Yesterday, I dragged Dylan to the office with me for my weekly team meeting. As you can see from the pics, he was more eager to get out the door than I was…!
Once at the meeting, he gamely brainstormed design and hashed out some technical details, all of which went far over my head!
Last Saturday, we celebrated Cindy’s 40th birthday! Yes, that’s right. The days of John Hughes flicks and Valley Girl are ancient history! Here’s Dylan with the happy bday gal!
It was a small family party, but hugely fun. Christina posted pictures of Cindy at various ages and we all got to guess how old she was in each one; I made a picture board of more of the same; Tom and I made vegan margarita cupcakes and cookies ‘n’ cream cupcakes; Bruce and Jennifer (Jeff’s sister and BIL) made the birthday cake; and we played an 80s play list to rehash those old high-school days! Oh, and she was Queen for the day — Dylan saw fit to try out her wand!
Dylan had a teeny tiny one-hour nap, but with all of the love, love, love he was getting from everyone and all of the interesting things to do, he remained a pretty jolly celebrant!
Well, lots has happened since the last post, of which successfully night-weaning Dylan and my sister turning 40 (holy smokes) are the most significant!
On Wednesday night, we finally started successfully weaning Dylan from nursing to sleep. Huge milestone. He’s teething and he had a cold that night, too, so we’re especially proud of the little fella!
In any case, I knew he was ready (I’ve periodically attempted night-weaning since Dylan turned 1!) because, although he was frustrated at not being able to nurse, for the first time ever, he actually was willing to let lullabies, rocking and a whole lot of snuggles and words of encouragement soothe him to sleep!
I also figured that we were in for a stretch of a lot of together time, so it was a good day of the week to start the process….
So, here’s the little guy at the Rodoni Pumpkin Patch just north of Santa Cruz.
Dylan wanted to do everything that Taliana did. When she sat on a pumpkin, he wanted to sit on one, too! She climbed the hay bales; so did he!
What was true for the pumpkin patch has been true elsewhere, too. He is now back to rejecting the high chair, but this time, it’s because he wants to sit on his own, in a big chair, just like Taliana!
So, we’d originally intended to make it all the way to Arata Pumpkin Farm near Half Moon Bay, but the kids both had little colds, so we thought it best to stay close by. This pumpkin patch seemed smaller, but they also had brussel sprouts still on the stalk (!) and cheap leeks, too! Overall, it was a fun way to end a very eventful week and, hopefully, it was a nice “reward” to Dylan for having endured his first two nights of sleeping sans nursing!!
We celebrated my aunt’s 60th bday this past Saturday and, boy, did Dylan have a blast. The party started late (6pm — “late” cuz it was in Castro Valley, ~1.5 hour drive from home, and attending meant flirting with disaster re Dylan’s bedtime!), but since it was for one of my favorite aunts and everyone only turns 60 once, we decided to go.
As soon as we got there, he was enthusiastically greeted by Zoe who just clearly adores him (and, amazingly, is strong enough to carry him around)! And, once we were inside and he caught sight of the rest of his cousins (including Jason and Tyler), he immediately joined in the fray, running around, laughing, showing off his dance moves….! He was a total blur!
Dylan wasn’t just a blur at the party, though, he’s been charming the socks off me with all of his “big boy” developments these past few days. For one, on Thursday, we put him in tennies for the first time (figured it was time for “real shoes” now that the weather is getting bad) and, boy, did they make him look big. For another, he’s been talking up a storm. He just started signing “fire”, he now says “ai ya yai” (he repeated this one morning when we were running late and I absently muttered this while getting us ready to go!), “help,” “poo poo,” “icky,” “ouch,” “owie,” and “shoe,” and he clearly sings (“caw caw” on one song and “deedle doo” sounds on a few other songs).
He is really beginning to copy us a lot more, too. In addition to vacuuming, “blowing his nose,” cleaning things off with wipes, cooking, Tom’s karate kicks, blowing food/drink to cool them off, and making munching and sipping sounds when pretending to eat and drink and/or feed his stuffed animals, he now copies me when I lean up against the wall to stretch out my legs.
When he needs (and often says) help, he has started taking our hands and putting them on the thing he needs help with (zippers, lids/caps, Tinkertoys, etc…) and he has also started taking our hands and guiding us to his destinations of choice!
It’s hard to believe that at this time last year, he was so wee, he was only beginning to sit up by himself!
The first picture is of Tyler when he was about 15 months old and the second is of Dylan at 13.5 months!
It was a rainy, rainy day and Dylan didn’t nap a single minute during the day, but we managed to get in a very, very nice anniversary dinner at Theo’s while Heather baked heart-shaped gingerbread for us with Taliana and Dylan!
The pumpkin-apple soup and the dry-farm tomato dish with pine-nut “cheese” were absolutely magnificent although everything was just as yummy as could be.
View the photos in flickr to read the descriptions of chow.
Since Dylan was born a mere 17 months ago, my flickr account has grown to exactly (at today’s count) 2,051 photos, 1,045 of which are pictures in which Dylan appears. This happens to be the 1,000th photo containing a “dylan” tag (here he is at his lola’s house while Tom and I were running the Almaden Classic 10K)….
Dylan was apparently the fourth most popular boy’s name in Hawaii in 2006. In all of California, Dylan doesn’t even crack the Top 20 even though we know of at least 3 other Dylans here in Santa Cruz!
Anyway, I’m neither happy nor sad about any or all of this, and anyone else who is interested in the popularity of baby names in the US (and a few other countries) can check out the Baby Name Map, too.
