baby dolly

Our next one is being tooled around in this.

Daddy Types, the weblog for new dads

This excerpt from Daddy Types' latest review of gear made me think of my wife, who is jonesin' for a new genie:

"So far, no improvements on the Diaper Genie, whose stock is dropping in our house, by the way. It's starting to smell even without diapers in it. And the whole mechanism's pissing me off."

Gettin' to it

So its about time for a cuteness update. Basically little D is so flippin cute you will go blind if you stare at him too long.

Chow Hound. I don't want to be his mother when he hits the teen growth spurt. He has cut back on the late night snacks but he could feed himself finger foods til the cows come home. We taught him the sign for "more". He doesn't do it quite right, it usually comes out as a clap, but boy howdy does he mean business. Unless you are prepared to share, please don't eat PBJ's or ice cream round the monster. He loves cheese and crackers and is working on a well rounded wine list too. It mostly consists of watered down apple juice, but the year is really good. My favorite is when he stuffs his cheeks like a chipmonk, has crackers in both hands, and still claps for more. I forsee chocolate bars in his pillow case in the future.

Speaking of obscure references to his mother, he has my stranger night habits. The main one being, we have to have something in our hands to sleep. He still doesn't have sucking his thumb and rubbing a blankie down like I did as a kid, instead he takes two binks to go to sleep. One to suck and the other to manipulate back and forth in his hands. This works much better than his earlier habit of holding our fingers until he went to sleep. At least now we can enjoy him from afar. The other night I went in to check on him and he had tossed a bink over the side of the crib and fell asleep holding on to the railing instead. Jason said one night David curled up like a ball on his tummy and knees and his arm was waving around at the top of his head like a windshield wiper looking for a bink. He promptly found it, suck it in his mouth and went on about his sleeping business.

In preperation for his up coming birthday we have been trying to get him to hold one finger up when we ask him how old he is. He did it for the first time tonight at G.Grandma H's house. This kid is going places, let me tell you. Grandpa Alex put headphones on him this afternoon with some reggae music. Not only did he do a little wiggle while listening, TWICE he clapped for more when Alex took the headphones off. Genius in the making here folks. He also loves to play the piano and sing. I don't care if social work doesn't pay, a few music lessons and a good agent and our retirement is in the bag.

He still leaves off the end of all words which makes it difficult to get what he is saying sometimes. "Do you want the ball or the bottle?" Tuff and dog sound alot alike too. The cutiest thing is when he says "uh oh" after he drops something on the floor. He looks so serious when he says it.

No first steps yet but I think they are coming. Hopefully when I'm around but I wouldn't bet on it. If you are looking for something for his birthday find a bunch of people to go in together and get him a rock climbing wall. This kid is going all the way to the top!

apple monster

So, a couple of days ago, David was eating an apple. When he was done, I picked all the bits of apple he left on his tray and on his lap and in his chair and on the foot rest and on the floor.

I reassembled them. Ok, I sort of scrunched them together. What I had was a piece of apple basically the same size as what I originally had given him.

Basically, he eats apples the same way that Cookie Monster eats cookies. He crams it into his mouth, chews it up, lets it fall out, and puts some more in.

Today, Nikki fed him goldfish (the cracker).

Later, monster fans.

St. Valentine's Day

Skylar sent mom and Jaime robes for Valentine's day. In case your monitor is not properly calibrated, they are red.

Midtown

I am working at my desk here at the house, which is within a half-mile of
two catholic churches and Topeka High School, all of which have bell
towers.

Currently one of the churches is playing Beethoven's "Ode to
Joy."

Cool.

a day in the life of david

Following is a series of photographs taken yesterday, an average Friday for David. Enjoy.


Asleep in the morning. Still dozing after a long night of uninterrupted sleep (ha!). Notice that he is face down, against the bumper, with a plush toy in keeping with pediatrician recommendations.



"Good morning world!" Specifically, good morning mommy, who is behind me.



After arising and getting dressed, we are off to Nikki's, the babysitter, who lives across the street.


The babysitter has a two-year-old, Collin, whom David loves and who loves David.


David also loves the cat food, so it has to be put up on the counter when he is around.

Then I leave and spend a long dark morning without him. While at Nikki's, he plays, eats toast with peanut butter, and chases the cat. Then he goes down for a nap, almost voluntarily (hee!).


I usually arrive to pick him up just when he awakes. Collin is excited to get in the crib, which has springs, and jump. Nikki is pictured here.



Home for lunch. Here, he is eating an apple, quite a task with six teeth.


Then, more playing. This is my favorite ball. It is essentially a dodgeball-type that glows in the dark.


His favorite ball is the Vtech Move and Crawl Ball, a self-propelled, talking, dancing, flashing, singing ball. Grandpa Brice bought it for him in a act of bitter spite.

Then, I'm off to the office and Jaime takes over.


"Dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadad!"


After much playing and conversations about dada and the ball, it's nap time. Usually, nap time is in the crib, but today, Jaime needed to clip his nails, which can only be done when he is sleeping.


After he awakes, its dinner time. He sometimes tries to feed himself with this big plastic handle with a little nub at the end that we can stick some food on for him to smear all over his face.


After dinner, playtime again, during which David tries to escape.



"What the heck is this Christmas Tree still doing here?"


Finally, he has be confined for his own safety.


At bedtime, he gets medicine. It looks terrible but he actually just gets half a teaspoon of allergy medicine, which he likes.


"Goodnight Moon"

Goodnight David.

supernanny

For two weeks in a row Jaime and I have watched Supernanny. While the excessive production, overly-dramatic editing, and silly attempts at spontaneity are as annoying as any reality show or episode of "60 Minutes," the content is tres interessant. As you would guess, Supernanny focuses much more on the parents' behavior than on the children's. Jaime and I find ourselves oscillating from outright scorn that anyone could really be such clueless parents, to absolute terror that maybe we are clueless parents and this is what awaits us.

Wait and see, superfans.

baby bathing kills local wildlife

The environmental impact from the latest of a series of deadly baths in
the Midwest.

Playin'

Playin'

Playin'

HERE'S DAVID!!

ha ha! shocking!

From Daddy Types: "If your child strays too far, the Angel Alert will deliver a harmless but incapacitating electric shock."

mini me

So I found a new toy. It's a bit of code that allows me to create a blog within a blog. I like this because I see lots of stuff online that I want to tell you about that is not "mission related." I.E. not about David Jaime or Jason.

So, if you look to your right, you will see a new header, "miniblog," at the top of the side bar. Below that, you will see . . .

well, nothing, for most of you.

It seems this special bit of code only works with Mozilla/Netscape browsers.

Here is a graphical representation of the browsers used by last 100 visitors to this blog.


As you can see, that means four of you can view the miniblog.

GET FIREFOX, PEOPLE.

I will continue to work on this project as time allows (read: as much time as my conscience allows me to waste). I bet there are a couple of Web-savvy folks out there (Val, Dn. Matthew, Jason) who can crack this nut for me.

Later, Internet Explorer slaves fans.

David's Godfather reads

Jason just shared with me that he is reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, so I thought I would share it with y'all.

i promise to take good care of my son's teeth

While doing "research" for an article I'm writing, I visited The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which is pushing oral hygene for kids this month. Apparently oral and dental disease is the most common chronic disease among American children.

The kicker--it can impair their ability to learn. If we have learned anything it is this: if you want me to take action on an issue, demonstrate how it may affect my son's interest in the complete set of Harvard Classics that I'm saving up to buy for his twelfth birthday.