Frito Bandito

Ryan and Addie have this little song they sing together. It's genesis was from the Frito Bandito song that Kathy sings sometimes to us.


When Ryan sings it to her, she sings it back with a hearty "aye yi yi yi" and we all laugh.


We really need to get it on video.



Now to be honest, I'm tempted to change the words to match Dylan and all his friend's love for cheetos. It'd work, don't you think?

Update: Got a video in the car of Addie singing her little song. Nevermind the turbulence. I was sitting in the FAR back of the car and it sure was a bumpy ride.

3 months

Addie is 3 months old. She coos and smiles when she sees her mommy or daddy's faces, loves to be held (hello seperation anxiety!), and is gaining weight nicely now. She's right between the 10th and the 25th percentile for weight now, which means a lot. She still is primarily breastfed, but gets about 2 ounces of formula per day most days to add some calories.

Her eyes are still mostly blue, but changing ever so slightly now more to a greyish hue. She's got a sweet temperment, but really doesn't like being set down. It takes stealth-like skills to transfer her from my arms to the cradle some days for to get her to take a solid nap.

Dylan adores her, but is still learning about what she can and cannot do. The other night he spent about 5 minutes preparing her swing for her to sleep in. He laid out her blankets and pacifier and dolly on the swing in a very particular way, making sure it was 'just so'. He loves helping her calm down when she cries. He turns on her swing to play music (often to my dismay, but strangely it seems to help her when he does it and doesn't when I try). He gives her the pacifier. He sings her songs with me in the car. And he tells me to go to see the baby when she cries, saying 'she needs you mommy'. He rarely is jealous and when he is, we try to help him label his feelings and ask for attention in a positive way. I'm sure as she develops more of her personality and is awake more, we'll run into more of the 'jealousy' for our time, but for now I'm proud of him. He's a good big brother. And he loves his sister. What else can you ask for with a three year old?

Plus, Dylan is nearly all potty trained! GO DYLAN!!!

Ryan has stayed home with Addie a few times while I've gone back to work. It has been lovely to see how Ryan has 'risen to the occassion,' making up his mind to enjoy the day with his daughter instead of complaining about what he could be getting done at work. He's brought her to me at lunch so I could nurse her and see her halfway through the day. And he sends texts with sweet little pictures of her and notes updating me on what they are up to, which is just the reassurance I need (hello worry-wart mama!). He's a fabulous husband and father. And I'm thankful that they have had that time to bond together on their own.

Neuron!

Awesome news:
Ryan's paper is being published in Neuron!!! It's really something to celebrate, as he will have had one paper published each year now for the past 5 years. This Neuron publication will be something that hallmarks his post-doc and hopefully will pave the way for an academic faculty position this next year. I'm so proud of him and all his hard work and diligence.
And while he has proved to be highly productive at work, it doesn't mean we don't see him at home as well, which is a blessing that I count each and every day. He is home every night for dinner and stays around each morning to help me with the kids, feeding Dylan breakfast and letting me get the baby settled with a feeding before he leaves for work. He makes time to spend with Dylan, like going with us for family walks on nice summer evenings and staying involved in Dylan's extra activities such as sports class.
I love this man. Not for his accomplishments (although I'm SUPER proud of him!), but for his heart, his soul, the love for both his family and his work.

Airplanes! (Part 2)

This weekend Dylan and his daddy worked on another airplane project.
Ryan had a few moments of frustration when Dylan decided he HAD to fly his newly-assembled airplane around before the glue had dried. More than once, I felt obliged to kindly remind Ryan that the DOING of the project was more important than the RESULT.
The painting portion of the project went much better. However Dylan got so excited about each new color of paint that the airplane changed colors about 3 times. First it was black, then purple and white, then blue.
Again, it's all about having fun in the DOING. Right?

Right.

Airplanes!

My friend Kathy and I took the kids to "Color Me Mine" and worked on a few fun projects together with Dylan.

Dylan made this airplane, which turned out really neat. See the progression in photos here. We also worked on a few other Christmas presents, which we get to pick up tomorrow.
I was impressed with how long Dylan lasted, painting and being patient while I finished projects like one I did of Addie's footprints on a tile. He lasted for 2-3 hours each time we went. It really helped that Kathy was there to redirect him when he got bored or restless. And of course it helped that Addie slept nearly the entire time!

Afterwards, we went to eat lunch and get some ice cream, which was the perfect treat for tired artists.
Dylan wanted to play with his new airplane, but we quickly determined that a 3 year old probably shouldn't be playing with a ceramic airplane. So I promised if he agreed to put his new special airplane on the shelf, I'd get him another airplane he could play with.

After scouring the stores of South Pasadena on Thursday, I finally found one. He loves it.
In fact, Dylan loves his little die-cast stealth fighter plane so much that Ryan decided another fun project would be to make a model airplane together.
I'll post some pictures of that when they finish it up tomorrow.

Place cells

Dylan has great place cells. These are neurons in the hippocampus that fire when an animal (or person) is in a specific spatial environment. We've noticed some things recently that have astounded us:

1) Dylan knows when we are close to Taco Bell when we are driving around town, and will say his word for taco, which is "pow-k," (over and over) to indicate his desire for a tasty, nutritious dog-meat taco. Yeah, you know your family is eating WAY too much Taco Bell when your two-year-old can identify the streets around the local drive-thru.

2) He knows when we are even remotely close to a certain tunnel on the 710 freeway here in LA. We sometimes honk the horn when we are going through it, so he yells "beep, beep!" when he senses we are near it.

3) This one is cool. We go for walks in our neighborhood sometimes, and they are often quite long and take us over 2 miles from our house and often end when it is pretty dark out. On our way back, when we are still many blocks away and have several left and right turns to go before we get home, we will be very upset if we turn in any direction away from home.

The other thing he can do, though not exactly a spatial awareness task, is he can recognize any Volkswagen on the road. At first we though he was just recognizing the shape and pattern of the logo on the front of the car, but he can recognize it just by the shapes and contours of the metal (we know this because he has often pointed out a Jetta or Passat - being those are the cars we have - when the logo is covered by another car on the road). When he sees a VW, he declares "a-daddy," indicating for us that there is a daddy-car until we acknowledge this fact for him. It's pretty remarkable.

I'm sure you have gathered by now that this is being written by the resident nerd, err, neuroscientist in the family. Aren't kids amazing!?

monkey see, monkey do

Sitting in his highchair, Dylan waves his finger in the air back and forth at daddy, saying "no no no" with a fickle smile.

We exchange a knowing look: The mimicking has begun. We must really start to be careful what we say and do around him (not like we didn't before, but it didn't seem AS pressing before now).

He copies my dance moves in the car, our expressions, and crosses his legs and leans up against the car just like daddy while waiting for mommy. He pushes his foot in my way while I paint my toenails, indicating that he wants his painted like mommy's.

And yesterday he started singing. The tune? The gymboree Clean-Up song, but his words are "bee-bup, bee-bup" - which just cracked us up when we realized that of all the songs we sing together, he picked up this one to sing first (goes to show what neat-freaks his parents truly are!)

What's next, I ask.

A Day at the Park

Happy Love Thursday everyone. This is one of my current favorite pictures. I love how Dylan has his bucket and shovel slung over his arm as they excitedly walk through the parking lot to the park playground. He loves the sand, loves the slides, loves the energy, loves the freedom of running around without (many) boundaries. And to be honest, I really love the nap that usually follows.

you say TEN?

Ok. So with the second bout of the stomach flu in the past month, I can safely say that my appetite has dwindled to near nothing (nausea really does a number on my appetite). On an ordinary day I'd be glad that I'm not hungry, but after stepping on the scale this afternoon and realizing that I've lost about 10 pounds in the past two months or so, this is ridiculous. I forced myself to eat a little something for lunch after work today. Hopefully it stays down....

Anyhow on a happier note, Dylan has finally gotten some new socks. He was busting out of the old ones. His morning with daddy (while I was at work, trying to see my patients and get home as quickly as possible) consisted of a trip to Target and the store. Ryan reports that Dylan had a meltdown in the grocery store, which I can imagine was NOT pleasant, but I'm glad they got out. And I'm very excited about those new socks. (can you tell that my expectations for good news has shifted?)... and in my own defense, Ryan seemed pretty excited about the new socks too.

Dylan is in love with his blankie now. He always seemed to like a couple of them, but recently (like in the past week or so) he's attached himself to one in particular. He chews on the soft, cushy fabric and snuggles it at bedtime. I figured out that he really liked it this past week when he saw me take it out of his crib to put it in the big-bad-washing-machine. I had to work some distractable mommy skills there to keep him from a full meltdown. "Hey, there's another blankie here. How about a train or your bear? Or how about helping mommy fold some laundry over here?" And, boy oh boy, was he excited when that beloved blankie returned the next day in his crib. I guess this one is a keeper.

Lastly, Dylan got a haircut recently. It is a little shorter than planned, but precious nevertheless. Kinda reminds Daddy of Jim Carrey a bit...