Closing the Cuteness Gap

We've been a little tardy here at Rizk-Henderson Industries (makers of Rizkerson.com), and for that we apologize.

When last we blogged, we were celebrating Reid's birthday. Reid turned 3 on Friday, the seventh of July. Unfortunately, that night, Reid fell ill with what turned out to be Strep Throat (Happy birthday!) Hasty cancellation plans were put into effect, and after a quick visit to the doctor, Reid was dosed with antibiotics and spent his birthday taking naps and alternately begging to watch and being permitted to watch Toy Story movies.

Somehow, K, Sania and I all managed to avoid contracting the demon scourge, but the less said about this, the better.

Nevertheless, things continue to chug along here at the house that babies built. Sania's cuteness levels are off the charts. One thing we've noticed about photographing our children after more than three years is that the manufacturers of things for babies to sit on and sit in and lie in believe that by making this products bright and colorful, somehow they will be more liked by the babies. This, however, ensures that every photograph of the baby is marred by what a background made of what looks to be a blue and orange animal print of undetermined genus and species. So that is the explanation for some of the backgrounds you've been looking at lo these three years hence.

Speaking of animal-print children's toys, Sania the amazing standing baby has conquered the Exersaucer. Reid didn't take to the dish of noise and rotation this early, but that was to be expected, with all the shouting and refusing to sleep (reflux plus a lifelong commitment to being undistractable are to blame). Sania has had a strong desire to stand (and mysteriously strong leg muscles) since she was less than a month old, and defying what I'm sure are the age-guidelines for the toy, her mom and I thought it would be cool to see if she would enjoy standing while looking at plastic things mounted in, er, another plastic thing.

Obviously, she enjoys it quite a bit. Based on current prediction models for super-children, Sania will be walking by five months and fighting crime on her own within a year. Stay tuned.

Back over in Reid-ville, we've definitely seen an uptick in Sania-related-stress-disorder. And although this is never directed as his sister, it's definitely growing in intensity. All first children have some trouble transitioning to being big brothers and sharing their parents. (We've had a big transition her ourselves as K has finally been dragged back to work, in order to finance our gigantic internet hosting and deluxe home internet service costs, not to mention terabytes of storage for our enormous photo library. K's mom is holding down the fort while we both work through the month of July and then daddy's home with the baby for a month.) Reid is such a good boy, and a mostly-honest boy that it's hard to begrudge him a little bit of drama as he figures our what it's like to be the oldest and not the only.

This figuring out period has impacted us in areas such as potty-training (still a little spotty, and accidents are related to Reid's intensive play and some attention-related issues, if you want to know the truth) and bedtime, which stretches out while he maximizes Reid-time.

He is our superstar, and I have a half-dozen moments of Reid splendor written in a little book I've taken to carrying around. He tells me sometimes (often when we're alone, reading stories in his room) that I'm a 'good dad.' It makes me nearly cry each time. He's full now of idioms and language tics that are amusing. He asked me for a piece of bread while we were making hot dogs one night. I said, "Sure, you can have a bun when we get out hot dogs." His nickname is 'Bun' for reasons not worth explaining, and he became agitated at my response: "No!" he shouted. "I a bun!" After a few Laurel-and-Hardy-like rounds of this game, I figured out what he was getting at. "You're my bun!" I announced, and his face melted into a smile. I gave him a hot dog in a...roll.

He went to the doctor for his 3-year checkup and passed with flying colors. Though he feels rail-thin to me, he is in the 50th percentile for weight and the 96th percentile for height, and he was 38 inches tall. Somewhere it says that your height at 3 is half your adult height which would make Reid 6'4" tall when he's a grow-up.

We rescheduled the birthday party and set up some pools in the back yard, salvaging much of the food (though the cake was eaten, at great sacrifice, by people who live in our house over the course of the intervening week). Reid's favorite pool activity is leaping wildly into the pool from a long run-up along the side of our house. K caught him mid-splash. That's how I think of Reid now, always moving, jumping, flying, splashing, smiling. Pure kinetic energy.

(The picture at the top of the entry was from Reid's birthday party at his daycare.)

Reid Turns Three

I don't know what it is about Reid's third birthday that frightens me more: that I have a three-year-old son, or that with every passing day, that boy is becoming more independent, smart and funny. The truth is probably somewhere in between. my mortality -- our mortality, K's and mine -- seems to sharpen when we see the bumps and scrapes of Reid's short boyhood. And then time seems to stretch out elastically before us when we talk or visit with friends whose kids are teenagers, or even just nine or ten.

but Reid is such a magnificent gift that for every minute I feel comically old around him -- creaking knees! -- I pass five more where his completely unchecked laughter refreshes my outlook on life. It's strange because this fun is so indulgently fulfilling, I half-feel it's a little bit of a bad thing. Around other adults, I find myself yielding to the tug of grown-up-ness. I'll let other play with him and stand around being parent-y, rather than reveal that my own greatest desire at that moment is to be wrestling or talking in funny voices just to see him flash his killer smile.

Life with Reid is full of surprises and those conflicts. Lately, we clash over bedtime like he's a nine-year-old. We negotiate and he shows a CEO's instinct for playing a situation to his advantage. My favorite aspect of summer, the long, lazy days and late-setting sun have proven his ally. He ntoes as we hustle up to begin the hour-long bedtime ritual that the 'sun is still awake.' Indeed, the son sometimes stays awake for hours. As I wade through his battery of excuses and distractions, and I am thinking of the chores that await me downstairs before my own bedtime, Reid never flags, and his charm stays on full force.

More than anything, I see Reid's third birthday as a chance, I think, for his mom and I to begin imagining even higher hopes for him. From the moment we found out we were having a baby we held the hopes you hold forever: success, happiness, a life as free of fear and loss as possible. We're hope this way forever for both our beautiful children.

But as Reid's little life takes shape, I have other hopes and dreams that reflect his life now and I know are colored by my own experiences. I hope he grows to understand hard times but never loses his soft side. Although he is every bit th rough and tumble boy, he is truly a sensitive soul. The tenderness he tries to express when he holds his little sister, or hugs a friend, or reassures his mom or me that 'we're okay' is a beautiful aspect of his personality. But it's hard to be sensitive and tender in our world sometimes. Giant, disappointing realities like injustice and war make it difficult. His country, which Reid knows nothing about, has been at war since before his young life began. Understanding this will be a challenge for him.

I hope, too, that he is the lucky child whose dazzling imagination stays a part of his life long after other kids' have faded away. We look into Reid's world of fantasy play and scratch our heads. He is dreaming up plots and schemes and characters and events. He's composing dialogue on the fly, as one of his action figures (a spaceman) struggles to keep from falling off a pirate ship (of course) until he is saved by his friend, a shoe. Reid's imagination is dizzying and delightful. I hope it stays a part of his world as he grows up.

My final hope for Reid is that he continues to be a believer. Everyone wants their children to be more successful in life than they were. Reid will be our own 2.0. I don't believe that means he'll get more degrees or make more money or whatever. I want him to be happier, or more importantly I want him to have a greater capacity for happiness than I could ever have. Our life is wonderful. But I'm a skeptic. I'm a worrier. I'm Charlie Brown. I want Reid to be Snoopy. I want to see him in his future dancing like he doesn't care. Growing up will teach him lesons for sure. I just don't want him to take them too seriously.

So, son, as I write these words, you're drowsing in your bed. You fought sleep tonight, more than usual. Dinner was late and in your head (you can't tell time), it felt like bedtime came too soon after dinner, that you were being cheated. Before you went to bed, I told you that you've got to sleep tonight so we can wake you up tomorrow and have your birthday. You said you didn't want cupcakes, you wanted to come downstairs. I remember making these demands myself at age siz, when my dad only came home from the hospital in time to kiss me goodnight. When you read this, some day in the future, I want to tell you something. Every night, I think about what bedtime felt like years ago, and every night, I feel sorry I can't let you stay up late. But we're parents now, and bedtime is bedtime.

And your mom and me? We're exhausted.

Happy birthday. I love you, son.

Smiling Faces

Here are two smiling faces. K shot Sania in her little bouncy-seat in the kitchen in natural light. We're finally getting our money's worth out of this chair because Reid didn't agree to sitting in it longer than a few minutes, while Sania enjoys it immensely.

Reid was out at the Jay's big momma's pool yesterday when (I think) Jay's mom shot this picture. (Thanks, Maggie.) He was running around with a water pistol 'watering the plants' while making shooting noises.

Quick Hits

Life as we know it now:

Sania giggled at us the other day. We've graduated from full-force cooing (often with endearing little peaks that sound like one second of pure joy) to periodic actual giggling. Usually this occurs during the portion of "If you're happy and you know it" when Katrena manually wiggles Sania's butt.

Reid is taking swimming classes. It isn't clear that he is enjoying himself that much. He is into the experience, but it is hard to get him to go, because it is a monkey-wrench in his regular Saturday schedule of not-going-to-daycare and he's suspicious. Also, I think he believes me and the baby are potentially doing something fun while he's at the pool, and he wants in on the action.

Early food restrictions K accepted when first breastfeeding Sania in order to combat baby-belly-discomfort (phasing out citrus, certain vegetables, etc) have all been relaxed. The cabbage restriction was tested this week with a Primanti Brothers Sandwich featuring cole slaw, and the baby fared well. So we're a family of omnivores, directly or indirectly, once again.

As I mentioned earlier, Reid and I now ride together on my bike, which is great fun. The other day, we were going down a hill, and normally when we go down a hill, we open it up a little, but this time we were going toward a narrow path to some of Arlington's miles of excellent bike trails, so I was braking while we went down hill, which feels strange on a bike. As we were riding, I felt Reid's two hands on my lower back, gently bracing me. He said, "No worry, daddy. I help you never fall down." I love this kid.

Sania definitely inherited K's sleep habits. She has been documented sleeping longer than seven hours a night. This isn't a regular occurence, but rest assured, we enjoy it when it happens.

Of course, Reid's potty-training is going well, except for the part when he regularly wets the bed. If I can swing out of bed before Reid's bladder capacity/sleep-willingness to suppress night-urination gives out, I can coax him over to the potty and preserve the sheets. Ironically, the very moment that the baby is letting us sleep, and we would like to take advantage of Reid sleeping, we are forced to wake Reid up. I mourn this development.

Since Sania is growing so much, we are taking a long view at a potential clothing crisis. At her current rate of growth, Sania's dimensions will exceed the size of this smoker capable of preparing 100 pounds of meat at a time. (Anyone interested in seeing a chart of projected child growth based on early childhood weight gain can visit the Trixie Update archives.) But the clothing crisis is this: She is wearing summer 6 month clothing now, clothing we anticipated she would be wearing at the end of September. It is a safe bet that she will be wearing 9 month clothing before summer ends. Our 9 month clothing includes a lot of long pants, sweaters and wooly baby-bag-looking getups. Maybe we can cut some off, so she looks like Daisy Mae of Dogpatch.

Reid's birthday approaches. He seems relatively conceptless about this entire development. Also, time still has no meaning. You say, "you're birthday's coming soon," because you're a parent and a mental case and you want him excited about his birthday. He says, "It's my birthday!" And you say, "No, your birthday's in seven days." And he's disappointed, because seven days and 100 years mean the same thing to him. Not today. Actually, we have some fuzzy time-logic that we're working out with Reid right now. He seems to have confused 'today' with 'now.' A parent promises something he wants for later today, say, after we've gone potty and had some lunch. And he begins to cry and demand that we have it 'today.' We say, 'yes, today, as soon as we're done with lunch and going potty,' but it is too late. You've lost everything, because he wants it today.

Sania went swimming for the first time over at his friend Jay's grandmother's house. It was nice. She smiled and smiled and couldn't figure out why she was wearing a hat. When I get the pictures out of the camera, K won't let me show them because she's the one holding Sania, but maybe I'll get some photoshop out and see if we can get a witness-protection blur across her face.

Reid is now a figure-of-speech memorizer. He's an idiom-addict. K's favorite story about this involved driving somewhere with Reid and refusing some unreasonable request (watch a movie, fly an airplane, reverse the passage of time). Reid became angry and put K in time out (from his booster seat), demanded redress for his grievances and generally expressed sputtering dismay for whatever had just been decided. Then he said, "This is crazy, mommy." What three-year-old says that?

Sania has made Henry's blog! Check the second picture in this post. Yeah, baby. Cross-blogging the babies!

Okay, that's it for a bit. We were out of town last week helping Nonni recuperate, so we're low on photography. But here's something to keep Sania's breathless fans happy. Enjoy.