we’re on our way to new york city.

it’s our first family vacation since exactly a year ago, when we were in Costa Rica for a friends wedding. We haven’t been in new york together, in an even longer time — not since five and half years ago when we got engaged.

it’s also sparklet’s first train ride, which is great timing considering her recent obsession with all things choo-choo. speaking of obsessions:

• she’s counting to five now — english and spanish. she needs props (nuts, crayons, figurines) but counts them off completely un-prompted.
• she’s half potty trained now — about four days ago, mommy sat her down and told her that she’d get gummi bears for each time she uses the potty. within the first 2 hours, she had gone thrice, and it’s been mostly dry diapers ever since.
• her vocabulary is growing — she’s definately in the identification phase, where she has to call out the make and color of every object she sees. Cute, but a bit of a liability when you’re hurtling down the highway and she’s screaming at you for each car, bus and taxi she sees.

we’ll be here through Tuesday — my family used to come up to new york every winter for years and years, to see the decorations and the store windows, and we’ll be doing just about the same thing.

it’ll be good.

sparklet’s first night in a big girl bed went about how we expected — two hours of unbridled excitement at her new bed followed by a period of shear “wait, you expect me to sleep in this thing” terror.

mommy had to sing about 20 minutes of twinkle, twinkle after the lights went out — a shockingly long time considering her current repulation for the easy manner with which she goes to sleep.

of course, we’re spinning this as a “present” for sparklet, but in the end she’s got to get out of the crib because thing two is going to need a place to sleep in the spring.

UPDATE: the following night it was back to normal, with a quick hop into the new bed and snoozing just 5 minutes later.

holy moses, sparklet is growing up quick.

i’m going total “my kid is awesomer than your kid” dad now, but i’ve got about ten stories that i just couldn’t have imagine i’d be telling two months ago.

• the garbage man — given the lack of sirens on our new block, sparklet has turned her dulcet affections to the garbage men. each Thursday and Friday morning when she hears the truck, she runs out onto her balcony (which faces the alley out back) and yells out to the garbage man, who wave at her and shout back.
• random hugs — after two years of being the least cuddly baby on earth, sparklet has started giving mommy and i random hugs. even better? the lady sparkler was out of town five of the last seven days, and i only got one “where’s mommy” whine while she was gone.
• refrigerator trained — much to mommy and my amusement, last weekend we saw sparklet walk over to the refrigerator, open the door, get out a yogurt, close the door, open a drawer, get out a bib, close the drawer, open another cabinet, get out a spoon, close the cabinet, walk over to the table, pull out her chair, climb up her chair, sit down, put on her bib, peel off the yogurt top, lick the yogurt top, and start eating the yogurt with her spoon — all without even looking in our direction. serious, what the heck?
• sockpuppets — speaking of “what the heck,” sparklet has started taking off her socks in the car, putting them on her hands, and acting out puppet shows. quick reminder, she’s two years old.
• baby gates — speaking of “what the heck” (part 2), sparklet can now open the locked baby gate at the top of the stairs, go through, turn around, and lock the gate behind her, and continue down the stairs unimpeded.
• baby sleeping — speaking of “what the heck” (part 3), a few days ago i hear a loud bang, followed by sparklet’s door slamming closed, and then sparklet starting to walk down the stairs by herself (we’ve given up — see “baby gates” above). when i went to scold her anyway, she shushed me that her doll baby was upstairs trying to sleep. she then went down to the living room couch, picked up her other doll baby, walked back up the stairs, opened the door to her bedroom, threw her baby up and into the crib (that was the first loud bang, btw) slammed the door closed, and shushed me again.
• photography — after sparklet’s strong artistic burst of photography out of the gate, she now refuses to take a picture of anything other than herself (see above). i’ve got 400 pictures on the point and shoot camera, and 300+ of them are of sparklet’s forehead, stomach or feet.
• animal noises — her vocabulary still isn’t that great but with utterly no warning she has started to scream out animal noises. my favorite has to be the monkey sound she makes when we read the snail and the whale but we’ve got a full range of options — horses, cows, sheep, goats and dogs.
• speaking of dogs — she hasn’t quite picked up the name of my parents dogs (“toby”) so she just pants twice whenever she is thinking about him.
• speaking of not talking — yesterday, she finally strung together what can be arguably considered her first sentence — with a noun, verb and object: “i get ipad now.”

awesome.

sparklet has really figured out the camera, now.

as in, she’s taken over 150 photos in three days.

in a vain attempt to keep her from overwhelming my flickr photostream, we’ve set her up with her own. for now, we’ve set her account so that her photos are only viewable by her “approved” contacts on Flickr.

we’d love for her loyal readers (all four of you) to see the photos, so don’t hesitate to ask. just log-on to Flickr (using a Yahoo! id) and add sparklet as one of your contacts and we’ll reciprocate asap …

… assuming your Flickr username isn’t “Pedobear24765″ or the like.

sparklet’s figured out how to use the camera, or at least how to push the button when someone else aims.

something tells me that payback (for the 10,000 pictures i’ve taken of her) is going to be a #$%!&.

mommy is out of town for work, so sparklet and i did what all good father/daughters do — we put our feet on the couch, threw in (her very first) movie, drank heavily, vegged out on the couch, ate macaroni and cheese straight out of the mixing bowl, and stayed up past our bedtimes.

that’ll teach mommy.

sparklet and i planted the first veggies of our newly reclaimed veggie patch — two basil, two tomatoes, and two cucumbers — but we saved the photo-op/watering until mommy could share the love.

sparklet’s discovered one nice thing about moving — bouncing on the couch when mommy has the slip cover at the laundromat. awesome.

sparklet insisted on walking home, tonight — and she made it all four blocks from the car back to the apartment. my back and i have never been so proud.

mommy’s office threw a little party for the kids today, which led to sparklet’s first official trick or treating.

unfortunately, sparklet kept getting confused — she thought it was a candy exchange, giving back candy at the next cube that she got at the previous, which was made even more thoughtful because she took the time to pre-moisten it before passing it along.

for posterity, her first trick or treat trophy was a box of milk duds — though they dropped to a distant second once she got her first lick on a lollypop.

well, that didn’t go particularly well — the very first time she tried a cupcake, you would have thought that she was being force-fed peas.

fortunately, we tried it again the next day and it did go a little better — even though *i* was actually the one to smear frosting all over her face.