I think we may have a white Christmas…

The inspiration brought on by walking outside at 4 am in a world covered in white and listening to the silence will only be revealed in fiction, I’m afraid.

But I have a cute baby! We took him outside on Thursday, when the snow barely covered the grass. And they called THAT the Snowpocalypse!

OK, he really looks more like a toddler in these pictures. The gallery is here.  

There’s a lot more snow on the ground now. So much that I can’t take Robin out in it, because we simply don’t have the clothes to keep him warm when he’s sitting in snow up to his armpits.

OK, it’s pretty dense stuff; I can walk on it and not break through to the ground beneath. So it wouldn’t be to his armpits. But it’s also very COLD stuff. I had to dig Hannah’s harness out of the snow when it came off Saturday night, and my fingers were numb when I was done.

I did just take both dogs out front and take pictures of them. It isn’t the hijinks there’d be in the back yard with Dante unleashed, but a.) I’ve fallen enough moving Hannah around in this weather and b.) you can get a pretty good idea of what the Dante pictures would look like from the above gallery.

Kevin is walking to the 7-11 to buy cigarettes. When he first suggested this yesterday I was very dubious, but after my 4 am stroll, I was a lot more enthusiastic, and a bit sad that I didn’t have an excuse/we didn’t have a stroller on skis. It’s getting dark soon, though…

On Saturday, in the brief lull of ‘good’ weather, before the predicted Windocalypse (which was cancelled on account of snow), we went shopping for Robin. That kid isn’t going to know what hit him on Thursday!

He really won’t. I expect tears and tantrums as we try to guide a 16 month old through present-opening rituals. (“No, baby, you can’t play with that new toy! You have to open another present! Can we have that wrapping paper now, kiddo? Time to get out of the giant box!”) It’ll be, as Kevin says, loltastic. I’m hoping to get some of it on a webcam to broadcast to his grandmother, probably via MSN Messenger.

Oh, hey, obligatory Robin development report:

Robin is  a bit more interested in walking instead of just cruising and crawling. If we support him, he’ll walk all over (and he used to immediately lift his feet or sit down if we supported him, so it’s progress), and occasionally he’ll take a single unsupported step. Speech-wise, Kevin has claimed he knows ‘block’ (‘dok’) and ‘door’ (‘doo’). He still primarily focuses on words he can start with a ”d’ sound, even though he says the (apparently) meaningless word ‘ah-oh’ all the time as well. He also likes to practice the ‘tsh’ sound of ‘toothbrush’ and ‘Christmas’, and will, when pressured, do ‘mama’ (yaya).  But… it’s clear there are some words he’s avoiding even trying. We’ll ask him to say a word and he’ll refuse, look away from us, say ‘daddy’, and eventually get upset if we keep pushing him. Sometimes he’s in far more verbal moods than others. But we’ve definitely reached the point where, say, baby sign language probably alleviates problems. If only he’d learn it. He’ll stand in his playpen and just… holler when he wants something. He knows hollering has worked in the past, and he’s unwilling to try anything else, even when hollering proves so vague that he rarely gets what he wants.

He’s quite the tool user. He likes to play with zippers, especially on Raymond’s pullover. He unzips it. Then, he lifts Raymond’s hand and puts it on the zipper, so Raymond will zip it up again for him. He’s used me the same way to make a toy pop its buttons out so he can push them in again. Why bother learning to do it himself when he has people who can do it for him? It’s unfortunately a reaction I’ve observed in myself in the past.

He’s frightened of more things now– or rather, he’s frightened of the same singular thing that has always frightened him, but he sees it now in more places. It started long ago with the song ‘Iron Man’. When anybody sang it, he cried and cried. Why? Nobody knew. And everybody– everybody– had to try it and see his reaction for themselves.

Then he got a toy for his birthday: a steering wheel, with buttons and sounds and a mechanical driving game in the center part of the wheel. One of the engine noises was a growly vroom. It terrified him. Lately, he’s realized that two of his truck-style toys both have certain noises that are kind of… growly vrooms. He doesn’t like them AT ALL. Nor does he like staticky radio stations. It’s very sad, but what is even more sad is that he’s incredibly cute when frightened. 

He doesn’t immediately cry when frightened these days. Instead, he stares at the scary object. Then he lays down on his side and stares at it some more. Sometimes, if he’s uncertain about it, he’ll trigger the scary sound again. Then, he’ll crawl away from it and give somebody a big happy hug, grinning and giggling– but a moment later, he’s laying curled up on his side, staring at the scary toy, even if it’s now inactive. This repeats a few times, until finally he breaks down in sobbing.  And we have no idea why!

So there you go: Robin at 16ish months.