Pardon the Egg Salad

Nico & VBG's Excellent Adventures

Are we still saying staycation, or is that over? Either way, I had one. My mom had minor surgery and needed a break from Nico-sitting. I needed a break after my summer of somewhat unfun work stuff, so I took two weeks off to chill with the little guy while Mom recovered. It was fabulous to have so much time with him, often doing nothing but keeping each other company. He's at a great age (although I think so far, I've felt that way about all of his stages), independent enough to play alone with his toys for short periods but still interested in cuddling. I spend a lot of time looking at him these days, trying to memorize the way he is now, his eyes a hard-to-describe shade somewhere between blue and gray; his hair the exact rich burnished copper of a brand new penny, a hue impossible to capture in photographs; his lone tooth a barely-visible scallopy ridge, only seen in the widest of grins.

Between crawling and pulling up on every vertical surface he can reach, the time has come when he's pretty much into everything at every turn and any lapse in parental attention is an opportunity for mischief. One day I dozed off in the rocking chair in his room while he was playing with his toys on the floor, only to be awakened to the sound of him stripping the dust jacket violently from one of his nice hardback books. My book nerd heart in my throat, I dove to the rescue and subsequently removed all his non-board books to a high shelf for safekeeping. We are undeniably at the point where babyproofing has become a mandate rather than a good idea, no door left ajar, no laptop cord left untethered. I turned to my good friend Craigslist and obtained a plastic superyard for nearly half price that we can zig-zag across the living room to block off the entertainment center and keep dog and baby separate. It's certainly not the stuff of artfully-lit lifestyle-blog photos, but it does a damn fine job of shielding our stuff and our son from inevitable misfortune. And as an unforeseen bonus, my floors have never been cleaner, swept and Swiffered clear of clumps of dog hair and potential debris every day.

I booked a quite a few lunch dates during my time off and Nico was a champ about it, politely sitting in high chairs at various restaurants, eating bowls of oatmeal and fruit that I packed for him. Other than lunch dates -- which, let's be honest, are way more exciting for me than for him -- I wanted to take Nico on a few special outings during my second week off. Our swimming date with Julia and her son got canceled due to a cold that we didn't want to risk catching, but there was other fun to be had. On Wednesday, we went to the zoo with my dad. I tried to keep my expectations low since Nico doesn't even know any animals by name yet, but it actually went better than I'd hoped. Nico didn't really notice the animals in their enclosures until they moved, but luckily several of the large-ish denizens were extremely cooperative. He looked at howler monkeys, a tapir, and wolves. And while we couldn't get him to look at a gigantic giraffe that was right there in front of us, adorably stretching its neck in a vain attempt to eat some leaves that were too high even for it to graze upon, he found the thick cable fence in front of the giraffe's enclosure absolutely fascinating. Nico made it through the Amazon exhibit, part of the African exhibit, and about half of the children's forest before falling asleep and napping in his stroller for an hour while Dad and I checked out the rest of the zoo.

Zoo is serious business.

Well, maybe not that serious.

Our prize packet for completing the Summer Reading Program included a coupon for a free adult admission with paid adult admission to the children's museum. We used it on Friday to go for a visit and took my sister along. Nico did even better at the museum than he had at the zoo. We spent nearly two hours there, and he only fussed for a few minutes at the end when I put him back in his stroller to leave.

The museum is ridiculously cool, and I'm looking forward to taking him again. I think my sister had as much fun as Nico, especially when she used the stop motion camera exhibit to make a very detailed short film featuring Gumby being attacked and dragged off by an Allosaurus ("Gumby always creeped me out when I was a kid," she said by way of explanation.) We had the dinosaurs spell out hello to Nico using alphabet blocks, too, and I briefly considered making them spell out "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal," but by that point Nico was getting restless in his stroller, so we moved on to the baby room, where he spent some time boosting his immune system.