered around to sing happy birthday. And he enjoyed his slice of cake quite a lot. Nana Jane came to town to help celebrate and Aunt Karen was on hand too.
Lux is growing more comfortable with entertaining and went from Susan to Paul to Nana to AK without any real shyness around all the people. It probably helped that all the kids that came, save cousins Ethan and Jackson, were her friends from school, the neighborhood, and Bradley class.
Sadly, the day after his party Nick came down with Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, a virus which causes painful blistering of, yes, the hands, feet and mouth. Luckily his blisters are only on his throat, but apparently it hurts quite a bit. He also had a pretty good fever going there for a few days, but is on the mend now.
Luckily we already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for NIck when he got sick. It was his one year check up and he came through with flying colors (other than the 102 fever, of course). He is in the 95 percentile for height (on the charts at last) at 31 3/4 inches and the 70 percentile for weight at 23 lbs 3 oz. Developmentally he is right on track.
One thing he isn’t doing that we had expected is walking, or even standing on his own. Nick cruises along anything he can hold on to but seems reticent to let go, even when he is doing nothing more than barely steadying himself with a finger or two. It would be nice if he started to walk soon - he’s getting really heavy!
Though he may not walk, he is starting to talk quite a bit. Right now he can say Mama, Dada, What’s That? Bubba (our word for pacifier) and he mimics Lux by saying things like Up/Down and March! Of course there is also his Ray family cheer, yeah, yeah, YEAH!.
He got a whole lot of great toys for his birthday. He loves wheels and cars and books and one of his favorite things to play with right now is a board with gears on it. Lux opened most of his presents for him and has found quite a few favorites herself. She particularly enjoys a set of boxes which look like different buildings and can be used to form a town. She uses her people to play with them and we hear all kinds of arguments and discussions as she makes the people walk and talk and shop.
Lux is quickly turning into a teenager, in fact. She claims she is 16 years old and has been pestering us to buy her a car. A real car, not a toy, she is careful to point out. Also, one of her favorite phrases these days is “Oh my God!” said with typical teenage Valley Girl inflection. Lately she has been getting a lot of compliments on her haircut and although she is too shy to say Thank you, she has been giving out compliments a lot. Almost every day she tells Susan or Paul “I love your haircut!”. She is anxious to know what our favorite things are as well. She refers to herself as Modest Lux and doesn’t much like to be complimented herself and the other day when we called her a peach she protested and said she was an apple. Now she reminds us each day that she is an apple.
She is doing very well in school and will be quite ready to enter preschool in the fall. We have just found out that she got in to both of the preschools we applied to, so we have a difficult decision to make in the next two weeks, since we like both schools quite a lot.
It was after visiting preschools a few weeks back that we got our introduction to one of the ickiest parts of parenthood - the stomach virus. One day after our visits Lux called out in the middle of the night. She had vomited in her bed. We cleaned her and the bed up and she fell back asleep and seemed much better in the morning. She ate some breakfast and that was when we learned that milk is not good while the stomach virus runs its course. She vomited a few more times that morning and then Nick started in too. It was a nasty few days. Even though the vomiting only lasted for about 12 hours, the two of them were really wiped out and could barely lift their heads for quite a while. It was so sad and cute to see them sitting on the couch next to each other, each holding a big bowl to throw up into.
Once they had recuperated we headed up north to visit our friends Scott and Felicia in New York. They have a daughter Sofia who is Lux’s age and a son, Leo, who is Nick’s age. They also had the dreaded stomach virus at their house. It was sad, because I know the kids would really have enjoyed each other, had everyone been feeling better. The kids, Lux especially, enjoyed going to the Mid-Hudson Civic Center to watch Scott play hockey. Lux was very interested and yelled “Yeah, Scott!” at mostly the right times.
While there we went to an indoor play area for children called Kid’s Kingdom. I wasn’t sure what Lux and Nick would think of it, but they loved it. There were moon bounces and ball rooms and trikes and cars and basketball hoops and a sand box. Lux ran off and never looked back. We practically had to drag her home, exhausted hours later. It was there that Lux also discovered that she does like pizza. Or rather she likes the real thing, and not the low fat, veggie covered whole wheat crust thing we make at home.
Nick is becoming a bit more picky when it comes to eating, especially since he wants to feed himself instead of being fed. No more spooning spinach and broccoli into a willing mouth for us. Now he would be happy to eat crackers all day long. He does still like his yogurt and has discoved the joys of fish sticks, but veggies are quick becoming a thing of the past for him. Luckily, Lux is getting better about eating at least a bite of veggies at each meal, so maybe there is hope for the two of them.
Nick is also learning how to drink regular milk from a sippy cup, but he still does enjoy his bottles. He is also growing more attached to his bubba, although we try to limit it to naps and bedtime. If he finds one he pops it right in, but when Lux says “No, Nick, No bubbas!” he dutifully hands it to her.
The two of them are playing more together, although most of their play is running/crawling around the house screaming at the top of their lungs or hiding (under the dining room table and in our closet are two favorite places) and screaming. Lux is very sweet to Nick, some of the time, telling him “It’s okay Nick, don’t be sad. Don’t cry.” Other times she is pretty bossy and “No, Nick, no!” is heard many times every day. In her defense, it must be pretty annoying to have some baby pester you all day and mess up your games like he does.
Nick does adore Lux and the other morning, before dawn, when both of them had crawled into our bed, he discovered that blowing raspberries makes her laugh hysterically. Now we can’t get him to stop doing it.
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