Random

- Tonight before bed Jack got up, went over to his wire jungle gym type toy, and started singing, while drumming on it softly with a book. The song was Oh My Sherman, a Backyardigans take on My Darling Clementine. He did this for a good 5 minutes, singing some lyrics I could understand, and some I couldn't. Big smile on his face, singing and drumming, and as he repeated lines, it was as if they were new each time, as if he was singing one long, 5-minute song, with very little uncertainty or pausing. I was torn between stopping him, seeing as it was bed time, and just fascination with how invested in the whole thing he was.

"Daddy, come here," he said. I went over, sat down near the toy. "No, you, with the book." I started drumming as well, with another book, but since I didn't really know the lyrics, I was a little off, trying to keep off. "No, I show you," he said. And he started up again.

After I finally got him into his bed and left the room, he continued singing it for another 5-10 minutes. Finally, I think, he slept.

- Before his bath tonight, Jack was running around. Wearing only a diaper, I saw him run, full-tilt, from his room into the office. Then the office into our room. Yelling. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Pause. Then back across the hallway into his room. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

- Speaking of music. Jack knows how to use the little CD stereo, which I might add we bought for his room in the first place, when he was a baby, so I guess it's kind of his anyway. He picks out CDs by color of the jacket -- "I want the blue one!" -- which is how he ended up with Moby's 18 in the player yesterday. Moby is kind of techno pop, I guess; not exactly what you'd think of as kid's music. Anyway, the first track on the disc is called "We Are All Made of Stars," but its chorus repeats "People they (may? whichever) come together," and so Jack now says, "Want to hear the come together song!" And so we've heard that Moby song about 10 times in the last two days, not the kind of music I ever figured I'd be listening to with my son. He's also learned random lyrics in the song, which he repeats (big smile) when they come up. "Left in my mind," he grins. And: "Growing in numbers."

- I don't presume to know what Jack's favorite things are, but eating watermelon has to be up there in the top 5. Tonight we told him he got dessert, and he said, "What IS it?" And I said, it's one of your favorites, and he said, "One of my FAVORITES?" And I said, watermelon, and he was practically giddy with joy.

So he sat down at the table and I brought the watermelon over. And we sat, me drinking a beer and Emily drinking her water, watching him eat. And as he finished, or paused, I don't know, he suddenly launched on a lengthy monologue that included watermelon, potatoes, and things about "So I could get..." and "but I couldn't have it" and an old standby, "Because I had a job to do." And his explanation included hand gestures -- putting his hands out palms up, and occasionally pointing, and maybe even a little shoulder shrug. This went on for several minutes with fairly a pause for breath.

It was like he was telling us the best story he'd ever heard or experienced, and he wanted us to appreciate it as much as he did.

Funny.

Jamberry

We're slowly trying to get things ready for Baby No. 2, and one part of that entails trying to steal all the things from Jack that he's had since he was a baby so we can give them to his coming sibling. Step 1 was moving him out of his crib into a bed, and that went fairly well.

(As an aside, Step 1 was probably boxing up all of his baby toys, some of which we'll eventually give to his sibling, but we have no illusions there -- as soon as he sees them he's going to want them anyway. In fact, he and his Mommy had the first chat today about whether Jack's toys were going to be in jeopardy from the newborn, something Jack seemed pretty concerned about, so that's going to be fun.)

Anyway. Today I extricated the glider / rocking chair from his room, which we rocked him, read stories to him in, and sang songs to him from basically when he was a newborn until a few months ago. That was when we moved him to the bed, and since then he's pretty much been content to read stories there. So he's not really going to miss it, but of course, I knew he would. So I wanted to try to decorate that area dramatically enough that he wouldn't mind the missing glider.

I put up a poster from a Natural History Museum I went to in New Mexico, with pictures of dinosaurs on it, and then I drew a big picture of a dinosaur and an Ichthysaur (probably misspelled, sue me). There was still a big space, so I pulled out another big piece of paper and tried to figure out what to draw.

My eyes fell on his Jamberry book, this great book that he's loved on and off since he was very young, of a boy and a bear dancing and singing through fields of berries -- raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, etc. Great book. Using his markers, I spent the next 15 minutes or so recreating the cover of the book, the bear in brown (with his purple hat of blueberries) and the boy in his blue shirt and pants, also holding a hatful of blueberries. It was a pretty accurate likeness, if I do say so myself, all colorful and happy. So I put it up on his wall and everything seemed good. I put his big monkey chair in the spot the glider used to be.

So Jack gets home and ultimately we go upstairs to see his new room. He sees the pictures and runs over to them, standing there to marvel at my efforts. He looked pretty happy, and Emily came in too, saying, wow, it's the bear and the boy from Jamberry, isn't that great, Jack? And he's smiling and I'm thinking, yeah, that worked out pretty well. And then he turned to look at us.

Jack: "Where are the strawberries?"

The Beach

Colorado had a lot of great things, but a beach obviously wasn't one of them. I think there might have been reservoirs or somesuch, but in the 5 years we lived there, the only time we went to the beach was when we flew to Los Angeles and Mexico. The last time we took Jack; he started walking there.

Back East now, we went to the beach twice this past week -- Jack and I on Friday, Jack and Emily and I on Saturday. And although the beaches themselves were mediocre at best (broken glass was fairly prevalent on one), it was great. Jack wanted to be carried at first, didn't want to put his feet on the weird sand or in the oceah, but within minutes he'd gotten past that and was running back and forth across the sand, from towels to water and back again, over and over and over. He had a little watering can he wanted to fill, to help us make sand castles and sand bunnies and sand turtles. "Another one!" And we'd run to get more water to mix with more sand to make more.

On a couple of occasions we saw horseshoe crabs, moving along the edge of the shore. I pointed them out to him. "Can I touch it?" he said. Er, no, probably not a good idea. Once we saw a mother duck and her ducklings. Jack ran after them, not getting within 20 feet of course before they scurried away. "Bye, ducks!" he yelled.

We'll see them again next week.

Are you sick?

We've been sick a lot this year. One of us gets something and the rest soon follow. We had a great, healthy Memorial Day weekend, somebody Jack played with had a high fever the next day, and naturally, Jack got it too. I picked him up at daycare a little early on Tuesday and he was home all day today.

It was funny putting him to bed last night, which is when he was really starting to feel bad. He lay down for reading stories. Was cold getting out of the bath. Went to sleep early, before 7 I think.

Today, I was also feeling crummy, although with me it might be allergies. But Jack was here, and had a fever of 101, so I was trying to get him to drink liquids, and rest -- he napped on me at one point.

At one point I either looked or sounded or said I was tired. Jack: "Are you sick?" Me: "Oh, maybe a little." "Do you need a glass of water?" "Er, well..." "I go get you some water."

He disappeared, went downstairs, and came back a minute or two later with a glass of water -- his plastic Spider-man glass, perhaps with the water that was already in it, or maybe from the bathroom sink, which I think he can almost reach. Gave it to me: "Here's water for you, Daddy."

Good stuff.

Big Kids

Jack and I set up his tee-ball set out in the backyard. We'd bought it in Denver, at a point when I think he was too small to really use it. Anyway, he took to it immediately, perhaps in part because he's gone to see his cousins Lyndsay and Stacey play tee-ball at the park on several previous Saturdays. That's a riot in and of itself, as the kids stand there in baseball stance while the ball rolls by them about a foot away, or alternately, the entire team swarms to the ball like bees.


Anyway, I'd place the ball on the tee and he'd really sock the thing, with a big, full-around swing. Pretty impressive. At one point, a couple of older boys -- 8 and 7, I believe, or so -- came over from the house next door, where our backyards connect. "Can we hit some, too?" "Sure," I said.

Well, it was pretty great. They'd haul off and sock it, but once they'd had their turn, they set it up for Jack, and gave him coaching tips ("Don't stand too close," "Hit the ball, not the red part," etc.). This went on for about 15-20 minutes, with them running around, and Jack either hitting, running to get the ball, or just watching the bigger boys in awe.

The best was the next morning, when Jack and I went out there again. Jack: "Are the big kids coming out?" "I don't know, Jack, I don't see them. They must be in their house."

Jack ran across the backyard, to the edge of theirs. Stopped, and shouted:

"Big kids! Big kids! I'm in my YAAA-RRRRD!!!!!!!!"

More sleep

- Sleep has been bad lately, because Jack has been going through a period of getting out of bed early in the morning, getting up after we put him to bed for up to an hour or more, getting up sometimes in the middle of the night. There's nothing quite like waking up and seeing a little person standing next to your bed. We started putting a gate up, and that helps a little. At first he really didn't like it, but then he was okay with it. "It's to keep you in your room, so you'll get more sleep," I explained. Now when I'm going to leave the room, he says "Put the gate up. Put the gate up, Daddy."

It's all been very frustrating, seeing as how none of us are getting enough sleep, but we'll figure it out. On the bright side, every once in a while there are moments like today, where he was so tired that I was able to sing him to sleep at naptime. I sat on the edge of his bed and sang "Swing on a Star," and he curled up on his side and went to sleep. His eyes slowly grew heavy, fluttered a bit, and then he slept.

- Ian's parents, "Nanny and Pop," have this shopping cart toy that Jack likes, he played with it when we were there last. This morning we were playing with his little dragon toy, and also the smaller dragon that goes in a game Aunt Robin brought. The larger one is the Daddy, according to Jack. Anyway, Jack wanted to give them a ride in the shopping cart, and he's going to the door and saying, Bye, I'm going to Nanny and Pops, bye. So we dug out this "Hungry Hippo," that Emily got when he was like 6 months old, and he pushed that around, with a collection of toys riding in it, as if they were in a cart. That seemed to work.

- The other night, Jack woke up crying for us. Emily went in, coming back some 5 minutes later. "He was cold," she said, "And had taken off his pajama shorts (it was warm when he went to bed) and pulled a pair of long pajama pants out of his top drawer. 'I picked these out myself,' he said. 'You put these on me.'" Kind of cute.

I could write much more, but I'm pretty tired.

Sleep and Potatoes

1. Sleep.

Jack's been falling asleep too late (preceded by an hour or so of singing) and waking up too early. The latter part usually involves him coming into our room -- 3:30 one time, 4:30 another, and then pretty much every 10-15 minutes from 5 to 6 a.m. It's been getting lighter earlier, maybe that's it. In any case, it's been rough on us -- and him.

Yesterday, after about 3 days of this, it probably came to a head while dining out. We needed to get out of the house, and met his cousins and family for wings at a place that had "kids eat for 99 cents night." Seemed like a good idea, aside from Jack getting progressively more restless and cranky as the meal wore on, and it ending with us hightailing it out of there with Jack wailing about his buttons (I still have NO IDEA what he meant), which lasted all the way home. Then came a relatively quick bath where he still dissolved into wails every once in a while, followed by getting ready for bed that included him actually walking into the wall at one point (that was nice), and finally, finally, sleep. For Jack, it ended up being nearly 11 hours, interrupted just once. For us, we probably got almost 8 hours! For all, it was bliss.

So yeah, sleep, very important for everyone.

2. Potatoes.

Jack enjoys his Mr. Potato Head toy, at times wanting it near him at night ("I want him to watch me brush my teeth") and when he's sleeping. Yesterday's mail brought a new toy from his grandparents, a Red Sox Mr. Potato Head -- he's a slightly smaller version, that can be dressed up in a little Sox jersey, helmet, face (blowing bubble gum!), and shoes.

Jack immediately started dressing up his little potato head. "He's getting ready to go to school," he explained. And again, as he put the little hat on him: "He's getting ready for school." And then he started taking all of his features off again, so he was just a little potato, and put him next to Mr. Potato Head. "He's not getting ready for school. He's going to stay home with his Daddy."

Railroad

I just put Jack to bed.

He's singing "I've been working on the railroad" at the top of his lungs.

"I've! Been Working! On! the! Rail! Road!
All
the livelong
Day!"

Yesterday his Mommy put him to bed, and he was singing "Take me out to the Ballgame." At one point she walked in to tell him to go to sleep, but as she walked in, she saw he was lying facedown, forehead on his arms a bit, singing with pauses:

"Take ... me ... out to the ball ... game...
Take
me out to the
crowd ...."

Thump. Head goes all the way down. Singing stops. Jack sleeps.

As just happened again.

Good night, Jack.

Daffy Duck

So one of the things that Jack and I do on occasion is walk down to this nearby office park that has a duck pond in the middle. And we throw the ducks bread and say Hi and Bye to the ducks and all that.

Tonight I was sitting with Jack and drawing pictures on his Magna Doodle (it's sort of like an Etch a Sketch with a pen, just in case you're not up on the lingo, I probably wasn't 2 years ago). And I'm drawing ducks all over it. So Jack says, "Draw his necklace." And I'm like, Huh? And he says, "You have to draw the duck's necklace." And so I draw one, and he's like, "And that one, too. And his necklace, Daddy."

So I'm sitting here drawing necklaces on ducks, thinking, What the hell? And then I realized: In our car I've still got the Daffy Duck my sister gave me, way back before my cross-country trip with Lucky (a year or so after college) -- I've moved him about from car to car since then. And that Daffy Duck is still wearing the necklaces that we got at Mardi Gras and put on Daffy, way back when.

So thanks to that trip, my son believes that ducks are supposed to have necklaces.

Talking to, and about, everything

I really need to write in this thing more often. In theory, a blog gets updated, you know, every day or at least every few days. Not once a week at most. Sorry.

Anyway. Lots to talk about with Jack these days....

When he's happy, Jack likes to talk a lot. And jump like a frog. And dance. And talk about what he's doing. "I'm jumping!" "I'm a baseball player!" (Complete with baseball hat.) "Nice job, Daddy!" (When he gives me the hat, making me a baseball player, and I hit the ball.) He talks to his trains: "Lie down, Salty!" And, "Hello, Thomas!"

He announces what we're going to be doing. For example, he goes around turning off the lights, and says "It's sleepy time now." If I reach for a toy, he explains, no, it's not playing time, it's sleeping time. We lie down together on the rug for a couple of minutes. "You lie there," he explains. And, "Mommy lies over there," he adds. And of course, old favorites: "Do you want to play with my toys?" Or "Play with me?" And "Play with me, Daddy."

Sometimes, and I know this is bad, but it's also very funny, he tells us what not to do. "Don't touch my toys." And, "Don't touch my trains." Not an order so much as a request. "Daddy, don't move my trains." He's on his way upstairs, but wants to make sure we don't play with his toys without him. Funny.

He can also be sweet, like when we were playing in the driveway the other day with the 2-year-old boy next door. Jack had his basketball and Max had a little ball, which of course Jack was fascinated with, and didn't want his own ball anymore. So for a while they traded, and both were very happy, but then the time to go in came and I said, Jack, give Max back his ball. And he walked over and handed it to him and Max handed his back and it was really quite touching. It was funny, too, to watch them playing, putting the balls through the hoop and jumping up and down with happiness.

Jack likes to turn the radio on in my room, the little clock radio, and gradually we find music -- which is to say, Jack turns the dial and the volume around randomly and ultimately I'm able to lock it in on an actual station, with music, and then Jack starts clapping and jumping around.

I ultimately got whatever eye problem Jack had, pink eye or more likely allergies, and had to have eye drops. Jack watched as Mommy gave me the eye drops -- I was incapable of doing it myself. When Mommy was done, Jack said, "Do you need jelly beans, Daddy?" Since that, of course, was how we got him to accept the eye drops.

Jack sings himself to sleep and sings in the mornings, too. He sings Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and Twinkle Twinkle, and Can't Stop the Cops (from Backyardigans). We went to the library for reading group one day and the teacher sang "Where is thumbkins, where is thumbkins, etc." So the next morning, when we woke up, we could hear Jack singing:

"Where is my daddy,
Where is my daddy,
where he is,
where he is....

Where is my mommy,
where is my...."

So, he's fun.

Big Boy Bed, Pink Eye, and More

Start with the worst, the pink eye. First off, giving Jack eye drops, not much fun. There has to be an easier way to give kids eye-related antibiotics. (Tomorrow Emily's calling to find out what it is.) He cries, he screws his eyes up, he twists away -- always at the exact instant the droplet of water, in slow motion, finally falls off the eye dropper. We did it for five days as instructed, 3 times a day, but either because we missed a couple of doses or some of the ones he did get were flawed in the delivery, or because he was re-exposed, or something else entirely, we're thinking he might have it again. So we've started giving them again, with jelly beans as before; it's about the only way we can get him not to pitch a fit about it. Giving a crying child with a runny nose (yes, he also has a bad cold) jelly beans creates a whole new set of problems, but you can probably figure it out.

The runny nose, also frustrating. He's not happy about it ("I have a BOOGER!" he wails), we're not happy about it, and it's all very messy, unsanitary, and probably not good when you're trying to get pink eye cleared up. The times when he doesn't have a cold seem to fly by, the times when he does seem to drag.

Despite that, there's some been some fun recently:

- Today, at Reanna's birthday party, the girls drew a hopscotch board in the driveway and started jumping around it. Jack, who primarily didn't want to give up the big car, which he loves, nonetheless got out of it to join in. But Jack just basically wanted to jump in the air and then drop on his knees, kind of like a frog. He doesn't quite get hopscotch yet.

- At the same party, all three of the girls were in a silly post-dinner mood, and wanted to entertain. Which was fine with Jack, who acts like he could sit there watching them sing and shout and jump around forever. Later came the running circles around the yard, pretending to be a train (Jack chimed in with saying "Choo-choo" and putting his fist in the air) and the dessert portion of the day, where Jack started out wanting cake and ended up drooling over apple pie, ice cream, and strawberries. I think he ate an entire strawberry patch. Grove? He ate a lot of strawberries, let's just say that.

Last Saturday we got Jack a mattress, and then this Saturday we picked it up. We kind of thought he might take a while to really get interested in sleeping on it, and felt the same way when we got it home and told him what it was for and he basically had no interest in it. Even after I cleared a spot in his room and put the mattress down, he was kind of like, eh, okay, I guess. But the idea of him sleeping on it seemed pretty remote.

And then Emily put nice sheets on the bed and all his stuffed toys and little blankets, and just like that, when he and I went in there after his bath, he acted like he'd been sleeping on it his entire life. Crawled up onto it, stretched out onto it, asked me to read him stories on it, and when I'd read all the books he picked out -- the same 8 short books I've been reading to him before and after virtually every nap and bedtime for the past week -- he said "Good night, Daddy." And lay down. I got up, said Good night, and left the room. And a few minutes later I listened at the door and he was singing Tyrone the Mailman quietly to himself, and when Emily and I looked in on him an hour later, he was sound asleep. Slept through the night. We're on night No. 2 and sleeptime No. 3, and so far, so good.

He didn't even need me to sing to him, as I always do when putting him into the crib, and while part of me was glad -- lately the songs have tended toward silly stuff like, yes, Tyrone the Mailman -- part of me also really missed it.

The next morning after his first night in the bed, of course, we were profusive with praise. And you could tell, he was pretty proud about it. So much so that when we talked to relatives that day, we put Jack on the phone. "Jack, where did you sleep last night?" "I slept in a BIG BOY BED!" he said. Darn straight.

A Good Day

Emily was putting Jack to bed; it's Friday night and I've just spent another day in charge of Jack. We went to the park (very cold, we didn't stay long), the library (very crowded, we stayed until it seemed likely things might end up in a fight over a book or puzzle), the grocery store, and home. Jack napped, we had macaroni and cheese, played a little, watched some TV, I kept him entertained.

I went up to bring Jack a glass of water and hug and kiss him good night. I sat down on the rug and held out my arms to him. He walked over, stood in front of me, and said, deliberately,

"I had a good day with you today."

And then he hugged me good night.

So, yeah, that's a good day.

Haircut

Jack's hair had gotten pretty long of late, but we had been meaning to get his 2-year-old picture taken, and didn't want to get it cut right before. Since he turned two three months ago, it had been a while since we'd taken him. I don't know if it had been three months, but if you're one of the ones who receives the pictures we had taken, you'll agree we probably should have gotten it cut a little sooner. Considering what a disaster going to get those pictures taken was -- he was tired and cranky and fussy and I don't think the woman much knew what she was doing -- the ideal would have been to simply leave a few minutes into the pictures and look around for a mall photo booth.

Anyway, yesterday I took him to get his haircut, and since he wasn't always happy during them, I talked it up a lot beforehand. And Jack remembered that this particular barber charmed him with lollipops during, or after, the cut. Me: "So tomorrow we'll get your haircut." Jack: "And he'll give me lollipops?" Me: "Yes, I believe he'll give you a lollipop." Jack: "He'll give me TWO lollipops?" Because that was the case at previous cuts. And I said, Yes, I'm sure you'll get two lollipops. And Jack said OK, and nodded a little.

I need to add here that Jack kind of rolls his "Ls" -- maybe I've mentioned this before. So when he says "lollipops," it comes out, "yoyyipops." Which of course is the cutest thing ever. "He gives me a yoyyipop?" Just classic. (I admit that when we're reading books together, I ask him to identify animals or various things that I know he knows what they are, just so I can hear him say them. "What's that?" I ask. "Yion," says Jack. And that? "Yeopard." And that? "A yemon." That's right, Jack. Really, I don't get tired of it.

To this point, no two haircuts have been the same for Jack. His first, in Denver when he was maybe a little over a year old (I'm sure we've got this written down somewhere), he sat very still in a little booster seat in the barber's chair -- petrified, I think -- while Mommy and Daddy shot video and took pictures and the barber clipped away. Since then he's sat on my lap each time, with hair falling all us while he either clutched tightly to me (once), was half asleep (once), cried and/or fidgeted (once or twice), and generally wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

His barber here in New York, Ruvo, this old guy who (judging from the pictures on the wall) has had a barber shop in the same place for probably 40-plus years, had clearly learned that the way to a young customer's heart is through lollipops, so at his last cut he said, if you sit still for Ruvo, I'm going to give you a lollipop. He held out the bowl of dum-dum lollipops to show him, and of course Jack wanted one right then, so Ruvo cut his hair while Jack ate a lollipop which gradually attracted pieces of Jack's cut hair, something even Jack didn't enjoy too much. So once he'd ruined that one with hair -- although he still wouldn't give it up -- Ruvo gave him a second one. So Jack sat on my lap with a lollipop clutched in each of his little hands, both becoming more and more ruined with stuck hair, and ate them while Ruvo cut his hair and it fell all over my shirt, my lap, Jack's shirt, etc. Great fun.

Yesterday's haircut was better. Ruvo promised him the lolllipops, and Jack seemed to understand that they would come ultimately, so he could wait. So he sat on my lap, with the cloth pulled tight around his shoulders, letting his hair be cut while he patiently waited for his lollipops. And every time Ruvo paused -- to change to the clippers, or get scissors, or whatever -- Jack said, "Lollipops now?" And Ruvo said, just another minute, and then I'll let you pick whatever color you want. Jack even had fun, and said so later, when the clippers tickled his neck. "That tickles," he laughed, and then said, "Again!"

We won't go so long without cutting his hair again, because not only was it fun, but even though we love Jack with long hair, Jack with short hair, and a haircut he doesn't protest all the way the through and let's the barber actually do his job, is worth it. Ruvo put gel in his hair and combed a smart little part, and all the rest of the day I couldn't stop looking at him, couldn't believe how heartbreakingly beautiful my son is.

Snapshots

At some point, I don't know when, I took Jack's hand and told him to be brave. Maybe we were entering his room in the dark, or walking across ice or something. Anyway, he has adopted that as a saying of his own, if we're going out in the yard or downstairs or sometimes even in the living room to play with his toys. He takes my hand and says "Try to be brave." OK, Jack, I will.

The other night Jack woke up wailing in the middle of the night. We have to gauge these things -- ignore it and let him go back to sleep, go in and give him a soothing pat, etc. In this instance I went in to check on him, and he asked for a story or a song or somesuch -- it's 3 a.m., or so. So I say, no, it's the middle of the night, everything is fine, go back to sleep. I left the room and his wails grew even louder. And now they were specific:

"I HAVE A BOOGERRRRRRR!!!!!"

I went in, wiped his nose, and he dropped back down on his stomach and went to sleep.

Not sure how much I've written about the potty thing, perhaps nothing. We've started with the potty training and having him sit on the potty each night. And he's gotten into it, and has gone potty several times, always to much praise, at which he beams with pride. It's great, really. Of course, frequently he'll spend 10 minutes sitting on it like it's all a big game, doing nothing, but saying "I need toilet paper," and "It's coming out!" (It's typically not.) "The poop is coming OUUUUTT!" (No, it's not. Still nothing in that area.) But I admit his little voice piping up, "It's coming ouuuutt!" is very entertaining.

He likes to sit Mr. Potato Head on his sink step stool when he's on the potty, so he can watch him, and then he likes to put him on the sink when he brushes his teeth. He likes Mr. Potato Head.

His favorite song these days is one his grandma sings, "California, Here I Come." Jack sings it too: "Open ... up that ... gol ... den GATE ....Cal if ornia here I come."

He has a dinosaur book which I go through with him naming the dinosaurs. One page had sea creatures. "Is that a whale?" He asked about one. "No," I said, "that's an icthysaur." It's now his FAVORITE animal. For a couple of days he'd say to me, "Do you want to see the ikkysaur? Let's go see him. Do you want to see the ikkysaur?" Sometimes he even says, "ikkythasaur," which is pretty close, all things considered.

He's really into his thick, colorful fleece blanket these days. He's had it since he was a baby, and never really cared that much about it -- until now. Now he frequently likes to have it downstairs with him, and when I go in at night, sometimes he's hugging it tightly to him. I think he has a song about it too. I'm not sure of the exact words, but it's something to the effect of, "My bankey....my bankey...."

He rode a horse outside a store today, one of those things where you put in 50 cents and it shakes a bit. He loved it; I of course didn't have any more quarters. Anyway, later we saw Aunt Cathy, who mentioned they went to the library -- where we'd gone after the horse. Things had evidently run together in Jack's mind. He asked her pointedly, "Did you ride the horsie? Did you go on the horsie?"

Kind of funny, at the end of the day I mentioned the horse to Emily, and she said to Jack, "You rode horsies today?"

Jack said, "No. Just one."

Random Thoughts

Jack has woken up at 4 a.m. the last couple of mornings, and what does he do? Cry? Call for Mommy and Daddy? Go back to sleep? No, lately, he's been SINGING. This morning it was pretty much steady for most of the next two hours: "Twinkle...twinkle....lit-TLE...STAR!!!! How...I...won-DERRR...WHAT...you....ARE!!!" and "Old MacDonald," and "A B C D E F G.... H I J...." and "ROW ROW ROW your BOAT!" Needless to say, I'm tired and this blog will be a short one.

When I picked him up at daycare today he was in this toy boat that rocked, wearing a large train engineer's cap. It was down over his eyes, so he couldn't see me. But he heard my voice and arched his neck so he could sort of see me underneath the brim. Then he smiles, gets up, and runs over to me, me worrying that he's going to trip and fall since he clearly can't see anything.

We head over to his play area, morning or evening, and he leads the way, and then stops and turns. Holds out a hand and tilts his head slightly. "Do you want to play with my cars?" Or: "Do you want to play with my trains?" I may have mentioned this before, but it's still a riot.

He's finally gotten into his Mr. Potato Head. For a while he only wanted him with a nose and feet. For some reason he didn't want him to have eyes, a mouth, or other features. Now he dresses him to the nines, with arms, a hat, eyes, a mouth, glasses, and even a flower on his wrist. And he wants him to hold a bat from another toy. This weekend, in fact, we played ball with Mr. Potato Head, with Jack standing at one end of the rug and Mr. Potato Head and me at the other. Jack would throw the ball, and I would then use Mr. Potato Head's arm to throw it back. This delights Jack. "He DID it!" The game continues for a while.

Speaking of throwing a ball, the kid's got an arm. We play with a little sticky ball about the size of a golfball and a mini nerf-type football. He can throw them. What's funny, though, is he has no grasp of how to catch them. He'll hold his hands out, like we tell him, but he has no real concept of what he's supposed to do. Raise them to catch the ball? Hold them out more? He's like a statue as I gently lob the ball in a perfect arc to where his hands are, and it bounces harmlessly off them to the floor. Again, this delights Jack no end, and he'll grab it and throw it back. We'll work on the catching thing, though.

Now that it's getting warmer, we're playing out in the backyard. Thus far (aside from a mini-meltdown today when he didn't want to come back after running into the neighbor's yard, partly a result of him waking up at 4 a.m. and being extra cranky I suspect) he's pretty easy to please in this form of entertainment. He just wants to run around. He doesn't care about having a ball, or a toy, or companionship really. It's enough to run up the slight hill at the back of the yard, stop, beam at me, and then run down to the bottom. And then go back up again. And hey, that's fine. Until he does a face plant in the wet grass, which seems inevitable, it's plenty of fun for me, too.

Sweetness Addendum

When I wrote the below blog, I actually FORGOT the main reason I wanted to write about "Sweetness" in the first place. If you lie down, or yawn, or drop down to an elbow on the floor while playing with Jack, he says, "Are you tired, Daddy?" Followed by, "Do you need a pillow?" (And he sometimes rolls his "lls," so it comes out "piyyow," which is even cuter.) And before you even respond, he runs over to the couch to get a pillow, which he bring out and puts down on the floor "for your head. You can lay down on this piyyow, Daddy." And then, "Do you need a blanket, Daddy?" And then he runs off and gets you a blanket, too. So you're laying there on the pillow, under the blanket, and he lays down next to you for a few seconds, before saying, "I'm awake," and getting up to do whatever. While you lie on your piyyow and watch him play.

Sweetness

You hear a lot about little kids before you have your own, and you form your own opinions based on the ones you see, in malls, restaurants, on airplanes, etc. Generally you think most frequently of adjectives like noisy, whiny, fussy, demanding. And other less than flattering terms which usually relate to how much of a pain they can be. What you don't hear as much, or at least I didn't, was how sweet they can be. Jack, at least, is showing us that on a regular basis.

- Before running off to play with something, he invites us to join him. "Do you want to play with my cars, Daddy?" "Do you want to play with me, Mommy?" "Do you want to play with my trains?"

- So we're playing with his farm or somesuch, and he says "Which horse will you play with?" Well, Jack, I'll play with the white one. "No, I want to play with the white one. You'll play with the brown one, okay, Daddy?" All righty then. "Which car will you play with?"

- His earnestness is similarly entertaining to us. If there's a story, or toy, or concept he hasn't encountered before, he'll say "I never never heard of that before." Or, "I never never saw that before." I'm not sure this is as funny in print; maybe his slightly wide eyes and sincere voice help make it.

- The other day I was holding Jack as Aunt Taffy, Uncle Ekan, and the girls were leaving, and Jack wanted to hug Ekan goodbye. It became a big 3-man hug, which I dubbed the Man Hug. Well, Jack committed that one to memory, with the result being that on occasion he'll just throw out his arms toward me and say, "Man Huggggg!" It was particularly amusing when we were eating a pasta meal, which invariably results in him having pasta sauce all over his hands, face, and shirt. He threw his arms out to me, droplets of tomato sauce spraying everywhere. Through a red-cheeked smile, he said, "Man HuGGGGGGGGGGGG!!" Um, I said, trying not to laugh too hard. How about after dinner, huh?

That's YOU, Daddy

I think I understand how games like Concentration, or Old Maid, or any number of games where you have to match things up and make pairs, became popular with kids. Because Jack loves to see matches, and pairs, and things that are like each other. I probably first noticed it when he had one of the Sandra Boynton books out, and on its back cover it had the covers of other Boynton books, and he wanted to match them up with each other. "We have that one....and that one...and not that one..."

So when he notices a picture of me, or the picture in his room of Emily, Jack, and me just a few minutes after he was born, he sometimes recognizes the pairs. "That's YOU, Daddy," he says. And, "That's YOU, Mommy." "And that's you, Jack," I say.

It gets funnier when it's not a photo. Like when Emily draws a sketch of the three of us on his Magna Doodle pad, where we're basically like Peanuts characters or something, and Jack points at one: "That's YOU, Daddy." I drew one recently that was a silly caricature with a square jaw, big grinning teeth, full head of wavy hair. Jack looks at me and points at it: "That's YOU, Daddy." Well, okay, sort of, I say.

Jack doesn't stop with pictures and people. My sister brought him gifts -- a superhero backpack, with the Hulk, Spider-man, and Mr. Fantastic on it, and a set of superhero refrigerator magnets. He brought the backpack over to the fridge where the magnets were, and held the image of the Hulk up to his magnet. "That's YOU, Hulk." And, "That's YOU, Spider-man."

As for Mr. Fantastic, well, he didn't know who that was initially. He was just "that guy." I told him who it was, and he repeated it and was as proud as if he'd made a new friend. "Want to see Mr. Fantastic, Mommy?" Okay, Jack, Emily said. "Want to see Mr. Fantastic, Daddy?" Okay, Jack, sure.

The best thing is that I found this old card game from the 70s, which I bought on ebay a few years ago -- nostalgia, really, since I had the game as a kid. It's a Marvel superheroes game, and it's basically Old Maid, but with Dr. Doom as the Old Maid. And you make pairs of the superheroes, including the Hulk...Spider-man...and even Mr. Fantastic.

Think I'll bring that game out tomorrow.

Snippets of time

- I was washing dishes this evening when Jack shambled out into the kitchen, an armful of big legos clutched to his chest. "Can you make Cowboy Bob, Daddy?" (I make the cowboy on the side of the lego box, who I called Cowboy Bob.) "Can you make Cowboy Bob?"

- In the living room, in the midst of all his blocks: "Can you make a train, Daddy?"

- At the park the other day, a sunny and relatively mild day where I took Jack to get some fresh air and exercise -- and there wasn't another soul there. I called Emily to share that fact, and afterward Jack was repeating what I said. "There is nobody HERE. Nobody HERE."

- Sledding in Vermont, in 2-foot drifts of soft, powdery snow that Jack couldn't stand up or move in, and Jack not having much enthusiasm for it -- tough to blame him, he was kind of helpless. But he LOVED seeing Daddy go down the hill in the sled, and Daddy fall over backwards in a pratfall (intentional....really), and Daddy set him down on the porch, out of the snow at last.

- Emily tells me that she and Jack have a game at night, when she puts him in the crib. He leans forward in slow motion, puts his face against the bars, and kisses her. And as he moves forward, he gets this little excited, mischievous look on his face.

- When I put Jack down for a nap, or for bed, and he's in a good mood, he says (as I leave) "Good night, Daddy!" Halfway down the hall: "Good night, Daddy!"

Good night.

The Toughest Job

Chances are if you're reading this blog you're a parent of small children, or have been one, or at least know a parent or small child very well. So it will come as no surprise to hear that the challenge of this job really shouldn't be underestimated.

A good time for this fact to hit home is when you have an extended period of time in charge of that child -- for example, when his daycare is closed for a week -- and when your child is a little out of sorts -- say, he has a cold, and has missed or had a couple of recent naps truncated, so he's behind on sleep. And let's say he's a little cranky, and you're a little behind on sleep yourself, and before you know it it's a near perfect storm of the challenges of being the parent of a toddler. And that's my week.

We went up to Vermont last week to visit Jack's grandparents, and because it's a strange place for Jack, he tends to not get as much sleep as would be ideal. Then his daycare was closed this week, but Mommy had to go to work, so Daddy was kind of on his own during the days -- and Jack had a cold.

Now I'm not going to make this out to be worse than it was. (Even though I already used the term perfect storm, but really, that's probably just because I always wanted to use it. Things could be worse.) Jack's grandpa came over this morning to help out, and Jack has had good naps the past couple of days, enabling Daddy to get some work done and loll on the couch a little bit. But when he's been awake, he's been kind of cranky, to the extent of where he says "Draw a circle Daddy," and when I draw it, he whines, "NOOOOOO...not that way....Over there...NOOOOOO.....not over there....." You get the idea. It was even worse when I opened up a set of blocks, and I had to try to read his mind as to what kind of tower he wanted help building: "NOOOOO....not THAT kind of tower....Make one of Mommy's towers....NOOOOONOT THAT TOWERRRRRR...."

Anyway, it's been a week. And the great thing about it is you realize, every once in a while, that being a parent is even tougher than most people realize, tougher than you realize, tougher than it looks from the outside. One library meltdown (we had one of those on Tuesday; Jack, not me) is all it takes to drive home the point that kids are tough, and being a parent is tough, and even though it's all worth it -- and it is, moreso than I ever thought possible -- it's an accomplishment to be good at it most days, let alone all the time. It really is a tough job.

Of course, it is all worth it, especially when Jack gets past the cranky phase into the half-asleep and lovable phase, and starts grinning and giggling at you with half asleep eyes and laughing merrily at silly games like peek-a-boo. That's when you realize that some people have tough jobs that may not be as tough, but they don't have anywhere near the rewards, either.

Sledding

It snowed yesterday, or rather, it snowed, and then it rained, which froze, and there was some ice and sleet and wind and so forth. Quite a mess. Today the sun was out so we dug our way out into the yard, Jack in his snowpants (borrowed from one of Aunt Taffy's kids, fortunately in blue) and jacket and boots and hat, me in my winter jacket and hat. Since what snow there was was under a thick crust, we really couldn't build a snowman or anything, but what we could do was get Jack on his sleigh and I could pull him around the yard. We went up a little slope and then he slid down; he enjoyed it quite a bit. "a-GEHN!" he said. We did that a few times, narrowly avoiding disaster when I was pushing him up and a runner caught in the snow and I fell head over heels over him and the sled. No harm done; I knocked one of his gloves off. Oh, and I bashed my face against the snow, but I realize nobody cares. "Are you okay?" I asked Jack, tears streaming through the ice stuck to my eyes and nose. He kind of shrugged, as if to say, did something happen?

Later on we were inside watching the "Mounties" episode of Backyardigans, which all takes place in the snow. Jack pointed at them and said "Like me!" And I said, yes. And he said, "They need a jacket." (The ski patrol outfits were kind of lightweight.) And he said, "It's very very cold outside." By the end of our time outside, his little face was kind of cold. And then there were players skating, and Jack said again, "Like me!" And I said, do you want to go outside again? And he said, "No......" and: "It's very cold outside." And so it was.

Dining Out

We went out to brunch with Jack this morning, celebrating his grandpa's birthday at a nice old inn in Norwalk. Eating out with Jack is always interesting, in part because we never really know how into eating he'll be, how well he'll behave, or if we'll get to finish a meal we start.

The good thing about brunch is that there is usually a broad selection of fruit, which thus far has been the one food that can occupy Jack's attention for quite a while. Well, that and donuts. Another grandpa story is that he usually attends Jack's swimming lessons Saturday morning and brings donuts for afterward -- or rather, he brought them once, and that became the routine. So now Jack sees grandpa on Saturday morning and although he's always happy to see him, within the first few seconds comes the question: "You bring donuts?" Grandpa's birthday was Friday, and we wanted Jack to wish him a happy birthday when he saw him Saturday morning. "Jack, what are you going to say when you see grandpa?" "You bring donuts?" Um.....

So anyway, dining out is usually me shoveling in food while Emily entertains Jack, her eating while I entertain Jack, or both of us wolfing it down while Jack eats fruit. And then of course he gets interested in eating off our plates, drinking our milk or juice, or (if we're lucky) some other baby or one of the Rosenfeld girls, and then we both get to eat at a semi-leisurely pace. To our credit, at least, we're starting to learn some lessons about the whole thing.

1. Bring other snacks. We love Mexican restaurants, because they usually bring chips and salsa quickly and he's into those things. Most other places don't bring the bread quickly enough, so we're glad to have a little thing of cereal to occupy him. Yes, most parents probably figure this out right away, and it took us quite a while, but whatever.

2. Bring activity books. Some restaurants have things to color and so forth, and they're great. Some don't, so we've recently figured out (yes, we're slow, we get it) to bring along a coloring book or something. We did today, and it bought us 5-10 extra minutes at the end of the meal before he was pretty insistent about going. Plus there was a big sleigh out on the porch that he wanted to see.

So dining out ended up being okay. And although this has nothing to do with anything, pretty much doing anything with Jack is entertaining these days, because he cracks us up. He sings kind of a lot, either the Backyardigans theme, or Twinkle Twinkle, or This Old Man, or a particularly amusing one, which requires interaction, where he says "And on this farm he had a....?" And then there's a long pause, him hanging on our answer with a big smile on his face, and we'll say, "Cow," and he'll say "Cow!" And then we'll start in with the "Moo Moo here," but he's already moved on: "And had a....?" Very entertaining.

Thursday we went to the Aquarium in Norwalk. That was also fun, as Jack was into the crabs (which he got to touch, even though he wasn't sure about it, and then another toddler was willing to, at which Jack changed his mind: "Want to touch it!"), and fish, and sharks, and octopus. Even though we couldn't see the octopus -- it might have been an empty tank for all I knew -- but I told Jack the octopus was sleeping, a fact (or guess) that he repeated for the rest of the day, as if for assurance. "The octopus was sleeping?" Hours later, talking with Mommy about the aquarium, he turns to me: "The octopus was sleeping?" And who knows, maybe it was.

Another Solo Day

Had another solo day with Jack today -- as has been the case for a while, he's been in daycare Monday through Wednesday and alone with me Thursday and Friday. Sometimes I loan him out to relatives (Aunt Taffy, Grandpa) if I've got a commitment or they're available for part of the day), but lately everyone's been sick so it's pretty much been just us. Except for last Thursday and Friday, when he and I were both sick and miserable, so we borrowed Grandma for a few hours to keep me from going insane. (Naturally, she's now sick. Probably a coincidence.)

Anyway, despite the tough moments, which are mostly him wanting one thing one minute ("cereal!") and then changing his mind moments later ("I don't want CEREEEEAALLL!"), the days are usually fairly positive, and I'm starting to cling to the positive moments more as I feel, yes, that he's getting older. Plus we're going to be moving soon, ideally, and everything is going to get more complicated. And he's just getting bigger, and more talkative, and more engaging, and more demanding. "Daddy, do puzzle." And then: "Go work at your computer." And then: "I want a snack." This in the span of, oh, 5 minutes or so.

Jack's 2 and what's scary is he's never going to be 1 again, and those great days are gone. They're replaced by new great days, of course, but I'm already starting to get nostalgic about those. I know, it's nuts.

Anyway, today was nice, because I didn't try to work. I just tried to enjoy him, and deal with the negatives and embrace the positives. Watching Backyardigans with him ("They fell down aGEHN!"), reading Kat Kong ("Forget science -- think of the money we'll make!"), drawing pictures (His easel is currently an ode to Tyrone, the moose from Backyardigans, who I draw for him over, and over, and over). Tomorrow we'll draw more, read more stories, do puzzles, play with trains, and I'll probably try to get him to eat something besides his favorite foods right now: yogurt, and fruit. Saturday we'll go swimming and the grandparents will be around; Sunday is the Super Bowl. Monday he'll go back to daycare, and I guess I'll work as much as I can -- until it's Thursday, and another solo day comes around again.

It's too soon to miss the days I'm actually living in, so I guess I'll try to stop and just enjoy them while they're here.

Kind to Others

Jack's got a lot of great qualities, but an amusing one lately is his politeness to inanimate objects. For example:

In the mornings, as we're leaving his room, he says goodbye to his Cow-shaped humidifier. "Goodbye, cow!" He waves. "Goodbye, cow!"

His trainyard is enhanced by the presence of a Hulk action figure that years ago I gave to 2-year-old Laura, my niece, and which found its way back into my possession when she was, understandably, terrified of the thing. Jack's okay with it, but he also treats it with respect. As he moves a train past him on the tracks, he says "Excuse me, Hulk." And: "Excuse me. ... Excuse me, Hulk."

He's also very respectful of injuries. If you say you have a boo-boo, he says "Want to kiss it." Then he comes over and kisses said boo-boo -- a scratch on my arm, or whatever. Of course, if he hits his head or has a boo-boo, it's the same story: "Kiss it," he says, holding out the damaged appendage or leaning forward so you can kiss his head. "Thanks!" he replies afterward. Nothing defuses concern over an injury, like when he hit his nose the other day, then him saying through tears, "Kiss it," followed by "Thanks!" Can't hurt that much.

Emily told me she picked Jack up at daycare once, and they'd told her that a child had been out sick. When he returned, Jack went over and hugged him to welcome him back. (Of course, Jack's sick as a I write this, so.....)

Jack Playing

A real-time account of Jack playing on Thursday morning...

8 a.m. Jack walks around the living room holding his baby dinosaur toy, his current favorite.

8:02. Jack picks up his toy harmonica. He had been inhaling, rather than blowing, but he finally figures out, sort of, how to blow and make it make noise. A single note comes out. "I did it!" he says.

8:05. Jack opens up Mr. Potato Head's silly suitcase. He likes Mr. Potato Head best when everything is removed -- arms, eyes, hat, whatever -- and then he has two noses. That's his favorite Mr. Potato Head, and he sets about having that become a reality. "Where'd the flower go?" When it's Mrs. Potato Head, she has a flower on her wrist. I find the flower for him. He opens up the butt compartment and begins putting pieces inside. And taking them out. "Take the eyes out...." and then: "He's naked!" Right now it's a bare potato. But Jack wants to put the moustache on, which of course can't be done without a nose to hold it in place. He holds up the second moustache. "That's a beard," he says. And now he doesn't like the noses, either. "I want the beard and the moustache on!" Well, I say, they won't stay on without the noses. "I don't want the noses!" This goes on for a few minutes. And then: "I want the baby dinosaur!"

8:15. Jack gets up and asks to watch "Backyardigans on the 'puter." And thus the blog ends.

Birthday Jack

Jack likes birthdays, even when they're not his. He sees a candle -- like at Aunt Taffee's, where there might be a pre-dinner Jewish tradition -- and he starts singing "Happy ... Birthday ... to ... you."

So when it was his own birthday last week, he was plenty into it -- the streamers, the balloons, the presents, the cupcakes. It was funny seeing him open gifts: the stereotypical tossing of clothes over his shoulder, plus the "OH!" when he got a toy he liked. "OH! Pablo!" when he tore off the wrapping paper of his Pablo of the Backyardigans stuffed toy. His favorite gift during the party was Cowboy Tyrone, which sang songs ("Riding the Range," etc.). He'd then pick up Pablo, which didn't sing, and say, "Not working."

His favorite gift in subsequent days was probably what also happened to be our favorite gift, a Mr. Potato Head from Aunt Casey. It's funny; he has no use for the eyes, or ears, or anything, he just likes to put noses all over it. So Mr. Potato Head typically has two noses and no other features. And then Jack puts him into his silly suitcase and carries him around, and says he's going out "to the post office and the library," and says "Bye, Daddy. Bye, Mommy. I'm going to the post office and the library." He also calls him "Mr. Tater Head," which makes me wonder if the word "tater" for Potato came from somebody who had a two-year-old.

Random Fun

I have a stuffed Daffy Duck in the back of our car, that my sister gave to me about 15 years ago on the eve of a cross-country trip. Today Jack looked at it and said "Goofy Duck." I said, what? Jack: "Goofy Duck!" Big smile from Jack. I said, no, that's Daffy Duck. "That's Goofy Duck," he said, laughing. All righty.

Yesterday Jack wanted to have a glass of juice, but when I went to put the lid on his cup, he said, "No, big boy!" Huh? "I big boy." OK, you're a big boy. I gave him his juice without a lid. Jack: "Lid."

I have this great superhero wall calendar that my sister, again, gave to Jack and me. It's not enough for Jack to see on the wall: "Touch it!" he cries. So I get it down and we flip through it. We came to the Spider-man page and I sing the Spider-man song. "Spider-man, Spider-man, does whatever a spider can..." so on and so forth. We turn to the other pages, and Jack wants a song for them, too. Now, I don't know of any songs for Captain America, the Hulk, etc., but I'm making things up: "Here comes Captain America, here comes Captain America!" And "Hulk, smash! Hulk, smash! HULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLkkkk - Smash!" He seemed to enjoy it.

Singing Jack

Jack sings himself to sleep sometimes, either when we put him to bed, or when he wakes up early. Some recent favorites follow. It's important to imagine his little voice piping up, occasionally scratchy, occasionally loud and boisterous or high-pitched.

"B...I...B...L...E... Yes that's the book for me...." (A song his Grandma sings to him.)

"Drumming.... Drumming... Drumming...." (A Backyardigans song.)

"Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells....Jingle.... All Da Way....Jingle Bells...."

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein-DEER!!!! Has a .... shiny ....Nose!"

"Santa Claus...... Is. Coming.....Town!"

I imagine we'll still be singing Christmas Carols come June, although I can hope.

Jack's Christmas

I went in to get Jack, while Emmy went downstairs to turn on the tree lights, the Santa and the Sleigh outdoor display (which I of course hooked up inside, since we live over our garage and I don't don't have a ladder), and all the other various lights I connected to set the scene. And make coffee, seeing as it was 6:15 a.m. and all. As I brought him downstairs, I explained to him that Santa had come last night and brought presents. "Yeahh..!" he said. "Santa!"

I set him down at the bottom of the stairs and he headed for the living room. Santa had thoughtfully taken the train tracks out of their box, set them up, and added all the various features -- tree, Sir Topham Hatt, trains, stop sign. Jack went right to it, oblivious to all the new presents underneath the tree and his other unwrapped gift, a musical band box with different instruments. "Trains!" He spent the next 10 minutes or so playing with those, while Emmy and I slugged down coffee. Then we each opened a present, and introduced Jack to his band box. He showed some interest in the various things, of course particularly in the ones that make the most noise, and then returned to his trains.

Then chaos set in. Ian, Cathy, and the rest of the Rosenfelds -- Reanna, Lyndsay, Stacey -- came over, and the girls were immediately at the tree. I think I blinked and in that time all the presents had been distributed by the twins, there was a flurry of paper in the air, and suddenly everything was open and it was impossible to walk anywhere. Jack played with their toys, they played with Jack's toys, I spent some time trying to open this realistic looking monkey that made noises and said ooh ooh ah ah and so forth, finally got it open, and gradually came to feel it wasn't quite as frightening as I thought initially. Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Linda were on hand as well, and there was much in the way of food, hors douvres (probably misspelled), drink, all that stuff. Ian set up the Mousetrap game we'd given Reanna, which was great fun for everyone, including Jack, who had little interest in the game but liked making the ball-bearing roll down the staircase.

At some point we let Jack go upstairs with his cousins, and they were going to color with markers. I'm not sure I need to explain where this plan went awry, but merely telling the twins to make sure Jack only colored on the paper was, of course, not good enough. No, instead they came down and notified us that Jack had started coloring all over his rug, rocking chair, etc. And so he had. I'm well aware that he'll do worse in the future so I won't complain too much.

A good dinner was had by all, nice work Emmy, and more playing with toys occurred. One of the twins -- no, I can never really tell, I try, but what can I say -- had some fun with Jack's Backyardigans Colorforms set, creating quite a nice scene with all of them in their pirate uniforms and so forth. I played with a wooden car Jack got that had some very cool craftsmanship. And read Jack some of his new books, including one with pigs and Dragon's Merry Christmas, which he showed his appreciation for by saying "Again."

His favorite toys -- on that certain day, but it changes a lot -- were a bucket of plastic food and a wooden crate of plastic fruit. And a plastic pizza. I don't know that I really understand why kids like imitation food, but the Rosenfeld girls do and so does Jack. He made me a waffle and pizza sandwich, which I pretended to eat, and then he cut slices of his little plastic pizza, and we ate those. "Here, Daddy," he'd say, with the same tone he'd use when handing me a apple skin after he'd eaten the apple out of it. "Here, Daddy."

I put him to bed that night by reading him his new books, and singing him his favorite songs (Rudolph, Frosty, Santa, Twinkle Twinkle, Edelweiss), and letting myself out of the room. Down to the living room and the Christmas Tree and Emmy and a glass of wine, and the knowledge that it would be Christmas again some time, and maybe next year it would seem to move more in slow motion, rather than in fast-forward, like far too many things with Jack tend to do.

"How was your day, good?"

Jack talks a lot, as I believe I've mentioned before. One of the recent fun things is him coming up to me in the afternoons or evenings, all serious, and saying "How was your day, good?" There's only a slight pause there; he's answering for me. Almost as if he believes "good" is part of the question, rather than the answer. I tell him, and then I ask him how his day was, and he says good. And sometimes I get details, and sometimes I don't. Frequently the details don't make sense. He'll say "Teddy and Jared," who go to daycare with him, but beyond that, I don't know what they actually did, just that they were there. Or that he is happening to mention their names.

He likes to have me draw things on his doodle board, this magnetic art board. Lately's it's "Frosty and Santa and the Christmas tree." I'll draw Santa, and he'll say "And now Frosty." And I'll draw Frosty, and he'll smile a little wider, and then he'll say "And the Christmas Tree."

His favorite books right now are a few he got up in Vermont at an early Christmas up there. "Are you my mother," by Dr. Seuss; "Carl's Christmas"; "If you're happy and you know it," and "Over in the Meadow." We read all four of them, every night. I make up different dialogue for the Carl book, since it's mostly pictures of a dog taking a baby out on the town, which doesn't seem safe, but anyway. The Dr. Seuss book is a riot, the other books are fun. Jack claps his hands and stamps his feet, he says "Oh no!" in the Dr. Seuss book when the baby bird gets picked up by the Snort, and is happy when he's back in the nest and sees his Mommy.

He walks around with two wooden ornaments on his wrists, one a train, the other a truck. I put them back on the tree, but he keeps managing to get them off, and they're back on his wrists.

Yesterday we were looking at Christmas decorations. He said, what's that, and I said, that's Santa in his sleigh, he said, oh, and then we looked at Frosty.

Jack: "Where's Frosty's sleigh?"

Daddy Sing a Song, and more

Putting Jack to bed is occasionally challenging, because we aren't always good about keeping to a routine, and since we both enjoy doing it we go back and forth, and on and on. Sometimes we put him down and he wails, but rather than a vague, frustrated wail, it's usually something specific, like

"Daddy sing a song!"

I'm not a particularly good singer; I'm sure most would agree. But Jack, because he's young and inexperienced, enjoys my warbling attempt at Edelweiss, and now Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. So sometimes it's "Daddy sing Edelweiss," and other times, "Daddy sing Rudolph!" (On the particularly bad nights, he'll want me to sing a song, and THEN he'll want Mommy to sing a song...we try to avoid those ones.)

Anyway, there's something very heartening about his little voice piping up "Daddy sing a song," or, as I'm bringing him upstairs to bed, "Sing a song?" And better yet, he chimes in, singing along to Edelweiss ("bloom.....an grow.....for-ev...er...." "you.... happy .... meet me....") Frequently as the song ends, he says, "Again?" And we go again.

What's amazing is that he already knows a surprising number of the words to Rudolph. Tonight I heard him singing it with his Mommy: "hadda very sy-nee nose... AND if ever saw it...."

Good stuff. As of yet, I'm not tired of singing those songs over and over to him. Not sure I ever will be.

PRE-CHRISTMAS

Jack's getting into Christmas. It's quite amusing, that he used to fear Santa, and maybe still does, but he also loves pictures of him, and Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman. He has a couple of little toys, a little wind-up Santa and Frosty that we've had for years, that he's fascinated with. We have a couple of window decorations that he takes out of the windows and carries around the house; they're of Santa and Frosty, and he likes to lay them down, pretend they're sleeping, whatever. He stacks them up into a tower ("Tower of Power," he calls it, a Backyardigans reference), plays with them, says they're "friends." He has a Santa hat he occasionally puts on and walks around wearing; it's big and slips over his eyes, and so he walks a little slower.

He points to snowman and Santa ornaments on the tree; points out pictures in his Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer book (his current favorite book); brings me his drawing board and wants me to draw pictures of "Rudolph, Santa, Frosty, and the Christmas tree." I think everyone in the family down here has read him the Rudolph book.

(At this point I should mention that last week we went to the Greenwich tree lighting, and there was a person in a Rudolph costume there. This is before I'd got him the book. Jack was transfixed; we went up near him and I put Jack down, and Rudolph's elf helper said, "Do you want to hug Rudolph?" Jack did a little half nod and threw out his arms and went up to Rudolph and gave him a big hug. It was classic.)

One final Jack thing, not necessarily Christmas related. Last night we were sitting in the living room near the tree, and Jack started bringing us his toys. "Hold. Hold, Daddy." And then he started bringing us our shoes. And our jackets. And then he came in clutching the two basketballs we use for his hoop outside. So we're sitting there in a pile of stuff, and he's like "Be right back," and he'd come in with yet another item. Just funny.

I'm sure there are other recent things I don't want to forget -- like when he saw a picture of himself from the zoo and he said "I'm at the zoo," even though there was nothing in the picture to indicate it was at the zoo. Like when his grandma was cracking him up by saying "gook," in reference to food on his cup. And things I can't even remember, sadly, which means I really need to write this blog more than once a week.

He's a great little guy.

Nice!

Jack and I went out Christmas shopping today. Christmas decorations shopping, really. Jack has kind of a love-fear relationship with Santa. He was afraid of Santa last year, when we tried to get his picture taken, an incident that was probably partially our fault. He just wasn't ready. Now we've talked up Santa, and our neighbor -- who had a huge inflatable pumpkin at Halloween, a huge inflatable turkey at Thanksgiving, and now a huge inflatable Frosty the Snowman, Christmas tree, and Santa Claus on his lawn -- has this big Santa that Jack is fascinated by.

So we went to Party City and bought a stuffed Santa for Jack, a Santa hat, and a series of window decorations -- Santa Claus, Frosty, reindeer pulling a sleigh. Jack approved and was very attentive as the clerk put them in the bag.

On the way home we went over to Aunt Cathy's, and I brought Jack inside, but he was very out of sorts, and kept saying things like "On floor" and "Santa," and it was all fairly confusing. But gradually we figured out he wanted to go back out to the car, where the bag of stuff was indeed, on the floor, and I got everything out and he clutched it all to his chest and under his chin and we went back inside. And showed things individually to Cathy, and Jack of course wanted to wear the hat, and hold the stuffed Santa. At some point I held up the window decoration Frosty, and Jack looked at it and smiled like it was the greatest thing in the world.

Jack, as he saw it: "Oh! NICE!!!!"

"Hold you."

Somewhere along the line Jack started expressing himself in complete sentences. And here some of them are.

"I need some more milk." (This is usually expressed with urgency, as if he's dying of thirst and only milk can save him.)

"I need some water." (This tends to be matter of fact, like, hey, I need some water, would you mind?)

"Hold you." Jack has figured out that being carried up and down stairs is easier and faster than actually walking up and down them himself. We may have to work on that in the future.

"Next to you." Jack either is or wants to sit next to you. Variations include "Next to Mommy" and "Next to Daddy."

"What's THAT?" (Explanation follow, e.g., that's a hat, or that's Daddy's coffee, followed by "OHHH!")

"Do puzzle." (Let's do the puzzle.)

"Can't reach it." "Too big." "Heavy." "Happy." "Too fit." Okay, these aren't sentences, but I wanted to write them down anyway.

He's been singing a lot. Verses of songs. "Twinkle, twinkle, little star....How... wonder what you are Up above world so high like ...diamond ...in the sky." And: "Shake .... shake... shake...shake your body." (From the Backyardigans CD.) "Wiggle it. Wobble it. Wiggle it." He still sings Edelweiss with me. "Bloom and grow.... forever... Edelweiss..." And: "I like this song." Me: "You like this song?" Jack: "Yeah!" Although it's partly a question. "Yeah!?"

Sometimes when he's talking he's just happy, other times he's earnest, solemn. Like what he's saying is very important. "No... Daddy sit there." "I need some milk." So on and so forth.

As always, I forget things. There's just too much good stuff in the average day, average week, with Jack, to remember it all. Him running around the park, like yesterday, happily going up and down slides. (Until he'd had enough, of course, at which point it becomes "All finished." And this, too, has urgency, as if to say, I don't want to be on this teeter totter another moment, thank you.

So I keep writing it down, in hopes I'll remember it always.

Thankful

My parents came down for Thanksgiving, and the best thing about it, aside from seeing them and stuff, was that Jack pretty much acted like he'd known them his entire life. He called them Nana and Baba, which is what their Irish grandchildren call them and we've encouraged it both for consistency and to distinguish them from his grandparents on Emily's side. He hugged them good night, they read stories together -- I came out into the living room and my Dad was reading "Thomas the Tank Engine - Thomas helps out" while Jack sat next to him in rapt attention. Dad's got a great reading voice, always did. Soothing. I pretty much just stood there watching for 5 minutes...I could have stayed longer.

Jack looked at pictures and pointed out Nana, Baba, and Aunt Robin, who will be here early in the New Year. In the morning he asked where Nana and Baba were. Two days after they'd gone, today, he said "Nana and Baba go home?" which we had explained to him the previous day.

At Thanksgiving Dinner, at Aunt Cathy's, there were about 18 people, and us, and Jack. And it was quite a change, seeing as in Colorado it was usually us and at most a guest or two - relatives, or a work friend. Certainly not that much family. And Jack was happy.

And even though we've got some stresses and worries and still haven't sold our house and are still trying to adapt fully to our new lives, Jack is happy. And we're thankful for that.

Up and Down Jack

I think sometimes we forget how much Jack has been through. Our move across the country was tough on us, but it was even tougher on him, and not because I made him drive (I thought about it) or handle setting up utilities and stuff. (The only thing he says into the phone is "Hi Ekan" and "Hi Grandpa.")

It was tough on Jack because we couldn't fully explain why suddenly he had a brand new room in a brand new house -- temporarily a basement at Aunt Cathy's, then our new rental house here. Why he was being taken out of day care in Colorado, and away from places he was used to going like Benny's and Hanson's. Okay, that might be stuff we miss more than he does, but the point is that there was a routine, it was everything he knew, and it was taken away, and we really couldn't explain it.

I mention this now because Jack had a very tough time at his new day care this past week. He cried when we dropped him off, he cried off and on in the morning, and we were told he cried at other times, and walked around saying "Daddy? Mommy?" Tough to think about, tough to write, and tough because we have to make day care work -- I can't really do my job otherwise -- so we'll be taking him again on Monday morning, and it will probably be hard all over again. So he didn't have a good time at day care, and (perhaps related) he wasn't his happy self most of the week, and he had one just awful night, Thursday, where we were all basically awake from midnight until 4 a.m., trying to soothe him, trying to let him cry it out, trying to sleep ... it was terrible.

The tough thing (among others) is you have to keep telling him how great it is, because it will be, once he gets accustomed to it. They do fun things, they run around, they go down slides in the indoor gym, he makes little friends, so on and so forth. And we need to tell him how great it is while knowing that right now he doesn't really want to be apart from any of us, and so he can't view it as a positive when his first thought is "Where Daddy go? Where Mommy go?" Yeah, it's brutal.

We forget how hard it is, because he is very resilient. As he has proved over the past two days, when he's been his happy self again. This morning we went swimming, and then he went to feed ducks with Grandpa, and apparently he played in leaves, and he came back and was happy, smiling, as happy as he's ever been. Doing all of his little cute things, sitting next to me on the couch and saying "Next to YOU!" And picking up the phone and saying "Hi Grandpa!" even though there's no one on the line, and when we DO have Grandpa on the phone, and put it next to his ear, he tends to say nothing at all, just listens and smiles. And he says "Thank you," in the cutest, sweetest little voice imaginable, and "Do puzzle, Daddy." And we go down in the driveway to play basketball, and he runs around with the happiest smile on his face, bubbling with laughter. It's the same after swimming, when we shower (we do this together, he enjoys it) -- he just laughs up a storm at the water pitter-pattering on his back.

I guess the point is that we forget sometimes that Jack's not always happy, and the hard part is that sometimes we need to do things that he's not going to be happy about. It's hard to do, and hard to live with. We just hope that some of them become things he is happy about, and we can make it work. Even if it's going to be really hard to get there.

Other Face

Quick one because I'm tired, but I don't want to forget it.

Jack generally wakes up in the mornings in good spirits -- not always, but generally. He'll be in his crib, taking time occasionally to liberate all of his stuffed animals, and he'll be kind of talking, babbling, and sometimes singing.

Grandma Pat sings to him, when she's putting him down for naps or just busying about the kitchen, and one of the songs she sings, when she's giving him food, say, grapes, is "I...love...grapes...They taste good....I love grapes....They taste good." And Jack occasionally sings it too.

The other morning I could hear him in his crib, singing, singing that song, but rather than a food item, he was including all the people he sees on a regular basis. And so: "I ... love... Aunt Taffy....They taste good. I love Daddy. They taste good. I love Mommy. They...." And there'd be a pause before the name, so it was "I..love... Aunt Taffy. They taste good." And he'd run through almost everyone he knows. "I love Lyndsay. They taste good...." Cracked me up.

The other thing is that Jack likes to hug and kiss us goodnight, which is quite nice, but then lately he's started doing this kiss on each cheek thing, like we're European or something. I crouch down and he kisses one cheek, then moves over and kisses my other cheek. And tonight he added "Other face!" to his routine, so he'd kiss my cheek, say "Other face!" and move my head so he could kiss my other cheek.

And then he'd run off into the next room so Mommy could put him to bed.

"Whuhs Dis, Daddy?"

Jack is quite chatty, and inquisitive, and it's hilarious. So here's the talking-themed blog.

SUPERHEROES

I have this T-shirt that has images of Marvel Comics' "Avengers" on the front - The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man, and the Wasp. The original team, of course, because I'm old school. Anyway. Jack was kind of intrigued by it when he was a baby - he'd pull at it and grab it, and I used to not understand it until gradually I figured out he was trying to grab the figures on the shirt.

I don't wear it a lot, but I wore it yesterday, and Jack, sitting on my lap, started pointing at all the figures. "Whuhs dis, Daddy?" He asked, pointing at the Hulk. "That's the Hulk," I said. "He's a cartoon character, like the Backyardigans." "Whuhs dis, Daddy?" He points at another character. "That's Iron Man." "Whuhs dis, Daddy?" "That's Giant Man." And so on until we've run through all five characters. But Jack's not done. "Whuhs dis, Daddy?" "Um...that's the Hulk again." "Whuhs dis Daddy?" "That's Iron Ma--" (Before I can finish answering) "Whuhs dis Daddy?" "That's Giant--" "Whuhs dis....."

This goes on until we've run through all the characters 3 or 4 times. Apparently satisfied, he moves on to something else, but about 10 minutes later, he's at my side pointing at my shirt. "Whuhs dis, Daddy?" "That's the Hulk, Jack." "Tha Hulk," he says. "Whuhs dis?" "That's Iron Man." Jack says, "Ion Man." Then we go through all the characters, some whose names he pronounces, some about whom he says "Whuhs dis?"

So basically, I will probably wear the shirt more often from now on.

PUMPKINS

I carved our pumpkin last night. Jack was fascinated. At first he wanted to put the nose piece back in where I'd cut it out of ("Back on! Back on!"). Then he figured it out (once I lit it up), and he began saying "big pumpkin....pumpkin lights...BIG pumpkin..." Later, he moved the similarly sized plastic pumpkin with the classic black triangle eyes and nose (used to carry Halloween candy around) over next to the carved pumpkin. "Friends," he said. "Friends." He nodded approvingly at his work.

SINGING

Jack sings a couple of TV show theme songs. (We only let him watch a couple, honest, and they're great. The Backyardigans, by far the best kids show on TV, and Wonder Pets. That one he started watching with his Grandma, but I admit it's kind of charming, and it's all about teamwork and stuff...whatever. The animals are cute too.) "Baccckkkk wif your friends ... the Back. Yard. Agains!" and "Wonder Pets, Wonder Pets, OnnOURway! Wonder Pets, Wonder Pets, save thuh day!" He sings Edelweiss with me when I put him to bed, and he also sings, sometimes, "Twinkle twinkle Litt-uhl Star!"

TRAINS

Jack plays with his trains, which are from the "Thomas the Tank Engine" series. As far as I know he's never seen the show. But they all have names, and he can recite them (he has one of the books which we read together). "Thom-as....Top-pam...Hat...Har-vey....Thom-as...."

LAUGHING

I like to lift Jack up and hold him (carefully!) upside down. He screams with laughter. As I ease him down, he says "Das fonneeee! Das fonneeee!" And laughs and laughs.

RELATIVES

Jack picks up the phone and says "Eekan!" (Uncle Ian.) "Aunt Taffy!" (Aunt Cathy.) There's a knock at his door and he says "Damma!" (Grandma.) Or "Dampa!" (Grandpa.) When he comes down from a nap and somebody who was here when he went to sleep is gone, it's "Where Mommy go?" or "Where Damma go?" Sometimes he wakes up and just chants: "Linsey tacey ranna (Lyndsay, Stacey, Reanna) ... Linsey tacey ranna ... "

DANCING

He likes to dance, a kind of shuffling, stomping, spinning around dance that I dearly hope he just came to naturally, as opposed to learning from watching one of us stumble around. I hope. Still, it's hilarious to watch him do it. And always smiling.

And there's more, but I can't think of it right now. Which is a shame.

You know why I have to write all this stuff down? Because I forget it. For everything I write down here within a day or two after it happens, there are probably a dozen or more things that I forget.

I just hope that I remember most of it, because it's too good not to. I don't ever want to forget it. I know I'll lose some, but if I can always remember him putting that plastic pumpkin next to the glowing carved pumpkin and saying "Friends," that'll be something.

Edelweiss

Is that even the right spelling? I don't even know. But that's the song I've been singing to Jack as I put him to bed these days. Badly, of course...I only know a few of the lyrics, and I tend to repeat them, and just kind of muddle through.

Anyway, today Jack started singing along with me. Head on my shoulder, hopefully near sleep, he joined in: "ayyydle-vyse...ayydle-vyse.....you....happy....geet....me...."

A nice moment.

Breakfast of Champions

With acknowledgment to ESPN's columnist Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy, I'm going to keep a running diary of Jack eating breakfast this morning....

7:23: Jack sees the counter and says "boobies." He is in fact referring to "blueberries." We bring him a plate of blueberries and sit him in chair. He begins to shovel them in by the fistful.

7:25: Plate cleaned, he says "more boobies! more boobies!" He holds his plate up. Mommy brings him the entire container of blueberries. "Giving them to him piecemeal just creates more work for me," she explains. Jack says "thank you."

7:27: Jack has transferred all the blueberries onto his plate and hands me the empty package. "Blueberries" -- he's got the "L" in there all of a sudden -- "all gone."

7:30: Jack asks for "more milk" with a full glass of milk in front of him. I point it out, and he drinks from it.

7:32: Blueberries mostly gone, I suggest we bring coffee cake. Mommy has divided it up into three pieces. Jack takes two for himself, gives me one, and then takes the third piece for himself, too. Then gives it back: "Here, Daddy." Thanks, Jack.

7:33: Jack points at my coffee. "MY toffee!" No, I say, that's Daddy's coffee. "MY toffee!" But he's smiling, this is kind of a game.

7:34: "Can I have a bite of coffee cake?" says Mommy. First Jack says "No," then gives her a bite. Then he starts stacking it up next to me. He's not really into coffee cake these days. We won't buy it again for a while.

7:35: Jack points at the floor. "OTHER BLUEBERRIES! OTHER BLUEBERRIES!" He's correct, there's a blueberry on the floor. I pick it up, wash it off, give it to him.

7:37: Jack begins singing twinkle twinkle little star, kind of. "Enh enh kl inna ty! ly a dime en inna ty!"

7:38: Jack makes monkey noises. Halloween is going to be great. Then he says, "Monkey sounds."

7:39: Jack starts stacking his coffee cake fragments, saying, "Tower!" The playing with the food portion of the meal has begun. Mommy brings cereal. "Thank you" he says. Thank you, Mommy.

7:41: Jack eats his cereal piece by piece. Then begins using the spoon to spoon milk onto his coffee cake. Somebody filled up on blueberries.

7:42: He begins naming the Backyardigans characters on his bandaid for his arm ow-ey. "Tyrone....Austin...." Great show, although Jack gets a little obsessive about his bandaids.

7:45: Done eating, Jack begins playing with the blueberry package. Knew I should have thrown that thing away.

7:46: "Mommy sit bucket. Mommy sit bucket." There's a bucket in the corner of the kitchen to be returned to Cathy and Jack wants Mommy to sit there. Mommy: I don't think I feel comfortable about sitting on a bucket. Jack then points to the open chair: "Mommy sit."

7:47: Jack is eating cereal by hand, interested in his food again. Mommy asks why he's not using a spoon. Jack begins to slowly use a spoon, watching Mommy all the time. Very good Jack, says Mommy. "Thank you," says Jack.

7:48: Jack notices the tree outside the window. "Bird?" And then "No bird." And then "bird ... HOME!" And then, with a point for emphasis, "bird ... DOWN!" followed by "bird, high tree." and "bird, round and round."

7:50: Jack is spilling a lot of milk as he eats cereal.

7:52: He starts putting cereal from his plate into his bowl. "Two...free....four! One...two...free....four!" Milk is splashing. Now he starts drinking the rest of his cereal milk from the bowl. Breakfast just about better be over. (Nod to the old Saturday Night Live talk show skit, where things start to get out of hand, and the Bill Murray host says "Well, we'd better run out of time....")

7:55: Jack says "All done. All done!" And so we are.

"Dass fonnee!"

So I'm in Connecticut now, at least until I drive to the end of the street or so, at which point I'm in New York. And we don't have our furniture yet, which is kind of a shame, but there are worse things.

The important thing is that the family is together again, which means that I can write about Jack again, because after all I am in fact changing diapers. And on a side note, let me just say it's great when I've buttoned him into his sleeper and am about ready to put him in his crib when he suddenly says, "Poop again," and I say, are you poopy?, and he says, "Yah!" And so he is.

The best thing about seeing Jack here is that he's really happy. I think he was pretty happy in Colorado, but clearly he loves his Grandma (he wakes up from naps now calling not for Daddy but for Grandma - excellent), his Grandpa (who takes him to feed the ducks on Sundays), loves his cousins ("Ranna? Lidsdy? Tacey?"), loves "Uncle Ekan" and "Aunt Taffy" -- for the uninformed that's Reanna, Lindsay, Stacey, Ian, and Cathy -- and loves his family. We drive down the road and he says "Aunt Taffy's house?", he calls for Grandma sometimes, and when he talks in a half-awake state he sometimes runs through all the names he can remember, which includes everyone here and sometimes "Baba" (Grandpa) and "Neve!" (Niamh) And I think, living here, he'll get to know all the rest of those relatives pretty well, too.

And since he is happy, he laughs a lot, and he's now at the point where he announces his feelings on these things. And everything, really. "New house!" and "Big pumpkin" have been popular observations in the week I've been here, as has "Dass Fonnee!" with a big grin, also known as "That's funny!" Or occasionally, if we dare to presume that something is funny that he himself isn't sure about, it becomes "Not fonnee," which he expresses by shaking his head and looking serious.

He runs about the house and plays with his school bus ("My buhs!"), he asks for his milk ("My milk!") and shows an interest in Daddy's coffee ("My coffee!"). No, I tell him, my coffee. He laughs and says "My coffee," and then, "Daddy coffee."

Today we went to get pumpkins at a nearby pumpkin patch, and he walked around amidst them saying "more pumpkins" and "big pumpkins" and all that. He had some pretty strong opinions about them: I'd point one out and he'd say "No," and shake his head, or "Yuh," and we'd either take it, or I'd rule it out - a bad spot, or mushy, or what have you. And in the car on the way back he'd say "My pumpkin," and I didn't dispute it, just smiled, because like everything it was, in fact, for him.

"MY DADDEEE!"

Gak! It's been almost a month since my last blog entry.

I've got an excuse though. I wasn't changing any diapers for a couple of weeks because Jack was in New York with his Mommy and I was in Denver. This real dad was real lonely, packing up our lives in Denver while Emily started her new job and Jack got to know his cousins and maternal grandparents.

I couldn't believe how much I missed him. I mean, I knew how much I'd miss him, but I didn't realize how bad it would feel. I didn't care about the house, about showering and shaving regularly -- OK, wait a minute, I don't care about that stuff as much as I probably need to anyway -- I didn't eat quite as regularly as I should have....I just missed my son. And my wife, don't get me wrong, but the difference was I knew she knew where I was and why I wasn't there. I didn't know that about Jack.

For a couple of days we tried to have me talk to Jack on the phone and it only went so-so. He'd listen at the phone, apparently, and smile, but it wasn't clear that he understood what was going on or that it was me. And then after they'd called me at lunch a couple of days, the phone rang around that time, and it was Emily's sister Cathy explaining that they brought Jack into have his lunch and he pointed to the phone and said in a loud voice "TALK TO DADDY!!!!" And so they called me, and he babbled a bit, and I asked what was going on, and it was great.

So I came here after about 10 days apart, and the plane was delayed so Jack wasn't awake when I got here, but I peeked in on him, and he looked so much bigger, and then the next morning Emily got him and brought him down and although he seemed a bit uncertain, he wasn't afraid of me or anything I was worried about. In a very short time, I think, it was like we hadn't been apart, and he was bringing me toys and telling me to "Sit, Daddy, sit," and we played with Legos and I read him books and put him to bed and all that. And after a couple of days if I left the room or was away I could hear him explaining his feelings and needs in no uncertain terms:

"Myyyy Dad-deeeeeee!"

Yesterday we went to the Park ("Daddy ....Park" he informed me), and rode on the slides, and ran around the jungle gym, and he pointed out butterflies. Today we went to get his haircut, and while we were waiting at the barber -- who had a picture on the wall of him cutting hair from probably 40 years earlier -- Jack climbed in and out of the leather chairs, and I pointed out that they were slippery, to which he responded with peals of laughter...he liked the term "slippery." Got his haircut, came back and had lunch, he had a nap, and in the afternoon we read a book and played with some toys and I realized how much I'd miss him when I went back to Denver for another couple of weeks to finish packing up the house and drive back.

Moments when I wonder why we're doing this and if it's worth it, there are moments like today, late afternoon, when he and his cousin Reanna were downstairs in the basement, playing with a toy kitchen, making plastic toy breakfast. I heard Reanna, who's six, yell and clap "breakfast! Yay!" and I heard Jack say "Yay" and they spent the next half hour or so just playing with the toys. And then they both came running up the stairs and jumped on the couch, and Jack's face was bright and beaming up at his cousin, and I said, yeah, it's worth it.

My Dinner with Jack

Emily was having a farewell happy hour with her co-workers tonight, and there was a showing at our house at 6:15. Thus, Jack and I had to eat out, and although we could have done McDonalds or something, we'd had good success at a Mexican place, Benny's, early in the week, with the three of us, so I decided to take Jack there. They bring chips quickly, which is always key.

I had hoped to sit next to Jack in a booth, but unfortunately it's a bit more crowded on Friday at 6 than Monday at 5:15. So we ended up at a small table in the corner, outside on the patio, facing each other - me in my chair, Jack on a little booster seat. Other patrons about 4 feet away at our elbows.

And Jack was great. The guy brought chips, and Jack shoveled them in, dipping them in salsa, which was hot, but he only minded when he got a really spicy bit, which he would react to with a brief yell of discomfort -- then go right back to shoveling them in. Every once in a while he'd pause to glance at the couple next to us...okay, he'd stare openly at them...and then go back to his food. He ate chips, ate a taco, let me eat my enchiladas and drink my margarita. The whole time I was worried he'd fall off the booster seat or something, but in fact he didn't move -- just sat still and ate. He even started to figure out the straw toward the end of the meal; that when you're drinking milk with a straw you don't need to raise the entire cup above your head.

The only problem with having a meal alone with Jack like that is that, well, he doesn't talk a lot. He just sits there and eats, making noises every once in a while and so forth, laughs at times, but you can't really have a conversation. I thought about having both sides of the conversation, but that would have been a little odd too. So we both just ate, and then at one point music came on, and we both bounced and smiled, and he danced a little in his chair. And then the meal was over and I scooped him up and we went home.

Life moves pretty fast

That's what Ferris Bueller said, and probably somebody else, and it's true. It's been an insane couple of weeks since the last time I wrote...

1. We gave up our dog, Charlie. We could not get him past his aggression toward other dogs and it was starting to worry us, and cause us daily stress. It just became too much. It's a tough thing to do and we went back and forth on it a lot, but it just wasn't working. I miss him, I think we all do -- although Jack, strangely enough, hasn't seemed to notice -- but I have to believe he will find a better life in a home where there aren't so many dogs around him, and maybe he can run and play in larger areas than our smallish yard in a crowded Denver neighborhood. I have to because I can't bear to think he won't. He's a beautiful dog and in many ways a good dog, just must have had a bad experience before us, and hopefully he'll get into a home that doesn't have many dogs around.

2. Emily got a job offer in Connecticut, so we're moving back to the East Coast. Last week we got our house painted, this week it went on the market. The past few days we've walked about our house like it's a museum, afraid to touch anything, since it's all "staged" for potential buyers, which is to say really, really clean. No dishes on counters, no newspapers and magazines lying around -- it looks like the homes at Roanoke, I guess, where everything looks normal, and the people are just gone.

3. Jack is busier than ever. Running around the house clutching toys he cared nothing about 6 months ago, putting together his puzzles, bringing us books from the shelves (a Curious George book I just bought, about which he says "Monkey! Monkey!" until I read it to him), asking for cereal ("Cereal! Cereal!"), smiling a lot, laughing, eating -- pretty much oblivious to the fact, naturally, that next week will probably be his last week at his day care, and that we're all moving back East.

And that's kind of the big one, because it is mostly about Jack, both lately and in general. We want the best for him, and that's part of why we're doing what we're doing, and part of what we do every day, every week, every month.

It's scary to sell one's house, to start a new job, to move across the country, to say goodbye to a lot of people and hello to a lot of others. It's all scary.

But I look at Jack, and he's all excited about having his monkey shaped pancake for breakfast, and can't wait to read a book with me or go outside and play with a basketball or help Mommy pick up leaves from that strange tree in our backyard that used to drop leaves and now drops banana shaped pods or something, and I say, well, it will be okay. We'll make it work. Because there's Jack, and he's a happy guy, and we'll do whatever we can to make sure he stays that way.

Happy Daddy!

Pretty tired tonight, but I want to write down a few random things before I forget them...

- My birthday was a couple of days ago. Emily tried to teach Jack to say "Happy Birthday Daddy!" Jack said "Happy Daddy!" and then went around saying it, with a big smile, for a lot of the day. "Happy Daddy! Happy... Daddy! Hap-py....Dad-dy!" Best birthday present ever.

- When Jack hears a dog bark outside, he says "Woof!" He's in the bath, playing with his toys, and hears a dog bark. Stops what he's doing for a moment. "Woof!" Then goes back to playing.

- He has a large, lap edition of "Goodnight Moon" as well as a small board book of it. This morning he came out of his room with both of them, as he often does. I was in the kitchen, and I heard him saying "Sit. Sit." I look out, and he's sitting on the rug with the lap version in his lap, and the small version a few feet in front of him. He's pointing at it and looking at me. "Sit."

- A little bit later, I'm at the computer, and Charlie is lying near the wall in the back of the room about 10 feet away, as he normally does. Jack comes up with the two books and puts the small one between Charlie's paws, then sits down next to him with his big lap edition. So Charlie could read along with him, I guess. Classic.

- Aunt Robin gave Jack a boat, sea captain, and seagull bath toy. Pretty cool. Jack loves the seagull. "Seagull!" he says. A bath isn't happy until I bring in the seagull and throw him in the water; these days, the seagull makes a bath a bath.

- Jack's favorite food these days is cereal. He likes these wheat pillow like things. The other day he was asking for them, and we'd give them to him, and he'd wander off, then come back for more. We found out he was collecting a tiny little bowl of them, with the bowl being one of the little cups from the egg poacher. I picked it up on one of his treks back for more cereal, because Charlie would likely have eaten it eventually, and he came back with a fistful of cereal, saw his little cup missing, and did a double-take, literally. Mystified. I showed it to him on the edge of the desk. He was happy.

- He likes drawing and coloring with markers. He mostly likes me drawing with markers. I draw him airplanes and sharks over and over again. "Airplane!" "Shark!" I try drawing other things, like a whale, but he says "shark"!

- I'm a huge dinosaur fan. We got him a book called "Dinosaur, Dinosaur." Good book, he likes it. He says "Nanosaur!" Funny to see, and to hear. "Nanosaur!"

So yeah, Jack's doing great.



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