I Swear He Said Freckle June 15, 2008

One of Jack’s favorite books is What a Family!, which is a story about the similarities in relatives. Maggie has freckles, just like her cousins Angela, Angelo, Britt, Rosie, and Ollie. Jack asked, “What’s a freckle?”. I pointed to my eye and said, “Mommy has a freckle here, and on her arms.” Jack was fascinated. He said, “Jack have freckle?”. And I had to say no, Jack didn’t have freckles. He was kind of bummed.

Jack has gotten into Band-Aids. We have Spiderman Band-Aids and Pooh bear band-aids. Any type of boo boo requires a Band-Aid. He pointed to his knee and said, “I got a boo-boo. I need Band-Aid.” I said, “No Jack, that’s not a boo boo. That’s a freckle.” “Freckle?!?! I have freckle!”.

So, he’s very happy that he has one freckle. Today, he was wearing only a diaper for awhile, and while walking up the stairs, I noticed that he had another similar freckle on his bum. I told Jack, “You have a freckle on your bum.” He said, “I got a freckle on my bum!”. Then he said, “Sing the freckle song.” I said, “There’s a freckle song?” He started singing, “Freckle freckle freckle freckle…”

Except, he’s two, so he doesn’t really have the “fr” down yet.

So what it sounded like was “fuckle fuckle fuckle”.

I just can’t wait for him to do that in day care.

Amazing Jack Tricks January 11, 2008

I haven’t posted about how wonderful my son is for awhile, so I thought I’d try while he’s being all rambunctious with Daddy about his bath.
On the way down the stairs, he started, well, babbling about something. Then I realized, he was reciting the text from the book Black Is Brown Is Tan – and doing a pretty darn good job for a not-quite-2-year old.
While eating yogurt, to get him to eat instead of play, we counted. He can generally count up to 10 or 12, though he sometimes skips 4. Anyway, I count and go to 21, then he says, “22?”. And I say, “Yes!” and then, “What’s next?” and he says, “23!” and he then did 24 and 25 too.
Finally, when I offered him a peanut butter and jelly cereal bar (by Earth’s Best – a wonderful culinary invention) he sang, “Peanut, peanut butter, jelly”. Very cute.

My Son is Scary Smart November 21, 2007

So, many of you may notice that I’m constantly talking about how smart my son is. Tonight, he was scary smart.
Brief background: My sister had an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse stuffed animal that somehow ended up here. I introduced Jack. Then, today, he’s wearing pants with MM on them, but the modern version. Apparently, he told Max that he was wearing Mickey Mouse. While we were marveling over this, Jack starts pointing at my shirt. It has postage stamp size pictures of Pooh, a broken honey pot, Tigger, and Eeyore, with a small, intact honey pot and some bees embroidered on it. He points to Tigger and says “Tigger”. Then, he points to the honey pot, and says “Honey pot.”
Max and I were freaked out. I’ve not worn this shirt in at least 6 months, if not more. And we didn’t discuss what the items on my shirt were today. So for him to say “honey pot” … I guess he has reading comprehension?
Scary smart.
Oh, and he can say the whole alphabet and count to 10.

I Don't Want to Forget October 12, 2007

I’ve been thinking recently about all the little things that I forget. I’ve been working on journaling Jack’s baby book. (OK, books – 4 to be exact. From pre-birth to his 1st Birthday Party. Anyway…) There were times when I was great about writing – either here or on paper. Then, there are times when there’s nothing. Basically, from October 24, 2006 until his birthday, then from birthday, it’s all sporadic. So, I’ve decided to write a bit, even though it’s late, about what I don’t want to forget.
Tonight, Jack and I went Kick Kick for the first time in a month. It was a lovely evening for it. Jack was a little fish daredevil, which I think is great. I don’t want him to fear water, at least not when a parent is around. He was jumping around, “swim”ming, blowing bubbles, tilting his head back into the water. At one point, he accidentally swam underwater. I think he went to jump and to tilt back at the same time. Anyway, he didn’t freak out or cry – just sputtered and held on to me for a minute or two.

He has so many new words each day! He’ll actually say words when you ask, “Can you say?” like, Pomegranate. It sounds a lot like pomegranate. He doesn’t miss a trick, and is so clued in to what’s going on. He knows most of his books by title and cover. Like “More Baby” and “Swee Mimi”. He’s just a little knowledge sponge. And yes, I am totally getting overbearing about it.

Today, Jack was a VERY GOOD BOY. He only threw 2 mini fits. Well, and when he woke up and Daddy wasn’t here (long story), he cried. But he missed Daddy. The first fit was, after we found the garbage man, we went to walk ahead of him. Jack couldn’t see the truck and started kicking in his stroller. But I stopped and turned his head so he could see. The garbage man, such a nice guy, actually waited for us to get to where we could see him pick up the trash every time he turned a corner. I gotta call the number and say this guy deserves a raise. The second fit was when I asked him to climb onto the stool to wash his hands. He just didn’t want to do it.

He ate well, and didn’t throw any of his food on the floor. This is an amazing accomplishment. He learned a new sign (school). (I never wrote down when he signed his first sign. I just know it was “more” and a few days before Christmas.) He didn’t go down for a nap for me, but he didn’t complain either. Then Max came home and was able to put him down pretty easily. He went in for his bath without too much trouble, and was all about snuggling up and having me sing him to sleep tonight.

OK. I have to go. I should add that Jack’s friend Keegan now has a little sister, born today. Yay!

General Update September 12, 2007

I’ve been using digital scrapping software to create pages, including an entire custom storybook for Jack.

Business and Mom…
I’m lucky if I get 18 hours of work done in a week. I have no idea how I’m supposed to work with a child. I can’t plunk him down in front of TV – not that I’d want to do that anyway, but it’s just not an option. Multi-tasking is all well and good, but when you have a kid pushing at you saying “pick up Mommy pick up” (he means “stand up”) or putting his stuffed animals in the water table, multi-tasking isn’t what you need.
I said to Max a few days ago: My job is to be Jack’s mom. That’s why I’m here. When Jack is awake, I need to be with him. That has to be my first priority. That means that business comes second and anything else comes third, fourth, etc. I have a baby-sitter but she has been rather flakey the last 2 weeks. Even at $5/hour, we can only afford her for a couple of hours a day, a couple of days a week.

Mom…
Jack, is, of course, the smartest boy in the world. Until I met sm00bs, I thought he must be the smartest child, but her daughter has more signs and words than Jack, so I’ll just have to qualify the statement with boy. He speaks sentences. Newer words include helicopter, I love you, I like X (where X is puppy, doggie, star, etc.), star, everybody, great-grandma, starlight/starbright. New signs are doll, water, and mouse. He’s getting more into signing now, but we can’t always tell what he’s signing, esp. since so many of the signs are similar. He signs “Signing Time.” Our TiVo just deleted our Signing Time stash, which Max unhappily said was a sign to buy the entire 13 DVD, 4 CD set. With shipping and tax it’s $202. A steal yes, but hardly cheap.

Jack also sings. Here are excerpts:

“e-f-p-nnnnnn-p”
“e-i-e-i-o”
“row row row boat… stream… maymaymaymay…”
“donny… sprites… donny… sprites”

He is very much into letters and numbers. Before his grandma came to visit, he could count 1-2-3. Now, he counts 3-4-5. Sometimes he remembers 1 and 2. I put some alphabet window clings on the office window and he loves to look at them, un-stick and re-stick them, and to look out the window.

Jack can also recognize many books by their covers, and also asks for books by name. His favorites are “Peef” (Peef The Christmas Bear), “Elmo”, “Chick-Chick-Boom-Boom”, “Chick-Chick 3″, “Hop Hop” (Pat the Bunny), and “Mimi”. A friend bought him a book that is also an Elmo puppet. The book is really the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, which is now known as the “Elmo song”. Everytime he sees Elmo in a store, or really anywhere, he exclaims Elmo Elmo! Do they put subliminal messages in these things? Narcotics? I don’t think it’s lead-based.

Speaking of lead-based, OY! I’m now going out of the way to not buy toys from China (so hard to do!). Also, we’ve gotten – OK Max installed – a reverse-osmosis water filter to take out the fluoride. And I’m hoping to get Jack off the bottle sooner rather than later because his bottles are made with plastic that leaches not-so-good chemicals into the fluid. We’re using gDiapers, a cloth/disposable hybrid that is much better for the environment than disposables (and 12 cents per diaper more expensive, but they’re so cute!). I need to post about all the green, granola stuff I’ve been moved to do since becoming a gDiaper parent. I’m driving Max nuts, I know, but so far I haven’t insisted on eating only food grown within 20 miles or only buying organic everything.

Today, Jack played with sidewalk chalk (or “Cray” as he calls it, for crayons) and loved it! He has a water table with rocks and water, but it used to have seeds, so he calls it “sees and wawer”. He started trying to brush his teeth seriously in the past few days. That’s a battle! I could post about that too. I wonder if it would be as boring as this probably is. If you read to the end, you should put a comment as to why. This is very long.

Abbreviated Post August 29, 2007

Jack has the vocabulary of a 3 year old, and no, that’s not hyperbolic. I was looking up toddler milestones, and 1 book and 2 different web sites all said that a child at 24 months should be able to say “several” single words, and, perhaps, 2-4 word sentences. It’s not until age 3 that a child will generally speak in sentences, or speak and be understood by people outside the family. Jack has 80 million words. OK, not so much. But he does have TONS of words, and about half of them sound like what they are, including “strawberry” and “helicopter.” He also has the sentence concept down: “I love you, name“, “I like x” or “I like it”, as well as several command sentences – “Mommy pick up!” He totally understands what we say, and fortunately hasn’t repeated any of our swear words. Not that I care so much, as I think swearing is a valid form of expression, but I’m not sure I want to explain that to everyone in the MOMS Club.

I have finished scrapbooking Jack’s first year. It takes up 3 scrapbooks, plus – I ran out of scrapbooks, and it looks like the final pages will just fit into one more, but it could take two. I still have to journal everything since August, and embellish. Searching for just the right embellishment was taking hours, so I decided to scrap the pictures, then go back and look at the stickers I have, page through to find the right page, and go on. I will be doing that this coming Friday night at a crop at a friend’s house. She’s a Creative Memories consultant, and I hope she won’t find out that I joined TLC. I only did it for the software!
I’ve become a gMum, with gDiapers, and I’ll write about that some more, per my agreement with the g people.

Jack sings! He likes the ABC song, and has the melody, but not the “words” – he sings “EFP” with great pitch though. He’s signing more too, and loves Signing Time. We’re trying to find the DVDs on the cheap, as our TiVo is full.

I’m taking Jack out insanely early tomorrow to go to a place with those jump houses with other moms.

Max is here to tell me to get away from the computer.
BYE!

 

Nine Months October 27, 2006

At 9 months, Jack is meeting pretty much all of the milestones listed in What to Expect the First Year. He’s figured out the “If I drop it, it still

exists and Mommy and Daddy will pick it up for me” game. He does not crawl, but he does creep, schooch, and roll himself all over the place. Thanks to Auntie Trisha, he now walks when he stands holding on to someone’s fingers. While we were in NH, he finally learned how to sit up from a lying down position. This has brought his schooching to a

whole new level. Now, all he wants to do is stand! Holding onto us, holding onto a table or chair, holding onto the crib rail.
Most importantly, Jack has TWO words: “Hi” and “Daddy.” “Hi” definitely means “Hi” but “Daddy” may mean “Mommy” and “Daddy” as he often says it to Mommy. The cutest behavior is watching him

saying “Hi” to himself in a mirror. For the record, he first said, “Hi” on October 2, and “Daddy” on October 13.
Jack will often respond to his own name, but he usually responds to “Jackson” better than to “Jack” or “Jack-Jack”.
At his 9 month check up, Jack was 20 pounds and 26 and 3/4 inches.

He is 50th percentile for weight and is finally on the chart, length-wise, in the 5th-10th percentile. His head circumference is in the 90th percentile.
His two bottom teeth are in, and his two top ones are still growing. He loves to bite and chew on anything he can grab. Yes, we have teether toys, but items that he’s not supposed to chew are so much tastier,

including human fingers. As for food, Jack does like yogurt (Yo-Baby), and combinations of cereal and fruit from the jar, in addition to his orange foods.
Jack’s favorite toys are blocks. He now has a few different sets, and he loves them all. He loves knocking towers down, and banging blocks t

ogether. He has also learned how to drum on empty containers and tables.
We were in New Hampshire for 18 days this month, and we were happy to see a lot of our friends. Jack didn’t take too well to the time change, so spent the first week being cranky and not sleeping well at all. The

second week, he was great, but because we lost the first week, we didn’t have a chance to connect with everyone we wanted to see. On October 8, we had a small dedication ceremony for Jack, at which his godparents and parents promised to look after him in all ways, including spiritually. As we are not members of a church, this occurred at his godparents’ home. His godparents are Marc & Joanne Gamache, of

Bedford, NH. Jack was a big hit at the Swonger household, where our flower girls, Jenn and Katie, clamored for his attention. They spent lots of time constructing elaborate towers and then letting Jack destroy them.
He still sleeps well at night, going to bed between 7 and 8pm and waking

up between 5:30 and 7am. Naps continue to be a challenge. So what else is new?