Whipping Up a Whipped Cream Frenzy

Dexy and Daddy made home-made whipped cream for some strawberry shortcakes. After we finished the strawberry shortcakes, Dex got My Bologna all worked up by letting him lick whipped cream off his fingers.

 This, in turn, got Dexter all worked up.

And so the cycle went...

Long Building and Tall Man

I helped with the design and construction of the long building but the tall man (on the right) was all Dexter.

Some Sort of Special Drawer?

The other day Dex and I were driving in the car we were listening to the Moth Story Hour on NPR. A woman was telling the story of preparing for the birth of her first child. In predictable fashion, she first explained how she had it all meticulously planned out. She had read all the books and decided how she wanted this birth to go. She even made 30 laminated copies of a typed 8 page detailed plan for everyone in the hospital about how she didn't want any medications, wanted a totally natural birth, no instruments, etc. But after 30 hours of painful labor she was hooked up to every device in the hospital with pain medication zooming through her veins.

As she began to talk about how different the experience was with her second child (she no longer felt the need for total control), Dexter quietly asked, "Does it hurt to have a baby? Did it hurt when you had me?" I explained that it does hurt when a baby comes out, and that it did hurt when he was born but that the pain is only for a little bit and then there is a lot of joy and relief when the baby arrives and when he came out Daddy and I couldn't have been more excited and happy. Thinking I could turn this into a learning moment about the importance of facing challenges rather than avoiding them I added, "sometimes the most important things in life are difficult but they sure are worth the effort." For a few seconds I thought I was off the hook. But then he asked, "Do you have some sort of special drawer?"

How does one respond to this?!  I wanted to laugh but I didn't want to make him feel foolish. I wanted to make sure he didn't have the wrong idea in his head but I didn't want to go overboard with details. Finally I said, "It's more like a baby gate. Girls have a place on their bodies where the baby comes out." Of course the next question was, "where?" I explained that girls have that place between their legs. "Can I have a baby?" "No, boys can't have babies.  Girls and boys have different bodies and only girls can have babies." "How does the baby get in there?" Oh Geez, here we go... "Moms and Dads share a special kind of love and the difference in their bodies allows them to make a baby together. But the baby only grows in the Mommy." I waited a couple seconds for the next question. But it never came. At least not yet.

Inspired by Elissa's Colored Ice Balls

Elissa told me about making colored ice balls with Ian during the last deep-freeze. We decided to give it a try with Dexy.  We filled balloons with water and food coloring and then put them out in the snow to freeze.





After peeling away the balloon casing, we ended up with beautifully colored ice balls that we used to line our front walkway. Unfortunately, the drifting snow quickly covered them up.

Momentum Experiment

The other day when I came home from work Dexter couldn't wait to tell me about the "momentum experiment" that he conducted with Daddy in the basement. They placed a toy pig on a skateboard and pushed it into the wall. When the skateboard stopped, the pig kept going into the wall!

Next, they tied the pig onto the skateboard and when they repeated the same experiment with this single adaptation, the pig stopped at the same time the skateboard did.

The additional variable of My Bologna's excited barking did not change the outcome. Dex explained that they had seen the experiment on Sid the Science Kid and wanted to try it out. I was so happy that Dex has a Daddy who does these things with him. I was also really happy that he got pictures of it!

Pineapple Sneezes

Dex announced to me yesterday, "If you have to sneeze, just say pineapple and you won't have to sneeze anymore." When I questioned where he heard this, he told me his teachers told him. When I asked him if it worked, he said he kept forgetting to try it.  Yesterday, Dex had plenty of sneezes so (luckily?) he had plenty of opportunities to try it.  Sometimes it worked - I heard him say "pineapple" and it wasn't followed by a sneeze. Sometimes the sneeze came out as he said pineapple. I think we now have new measure of how sick Dexy is - the number of "pineapples" he utters per day!

Finally Warm Enough to Try the New Christmas Sleds

Rather than the problem of not having enough snow to try out the new Christmas sleds, this year, we have had to wait for temps to warm up enough to enjoy the snow we do have! Dex is getting really good at going down all by himself,

with the occasional "kerplunk" before reaching the pavement of the parking lot,

and pulling the sled up the hill all by himself.

Upwords. Up, Up, Up!

Dex and Daddy challenged Mommy to a game of Upwords (Daddy should have known better).

Dex helped Daddy think of words and find placements on the board. Daddy needed all the help he could get!

While cleaning up after their thrashing by Mommy, Dex decided it would also be fun to build the tiles up, up, up.

A Minute to Learn...

...and a lifetime to master.

Dex loved the new bookcase for games, especially since it now houses grown up games as well as kids' games. We spent the next few days showing Dexy how to play Battleship, Mastermind, Yahtzee, and Othello. He really enjoys Mastermind and Othello!

Dex even got to teach Daddy how to play Othello (I couldn't believe he had never played it before - especially since we've had it forever and before Dex came along Ben and I loved to play games). 

Dex likes to keep score. In this case, Mommy beat Dexy. But then again, she's had a lot longer time in her life to work on mastering it!

The Museum of Helicopter and Elevator Parts

The other day Dexter interrupted me while I was working to show me the "museum of helicopter and elevator parts" he had just made out of wooden blocks.  It was pretty amazing (the helicopter parts were pretty obvious to me but he had to point out the elevator parts).  I asked what his inspiration was for this museum. When he looked at me quizzically, I asked what gave him the idea for this, what made him think of it. "Well, I was just getting bored and I started thinking about building a museum and I thought of helicopter parts and elevator parts and then I got my blocks and built it."  Such a mystery how that mind works!

The Black and White Future of New York City

Lately Ben and Dex have been playing instruments to each other.  Sometimes Dexter will play guitar while Ben reads Winnie the Pooh poems or a book and sometimes Ben will "write" a song for Dex.  The other night while they were trading off songs (I should say sounds) on the guitar, Dexter announced, "This next song is called, 'The Black and White Future of New York City'." Dex started playing the guitar and Ben's mouth hung open in wonderment - where does his brain come up with these things? Seems like pretty sophisticated conceptual stuff but then so does a lot of what little kids say.

After Christmas Clean Up

As part of our post-Christmas clean up this year, we rearranged the furniture in our front room making it into more of a designated play space for Dexter. As part of that endeavor, we bought a bookcase at Ikea to hold all the games.

Dexy helped Daddy "build" the bookcase - he even used real tools!

Fruit Juicing

During our winter sequestration, Dex also transformed all the fruit in the house into some delicious fruity juice.

French Pressing

During the cold snap, we chose to make coffee at home rather than venture outside to buy it.

Dexy enjoyed learning about the french press and helping to make the coffee for Mommy and Daddy.

Fifteen Below

We got slammed with about a foot of snow the day before the temps plummeted to about fifteen below zero without windchill.  We hunkered down in the house for a couple of days - just looking out the back window made us cold!

New PB&J Implement

Grandma and Grampy sent us a special implement for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches - it has a jelly scoop on one end and a peanut butter spreader on the other.  Dex enjoyed using it to make himself his own PB&J sandwich. 

The fatal flaw with the implement's design is that it doesn't matter which end you use first, you are going to get either jelly or peanut butter (whichever you used first) on your forearm when you use the other end second. At least Dexy did...

Twenty-Twenty

At his last doctor's visit, Dexter's pediatrician suggested that we get him an initial eye exam before kindergarten. Since Ben and I both needed to get eye exams, we found a local opthomologist who works with young children as well as adults and scheduled us all for eye exams. After some initial hesitation Dexter really enjoyed his first eye exam (at first, he thought the chair and equipment was a robot but after watching Daddy go up and down in the chair a few times, Dex got on board). Dexy got to look through 3D glasses, read really small letters on a far away wall, point a red laser around the room, and look into some funny implements that had blinking red and green lights.  Dex has 20/20 vision and his eyes look very healthy.  Poor Mommy now needs bifocals.

Solution for Shyness

As I was waiting outside Dexy's classroom to pick him up from school on Wednesday, I overheard him say to the girl he has described as his "quietest friend":

"Maybe if I came over to your house we might have so much fun you would forget about being so quiet." 

She didn't say anything back but she smiled at him.

Delayed Playdate Realized

We were able to reschedule Dexter's playdate with Tabitha and it was a smashing success.  Dex showed Tabitha his Leap Pad and how to play Mousetrap.

They both ate munchkins and made "music" in the basement. There were no issues until it was time to say goodbye - both Dex and Tabitha struggled with the transition.  More playdates means more opportunities to practice graceful good-byes.

Soup Spoons

While eating some minestrone soup, Dexter asked for another spoon. Ben resisted telling him that he already had a spoon but I knew Dex had something in mind so we got him an additional spoon.

Sure enough, Dex used the two spoons to get at just the broth - he would scoop up one spoonful and then use the other spoon to knock the bits off the first spoon leaving only the broth.

Birthday Boy

Happy birthday to My Bologna who turned 10(ish) on New Year's Day this year. Because he started life as a stray, we have no idea when his real birthday is. The vet thought he was probably a little less than one year old when we got him so we're going with 10 years old.

He is the best dog ever and we love him so much. He really enjoyed the birthday beaver we got him.

Snow Scraping

Rather than help Daddy with shoveling, this time Dex decided to do some snow scraping with his sled.

Turns out it was more like snow spreading...

Snow Angel

I asked Dexy if he knew how to make a snow angel (assuming that he didn't since neither Ben nor I had introduced him to the concept) and he promptly got down on his back and started moving his arms and legs back and forth in the snow! 

 He needed some help getting back up - Daddy comes through!

When I asked how he knew what that was and how to do it, he explained that he had seen it on a commercial (how embarassing that our son learned about this from TV).

New Year's Snowy Walk

We got a dusting of snow on Christmas but we got a more significant amount on New Year's Day. Ben took My Bologna and Dexy for a snowy walk/sled ride.

Kind of Like an Artist

On New Year's Eve, after our visit to the Winter Wonderland and before Ben had to leave for his gig in Evanston, Dex asked to do some painting. Santa brought Dexy a dinosaur painting book so we got that set up for him with some water and a paintbrush.

He really became engrossed in the process.

At one point, he said to us, "I am kind of like an artist." We told him he is exactly like an artist.He was so much like an artist that he insisted we hang up the paper towel he was using to dab his paints as the artistic product (rather than any of the actual dinosaur paintings)!

Box Blocks in the Basement

We transferred the box blocks to the basement and Dex is having even more fun with them down there (more stuff to play with on them!).

He said to Daddy, "I don't think Santa's elves made these box blocks! This one says 'Office Depot'!" Ben explained that because they were so big and would take up so much room in the sleigh maybe Santa picked them up near our house. That made sense to Dex.

More Tilting and Whirling

One of the other highlights of the day for Dexy was the Tilt-a-Whirl. He asked to ride the "Tilt-a-Coaster" again and then on the ride home announced that the "Tilt-a-Roller" was one of his favorite rides he's ever been on in his whole life.

Caboosing It

Dexter got to sit by himself in the caboose of the Winter Wonderland train.

Afterwards, he couldn't wait to tell us that "where the train went it turned to night and then back to day!"In retrospect, riding the train was one of the highlights of the day for Dexy.

Li'l Ice Sk8r

Dexter was sooooo excited to try ice skating for the first time.In retrospect, he reports that ice skating was his least favorite Winter Wonderland activity but he was glad he tried it.

Standing up and balancing on the skates took a little getting used to.

Dexy got pretty tired waiting to get onto the ice and decided to have a seat on the floor periodically.

Dex held onto the wall and my hand most of the time. He had pretty good balance but complained about his feet hurting and insisted on getting off the ice after going only 1/4 of the way around the rink.

Daddy had to lift him over the side while Mommy skated all the way around to the exit but not until after Dexter skated a little without holding onto the wall (still holding onto Mommy - my aching back).