I recorded this sound for Nathan yesterday morning.
Train Arrives by Ben Brophy (23 seconds, 183k)
The train pulling in to Roslindale Village Station (probably a few minutes late).
I played it for Nathan last night to see if he knew it what it was and sure enough he got all concentrated and then started yelling “Choo CHOO! Choo CHOO!”
The boy is brilliant, I tell ya.
Today is my birthday. I’ve had a lovely day. One of the gifts I got today is a digital sound recorder. Fun! Here are two sounds from today:
Pop by Nathan Brophy (2 seconds, 20k)
This is what Nathan calls me. I love it, I wanted a recording of it. I imagine I’ll be recording a lot of Nathan Sounds.
Happy Duck by Ben Brophy (4 seconds, 39k)
This is the sound of my duck call. This is my impression of the happy sounds a duck makes when he’s found some bread floating in the water.
Nathan had fun tonight staning without any support. He’s never stood much before, so the first time he tried we cheered. He was so into the laughter and the applause that he just kept doing it over and over again. We loved it every time. Here’s the movie.
Nathan tried fingerpainting for the first time today.
Nathan was such an active participant while grocery shopping today. As soon as we got out of the cars he was pointing to the other cars in the lot and saying “truck” and doing his sign for wheels. Then we got on the escaltor and he somehow knew that there where wheels/gears under there somewhere and did the sign the whole ride up.
First thing you see in the store is the flower section so he was wildly pointing and doing his sniffing the flowers sign. Then he saw the melons and said “MMM Yum Num.” I managed to distract him from needing melon right away with a sample of cider. Then he saw the apples and very loudly said “Apple, Apple, Apple” over and over again.
He practically demanded a bag of preztels by pulling them off the shelf. Once I opened it for him he was quiet for a little bit. We saw a man stocking shelves though and Nathan provided him with numerous grunts because he presumed that opeing all of the boxes was hard work. Then he nearly freaked out when he saw the crackers I put in the cart and handed me the pretzels he still had in his hand and asked for crackers with anxious signs.
As we got to the other end of the store he spotted the cafe and started saying, “Pop,Pop,Pop.” He remembers that that is where Ben waits for us and said Pop the whole time until we got to him.
I guess you had to be there but it amazes me how engaged he is with the world.
We decided to go shoe shopping for Nathan yesterday hoping that it would inspire him to walk on his own. We went to a well known children’s shoe store in a fancy mall. I have felt pretty strongly that Nathan should be shoeless until he walks and most current research supports this. Without shoes children learn to use their muscles properly and anyway most children in the world don’t wear shoes. But most mothers of late walkers that I have met say that getting shoes seemed to make their kids walk and I feel ready for that.
The woman at the store confirmed that we shouldn’t buy him shoes until he takes 10 steps at a time on his own. So already she was a little annoying. Then she asks if he is from another country. This didn’t bother me even though she is the first person in the 14 months we’ve been home with Nathan to say anything. But she thought we might not know some things about adopted children and tried to educate us on how some children are kept in their cribs in orphanges so they are late to walk. I said that since he was adopted at 7 weeks I didn’t think that had anything to do with it. She went on to say a few other offensive things about Nathan’s birthparents. I wasn’t really noticing it all until she went to get the shoes and Ben said he was about to punch her.
Once she came out with his shoes she started calling him Nate. Several people do this, I’m not sure why. Nathan hated the shoes. Shoe Lady said it takes a little while for them to get used to them but usually after an hour they are okay. I wanted the blue shoes but since they only had the brown in his size I declared we would wait. When Ben said that he liked the brown Shoe Lady told me that I should give him some say since he was paying. Um, hello?!?!?
Stupid Shoe Lady.
I’ve written before about my feelings about fresh dairy products. Lately I’ve been reading online about keeping a family cow and I want one. There is a book called, Keeping a Family Cow, by Joann Sills Grohman that I have not seen but I have been reading her website.
I would get a Jersey cow. I would drink the yummy milk and make butter and cheese with her cream. It would be a lot of work though. I think what I would really like is if a neighbor had a Jersey heifer and I got to go pet her whenever I wanted to and get fresh raw milk whenever we needed it.