these days

no earth shattering events this week

Jack giggles when I roll him over and he loves playing in the grass.

We started him on green beans but we think they're too fiberous. He doesn't spit them out but he doesn't swallow either-he just sits there with them on his tongue and gives me a tortured look.

He's also reaching out for more things and picking between objects. His favorites this week are any metal cups, his bunny with the bells inside, his texture pillow that Grandma made and of course, his feet. 

These couple of pictures are from a recent visit with my dear friend Eileen at a park in Los Gatos.

Jack appears fairly comfortable in the water

Grandma took this picture on her recent visit. Jack is very good at floating on his back and kicking (although not on demand), holding onto the side of the pool and playing Humpty Dumpty (where he sits on the side of the pool and then "jumps" into my arms.

oh and yesterday!

Jack got his first library card!

Papa's observation

Jack has a fabric cube that his Grandma made him-it has different textures on each of the sides. For a little while he was waving it around and bopping himself in the face but when he exhausted of that he just laid on his back rubbing his hand against the little bumps on the side of the cube. He's clearly gathering information with his hands, so not everything has to go in his mouth.

growing

Jack is getting long enough now that I can't very smoothly move him from my lap to his bed because I can no longer hold his top and bottom half without him bending in the middle-it's so exciting to feel him grow like this.

sippy

Jack has these little plastic animals that attach by a strap with velcro at one end to a arc over his bouncy chair. Once he pulls one off, he usually plays with it for a while, carrying it with him when we move from one room to another. Yesterday while I was doing dishes, he sat in his high chair sucking on the velcro like a straw in a milkshake. 

prison riot

We used to keep several rolled up blankets around the edge of Jack's crib so he would feel more encapsulated. The other day Jack was lying in his bed, not really wanting to go to sleep and I looked away for a minute. When I looked back he had destroyed the bed! The rolled up blankets were open and scattered everywhere and he was flailing a couple around with both hands! 

Father's Day

The picture of Jack in the grass isn't from father's day, but Jack really likes lying in the grass, so I thought I should post it.

I hope Sean felt dutifully honored today, as he daily exceeds my every expectation as Jack's father. Sean slept in while Jack and I puttered around the house and later we went to a barbeque at the home of one of our dear friends who just finished the AIDS bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles! 

Sean got a cup of coffee at Philz on the way. I had a sip, but I'm still shying away from the caffeine since that rave Jack was throwing back in Mendocino.

My internship at the Labor Archives and Research Center turned into a job this summer, so Jack is spending time with artist and educator Molly one day a week. Molly and I met when we worked a summer session at Children's Day School together and there are not enough hours in the day to praise her. Jack seems smitten as well. 

Jack continues to enjoy the park, grabbing his toes and chewing on his feet, and each morning he smiles at the light coming through our blue spotted shower curtain like it's personally saying good morning to him.

Sean's brother Scott made a (yet another) brilliant comment when he said (about babies sleeping) "it's the first thing they learn". And it's HARD dude. Pretty much once a baby is awake for an hour you're supposed to start getting them to go to sleep again. I'm not tough enough to put him in a room, close the door and let him wail away until he give up on the idea of anyone coming to save him, so it's a long, complicated dance to get Jack to sleep. 

Now try grafting that onto the real world-where you have to be places at certain times. Try telling someone who wants to hold your baby that Jack needs to go to sleep when he doesn't look tired because once he LOOKS tired he's already overtired and they think you're a crazy, overprotective first-time parent. As adults if we don't get enough sleep, we're exhausted and we sleep really well at night. Babies and children are the opposite. When they are overtired, their bodies release a chemical that acts like adreniline, and they actually sleep less and less well. So if we go somewhere in the middle of the day and Jack misses a nap, he's not going to sleep as well at for the rest of the day, and well, that means we don't sleep at night either. So it's tough, but we're figuring it out. We've got a couple really good books that are enlightening us on how to do this right. We want Jack to enjoy the world and we want the world to be friendly to Jack and that is a lot easier to manage when he's had enough sleep. 

It's gotten much more difficult as Jack has become more aware of the world around him and nothing slips by him. His latest thing is trying to pull the stripes off the rocking chair and sitting up on my lap, playing with his feet until finally he glances over at me and smiles as if to say, "oh YOU'RE here! have you seen these toes? they're incredible!" He doesn't sleep in the stroller or the baby carrier like he used to either, he wants to be up and looking around, checking everything out. It's a good thing he's such a nice guy.

our little fish

Today in swimming class Jack went underwater. He seemed unalarmed. Just blinked a little.

Jack rolled over all by himself!

I was sitting right next to him and I looked away for a second and when I looked back, he had turned himself over onto his stomach! He seemed pretty amused with  himself...sorry for the blurriness, I took this picture with my cell phone because I didn't want to miss the moment.

June 7, 2008

Jack likes to grab our faces. Sometimes he just likes to grab them and maul them a little. Sometimes he likes to grab a face with both hands and put as much of it as he can in his mouth.

Eatin' peas

Jack seems to like peas okay, he just wants to control the spoon.

Tonight's pea episode went well-Jack seemed to eat more of the peas and get more of them all over himself---even on his socks. 

Jack's teeth are givin' him grief. He frantically rubs his pacifier over his lower gums and he wants to nurse in his sleep.