This Guy is Into Everything

While I know that you have to watch a toddler closely, yesterday, Olin took this to another level.

At the start of the day, I left him for 2 minutes and in that time, he went through the bottom of his stroller, pulled out the travel baby wipes and took out every single wipe from the package and had them strewn all over the floor by the time I got back.

Shortly thereafter, I found him running around the apartment with a DVD in his hand that he had managed to retrieve by turning on the DVD player and finding the "open/close" button.  (We are still working on the rules.)

Later in the afternoon while we were at the drug store to buy Josh deodorant, a nice lady stopped me to let me know that Olin had the cap off a bottle of Vagisil feminine wash, which he must have pulled off a shelf when I wasn't looking, and was about to drink from it.

Then, mere minutes later, as we were walking home, I saw our insurance card and vehicle registration papers blow past me down 116th street. Little mister had reached around to the basket at the back of his stroller and pulled out a folder of documents I had with us to drop off at our new parking garage. I literally had to run down the street to get our papers back.

I am exhausted and so glad that grandma and grandpa arrive today - more eyes to watch this one.  It's a good thing we find him so cute, it really is hard to get mad at him.

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

P.S. I got bangs cut this week (why?!) and this is how my boys reacted to them - Olin kept pushing the hair off my forehead and Josh told me that it looked like I was wearing a wig and that I look like my 4 year old self.  Fingers crossed for swift hair growth over the coming weeks.

Olin and His Puppy

Uncle Matt and Aunt Julie gave Olin this little dog for Christmas and while he has played with it off and on since then, over the past couple of weeks he has really fallen in love with this dog.  Yesterday, he played with it for nearly thirty minutes all by himself (which is unheard of around here)! 

You can see in the first photo that at one point he even accessorized his tail with a bottle cap.

I guess this means that we ought to give this little guy name...

For Funny

On our first weekend back in the city, we went to the neighborhood hardware store to get an extra set of keys made and look for some babyproofing gadgets. Well, they didn't have the gadgets we were looking for, but they did have this...

Yep, that's a child lock for your VCR.  Who still buys these?  Oh this city makes us laugh - at times, it seems so progressive but then at other times, it feels like it is stuck in 1986!

P.S. Dad, this post title is just for you.

"Big" Rules for Little O

On our drive from Indiana to New York a few days ago, Josh and I finished reading the book Bringing Up Bebe and in the book the author talks a lot about this notion of establishing a cadre (or rules) for little ones.

This got us thinking... while we have rules for little mister, we are not always great at enforcing the rules so we decided that perhaps writing them down and hanging them on the refrigerator would make them more concrete and perhaps encourage us to more strictly enforce them.

So this morning I did just that, but while writing down our list of "no's" for Olin, I felt kind of mean, so I also wrote a list of "yes's" for the little guy.  Life is all about balance, right?

Wish us luck in better keeping this guy on the straight and narrow!  By the way, do you notice a theme with the "no's"? This guy really loves technology!

Date Night at B. Cafe

This past Saturday night, my boys and I went to B. Cafe, a Belgian restaurant on the Upper West Side, for moules frites.  Olin skipped the mussels and had bitterballen instead (which we learned are mini beef croquettes) and he discovered a new favorite food... butter!  He loved the butter so much that when we buttered his bread he would lick the butter off of it and then give the bread back to us for more butter.  He sure is on a health kick so far in NYC. 

After dinner we took a leisurely stroll home via Riverside Park - we sure do love this park!

The Next Jim Brickman?

.... oh, wouldn't that be wonderful.  Happy Monday everyone!

Emily Post Would Be So Disappointed

Little mister was having so much fun with his lunch yesterday that I couldn't bring myself to stop him.  Shhh, don't tell Josh that I let him do this!

Dear Grandma Peg

Yesterday, Olin came out of his room with his Who Love's Baby? book, saying 'ma-maw' and pointing to that picture of you and him at the Grotto with your matching dimples.

So glad we get to see you (and Grandpa!) next week!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Inspiration of the Literary Kind

We're subletting our apartment from some real brains (not surprising because one is a professor at Columbia and the other is a lawyer). They don't have cable, but they do have hundreds of books around the place and I am embarrassed to say that I recognized only two titles on the bookshelves - the Runaway (which was probably due to its placement on the front table of a Barnes and Noble I wandered into at some point in time) and The Great Gatsby (which I haven't read). So as we were watching some awful show on network TV like animals the other night (oh, I miss our DVR), I decided that I need to detox from TV and read more "real" books - so I am going to at least read these two books over the summer, starting with the latter.

On a somewhat related note, I read in Women's Wear Daily (more my speed for reading material) that they are making The Great Gatsby into a movie so the timing is perfect!

In the meantime, if anyone is in need of a book to read over the summer and are in the NYC area, let us know because we are living in a library.

P.S. Hope everyone is staying cool. There is a promised reprieve from the heat for us over the next few days which is a good thing because Olin and I literally pretended to shop in our corner market today so that we could enjoy the AC - we are pretty pathetic around here!

We're Melting

They weren't kidding about the weather today... hope you all are having a cooler day than me and Olin!  We miss you already, central AC.

Summer Project

In honor of the first day of summer and inspired by the seemingly endless comments about how quickly Olin is growing, I have decided to document our summer together by taking a picture of him everyday to capture this growth in photos.  And let's be honest, I just need another excuse to use Instagram!  So without further ado, here is today's picture:

I am planning on tweeting the rest because I realize how nauseating such a project could be unless you are closely related to the little guy.  So if you want to check in on our exciting daily activities, visit us on Twitter here.

The Cool Before The Heat

They have predicted that it will be in the nineties tomorrow and Thursday, but feel closer to 100 degrees with the humidity so Olin and I took advantage of the nice (cooler) weather today and played in Riverside Park.  At the park, Olin befriended an 18 month old Chinese girl named Claire and we discovered that he is fascinated with pigeons (he must have inherited that gene from Grandpa Carl) so its a good thing we ended back in NYC because there is no shortage of those guys here.

If anyone has any ideas for good indoor activities for an energetic 19 month old, please send them my way!

Hello New York City... We've Missed You

We arrived in NYC on Friday and spent most of the weekend in true Burgher fashion  - indulging in a culinary reintroduction to the city.  Luckily we have probably walked as many miles as restaurants visited so our waistlines haven't suffered much (yet)!  We are enjoying our new summer neighborhood of Morningside Heights - the view out of our windows of tree tops and the Hudson river make it easy to forget that we are in Manhattan - we may want to stay here even longer.  It's so good to be back and it feels like we never left.

I also have to post a few pictures of the beautiful farewell we received from Indiana on Friday morning...gorgeous.