Part-Time Student

So The Boy went to "school" today. As mentioned earlier, he's going to go on Mondays & Wednesdays. The Wife dropped him off around 8 and picked him up about 4:45. I called them around 11:15 to see how he was doing. They said he was doing good and eating lunch when I called. Nap is supposed to be from 12:30 to 2:30, but I guess he didn't nap. We were worried about that part. For one, most days he still takes 2 naps, but some days he only takes one. The other thing is, he always naps in his room, in his crib, by himself, and it's pretty dark in his room. So we probably created this problem ourselves. Well, it was only the first day, so hopefully we can get this fixed.

I'm not sure how much he'll wear his hearing aids there. I'm not sure how much he or the other kids will try to take them out. I guess we'll just play that one by ... ear.

Our vacation starts on Friday. And although I'm very excited, I really got myself bummed out thinking about being away from him for so long.

He's getting so big. At night, when I go check on him before I go to bed, sometimes he's all stretched out in his crib, and I just can't believe how much of the crib he takes up.

Pick A Winner

The Boy had a huge booger in his nose the other day. I tried using kleenex to wipe his nose to get it out, but nothing doing. So I gave up. A few minutes later, we were just hanging out, and I asked him where his nose is. He reached up to touch his nose, but accidentally stuck his finger in his nose and pulled out that enormous booger.

I was so proud!!!

I'm So Happy I Could Cry Myself To Sleep

It's the emotional roller-coaster that is parenthood that I have a hard time dealing with. The Boy goes from happy to sad to angry to screaming faster than a MacInnis slap shot. That just drains me. But at least this night has ended positively (so far - hopefully Murphy isn't listening).

In the interest of the health of The Family, we've enrolled The Boy in daycare for two days a week. He'll start next week. I think it will be good for all of us - The Wife will get some regular breaks and The Boy will get some socialization and variety.

New. Improved.

So this is the new Blogger? Well, the labels are cool. So far, I don't see much else different.

EDIT: Wow, the customization is great! What I used to have to do with javascript is now drag and drop with my mouse. Way to go, Blogger!

We're going through a major layoff & re-org at work. Very stressful. Hard to stay focused.

The Blues are like 8-2 in their last 10. Quite a turnaround. Hopefully they can keep it up. And hopefully Pittsburgh pisses off Lemieux and he brings the Penguins to KC. Of course, if I don't have a job I'm not sure I can justify season tickets.

The Boy is doing well. He knows a ton of sign language and a few words. Except that for most the words you have to be Mom or Dad to understand. But the tantrums have started, and they are rough.

Let's Wrassle

The Boy loves to wrestle. It's amazing how rowdy he is, without ever really having been taught to be rowdy. It sure is fun, I love it. Of course, it's not all that helpful when I'm laying on the floor trying to fix the sink. And it's even less helpful when The Wife goes to get the camera instead of getting him off of me. But I'm not complaining, especially since I would've done the same thing.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Search This

What's a baby gotta do to find a search engine that works?

Hat Trick

We know Detroit couldn't manage to beat St. Louis in baseball. But did you see that they can't even beat them in crime? Now if The Blues can get their shit together and start whipping the Red Wings - that would be the icing on the cake. I don't recommend holding your breath for this.

FILE UNDER: SPORTS

Here's Your Sign

The Boy has definitely picked up on some of the sign language we've been working on. He knows "eat" - which isn't surprising since that seems to be his favorite thing to do. Within a couple minutes of waking up in the morning, he's giving the sign for "eat", and saying "na-nana. This kid is banana-crazy. Although I haven't seen him use it in a while, he used to know "more". He definitely knows "out", except he made up his own sign for it that looks more like an "I don't know" shrug. Along with his sign for "out", he gives a little grunt that actually sounds a little bit like "out".

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Steppin' and a Chuckin'

So it seems I've lost some interest in blogging. But here are some blogworthy events.

It's his birthday today. That's blogworthy.

For quite a while now, we've been giving The Boy things to hold and tempting him with items to get him to take a few steps. We've had very limited success. Last night, we were getting ready for bed and he had a binky in each hand and one in his mouth. We stood him up and leaned his back against the chair and put the big stuffed "riding" elephant in the middle of the room. His eyes kind of lit up, he used his butt to push off and stand on his own, and then took about 5 steps all on his own to get to the elephant! How fun! He did this about 5 separate times, and we managed to get one of them on video. Although we thought he was going to pull his "no trick pony" act, because once we got the camcorder out, it seemed like he wasn't going to do it. We felt kind of silly that we hadn't thought to try binkys before, he's always seemed more comfortable, safe, relaxed, and confident when he's holding binkys.

Speaking of binkys, this is pretty cool. When he wakes up and we get him out of the crib, if he still has a binky, about half the time, he takes it out on his own and throws it in the crib. The other half we just have to say binky a couple times and then he does it. He pretty much never gets or wants a binky except for sleeping.

He got a lot of cool stuff for his 1st 1st birthday party (with family). And I expect he'll make a decent haul at his 2nd 1st birthday party (with friends). Don't ask why we did it that way. Or if you really want to know click here.

He vomited for the first time last night in the middle of the night. That sure is a bummer. I woke up to him crying about 12:30am and knew something was wrong because that's so rare. I went to check on him and couldn't see very well. As I am feeling around for him so I can pick him up, my hand goes *mush*. Hmmm, that's not good. Hey, what's that smell. Oh god, that smells really bad. Oh wow, this stuff is everywhere. I'm going to need some help. So we went to get The Mommy for help, but she was already on her way. So we got him cleaned up. We started laundry. He puked once more. We cleaned him up again. We added more stuff to the laundry. And then I went to Wal-Mart at 1:00am to get some medicine, more sheets and another mattress pad in case there was more puking, and some other stuff. He slept through the rest of the night and was doing quite a bit better today, but still not 100%.

The Wife and I got to go on a date last week. That was nice. We went to a dinner theater. The play was so-so, but we had a great time. It was nice to be husband and wife for a while instead of mommy and daddy. I hope we get to do that more often. It's tough to lose your identity as a man/husband and woman/wife to the identity of mommy and daddy.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD, THINKING

There's A Lion In My Shoe

You might think that's some kind of secret code and that the response should go something like, "The dog barks at the blue moon at midnight.".

You'd be wrong.

I was letting the dogs in when I noticed something stuffed way up in my shoe. Apparently, The Boy felt the need to stuff the "Little People" lion in my shoe. It's things like that sure make me wish I could know what he is thinking.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Happy Place

The Boy goes bonkers happy when I get home from work. Sometimes he crawls over to me as fast as he can, screaming "DA. DA. DA. DA.". Sometimes he crawls to me until I start towards him, then he turns and crawls away, laughing as I chase him. It sure does help melt my stress to come home to that.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Choo-Chooooooo

I was sitting in the living room tonight with The Boy and The Wife and I noticed he was making a new sound. I'll leave it at that because I can't do it justice in words and I don't have the time to attach a sound-bite. So I noticed this new sound, and thought it was kind of interesting because it wasn't like any other sound I'd heard him make before. A few seconds later, I realized he had just been playing with this toy train that makes a "Choo-Chooooooooo" train noise and then it occurred to me that he is mimicking the toy train! Sure enough, about that time, he grabs the train, presses the button to make the noise, and then makes it himself. Holy Shit! This is so cool. Of all the neat, new things he's doing, this one really strikes me as awesome. And makes me think I need to start watching my mouth.

He's starting to take steps around the room if you hold his hands and walk with him. He's just crazy about banana, he shoves it in with both hands as fast as possible. He seems to be able to say it. He mostly calls it na-na, but sometimes throws a ba- in there. Of course, he seems to be calling all food he likes na-na. Oh, and there is the fact that he seems to like all food. In fact last night he ate off our cheeseburgers and tonight he ate off our soft tacos. He's really starting to be against baby food and wants to feed himself by hand, or with spoon, or wants whatever is on our plate. He screams a lot at meal time if he doesn't have what he wants. That's pretty annoying and I'm not sure how to deal with it at this age. Reason doesn't quite seem to work yet.

He has this really funny thing where he likes to go around the room and pull all the pillows off the couches and then flop down in the pile of pillows, roll around, and laugh, laugh, laugh. It's pretty entertaining.

We had fun at The Lake last weekend. He sure seems to love boat rides & swimming. He jumps in rhythm with the boat going over the waves and just babbles away. Sometimes he gets annoyed by the life jacket, but that's understandable.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Update

The Boy can take a few wobbly steps across the room while holding onto his "walker" toy.

At times, it seems like he knows what "hello" means because he'll start opening and closing his hand when you tell him hello. Other times he just does it randomly like he has no idea what's going on. He gets so excited when I come home from work. He "waves" at me and then crawls to me as fast as he can.

One morning, he had been playing quietly in his crib for a while and The Wife decided to go get him up and start the day. She found him flipping through his plush "Pat The Bunny" book as if he was just reading all by himself. He sure seems to like books.

He still flips back and forth between favoring his right and left hand. Currently he seems to use his left a lot for eating finger foods. There was a little chunk of time when he was feeding himself from a spoon with considerable success, but lately not so much.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Charge!

The Boy attacked me the other day. Crawling on me and grabbing me and slobbering on me. Giggling the whole time. It was so much fun. I'll never forget those times. Thanks, buddy.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Is That A Plush Toy?

I have a picture of The Boy on my work computer. He's wearing a shirt that says, "My Dad's a Geek". It's a few months old, and he does look a bit chubby in it. It really kind of emphasizes his square head with rounded corners and rounder cheeks. His arms are stuck straight out and look a little padded. And the shirt is filled out quite well by his belly. It was "take your child to work day", today. The Boy didn't go for various reasons. One of my co-workers brought her 5 year old son by and he came in my cube and read The Boy's shirt out loud and laughed. Then he leaned in, looked real hard, and said, "Is that a plush doll?". Oh my gosh, it was just so funny.

He's crawling up on hands and knees pretty regularly now. Except he has his own little twist to it. He frequently has his left knee down, but puts his right foot down to push off. It looks pretty funny and awkward.

He pulls up on everything to stand and even makes his way back and forth across whatever he's leaning on.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

There I Go, Turn The Page

Welcome, Seger fans. ;-)

The Boy loves the board books. Recently, he's started helping turn the pages. He turns them in the right direction and everything. Sometimes he decides he wants to go back and re-read a page or two, but for the most part, he just likes plowing through the book. The only thing I really have to help him with is turning one page at a time.

He intermittently is able to hold and tip the sippy cup all by himself to get a drink. We've also started on some big people food. Lunch meat, potatoes, green beans, etc.

As always, there's more to report, I just can't remember what I wanted to write about. Q: How many ADD kids does it take to change a light bulb? A: I dunno, wanna go ride bikes?

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

These [amps] go to eleven.

That was the other thing I forgot yesterday. The Boy is experimenting with volume. He has this elephant that honks? (what the hell do elephants do? trumpet? whatever, that noise elephants make - it makes it 3 times in a row) So we were playing with it the other day and he was trying to mimic it. Didn't sound at all like an elephant, but he was purposely adjusting his volume. It was interesting.

He also likes raising one or both arms, sometimes it's at the perfect moment and is really funny. Like tonight he had his jammies in his hands and he was raising and lowering his arms like he was playing peek-a-boo.

He's also been blowing raspberries on things like his plastic cups, and other odd objects.

Fun stuff.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

If You're Happy And You Know It

We went on a mini-vacation the past few days. We really just went to my dad's. He lives on a lake so there's lots of fun summer activities. And my half-brother met us there with his family, so that was fun. But vacations sure are a lot different when you have a baby. Overall, he was good, but he does have trouble adjusting to being in a different place. He had a lot of fun in the water and on the boat. We got him a little blow up raft complete with a shade to keep him out of the sun.

He's started clapping his hands together in the past few days, that's cool. And he's started sitting up in his crib.

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, and I could go into more detail, but I'm tired.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Guilt

I feel like such an asshole when I leave the house for work and The Boy is crying/screaming/having a fit.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Pull Up A Couch

The Family was watching Italy and Germany go at it today. The Boy and I were sitting on the floor and The Wife was on the couch. The Wife and I got fixated on the TV, when we suddenly realized the boy was standing up, using the couch to keep his balance. He apparently pulled up into a standing position all by himself! Wow.

The Boy discovered his penis quite some time ago, but tonight in the bathtub, he was pulling on his scrotum like he was stretching out a balloon in preparation to be blown up. It looked like it should hurt, but he wasn't screaming, so what the heck.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD