Jack @ 35 Months

Hard at work, trying to figure out how to use a mouse.

It’s funny how sometimes in just one month it seems that the old child is gone and a new one has come to take his place- one who is easier to communicate with and is much more fun to spend the day with. Jack has changed so much recently, I hardly recognize him at times. He is managing himself and his emotions much better and even when he gets upset, he doesn’t descend into a real tantrum. He is learning to dress and undress himself, though he still argues every time that I should do it. Not a surprise really- this is the kid who never held his own bottle.

Just the other day, he became interested in coloring and will sit for long periods, drawing scribbles on pages. He’ll say “this one is Daddy and you!” and “Oh! David will love this!” He also has suddenly decided that it’s okay to sing after all. In the past, he has almost always flatly refused to sing anything (except sometimes he would sing the ABC song, but only in the bathtub while playing with his foam letters), and when I would sing he’d yell “NO!!” Now he will sing along with me and even try to sing with his favorite Laurie Berkner sometimes.

Jack loves to help water the flowers.

For some unknown reason, he has begun calling me “Mom” and Mark “Dad” about half the time. It sounds so funny coming from such a little guy. I thought I’d be Mommy for at least another couple of years. He is fascinated these days by what everyone’s full name is and when Daddy tries to call him by his usual nickname, “Pudge”, Jack counters with “I’m John Hudson Clay! You’re a Pudge!!”

Important things to learn

Have taught Jack to yell “Did you fall in?” under the bathroom door after Daddy has been in there a while.  It’s the small joys of parenting that make it all worth it.

Visit to the Dallas Rainforest/Aquarium

Just a couple of pictures from our visit today to the Dallas Aquarium. It was about half aquarium, half rain forest habitat, and was great, except that it was a bit over priced I would say. Thankfully, Jack was free, but it cost me $20 to get in and it wasn’t that big a place. 2 hours would be enough to see it all.

In the underwater tunnel:

I thought these seahorses were pretty:

There are lots more pictures at Mom’s online gallery.

Fun in the pool

We recently got one of those pop up pools and a slide, and Jack has been having a great time so far this summer. I love this pool because it’s bigger than a standard hard plastic kiddie pool and when you’re finished with it, you can just roll it up and get it out of the way.

My Aunt Neva bought us this canopy tent as a “welcome to Texas” gift and it’s been great for being out during the day, enjoying the back yard and sand box while escaping the brutal hot sun. It’s also perfect for Mommy to sit under while Jack plays in the yard and pool.

Jack @ 34 Months

Looking every bit like a Texan…

This month has definitely been better than last, though we’re just wrapping up a two week visit with Mark’s parents and Jack may have a hard time adjusting to life without two adults ready to do his every bidding. I expect we’ll have a few screaming fits this week as we get back to regular life.

The alarm clock thing I mentioned last month is working like a charm and it’s so nice to be in control of when he gets out of bed in the morning. He knows he has to wait until Laurie Berkner tells him it’s morning time, and having a consistent 7am wake up is really nice.

Jack is developing a real awareness of the emotions of others and how what he does affects how others feel, particularly Mommy and Daddy. He will ask if he’s made me mad after he’s had a screaming fit that’s driven me to insanity, and one night, as I was putting him to bed, I was praising him for having such a good day and he said “I make you happy!”

Though we’re not really pushing Jack to learn things early, he does enjoy playing computer games and has fun recognizing letters and numbers. He has known his uppercase letters for a while and now pretty much knows the lower case and is also learning the sounds they make thanks to this site.

Potty training is going well I think. We’re not really pushing him here either of course- just letting him go at his own pace. He gets to the potty at least once a day usually, and I’m happy with that for now.

His favorite food item these days is probably ketchup.  Tonight we had rolls with dinner and he even ate those with ketchup- yuck!

2 year olds will argue about anything…

Jack’s friend Abby is over today, and while they enjoy playing together, the natural tendency of those of this age to fuss and argue is always an issue. I can understand arguing about who gets to open and close the garage, who is the owner of a particular lump of Play-Doh, and even whose turn it is to play with the lid to the hairspray can, but… when we descend to arguing about who gets to flush Abby’s peepee down the toilet I think we’ve gone over the edge. Somehow the explanation that it’s Abby’s peepee and she gets to decide if she wants to flush the toilet or if she wants to pass on that particular pleasure, just does not get through to Jack. Of course, that may be partly due to the fact that he boo-hooed so loudly about the whole issue that he couldn’t hear me explaining that to him.

Jack @ 33 Months

This month has been incredibly trying with Jack. It seems we’re in a new testing phase and he’s pushing this battle of wills to the outer limits. Mark and I are working on being absolutely consistent with the discipline, because we know that’s the only way we’re going to achieve some measure of peace around here. I’m just praying that we can get through the worst of this before David comes along.

Singing a lovely aria with a double-cheeked piano accompaniment

Jack has always been an early riser, and so am I, so that’s not so terrible. But, since we’ve been here he’s been waking up between 6-6:30am every day, and that’s just TOO early as I look down the road a couple of months at the coming nights when sleep will be scarce. He responds well to sound cues indicating when things should happen, such as the mantle clock “bonging” and telling us we have to go to bed, or the timer going “ding” to tell us we have to get out of the tub. It’s amusing really- if I tell him it’s time to get out of the tub, he screams and fights about it, but if I set the timer, when it dings, he almost never fights about getting out. Anyway… knowing this, I bought him a CD clock radio, and put in a Laurie Berkner CD to serve as the alarm. It’s only been a couple of days, but I think it’s going to work well. I don’t really care when he wakes up, but the rule is that it is not morning time until Laurie starts singing, and he may not get out of his bed. I’ve set the alarm for 6:45 for now, but my goal is to get to at least 7am. It took a couple of weeks being out of the crib, but Jack has finally figured out that he doesn’t have to call for me to get him out of bed. This morning, he came into the bedroom at 6am: “I climbed out Mommy!” I sent him right back to bed and reminded him that it was not morning yet, and he must stay in bed until he heard Laurie Berkner, and I didn’t hear a peep until then!

Jack’s current raison d’être is the garage door. He lives to open and close it. I was trying to wake him up from an extra long nap the other day, and just couldn’t convince him to wake up, until I said “we need to go to the store, do you want to open the garage?” Like Lazarus from his tomb when Jesus said “come forth!”, Jack woke from his dead sleep and ran for the garage.

There may already be signs of the coming jealousy when David comes along… when I pull up my shirt a bit baring my tummy so Jack can feel (or see) David kicking, Jack might put his hand there briefly, but has very little interest, and soon gets frustrated saying, “can you close your tummy Mommy?! Need to play toys!”

Up to no good

Hugs

Don’t move to Texas Jack!!!

Okay Jack, you can let go now…

Jack @ 31 Months

Another month has flown by, and Jack continues to entertain, challenge and amaze us. While he still is very strong willed and throws a tantrum now and then, he finally understands the concept of needing to be in his room until he calms down. I can put him in his room when he loses his cool, and most of the time, he will stay in there a while screaming out his frustration, and then get over it and come out and say “I calmed down Mommy.”

He is very visual, and his memory of things he has seen in the past sort of amazes me. He was looking at Mark’s mother’s cross necklace yesterday, and said “that’s at the church!” We’ve never pointed out the cross before, but he remembered where he had seen it. My mother bought me a white blouse while we were in Texas, and while we were there I tried it on briefly and told Jack I was going to show Mommaw that it fit. I had it on for maybe 2 minutes and took it off again. This morning I pulled it out of the closet for the first time since we got back almost 3 weeks ago, and Jack pointed to it and said “you going to show Mommaw it fits?”

I keep trying to get Jack to sing some songs, but he just doesn’t want to much. Lately, he’ll sing the alphabet song with me, but for some reason he feels he must put his hands over his eyes when he sings. It’s like he’s shy about singing or something.

Daddy finally got to buy Jack some boots yesterday- they’re cute on him:

He rewarded Daddy by asking him in a nice loud voice this morning in the church foyer after Mark came out of the bathroom, “did you go peeepeeeee Daddy?”

A couple of pictures

Mom says I have to put something on my blog… heheh. I’m too busy to keep this one updated very well. I’ve been blessed with lots of business and just sorta keeping my head above water. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures:

Jack fell asleep sitting up while he was sick last week:

Mom took this picture while they were out walking in Texas on one of the few nice days we had. (Of course, Laura went last week and they had 70 degree weather the whole time.) Note the green in the grass behind him, even in January!

Jack @ 30 Months

At 2.5 years old, Jack is desperately seeking to have some control over his life. Pretty standard behavior for his age I assume, and I need to be doing a better job at offering him a couple of choices when I can instead of just issuing commands all the time. We’re in Texas right now, visiting family, and when we told him we were going to Texas on an airplane, we thought he would be really excited to get to ride in one. When he said he didn’t want to go up in the air, we just took it as his standard negative response, trying to assert some control and really thought the plane ride would be fine. Wrong. He was fine sitting in the airplane, and fine when the plane was moving on the ground, but when it took off, Jack went nuts. “I want to go DOOOOWN!” Screaming, kicking and flailing ensued. Mark used to be a flight attendant years ago, and he said he had never seen a kid flip out that badly. After trying to comfort him by rocking him in my seat, and giving him the jellybeans I had brought along for an emergency, and turning on the DVD player, I finally had to take him back to the lavatory. He was fine in the lavatory. He played with the water, and kept trying to push the Flush button, but when I tried to take him back out, he flipped out again. So…. we spent at least an hour and half in there. I am now very familiar with all the accoutrements in an airplane lavatory. FINALLY, he fell asleep and I was able to take him back out and even get him in his seat- he didn’t wake up until we were at the gate.

We changed planes in Dallas, and we even talked briefly about renting a car to drive the San Antonio area, but decided we had to just bite the bullet. By putting on a big song and dance to distract him with everything we had brought along, and by keeping the shade down, I was able to keep his mind off the fact that we were in the air the second time for the short flight, and we praised the Lord that we didn’t have a repeat of the first flight. Unfortunately, Jack reacts the wrong way to Benedryl, or we would be seriously drugging him up for the flights home. Mark suggested a fifth of whiskey, but I have a feeling Jack would be a mean drunk.

I have worked hard not to end up with habits like rocking Jack to sleep for example, but this month he has realized that he likes to be “petted” before he goes to sleep. He lays down and snuggles up with his cloth diaper “night-night” and his bear and says “Mommy, pet me?” in the most plaintive little voice that I don’t mind if we are in a new bedtime habit. I rub his tummy and stroke his hair a little while before leaving the room and am glad he wants a little “mommy love” before going to sleep.

Jack @ 29 Months

This month has just flown by- it seems like I was just taking Jack’s 28 month picture. We have definitely seen some improvement in him this month with regards to the tantrum throwing. He used to throw about 1 a day and now I can’t even remember the last big tantrum he threw. It’s more fun to talk to him all the time. He is rarely quiet, and goes about narrating his life- everything he thinks, feels and sees comes out of his mouth. Much of his communication is negative right now, as he is obviously getting tired of being told what to do all the time and wants to have a say in things.

Thanks to Mark, Jack has discovered that he loves sour candy and Mark gives him a couple pieces each night. Jack walks around the apartment saying “I got candy, I got candy”, and he hoards the last piece, sometimes for up to an hour, not wanting it to be gone.

He also has a new love for Ernie from Sesame Street. He especially likes to watch Bert & Ernie videos on YouTube. Check out this one - it even made me and Mark laugh.

We’ve told him he’s going to be a big brother, and that we’re going to have a new baby to play with next year. When we ask him where the baby is, he points to my tummy and says “right there.” One morning, he laid down on his back after saying that, and pointed to his tummy, saying “I’ve got a baby too!” I’ve discovered that being pregnant with the second one is much harder… it’s much easier to go to work and sit at a desk all day than to chase kids around all day. When I was pregnant with Jack, I was working during the day and then going to downtown Chicago to perform an opera every other night or so, but somehow I’m much more tired with this one. Jack is pretty good about letting me lay down on the futon in his room and he plays on his own. He used to demand “Mommy get up!” when I would do that, but maybe now he sees that would be futile.

Kicky

Here’s another one: Jack and Emily doing the Charleston!  These crack me up!

Groovy

I keep trying to embed this video in the blog, but it’s goofing things up in Firefox, so instead click here to check out Jack and Emily grooving to some disco music.