A few highlights from the past few weeks:

• Eli seeming to find interest in all things musical – calling out the names of different instruments when he hears them in the car.
• Eli’s favorite instrument – Harmonica (or Mahkana-maka) – See video
• Eli starting to “read” books to himself.  Walking into his room to hear him “reading” with the same inflection when we’re reading to him at night.
• Eli playing with, and already looking up to his older cousin Jonah.  Brings me back to time as a kid with my own older cousin.
• The first family road trip down to NJ to visit Rachel’s parents.  Rachel in the back between two boys…flashback to her childhood with two older brothers.
• Eli’s last day of “Tuesday’s with Nani”.  Eli spent every Tuesday with his Grandma Karin from 3 months old until 2 years, 1 month.  Now he’s in daycare full-time and Liam starts the “Tuesday’s with Nani” in February.
• Looking at Rachel when both kids are finally asleep, and just laughing at the life we find ourselves in today

Here’s a photo/video update of the two kids at their respective milestones.

Eli @ 2 Years & 2 Months:

Liam @ 6 Weeks:

Mahkana-Maka:

Liam rolls @ 1 month:

It’s getting harder to remember a life without this guy running around.  At 2 years, we’ve settled into some sort of a parenting routine and he’s pushing new boundaries each week.   We’re not sure what to expect from “the terrible twos”, but he knows what he wants and has learned how to use “no.”  For the most part his assertiveness is still cute, but we’ll see how long that lasts with another Ash on the way any day now…

A few clips and pictures at his 2nd birthday:

Eli reading to Russ (and aggressively patting him)

Eli reading magazines at dinner (a demand at every meal)

Eli bites it at gymnastics (and dad holds back laughter)

Eli opening a gift on his birthday (quite the reaction to a pair of pants)

And then the biggest highlight.  Meeting Bill Murray at a Cornell Football game. 

Language:  We’ve clearly entered the questioning phase of childhood development.  Eli’s vocabulary expansion is on cruise control and now he wants to know what everything is around him….

Swimming. His mom was a State champ and his dad has a freakishly long torso, so he has the genes to be a future Mark Spitz.  Yeah, he has the aid of a pretty ridiculous looking 1950s inner-tube jumpsuit, but look at this kid move.

Helping Out.  In addition to picking up our language, he’s mimicking much of what he sees us doing.  Which happens to be a lot of house work.

Just Eli.  Two random clips.  His first backwards walk, and a time in the grocery store when he heard his mom use the word “honey” for dad.

That belly is the big news this summer.  That’s right Eli…we’re giving you the greatest gift a parent can give their first-born.  Someone to pick on for the next 20 years.   Come November, you’ll be a big brother.

Growing up, my brother was my best friend and partner for endless games, chats and torment.  Watching my own son grow up with a sibling will no doubt bring back some great memories from childhood.

From a parenting standpoint, it’s hard to imagine what it will feel like to have two kids to spread the attention between.  But as with the first, I don’t think there is any way to really prepare for it.  We’ll buy extra diapers, stock a little more wine in the cabinet, close our eyes and get ready for the ride.

A few interesting things (probably to his parents only) that we’ll want to remember about Eli from this stage someday:

• Following his mom’s actions, when he wants my attention, he now yells out, “E!” (see video)
• His word for all done:  ”Gah-gong” (also in video)
• His favorite book:   We All Go Traveling By – He can point out the buth (bus), chuck (truck), bikey (bike), and peeeen (plane)
• His favorite character:  Elmo or “Em-mo”
• Favorite Song:  Wheels on the Bus (complete with ‘rolling down the river’ hand motions)
• His surprise face whenever he sees something new or wants to impress us (see jack in the box video clip)

My son is 19 months old and knows how to navigate an iPhone.  Does it make me a bad parent for exposing my kid to a smartphone before he can talk?  What responsibility do we have as parents for a generation growing up surrounded by this kind of technology?   Living and working in a digital age, I can’t help but think about the right balance between the virtual world and the natural world for my kid’s development…and these issues are only going to get more complicated.  But it’s this conflict and challenge that I believe is driving the success of a local organization I’ve been following in Ithaca…

Primitive Pursuits was launched ten years ago with a mission to teach kids the skills that will strengthen their connection with nature.   It’s almost hard to believe that an organization like this has become a necessity.  Growing up, I spent as much time as I could outside.  But then eventually I discovered cable TV.  And then video games.  And then computers.   And now I spend most of my day in front of  a laptop working for an internet company.  (Neither of which even existed 25 years ago!)  Well, now we have a generation of kids growing up with the virtual world as a standard in their lives.  Between websites like Facebook and online gaming, kids can even create a social life without leaving their bedroom.

Tim Drake, the Director of Primitive Pursuits, shared this statistic with me at a recent meeting:  On average, children spend 53% of their day in front of a screen, 35% in a classroom and less than 1% in outdoor activities. He also shared results from a study that children could identify 100 corporate logos but not 10 plants from their own backyard. What are the repercussions of children growing up without a strong connection to nature?  If you don’t connect with the natural world, do you have any sense to protect it?

The concept of Primitive Pursuits is nothing new, but the relevance and importance seems to be growing as our society grapples with questions about the role of technology in our lives.  However we decide to raise our own son, I’m glad to know that there are people like Tim focused on the basic idea of getting kids connected with, and excited about the outdoors.

I attended the Primitive Pursuits 10 year anniversary event last weekend and took a few pictures for their website….

For more information about Primitive Pursuits, click here.  There is also a documentary on this subject of the need for outdoor education for todays kids called Play Again.  I haven’t seen it yet, but hear good things.

10 years ago this September, I was standing on the corner of Broadway and Houston in Manhattan on my way to a job interview.  I was staring up at the World Trade Center wondering how a small plane could have accidentally crashed into the World Trade Center.   In a sign of ignorance prior to that day, I took in the chaotic scene of sirens and gawkers, but then got on the subway still planning to make my interview.

10 years later, I’m now married and raising a son who will have no emotional connection to 9/11 or Osama Bin Laden.  And when Eli comes home from History class one day and asks me what it was like the day Bin Laden was shot, I might have a tough time explaining.  On the one hand, I’ll probably tell him  that initially it didn’t really impact me.  It didn’t mean we would be ending our “War on Terrorism” or pulling troops out of the middle east.  And it didn’t mean that our risk of terrorism would suddenly drop with his departure.    But having lived in New York City in the period after September 11th, his death did mean something.  For 7 years after 9/11, looking at the gap in the lower Manhattan skyline stirred a mix of emotions.  Knowing this man is dead does bring some undeniable sense of closure to that period of my life.   And if it feels that way for me, I can only imagine what it feels like for people who were directly impacted by the attacks that day.

And if I can look into the future, this smart kid’s next question will probably be, “how did it take 10 years to catch him?”  Fortunately, I have  a few years to find a satisfying answer for that one…

While most of our previous observations about Eli centered on him evolving from an infant into a relatable human being, the last few weeks have been marked by clues that those XY chromosomes are shaping him into a real boy.   While every new word that rolls off his tongue is exciting, there is something different about the emphasis and wonder he has for ‘truck’, or “kuksch” as he calls them.

In the span of one week we noticed that he kept pulling the same truck book off the shelf.  His favorite toys are now trucks and every time we pass one on the street I hear the same cute chatter from the back seat…”Kukch, Kuksch, Kuksch.”  I’m not implying that girls don’t enjoy trucks, or that I’ll be upset if his truck interest evolves into something less masculine, but it’s just interesting.  What is it in our makeup that causes a kid at 17 months to fall in love with trucks.  I can see why I like them. But what does he see?   As far as I can tell, nobody was giving him cookies if he said the word truck.  So why does that happen?  Is there some evolutionary benefit to boys liking trucks?  Life mystery I guess.

On another note, he also discovered pockets this month.  While not as defining as trucks, for some reason he looks 10 years older when he puts his hands in them and starts strolling.  Go figure.

Quite a fun time in parenthood.  The changes are happening at warp speed and it’s just fun to be a witness to it all.  Thank god for the blog or I’d forget all this stuff next week when he discovers race cars and play dough.

The second video is the other side of parenthood at this age.  Mayhem and cleanup.

Thanks for keeping us on our toes, kid.  Wouldn’t trade it for anything.