The life and times of Oscar Marcos Perez-Cytron. Born Thanksgiving Day 11/22/01.   Archives << current   If you want to add something to Oscar's baby-blog, send an email to megan@alpha60.com and we can set it up so you can post...

oscar's life   Saturday, May 24, 2003 6:52 AM posted by Oscar   So much time has elapsed since my last blog entry! It's been hectic with lots of nice visits interspersed. Christian's mom visited back in April. We had a great time just hanging out and going for walks (it was warmer then that it has been the past few weeks). A lot of war protests were going on at the time and we inadvertantly got caught up in one when we went to the National Gallery. Oscar has started to look at all of the helicopters circling overhead with the same trepidation as us. The next week Christian's dad and brother Michael (Oscar's godfather) came for a visit. It was kind of a whirlwind, but it was great to just hang out and see Oscar interact with everyone. He loved the attention and actually got kind of depressed when they left. It was the first time I've ever seen him get like that. Barbara and Bernice came over with Parker and Aisling. They are each a year apart: 1 1/2, 2 1/2, 3 1/2. It was really fun seeing them play together. Oscar was the loudest and most exuberant. Aisling was shy and taking it all in. Parker, the oldest and most socialized and sophisticated, seemed to want to keep the other two in line (he kept telling Oscar to "stop yelling"). After we were all completely worn out and wondered how people can handle more than one close in age. Last weekend Kathy and Bill came up for a visit. We got to spend a lot of time just hanging out and relaxing. Shannon and Patrick (and Oliver) just packed up to leave for Florida today. Oliver came over for the day, because he was a bit traumatized by the move...Oscar got so excited and overstimulated by his presence that he completely wore himself out and took two 2 1/2 hour naps and then went to bed early. We're definitely going to miss having them so close. Mary Kate has been babysitting for us quite a bit and she's moving to Mount Pleasant, just a few blocks away, so we'll get to see even more of her. It's been raining almost constantly for the past month and it's starting to get depressing. I'm still not watching the news, but I looked at the weather map in the Post and it just had rainy arrows going in a perpetual circle over DC--not sure what's up with that... We haven't been able to go to the park as much as usual, so Oscar's been a bit stir crazy. We've also been embarking on some major and disruptive home improvement projects. We had a balcony and stairs built on the back of our house (our old stairs fell down at my 30th birthday party over two years ago). And we've had people here all week redoing our floors and painting on the first floor. It's the first time we've hired people to do stuff that we could do ourselves and it has been both liberating and stressful. We've both got to learn to tame our latent Martha Stewart tendencies or this house will drive us crazy... On a more important note, Oscar has been making some major developmental strides: Constructing, not just deconstructing He's building all kinds of cool and amazing things with his blocks. He used to just like to throw them over his shoulder and use them to bludgeon things, but now he is actually building large and intricate structures. He likes to mix media, by putting duckies and Pooh bears in the midst of very tall and almost impossibly non-linear towers. He seems to have a very good sense of balance, proportion and space. Naming and recognizing things and people He's finally differentiating between Christian and me. He used to call us both "mama." Now I am "mama." Christian is "papu." He loves looking at the little album that Bett sent us. He looks at the pictures and points out ducky, dog, papu, mama, etc. He calls balls "ka" (he's truncating "pelota," I think). He says dog and says "guau, guau, guau" (Spanish for "woof, woof"). He differentiates between Tigger, Pooh, Eeyore, and Piglet. He knows a bus from a car, but thinks horses and cows and elephants are all "moo." Drawing He's finally getting into drawing and scribbling. Tonight he was playing with my markers and marked all over himself. He seemed really interested in the different colors. I want to get him a copy of Harold and the Purple crayon. That was one of my favorites as a kid. I can't wait until he's ready for play-doh! Giving and taking Oscar is just starting to understand that you have to give a little to get a little. One afternoon we were walking in Malcolm X Park and Oscar was holding onto a dogwood flower. He saw a teenage boy holding a dandelion and he walked up to him and said "hola" and tenatively held out his hand. The boy gave him the dandelion and then Oscar gave him the dogwood blossom, one petal at a time. It was touching. Saturday, May 03, 2003 8:09 AM posted by Anonymous   Long time since last our last updates, lots of ground to cover here. OK. So I will jump back to April 10th. It was our 10th anniversary (me and Megan)! Mom came into town the same day for a long weekend visit. She got to babysit Oscar and we got to go out to Palena to commemorate our "date" of dates. It was a night to remember. Mom had a good time with Oscar, doing all our usual stuff. I was happy she got the chance to enjoy him in his regular everday activities. We went to the kalorama playground, dupont circle, and the swimming class at the JCC. We also went to the National Gallery for a last peek at the Vuillard exhibit. We did a good amount of walking around. On Friday we went to Claus and Claudia's for a sendoff feast for Chanon. He's headed to Jordan for 3 months and then to Iraq for humanitarian work. We had a little jam session to send him off. I played Neil's bass, Claus played Sax, and Chanon played a funky drumset with the snare on an old porta-potty. It was pretty ridiculous and fun. Oscar was sleeping upstairs, then he woke up a little later and came down and hung out with us for a while. I was glad Mom got to come and spend some time with our friends, new and old. I wish Dixon could have been there too. Mom and Dixon gave us a nice japanese cast iron teapot for our 10th. It is getting daily use. Also, Mom gave Oscar a mexican chair, a musical stuffed animal ducky, and two more rubber duckies for his growing collection. He is still saying "ducky" about a hundred times a day, in addition to "gato" and "moo" (sounds more like "boo"). He spots these things everywhere and points them out. OK, more to come (including photos).