Goodnight Kisses

News: He’s crazily independent already, insisting on walking through the garage on his own… and doing things like walking up the stairs and counting them as he walks; because he simply wants to. In the car last night he began naming off animals and the sounds they make. Let me stress the difference: Nobody was asking him what an animal’s name was, or what sound they typically make. He just started ticking them off in his head, and putting the list to words. “Mooo. Cow. Horsey. Neighghghgh.” (He does a great neigh… there’s a little whinny in it.) This morning we tried to feed him a banana and he wouldn’t eat it unless he fed it to himself. We literally have to stick the portion of the banana that was given to him back on the fruit that is still in the peel. (I admit it is also incredibly hard to distinguish between “I’m don’t want what you’re offering me” and “I will only take what you’re offering me if I can feed it to myself.” A few times he’s said “I help.” which is his way of saying “I can do this myself.”) He also takes initiative to do things like clean up, now. He saw I left a game controller out last night so today said “Game.” “I back.” And put it “back” where it belongs, in a container under the couch.

Alright so now let’s go back in time again… This is at Grampa Dave and Grandma Marcia’s on February 14th, the promised “goodnight kisses” video. You may recall I mentioned this back when I showed a photo that Grampa Dave takes during this video clip. At long last, here it is!

Click here to see the video, it is 1.4 MB in size.

Counting… kinda

News: So I guess the other day Melissa brought Ian into daycare early. Ian was there with another boy, and the two of them got out all of the toys. Well as the other kids began to filter in, Ian was not very good at sharing, and apparently there was a lot of “MINE!!!!” going on. If you think about it from his perspective, it makes sense. Usually he shows up, each child has his/her toys kind of picked out, and you get the leftovers… but what if you were first and played with ALL the toys? This is akin to licking all the candy or cookies in a package, I would guess.

Ok so in this audio clip, which was recorded on February 9th, Ian is bringing me various items and running off to go get more, of course. At the very end, right after you hear me say “Ready?” you’ll hear him help me count to ten… It may even require headphones for you to be able to make it out, but he takes over at around four and goes to ten… then he starts making up words, I think… unless “Bob” is a number I haven’t learned yet. Then I say “let’s start over again” and he counts from two to five, all very clear.

Here is the audio clip, enjoy! It is 3.3 MB in size.

ABC’s… Kinda

News: Ian is 35 inches tall… that’s almost 3 feet. Which is nuts. When did that happen?

Still catching up: Alright so if you haven’t seen this yet, you probably read about it a few entries ago. This is a very large video, weighing in at 4.7 MB, so it is pretty big, but prepare to hear Ian trying his best to sing the alphabet! For the record, this video was shot on February 5th, 2009.

Listen carefully for the wxyz… you’ll see his tongue hit his upper teeth when he hits “x” and on the first go around you can tell when he hits the “now I know my ABCs” bit. It is so awesome to see him learning. As of the morning of the 22nd, he’s got a-b-c-d-e and w-x-y-z down pat, and clear as a bell.

Click here to watch Ian singing the ABC’s!!! Kinda.

At Play

Let’s talk about toys!

Grampa Dave hand-cut a few shapes for Ian to play with, a three-dimensional square (not quite a cube) and an extruded circle, during our visit on February 14th. On Monday of this week Ian was delighted to get a package containing the third shape, a triangle. Needless to say we’ve heard the word “triangle” a lot this last week! Thanks Grampa Dave! See this image larger.

Here’s some toy videos you might also enjoy! The first is from January 19th… Ian plays a game called “WiiMusic.” All you have to do is wiggle the controllers up and down in the air, and through the magic of three dimensional positioning… you’re playing a marimba.

Click here to see Ian come up with his own way to play… this video is 1.4 MB in length.

The next video shows a car and track set that Ian got from Santa while at Grandma Barb and Grampa Ray’s… Ian likes the car to go through tunnels, so we came up with a way to have it go under furniture, first… and then came up with a way to just watch! (Note: Since this was filmed (on February 2nd) we’ve found these cars under the couch, completely drained of battery power about 3 times!!!)

Click here to see not very much Ian, but a lot of ingenuity! This video is 1.4 MB in length.

Tickle Tickle

On Monday, February 23rd, as the day progressed, Ian and I discovered something that could make a 2 year old boy and a 38 year old man giggle with glee. Have you ever blown bubbles over a floor mounted heater vent? It was nothing short of the Fourth of July!

Speaking of giggles, here’s today’s flashback video… the date is January 18th of this year, and Melissa treats Ian to a quick round of tickling. It is interesting to note that I did show this video to Ian today, and he immediately wanted Mommy to come home and tickle him. When she got here, he actually laid on the floor and pulled his shirt up in anticipation.

Click here to see the video, it is 3.14 MB in size.

To The Rescue!!!

While Saturday was the kind of day that made me want another child, full of beautiful moments to sigh over happily, Sunday was a lot more rough. He’s definitely at the age now where everything needs to be challenged… It is funny everybody tells you “just wait for the terrible twos” but nobody bothers to tell you what to do about it, or perhaps more importantly that once you figure out the purpose of this behavior that it at least makes sense. What i mean by that is simply – if he didn’t challenge us right now, every step of the way, he wouldn’t challenge anything or anybody. Who wants to raise somebody like that?

Anyway, so Sunday one of his antics was that he cleverly disguised the removal of a crayon from the drawing-safe area as a typical pre-diaper escape… For whatever reason he tries to avoid getting his diaper changed sometimes. I laughed and watched him run around a corner and slowly got up to grab him… then heard the unmistakable sound of crayon-on-wall. I couldn’t believe it… “But there’s still eight crayons on the mat… oh SNAP… SEVEN.”

I advise everybody to use ceramic flat paint, it cleaned up without so much as a single line or buff mark with just a wet paper towel. Perfect! (EDIT – Ohhh. “Washable” crayons! nice!)

This morning (Monday the 23rd) Ian reached a sort of milestone I didn’t expect. In the past he’s just set his zooey (pacifier) on the floor, or kitchen table when he’s had enough. And this is always a heartening spectacle to watch, as it really does mean he’s maturing before our eyes. So today was different because Ian took the zooey out, said “no zooey” and clambered up the stairs to his room, tipping it up onto his dresser, which is where they are typically stored.

Alright so now that we’ve caught up on some stuff, let’s go back in time a little bit and catch up on the other bits.

We’re going to start back on January 13th with this 2.8 MB video. It requires some explanation.

In the TV show that we’re watching, a group of kids form a sort of super-hero club to save the day, and they do this EVERY episode. They invite the watcher to join the group, asking you to say your name, put your hand in, as they all do, and then they raise their hands in the air saying “to the rescue!” They then introduce themselves one by one naming their powers… The viewer’s power is the power to “help.”

Click here to watch the video…

Gramma Seeshaw and Grampa Dafe’s!

I’ll do my best to keep you and I both informed about chronological order mishaps that are about to happen because I can’t get organized, apparently!

These images are from the trip to Grampa Dave and Grandma Marcia’s house last week on the 14th and 15th of February, 2009. We combined a number of celebrations together and wound up with this weekend. One of the brighter spots for me was seeing Ian do a sort of skip-step across the room a couple times… it felt a little like a one-off kind of thing, but today (the 21st) Ian was full-fledged galloping across our living room like an extremely happy pony.

This is actually a still from my video camera footage, I managed to not take a single picture again… Ian is happily celebrating his birthday again! See this image larger.

“You keep your breakables where, exactly? In THAT cabinet, you say?” See this image larger.

This picture is so nice, I don’t even know what to say other than “Thank you, Dad” for taking it. Perfect shot. See this image larger.

I’m going to drop some video on you in a few blog entries, Grampa Dave snaps this shot during one of the videos, shortly after Ian gets a kiss or two before heading to bed. Here Ian waves “night, night” after a Marcia smooch. See this image larger.

Another video still – Grampa Dave and Ian try to figure out a radio headset. Ian’s pretty sure if you hold the antenna like so, you’d get NPR. See this image larger.

In this video still, it looks like they’ve got it figured out… but then the batteries died. Didn’t stop Ian from feeling like he needed to dance, though, as you’ll see in a video clip soon! See this image larger.

Ian attempts a “Dancing With the Stars” workout, while Momma and Grandma Marcia briefly clear the dance-floor… Additional commentary by SpongeBob Footballpants may or may not reflect the opinions of this website. See this image larger.

And then it was time to head home! We thought about dropping by Ikea, but Ian fell asleep as we got close, and we decided not to push our luck. Thanks a billion for all the hospitality and generosity Grampa and Gramma!

“Pee” is for “Potty”

Hi again, sorry about the delays. I’ve got some stuff kind of lined up to last us a bit. Hopefully we’ll get additional pictures and stuff eventually. I’ve got a whole disc from Christmas in Florida that contains some bonus pictures I’d like to get up here as well. Things are just really busy at the moment.

Ok we’re going to hop all over the place chronologically, but I want to start off by saying that tonight was the first night that the little plastic potty was christened. I’ll go on to say that there was some holding of Ian’s shoulders to keep him somewhat in the right spot, he is by no means potty-trained. But I thought you should know, regardless, that some measurable progress was made. And by measurable I mean about 5 fluid ounces.

So that was the latest news, let’s catch up a little before we talk about our visit to Gramma Marcia and Grampa Dave’s, which we’ll get to next entry.

Remember I mentioned the recliner that immediately came in handy? Here it is… he wouldn’t let me sit with him. I think I use that chair the least in the family, but I’m the one who insisted on getting it. See this image larger.

I’ll tell you more about this picture in a few entries, when I explain the “to the rescue!” video. For now, suffice to say this is Ian and I sharing a hilarious TV moment where he’s asked to cheer, and he did. This is February 9th. See this image larger.

In honor of Ian’s recent birthday, our wall-cat (you know the one on top of our half-wall?) was wearing Ian’s “prince” crown from his first birthday… Ian decided he had to wear it. And why not? It’s pointy… See this image larger.

And springy… See this image larger.

I think I’ll have another entry lined up for tomorrow night, so tune in again please!

Update coming soon

Things are alright, money-wise… we’re doing fine, but there has been a temporary lapse in work for me as clients shuffle projects around, etc. There’s plenty of work coming down the pike, I think, but I used that pause to do something for the business. I’ve been working on my company website. It is far from done, but it should help get additional work further down the line. I apologize for not updating lately.

Wait, WHAT?

Ok so today we were cleaning up the remnants of lunch, Ian was sitting playing over on the first step, a handful of coasters in his hand. From her chair Melissa counted them as he moved them “One, two, three, four, five…”

And then Ian chimed in, moving the coasters and pointing, but more importantly… counting. Melissa and I fell silent in shock… he said the rest by himself, without any kind of aid —

“Seeks, Heben, Eight, Nine, Ten.”

Melissa and I looked at each other in disbelief and then applauded and cheered. Ian was thrilled with our reaction.

But that’s not all… hopefully I’ll have a video of him trying the alphabet. He doesn’t have that down nearly as well as the above, but you can hear the pieces falling into place.

EDIT – I don’t have the alphabet video yet, but here’s a nice one I took around Christmas time of Ian as a raspberry machine. Enjoy!
Click here to see Ian as a raspberry machine!

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