Cold blast

I did not get a full night's sleep last night. I'm not surprised, though. Full-night sleeps are hard to come by in the city. Loud patrons leaving the nearby restaurant at 2 a.m. have woken us up before. So have sirens, garbage trucks, and drunk Polish soccer fans. I once awoke to the sound of a man slamming his car into the iron fence in front of our 3-story building. I looked out the window, saw that everyone was okay, yawned and went back to bed. These things happen.

Recently, Kyle has been to blame for many of my restless nights. In his first few months, keeping us up was one of his favorite pastimes, along with finding creative ways to dirty the curtains near his changing table. We knew we were in trouble when he cried throughout his first night home from the hospital. We almost brought him back the next day, but then Jennifer reminded me that he was worth keeping because he'll be able to accomplish a lot of chores for us in about ten years. In recent months he has slept much better, but other factors related to him tend to keep me up. For example, I can barely sleep a wink when I know he has a fever, even if he's not making a sound. I also have trouble sleeping whenever I fear Kyle might be taken away in the night by pint-sized circus clowns, but this only seems to happen whenever I eat Chinese food close to midnight. Last night, though, I was simply concerned that our son was going to be too cold.

In case you haven't heard, New York is caught in the middle of a violent fight between summer and winter, with spring deciding to sit it out this year. Last week, New Yorkers could walk down the street wearing nothing but a thong, but this week only the visiting Eskimos are doing that. The sudden burst of cold air outside has been cooling down our apartment since Saturday. Our heat, which we do not control, had not been running because, as I've screamed at Mother Nature, IT'S MAY!


(Above: Kyle, seen here stealing my slippers, wears a heavy sweatshirt inside the apartment, just three weeks before the unofficial start of summer)

The nights have been awfully chilly, as was last night, when I woke up to a groan from Kyle, amplified over our baby monitor. I realized he might be a little uncomfortable, since he had only one blanket in his crib, compared with the seventeen blankets, comforters, and bearskins covering Jennifer and me. I got up, walked to Kyle's room, and quietly placed a second blanket on him. It was 5 a.m., which isn't too early, but it felt earlier since it was still dark out, and Jennifer and I made the mistake of going to bed after midnight.

Thirty minutes or so later, Kyle woke and found the blanket. I know this because, instead of snuggling in more and appreciating its warmth, the little guy noticed something new in his crib and thought it was fun to play with. Suddenly he was yelping joyfully and making karate-chop sounds. Jennifer and I awoke to the party going on at the other end of our apartment. We groaned and tried to hide more under our covers until the noise stopped or he called for us. Fortunately, the noise stopped about five minutes later.

About forty-five minutes later, the party began again. Woohoo! Extra blanket! Yippee! Based on the evidence, this is the most likely time when the party got a little bit out of hand. However, we did not know what was going on, so we simply waited for the celebration to end, and it did about ten minutes later.

Five minutes after that, the alarm went off. We threw it across the room and slept for fifteen more minutes. Then I went to the computer while Jennifer took a shower. Shortly afterwards, I heard Kyle again, but this time he was just talking to himself. The party, apparently, was over. I let him chat away, and at 7 a.m. I decided to say hello.

I opened the door to Kyle's room. He immediately said, "hi." He was lying down in his crib with a smile on his face. The blankets, as I had suspected, were not on him, but rather tossed off to the side. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, except for the fact that Kyle was wearing nothing but his diaper.

"Kyle!" I shouted, and he cackled. I'm shivering in the cold, but he hardly seemed to notice. I'm guessing the clothes came off while he was making a lot of noise, about 45 minutes earlier. Yet, as I stood there, he was still basking in the glow of his extra blanket party, and proud that he was able to discard his clothing without help from any of us. He kept smiling as I quickly put his pajamas back on, still unaware that his toys had developed frost.

I learned today that, for Kyle, weather matters not. If summer's just around the corner, then Kyle feels it's time to act like summer's just around the corner, regardless of how cold it is. Have a great time. And, if you want to party, all you need is an extra blanket. You can have a blast with the simple things. Maybe this is a lesson for all of us.

Or maybe my kid's just crazy.

The special sauce

Our son is obsessed with apple sauce.



It all began a few months ago, at dinner time, while Kyle was quietly throwing his entire meal onto the floor. I pulled out a carton of apple sauce and asked him whether he'd like to try it. As it was, the little guy was already a fan of apples. Every time I try to eat an apple, Kyle grabs it from me. He likes the feel of the skin and how it glistens in the sun as it flies through the air. When I gave him some apple sauce and told him what it was, Kyle smiled and exclaimed, "AP-bul DAW!" It was love at first sight.

Now Kyle says "apple sauce" everywhere. As he plays with his toys, we often hear him repeat, "AP-bul daw. AP-bul daw. AP-bul daw." When we go traveling, he sits in the back seat and says, "AP-bul daw. AP-bul daw. AP-bul daw." Sometimes I even hear him over the baby monitor, repeating "AP-bul daw" as he tries to fall asleep. When he wakes up, instead of "Mommy" or "Daddy," we just hear "AP-bul daw. AP-bul daw. AP-bul daw." I often wonder if this is a healthy obsession.

Of course, Kyle's new love affair really is no big surprise. I was a big fan of apple sauce when I grew up, and I still enjoy eating it. Jennifer loves apple sauce, too. It has always been a treat in our family, as my grandmother used to make her own homemade sauce, and Jennifer's great-great-great-grandfather once used apple sauce to kill a grizzly. I know we are not alone, too. Most kids grow up eating and loving it, and around the world it is a favorite accompaniment to many fine dishes. Of course, we all know that apple sauce has a prominent spot in our global history as well, playing a key role in several pivotal moments...

Roosevelt: "We need your help to beat the Axis Powers."
Stalin: "Ha! The Soviet Union will never be allied with the United States."
Roosevelt: "Oh really? Well, maybe this will change your mind."
Stalin: "What? Is that apple sauce?"
Roosevelt: "I'm not saying it is, but I'm not saying it isn't."
Stalin (after a few slurps): "I think we might be able to work out an arrangement, after all."

But Kyle's love does not end with apple sauce. Over the past month or so, he has developed even more sauce names, which he also repeats often. His three favorites are "cookie sauce," "hockey sauce," and "happy sauce." Jennifer loves happy sauce the best, and I agree with her. Life could certainly use a little more happy sauce. Too much stress in your life? Have some happy sauce! Down because your favorite team can't win games? Have some happy sauce! Need peace in the Middle East? Feed them all happy sauce! Tired of gridlock in Washington? Well, I don't think there's anything that can help with that one. Still, in most cases, happy sauce would make the world a better place if it actually existed. The same goes for cookie sauce. Hockey sauce, on the other hand, might cause you to lose your teeth.

There is one thing that's a bit odd about this obsession, though: for all of Kyle's yammering about apple sauce and its sister sauces, the kid has yet to eat much of it. He enjoys saying it, he enjoys looking at it, and he enjoys dipping a spoon into it and splattering it on his tray. Yet, if apple sauce ends up on his hands, he will implore me to wash them. If even the slightest bit touches his tongue, he wrinkles his face in disgust, as if he had just heard Bob Dylan sing a Christmas song. If left alone, Kyle would quickly propel the container of sauce onto the floor with the rest of his food... before going into yet another cheerful chorus of "AP-bul daw." I guess you could call it a love-hate relationship. I'm sure, in time, Kyle will learn to love eating apple sauce, like every other kid in the world. Until then, it's going to require a little more persistence from me... and perhaps a small dose of happy sauce.

Flight risk

Kyle is 22 months old, which means he is still young enough to ride on a plane for free. Whether or not he should is a question we probably should have discussed when we bought plane tickets for last weekend's trip to Florida. Consider our choices: by purchasing a ticket for our son, we would be able to fly together as a family, without a stranger sitting next to us by the window. Kyle would not be forced to sit on Jennifer's lap or my lap, and he would be spared from having our seat belt buckles dig into his back. He would not be close enough to the seat in front of him to kick it, and the comfort of his own seat, combined with the soft purr of the jet engine, would likely quell him to sleep for most of the flight. On the other hand, by not purchasing a ticket for Kyle, we would save 250 bucks.

We chose to save 250 bucks.

As the millions of my avid readers know, this was not Kyle's first flight, but it seemed like it. The last time Kyle boarded a plane, George Bush was president and the stock market was dropping faster than a bird glued to a bucket of bowling balls. While many people would like to forget that period of time, Kyle actually did, so this whole plane thing was new to him.

I think the entire flight would have gone well for Kyle had it been as turbulent as the takeoff from JFK early Friday afternoon. The plane jerked. It rocked. It fell suddenly. I sweated profusely. Jennifer's life passed before her eyes. But Kyle laughed and smiled. Apparently he thought he was on a new ride, something like those crazy tea cups at the amusement park. Sadly for him, but much to our relief, the plane steadied as it hit cruising altitude. Our prayer time ended, and Kyle became bored.

First he wanted off our laps. Then he wanted back on. Then he wanted to be on the floor. Then he wanted all his books on the floor with him. Then there was no more room on the floor, so he wanted to be back on our laps. We had downloaded some children's videos on an old iPod Nano we own, and he seemed interested in that for a while. By "while," I mean five minutes. He then flung it away and wanted to be back on the floor.

We thought food might help pass the time. We fed him snacks he always enjoyed at home, including his favorite cookies. This worked for a while, but then, like he does at home, Kyle started flinging his food. Unfortunately, unlike home, Kyle did not have much room for tossing. The passenger next to us received a lap full of Cheerios, I received bits of sandwich, and Jennifer was socked in the face with a water bottle. When she regained consciousness, Kyle was kicking the seat in front of us so hard that the passenger there nearly swallowed his tray table.

Then came the landing. As we began our descent, Kyle decided he was not interested in a lollipop or even the straw cup he drank during takeoff. We desperately tried to give them to him, since sucking on them was the only way for him to pop his ears and avoid the -
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

We were too late. Kyle felt pain from the air pressure.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! WWAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Our child screamed. His face turned purple as his lips quivered. We tried desperately to make him stop, practically forcing a lollipop or the straw cup into his mouth. He kept pushing them away. People were turning around, and we realized we had become that family: the one that wakes everyone up with the screaming child. The one business travelers complain about at the staff meetings. The one that makes people swear to never get on a plane again. The one that helps control the population by convincing young couples that they'd rather have a dog.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" screamed our child, ramming his head into my chest as I tried to rock him back and forth. A flight attendant stopped by. I feared she was going to give us a few parachutes and tell us we'd have to leave.

"Have you given him a lollipop?" she asked. When I told her we had, she walked away. She was very helpful. Later another attendant came by and asked us the same thing. Apparently no other kid has ever refused a lollipop before.

Thankfully, we soon were on the ground, and Kyle's crying stopped. His sense of humor came back, and he laughed as he waited with us at the car rental pick-up spot. For the rest of our time there, Kyle was a joyful kid, entertaining all the guests at his great-grandmother's 90th birthday party (which was the reason why we flew down). We had a great time, too... so much so that we had even forgotten the unpleasant fact that we had another flight to take to get home.

That happened yesterday. I won't get into as many details about that trip, only to say that it was very similar to the trip down, though this time he did spare our sanity a bit by taking a brief nap. I'm just glad we made it back alive, and with our eardrums in tact.

We will be driving for our next trip. I think might wait a good number of months before we fly again. The break will be good for Kyle, good for us, and good for humanity in general.

And you can be sure that next time we will buy Kyle his own seat.

Taking the morning train

As you probably know, my family lives in a New York City apartment. While there are a good number of perks that come with this, including the complimentary 2 a.m. wake-up alarm service provided by the local bar patrons, there are a few downsides. One such downside is the fact that the floor is not entirely ours. We live on the third floor of our building, which means our feet touch the ceiling of the second-floor apartment beneath us. If we choose to be the friendly and respectful type, and we often do, we have to limit some of our behavior. We try not vacuum or make other loud noises very early or very late in the day, and we keep our clog dancing to a minimum.

Sometimes, though, no amount of kindness can avoid a complaint, either to you or your landlord. Believe it or not, some city dwellers are actually irritated by the noises they hear above them, and I'm not talking about sounds caused by the occasionally necessary chair-smashing or pogo stick race. No, these people are bothered by walking or simple furniture movement. Somehow they don't grasp the concept that, by living in an apartment, you might have to hear some noises made by people who live above you. I once had a downstairs neighbor approach me frantically to complain about the slight tapping noise made by my coffee table whenever I put my feet on it. That's nothing compared to another person we know who is so bothered by simple noises she had called her upstairs tenants to complain daily, and she threatened to have them arrested by the police or deported. She says the tenants blast their radio and host wild dancing parties whenever we're out (since we never heard such things), but other tenants in the building say noise has always been a problem with her. They told us that she once called and threatened (in the most polite way, I'm sure) to stab a pregnant woman who had made the dreadful mistake of dropping something on the floor. She's a sweet old lady, once you get to know her.

Fortunately, this person does not live directly below us. The tenants who used to live there were very kind to us, and tolerated the many noises Kyle started making once he transformed from a little immovable baby to a fast-moving, foot-stomping, wild and crazy noise machine. But they're gone now, and we are just waiting to see whether our new downstairs neighbors will be as friendly.

In the meantime, we have become a little too comfortable with an empty apartment beneath us. We're living it up, giddily stomping on the floor whenever we feel like it. Our son is enjoying it, too, as our neighbors' departure just so happened to coincide with his new love for a toy he received nearly a year ago from my aunt and uncle. Kyle has spent many mornings this month riding a blue plastic train through the apartment, running over anything in its path and bumping into walls. When the steering wheel doesn't turn the train far enough, he often stands up and flips it around, sliding its four wheels on the floor. He also manages to drive the train over small obstacles by lifting the front wheels, passing them over the object, and then dropping them back onto the floor with a THUD! He then does the same with the back wheels. Sometimes he also removes the back of the train seat and throws it to the floor. This all happens before eight in the morning, even on Saturdays.

If our neighbors were still downstairs, we probably would have hidden the train in our room each morning, but it's been so much fun watching him play with it. In the weeks he has been using it, his driving skills have greatly improved, though he has yet to master parallel parking. He often leaves the vehicle right in the middle of a traffic lane, where an unsuspecting visitor or dad might create more noise on the floor with his or her body after tripping over the thing.

Soon, though, we will have to be quiet again. Hopefully the neighbors we get downstairs will be tolerant of our kid, just like the previous neighbors were. Even so, I suppose we will have to return to our old morning routines, keeping quiet out of respect to those living beneath us. Kyle will have to limit his train riding to the late morning and afternoon hours. I guess that's the way things will have to be until we move to the suburbs or have a ground-floor place. It's too bad, really, because Kyle has truly grown to love the train. The only thing he seems to love more is his toy jackhammer.

Hidden treasures

Behold, the elusive yellow plastic circle thingy:



This is one of ten pieces belonging to the Tupperware "Shape O" ball. Chances are that you probably had this shape sorter when you were a child, as it was developed many years ago by cavemen to teach their kids how to recognize the wheel they just developed, along with other shapes and objects still on the drawing board. Kyle received this toy for Christmas, and at that time the ball contained ten pieces. Since then, the circle has become our own Loch Ness Monster, with knowledge of its existence kept alive merely through rumor and folktales. The circle vanished so early during its stay here that many have wondered whether it was even part of the set. There's one belief that Tupperware deliberately did not include a circle piece and left a slot for one in the ball to screw with children's minds and teach them some sort of lesson about life.

Then, sometime in February, any denial over the existence of the circle was shattered. In the fog of our living room (our radiators give off a lot of steam), our Loch Ness Monster reappeared as mysteriously as it had disappeared. I leaped in excitement and was about to call all our friends and neighbors, but then realized that perhaps they would not quite understand the significance of the yellow plastic circle thingy's return, and I did not want them to ruin the moment. Turns out that was a wise move, because the moment was incredibly brief, as the piece vanished within days, returning to the stuff of legend for several more weeks. Sometimes it would come back and take its friends away in the night, leaving Kyle to play with only half the shapes he should have. In recent days, though, all pieces have returned to their rightful place, including the yellow circle. Its reappearance allowed me to finally take a picture of it, proving that it does, in fact, exist. I plan to showcase it on a talk show next week.

The disappearance of the elusive yellow plastic circle thingy is not the only phenomenon happening in our New York City apartment. Other objects have also mysteriously vanished. A set of twelve Sesame Street mini-books Kyle received as a gift now has just ten books. A jungle play set that came with six colorful balls now has only two. Several stuffed animals are MIA, and so is a Curious George book. Who knows where they all went, though I suspect the Curious George story may have vanished to the same watering hole the man with the yellow hat always seems to be visiting whenever his monkey runs amok.

Perhaps the greatest mystery of all is the disappearance of Kyle's first birthday gift, the Oball. Jennifer and I are not sure exactly when it ceased to exist; we just noticed one day that Kyle had stopped playing with it, and we have not seen it anywhere. The only known photographs I have of it, in fact, are from his birthday. I believe this is the largest of all the objects that have vanished, and I am puzzled as to how it happened. After all, we live in an apartment. Sure, it's no studio, but it's no townhouse, either. We're on one floor with adjoining rooms, a so-called "railroad apartment." We do not have our own yard, our own deck, or our own killer sand creature like the one in "Return of the Jedi." If we did, then the disappearance of these things would make more sense. Our home appears to have very few hiding places, but somehow, someway, these objects have found a good one.

While we hardly ever see Kyle play with these toys after they go into hiding, he might know where this perfect hiding spot is. That could explain how some things unexpectedly reappear. Such was the case several months ago, one morning shortly after Jennifer went to work. Kyle had left me in the middle of a deep conversation and ran to his bedroom. I didn't bother to follow, since his bedroom is a relatively safe place, if you overlook the snake pit, which I often do. Kyle did not spend much time in his room, and I sat there and watched him run out, back towards me with a big smile on his face... and a straw cup filled with water in his hand.

Funny, I thought to myself, I don't remember giving him a straw cup today. I hadn't yet, in fact, since it was still early in the morning, shortly after his breakfast, and I normally don't fill one up with water until later in the day. I e-mailed Jennifer and asked her if she gave him one before she left. She e-mailed me back saying she did not. I looked back at Kyle and saw him smiling and drinking away... and I wondered just how old that water was. Thank God it wasn't milk. Kyle must have retrieved that straw cup from the hiding spot, where it had sat overnight, or perhaps days or weeks, next to the Oball, the Sesame Street mini-books, the jungle play set balls, and the yellow plastic circle thingy.

Of course our son is not telling us where this hiding place exists, as he likes to find any way to build leverage over his parents. So I must go from day to day, wondering what's happening to most of his toys, trying to figure it out without going crazy crazy crazy. I am sure they will turn up eventually, but not before more toys, including something bigger (like his Elmo doll or the crib), will disappear. Or maybe there is no secret hiding place. Maybe Kyle's just selling is toys for profit on eBay. That certainly would explain how he was able to afford that new stereo system in his room.