Little Scam Artist

I'm at the Denver Airport but I thought that Graham's shenanigans needed to recorded on the blog while they were fresh. He has ascended to toddlercy, and life will never be the same. It is amazing that someone so small and so young (20 months) could be so crafty.

Sometime late last week Graham contracted some sort of virus that gave him a slight fever and skin rash. Saturday and Sunday he was definitely under the weather, and didn't sleep or nap as well as usual. He got a little more personal attention than usual, mostly because he demanded it. Monday, he seemed better, so we brought him to school. That lasted only a few minutes, and he was very sad and upset. I spent the whole day with him at home, and, except for an extra long nap (on me) seemed quite normal, but liked spending the day with me and watching a Sesame Street. He requested it by pointing at the TV and saying "Mooie."

Then came Tuesday---I wasn't in town so I'll let Katie's Facebook post tell the story: "Cried and refused to eat the whole 1/2 hour between when I dropped him off and picked him back up. Ate his muffin in the car on the way home, then came in the house, climbed on the couch, pointed at the TV, and said "Mooie!" I am sincerely hoping the doctor we see this afternoon will clear his rash as "not contagious" and the little faker can go back to day care tomorrow." (Dr. said he was fine.) Here is a pic from that day:

Today, according to Katie he went into hysterics again at drop-off today, but, just like yesterday, he is no longer sick. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice....nah, won't happen.

It is beginning to dawn on me that Graham may have been scamming us since day 1. This easygoing personality, chipper attitude, and good napping thing was all just an act, and he's been waiting patiently to take advantage of us.

Finns are taking over the world

Speaking of charts, look how many more babies were named Finn last year than, say 2006. 1081 vs. 590.

The next graph is popularity in the US - i.e. Finn was the 457th most popular name for boys in 2006, the 300th most popular in 2010. Before 2000 it wasn't in the top 1000, so the Social Security Administration doesn't give us the data.
Back before we were even pregnant, I started playing with the website and following the blog of Laura Wattenberg - a baby name data analyzer. I still do, even though I'm not planning on naming any more babies, because it's often fascinating. If you read Freakonomics and liked the baby name chapter, you'd like this stuff. Come over for dinner sometime, and I'll let you look up your name in her book. Her most recent post said that her readers had predicted that FINN would be the fastest rising baby name of 2010. It wasn't - not even one of the five fastest rising - but it caught my attention.

In case you're wondering, no, we're not people who picked Finn's name because we were sure it would make him a unique and special snowflake and who get mad as it gets more common. We just wanted something rare enough that he wouldn't have to use his last initial in class (ahem, Katies born in the late '70s?). If we've caught a rising trend and he won't have to spell his name for people, and no one will have to agonize over whether to address his correspondence to Mr. or Mrs., I think that's great. The quote from the blog that caught my eye was "More than anything, this sounds like a class list from a Mommy-and-Me gym class in a fashionable upscale neighborhood." Reminded me of the article from a while back that listed Finn as one of "the best names coveted by style-conscious parents." This amuses us. Sure, we're educated. We have Lived In New York. But at root we still think of ourselves as Midwesterners. Slobby ones. But Finn, apparently, is destined for greater things, or at least will be able to pretend to be without changing his name.

Graham is also on the charts above, although he hasn't been getting the same kind of press. Graham held steady in numbers and popularity for years, but has been climbing the last few. But I don't think he'll have to use his initial after his first name at school.

Your bonus for wading through/past the above: a story from Finn, to the best of my memory and paraphrasing ability.
F: I'm going to go and visit the chinchillas. In... where do chinchillas live, Daddy?
J: South America.
F: I'm going to go see the chinchillas in South America. They are very soft. And very delicate. You have to be very careful with chinchillas. And my airplane will go fast! Faster than a bullet. Faster than a bullet! And then I will go to Africa. To see the animals. And they will not bite me. And I will stay in a tent. They will not bite me because I will not try to ride on them. And then I will go to Japan. To see the train. The train called... what's the train's name, Mama?
K: Hiro?
F: ...Hiro...(looks doubtful)
K: Anpanman?
F: The Anpanman train. I will buy another Anpanman train* for my baby. And it will (various things, involving going very fast, all directions, etc., etc.). And then I will go to Florida. And my airplane will go SO FAST.
K: What will you see in Florida?
F: Weeelll, I will go to a meeting. A three year old meeting. All of the three year olds will be there. But not the four year olds.
*Jonathan got the boys toy trains as souvenirs from Japan. Finn's was Thomas, Graham's had an Anpanman face.

Covering the above destinations probably took 5-10 minutes. I forget where we went from there, but it was very enlightening.

Graham says "meat" and "beach" and other things

You know how it had been about ten months since I updated the height/weight chart? Yeah, it's been about a year since I updated my Flickr photos. So today I picked two photos a month and caught that sucker up. Restricting myself to two a month was tough, but made it a manageable process. And also means it's really easy for you to scroll through and see how much the boys have changed in the past year. Really. Look, go try it.

We are not the obsessive documenters of our family that we used to be. You, the blog audience, are woefully behind on Graham's progress on learning to talk, for instance. He says TONS of words now. I don't know, maybe a hundred? My favorites range from necklace ("nechiss") to couch ("shote"), both of which I need to capture on film. I totally missed my chance to capture how he used to pronounce zebra as "bizzahbizzah." Now it sounds more like zebra, and isn't nearly as cute. What *is* cute is when he demands, out of nowhere, that you "STOP!", complete with raised hand a la traffic cop or the Supremes. We don't know where he picked it up (teachers think maybe "Frosty the Snowman"?) or, often, what he's talking about. Usually nothing. There's a little bit of that one in the clips below.

He's big, huh? He is also snuggly, and fun, and a favorite at school, and a person of increasingly strong opinions.

Return of the charts! G = 18 months, F = 3 years

Apparently it has been TEN MONTHS since I updated this sucker. Pathetic. Insert usual disclaimers here about them not necessarily having their appointments at the same week of age, etc.

Probably we also need a disclaimer about taking the measurements with a grain of salt because of the small numbers we're dealing with, the fact that we've switched doctors a couple times and they measure a little differently, and also that small boys are wiggly. I think the main takeaway is that our boys are large, and will continue to be large. What you can't see here is that Finn's added another couple inches to his height since last November. The kid is TALL, or at least he seems that way to us.

My mom visited last week. This was great fun, as always, but this time it was also extraordinarily fortunate because the boys' day care closed for a week for spring break. Spring break!! Don't get me started. One of the days she was here we actually remembered to take a few photos. This is probably the best one.

And here's one of the outtakes that should give you a flavor for how the session went.

Jonathan is out of town again for a chunk of this week. The boys and I aren't letting it get us down, though. For one thing, Finn is very excited to be moving up to a new room at school, the Busy Bees. He has been itching to get over there, and apparently his "visit" to that room to start settling in today lasted from an hour after he showed up at school until the time I came to pick him up. Both the teachers told me he was a lot of fun to have in class.
In case that wasn't enough, the weather has finally turned gorgeous. We ate outside tonight even though the logistics were a little daunting for a single parent evening. Well worth it, I think.