Nate Nate

BECUZ i AM FRSTi

"MOME," Jonah demands to know, in a letter he presents to me, "WAR iS Mi WOTR[?]"

[For those not fluent in Written Jonah, that's "Mommy, where is my water?"]

Four

And just like that, Jonah Butler turned four.  Four!  It seems like just yesterday that he was sleeping contentedly in my arms every night, causing us to say, "Wow, I thought Nate never cried, but this kid really never cries!"  Four years of endless smiling and laughing and being insanely silly and enthusiastic and loving and refusing to ever, ever go to sleep.  Ever.

I think it was a pretty good birthday.  We brought cupcakes and a hilarious book to his class, where Jonah inexplicably refused to wear his birthday crown.  "Well," he reflected tonight, "I thought it might be itchy."

I had repeatedly asked Jonah what he wanted for his special birthday dinner, and he had repeatedly told me that it was a secret.  Finally, I gave up and decided to order a pizza.  Then his teacher, trying to help me out, asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner, and he said, "It's a surprise, and my mommy is gonna cook it!"  Since I'm not actually all that good at cooking a surprise meal when I don't know what the surprise is, I took Marsha's excellent advice and made blueberry pancakes. 

Jonah also enjoyed getting to pick absolutely everything today, from which pair of plain white Gap Kids socks he would wear to which straw would grace his chocolate milk glass.  "It's my special day," he recited.  "I get to pick."

Jonah opened some excellent presents, all of which he wanted to play with immediately, and gracefully accepted birthday wishes from his callers.  And this being December, he closed out the day with a letter to Santa.  "DER SANTA," Jonah wrote, "i WD LiK A ALiN."  Ha ha, Jonah's so funny -- a little reference to a Fountains of Wayne song!  He continued: "SANTA iTS Mi BRFDA."

Coming Sunday: A party and some party pictures!

Sensitive

Tonight, on the eve of the eve of his fourth birthday, Jonah B is sobbing his heart out in his Spongebob pajamas.  Why?  Because he does not want to turn four.  Apparently, he's really enjoyed being three.  And possibly, given his contemplative nature, he's bummed about the passing of time.  Fortunately, it was nothing a little early birthday present (super cool ball with all of the planets on it) couldn't cure, but man--real tears and everything.

Also sensitive is Jonah's art.  Today he presented me with two creations that he made at school.  The first was a card, addressed to "MOME" at our house number, with the following message: "MOME  LUV JONAH AND NATE i LOVe ADE [Daddy?] BLiG BOL BLEG [That's "bowling ball" and "bowling"][.]" 

The second was a totally recognizable flag of Japan, complete with stick.  Everyone is very high on Japan these days, as it is (a) the country of origin of part of our family, (b) the site of the first leg on this season of The Amazing Race, which the guys are VERY into (more on that in a minute), and (c) the site of one of our very first efforts at a Top Secret Adventure.  Even so, I'm not sure that Jonah's plan to "send it to the government for Japan" is going to take off.  Unsurprisingly, the letter he dictated for me to send to our own government -- "Dear Government, I would like a rocket ship, Love Jonah" did not get us any closer in our quest to visit outer space.  Still: one very cute dark blue Japanese flag now waves, as only construction paper can, in our kitchen.  And I'm pretty sure his teachers think I feed him flash cards for breakfast.

And also sensitive is poor Nate, who is so stressed out about seeing his favorite team compete in The Amazing Race that he cannot bear to watch the final, million dollar episode.  He therefore composed the following list of Rules For Watching The Final Amazing Race:

1.  Nate will not be watching.

2.  Mom, tell me who won a million dollars.

3.  Tell me who won 2nd.

4.  Tell me who won 3rd.

5.  Tell me where they went.

6.  Have fun!

Nate is also proving to be a shrewd viewer.  He's started an old season that we happen to have on DVD, and he immediately picked an excellent favorite team, the much-loved Jill and Jon Vito.  At the same time, however, he already knows who wins that season, because before I realized that we had it on DVD, I was telling him about the sad outcome of that season (when sweet Zach and wretched Flo stole the win at the last second by sheer taxi luck).  Nate has therefore decided to hedge his bets by also rooting for Zach and Flo.  Which isn't a half-bad strategy, as it improves his chances of actually making it through the season with his nerves intact.

The Elephant Seals Will Have to Wait

On the recommendation of a friend's mother, we were going to go to Ano Nuevo State Park to see the elephant seals fight each other for mates.  We had our trip timed to reach Santa Cruz by lunch, though, so we took the kids to the boardwalk to eat (you can imagine why this was a selling point to our Monopoly-obsessed).  Of course, Jonah wanted to ride some rides, and make sandcastles, and then sand sidewalks, and sand paintings, and Nate wanted to watch, and flee from, the waves -- a game that gets him giggling like a schoolgirl.  Frankly, Jonah could play in the sand all day, and Nate (and I) could watch the waves all day, and so it suited us just fine to spend a few hours on the beach.  By the time we got to Ano Nuevo, it was too late for the walk down to the beach, so the ranger turned us away.  Instead, we stopped a few miles up the road at a beach where huge waves, real California surfer-sized waves, crashed into the non-surfer-approved rocks (even at low tide).  Jonah was too cold and tired to muster much enthusiasm, but Nate scampered over the big rocks and played a little more tease-the-waves.  And nobody really missed the elephant seals.  They'll be there when we go back. 

Incidentally, an apology:  this was essentially the same drive that I ruined for my dad and Debbie back in the early 1990s, when I was a college student on vacation and wanted to sleep in.  So I petulantly dozed in the backseat.  Sorry.  Yeah, it's spectacular.   

There are pictures: 

 
Posted by Daddy.  
 

What? The Thanksgiving is not beutiful holliday that the TURKEY went on the Mayflower

(An abridged version of Nate's Thanksgiving story.)

The pilgrems sailed from Europe to N.A. on the ship.  On the ship in 1634 there was even no toilet and they would go potty in there pants.  You can do it but 102 people could not go potty for about half a year and they started a long time ago and landed on Thanksgiving.  There were 4 floors on the ship and girls were on floor 3 and 4.  There were 95 girls and 7 boys.  The 95 girls got to have fun at the beach.  The 7 boys on the ship and said BYE BYE! to the girls.  Boys wore brecches.  They were pants. 

The Nateofamericans sailed.  The [children] were SAD CHILDREN.  HOW CAN NATEOFAMERICANS COULD NOT COME BACK!  What?  said a girl.  CAN IT BE POSSIBLE! WHAT! 

Yeah!  Turkeys came along! Not like the country but they started in the same continent (Europe). 

Sweetness and Light

So Jonah B.'s birthday is coming up next week (FOUR!!!), and in between asking for every single thing in the universe as a present, he took a moment out to discuss the cake with me.  "What do you want your cake to look like?" I asked.  "Lightning McQueen?  Spongebob?  Soccer?"

It was none of those.  "Our house!" Jonah announced.  "With Mommy, Daddy, Nate and Jonah in front of it!"

And he was certain.  Apparently I'll be emailing a picture of our house--and, um, us?--to the fabulous cake bakers of the Greater East Bay.  I have to say, that makes me a little choked up.  That kid has such a way with words.  Kind of like last week, when he was overheard commenting to a friend, "Tomorrow I'm going to be sick so I can stay home with my mommy."  Or yesterday, when he got a blue ring from a little machine outside the movies and declared, "When I grow up ... and I marry Kate ... I'm going to wear this ring."

Nate has been heavy on the sweet lately too.  He's managed to turn his incredibly annoying hit-mom's-bed-at-5-am-and-then-talk-and-toss-and-turn-until-mom-finally-gives-up-on-sleep habit into an incredibly snuggly crawl-stealthily-into-mom's-bed-and-cuddle-silently-and-sleep routine.  Love it!

Picture Roundup

And...finally, a few Halloween pics:

I realize you can't quite tell that this is Jonah leading Nate, but I found it very cute anyway:

Back home, Nate "The Eyelashes" H took a moment to pose as Don Draper:

And that's it for Halloween.  Sorry.  Since they're wearing the same costumes they wore last year, though, feel free to revisit those pictures for an idea of what it looked like.

Next, Nate was off to Apple Day!  While Jonah stayed home nursing a cold, a popsicle, and an endless loop of Lightning McQueen.  But Apple Day!

Once Jonah rebounded, it was off to a special adventure day with Daddy.

He even had time to run into his buddy Layla:

Don't lick that!!

 
All in all, a great day with Daddy.

Flattery

Jonah came home from school today with 5 new pieces of fine artwork.  Every single one said either "JONAH LUV MOME" or "MOME LUV JONAH" on it.  It's hard not to feel a little awesome about being someone's muse. 

Jonah also showed us another talent of which we were previously unaware.  Apparently he's been brainstorming ways to prove to us that he's ready for that new iPod he wants for Chrismubirthdaykapalooza, aka December Festival of Presents, because he's developed quite the iPodding skills.  He picked up my iPod, which was on shuffle, and scrolled through "Music" to "Artists" to "They Might Be Giants" to "Albums" to "Here Comes Science" to song #2, "Meet the Elements," pressed play, and handed it back to me to plug into the car's iPod thing.  And frankly, it's kind of hard to argue that a guy is not ready for his very own Nano when he knows how to scroll through the whole thing to find the song he wants.

No school for Nate today, so we spent the morning cruising Whole Foods and playing Monopoly.  We then spent the afternoon playing minigolf and playing Monopoly.  Another perfect day in Nateland.

Stellaluna

Stellaluna was clucthing the bars and Stellaluna landed gracefully in a nest with Pip/Flitter and Flap.

Milestones

I dropped Nate off for a playdate at a friend's house yesterday.  And I spent the rest of the day dropping that fact casually into conversation, just to hear myself say it over and over.  For obvious reasons, not a single one of my fellow mom-of-a-six-year-old friends found anything remotely remarkable or interesting about that comment.  I'm getting all choked up writing about it, but I'm pretty sure it was our first drop off playdate ever.  We've had approximately 12 million playdates in the past 5 years, and I have hosted and/or facilitated every single one of them.  And it's been a long, long road, but since we started in a place where Nate had no interest in other kids, arriving at the point where he can happily go running off to play with a friend, at the friend's house without me, feels pretty freaking amazing.  And all indications are that it went very well; he said he had fun, the friend didn't want him to leave, the mom said it was great, and Nate wants to line up another playdate soon.  Sometimes I really think that we are getting to the point where I'll be able to let out this breath I've been holding for the past 5 years or so.

Of course, he insisted on playing Monopoly with said friend.  Some things will never change, and thank Gd for that.

In other, less weepy milestone news: Jonah Butler can whistle!!  Who knew???  And he already has a new favorite game, which is Mommy, Guess What Song I'm Whistling!  I should add that he can produce sound; he can't yet quite get a tune going.  Which makes the game that much more challenging.