Saturday, November 8, 2008

More Fun in the Fall!

I've been meaning to add a new post here for weeks, and even put the video and pictures together back in September. That, I guess, should tell you something about how the fall is going. With Ruth Ann busy at work and me moonlighting as a teacher at Stanford again we aren't finding ourselves with much in the way of free time.

There's a lot to tell about what's going on with Jonah, but they tell me a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's 19,000 words, plus however much credit I get for a video:

Exhibit A: Jonah Baer Can Dance. He's got moves, that kid. He'll dance to almost anything, sometimes even stopping on the sidewalk to dance to the music that drifts out from nearby stores. Given the choice though, he seems to prefer the blues. Well, that and Flight of the Conchords...



Exhibit B: We Still Take Some Pictures. It's true - if you graphed the frequency with which we've been taking pictures over time, it would look a lot like a graph of the value of your 401(k). Well maybe not with as precipitious a drop, but certainly the frequency has gone down. Still, we did manage to take a few pictures this fall, and here are the highlights:

Friday, October 24, 2008

More Words from Jonah

Jonah has always been a verbal kid -- a fact his mother, never short on words herself, finds unsurprising. In fact, for a while now has has been speaking in complete sentences, which he delivers in a very animated and emphatic manner. Unfortunately, however, to our adult ears, his sentences are almost completely unintelligible. Still it's pretty amazing to hear Jonah immitate the patterns of adult communication.

And we can see that in not too long, Jonah's sentences will turn into words we can fully understand. His vocabulary has continued to grow over the last few months, and in recent weeks it has really blossomed. And overall his pronunciation has gotten quite good, although there are a few really cute mispronunciations that we can't bear to correct ("opie," for open; and "tummel," for tunnel). He's mastered the two-word sentence -- for example, "up bed" (I'd like to get up on the bed now, please) and "no shoes" (pretty self-explanatory, I think) -- and longer sentences seem like they're right over the horizon.

Here's an example of where he's at now, showing off his pronunciation skills:

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Promotes Toddling

In just the last few days something small but notable happened: Jonah started towing around his toddling pull-toys -- of which he has several -- and get this, 'cause this is the important part: he's towing them by their string!

Pull-toys seem to be popular baby gifts, and for going on 20 months now we've had a bunch of them lying around. But never once (until just now) has Jonah shown the slightest interest in using them in their intended manner. So, naturally, we had eventually concluded that the whole pull-toy industry was just a hoax designed to sell more toys to witless parents. Then - lo! - out of nowhere Jonah starts pulling the toys around like he's read some sort of manual on how to act like a baby.

So, go figure, from time to time these toys really do get used as intended. I'm sure it's only going to be a couple months more before Jonah learns that a pull-toy, when whirled about by its string, makes a convincing facsimile of a medieval mace.

But in the meantime, it's pretty darn sweet to watch him tow his wooden snail (and his musical turtle, and his bear-in-a-boat...) around by its string.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Jonah is the Cutest!

We think Jonah is the cutest kid around, and we can't understand why everyone we meet doesn't immediately acknowledge this fact. Maybe we're biased -- who knows? -- anything's possible... But really -- isn't he cute?
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In the backyard, with chalk, it's the cutest baby ever.
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For us and our cute kid, summer has been sailing by. We just spent a nice Sunday up in the north bay. In the morning, we drove up to Santa Rosa and met our friends Scott and Molly and their 18 month old daughter Audrey (who were up there to watch another friend run the Vineman triathlon) at Howarth Park, which is this ridiculously big kid's park with a half-dozen different play structures, ponies, trains and a merry-go-round. If you're ever in Santa Rosa with kids between 1 and 11 -- unlikely, I know -- you should really check it out. We then drove over to Sonoma while Jonah took a quick snooze in the carseat, then hopped on bikes (with Jonah in the Burley trailer) for a 20 mile ride through wine country. We had grilled cheese sandwiches and cookies (and Jonah put grilled-cheese-grease handprints all over the mirrored walls) at a cafe in Sonoma. And we managed to make it back down the 80 on a Sunday night without hitting any traffic. All in all a nice way to spend a weekend day -- we need to do more of this.

As summer passes, Jonah continues to grow. Lately it's feeling mostly like "slowly but surely" growing. Nothing dramatic like learning to walk. But there are little things every day, like drawing with crayons and chalk, learning to climb up on the bed (and the kitchen table!), picking up a new word. Each day a new "baby step" toward growing up, I guess.

There have been a few rough patches too, no doubt. A few weeks ago, Jonah was getting in four new molars and at the same time we were weaning him off the morning nursing. Much as Ruth Ann loves the nursing, it was getting exhausting for her, and with us thinking about trying for #2 (yup!) the concept of nursing and growing another baby at the same time was just too much. So for a stretch of days, morning wake-up duties were entirely mine. And what fun they were! Jonah would wake up early and grumpy (you might too if you were growing four new teeth, I suppose), and I'd drag me and my sore back out of bed, over to Jonah's room, and through his door with as cheerful a "good morning" as I could muster. Jonah would take one look at me, quickly determine that I was not the one with the long hair and breasts, and throw himself on the floor of the crib, wailing with maximum intensity. Talk about a rough wake-up. Good news is that phase has passed and lately Jonah is back to waking up cheerfully, babbling away in his crib until someone comes in to get him and start the day.

Jonah was having so much fun this summer, he insisted on putting together this slideshow to prove it to you. (Clicking on the slideshow should get you bigger pictures -- enjoy!)

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Back to Hawaii

Hey, remember these guys?



Well, here they are again -- it's one year later, Jonah is bigger, Mommy and Daddy have a few more grey hairs, and we're all back in Hawaii!
From Hawaii (2008)

That's right, at then end of May we took a last-minute trip to Kauai, Hawaii. This was a vacation on toddler time: we didn't go to far (mostly just to the beach, and occasionally for a hike), took naps in the afternoon, and tried to go to bed early. Jonah was much more mobile this time around, of course, and enjoyed sitting in the surf and playing with sand. We took a few pictures too, which you can access with the link in the photo above.

"And was it relaxing?" you ask (as everyone did). Well, here's a little slice of life on vacation with a toddler. Watch it and you be the judge.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Jonah Talks!

But wait, there's more: now he talks too! Jonah's vocabularly has been growing steadily over the last few weeks. Popular words include: agua (water of any shape or size, from drinking water to the Pacific Ocean), 'nana (banana), 'ack-ack (cracker), shoes, socks, hat, doggie, cat, duckie (for both ducks and more or less anything else Jonah can't figure out the word for), horse and 'ish (aka fish). Jonah also has a few signs, like the sign for more (fingers pointing at palm) and his own one-of-a-kind sign for music, which involves waiving his hands like a maestro while clucking his tounge.

We tried to capture some of this on video -- here's the result:

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Jonah is Walking!

Yup, finally! It actually started happening around Rebuilding Weekend (April 26-27). But Jonah, having "walked" around for months beforehand while towing a patient adult by the fingers, quickly advanced from drunken staggering (as shown in the video here), to toddling, to nearly running. At this point, you'd never know he's been walking only three weeks. We're still a little dumbfounded by Jonah's new skill -- the fact that we can put him down and have him stand up and walk off somehow doesn't quite square (mentally) with the less-mobile Jonah that we've known for the last 16 months -- but Jonah seems entirely at home with the new skill and happy to be walking (and running) everywhere his little feet can take him.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Few of His Favorite Things

I just recently went through Jonah's stuff and boxed up the (now unused) baby toys. Doing this reminded me that I've been meaning for a while to write about some of Jonah's favorite toys. What exactly constitutes his favorite toy is something that changes over time, which I guess is part of the story.

For a while, the clear favorite was the rocking horse gifted to him by his Aunt Ellie. It's a wooden rocking horse that Ellie took the time to handpaint herself (thank you Ellie!). In its heyday Jonah loved nothing better than to pull it out, mount up (a process which, since his legs are a bit short, involved a hair-raising stand-on-the-saddle maneuver in order to get his legs straddling the seat), and rock away with compelte abandon. And all the while, he'd be shouting "be-la-be-la-be!" -- which is apparently baby-speak for "giddyup!" The most notable thing however (Ellie, are you still listening?) is that the rocking horse seems to have received less-than-thorough scrutiny from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and every time Jonah rocks away with abandon, he comes within a hair's breadth of completely flipping over backwards. Part of the issue is that when I say he rocks with abandon, I really mean it: he's like a drunken 17 month old cowboy, riding the mechanical bull down at the local bar. The other part of the issue is probably that Ellie and the rocking horse come from Canada and (no doubt due to their inefficient socialist form of government) they have fewer personal injury lawyers.
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Ride em' drunken cowboy!
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Another recurring favorite is the ride-on scooter gifted to him by Bleema and Richard. It has waxed and waned in fashion, but recently Jonah has discovered that his legs are now long enough that he can push himself along under his own power. (Before he could get on the scooter, but then was stuck with beeseching us to push him around.)

And then there's also the noise-making toys. Try as we might to interest Jonah in vegan organic wooden blocks and other similar politically-correct playthings, there's nothing he finds quite as delightful as a noisy plastic battery-operated gadget. If I could find a way to put the sound files up on this blog, I surely would, as it pains me to know that you're all missing out on experiencing this precious slice of childhood.

Anyway, if I can't share the sounds of childhood, at least enjoy a few more pictures:

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Does Jonah Need a Haircut? (And Other News)

We don't think so! He's gone 15 months without, and as far as we're concerned (and except for the occasional dreadlock) he looks great! And, go figure, Jonah has been growing right along with his hair. He's now fully a toddler: he seems to be on the verge of walking, on the verge of talking, and, to some combination of our amazement and dismay, on the verge of become his own independent little person.
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Does Jonah need a haircut? "No-no-no-no-
no-no-no-no," he says.

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So let's talk about the talking thing for a moment: In recent weeks, Jonah has starting to make a surprising number of sounds that resemble real grown-up words. One of the first to arrive was "Ella", which is not surprising since it's probably the most frequently-spoken word in our house (e.g., "Ella, don't eat that!" "Ella, do you have to lie right in the middle of the doorway?" "Ella, please don't dismember the mailman!" and so forth.) We also seem to be getting a reliable "ma-ma" and "ball". And Da-da (who is still waiting in vain to hear his name) swears that Jonah once read most of the words to "Goodnight Gorilla" aloud, although that feat has not been repeated since.

However, we're chagrined, and worried, to report that the very first word seems to have been that all-time toddler favorite: "no". Or, in its more emphatic version, an unbroken string of syllables: "no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no". For this gift, we place the blame squarely in the lap of Eric Hill, a man we've never met, but who we know as the "author" (and the appropriateness of that honorific is debatable here) of the world's worst children's book: "Where's Spot?"



Let us relate the plot of "Where's Spot?" (and don't worry, it won't take long): the story involves the timeless theme of a mother's search for her child. In this case, Mama dog is looking in various rooms in a house for her baby ("Spot") in order to feed him dinner. In each room, Mama dog asks about a particular location ("Is he behind the door?" "Is he under the bed?") and the reader is invited to open a little paper door or flip up a little paper bedskirt so as to look for himself. But Spot isn't in any of these locations. Instead -- inexplicably -- there are a variety of unlikely and somewhat scary other animals. There's a creepy bear behind the door, a scary aligator under the bed, and so forth. And, more importantly for our purposes, each time the reader is left with is the same answer: a simple, plain, unadorned "NO". No other dialogue. No variation in plot. No explanation as to why this menagerie is hanging around the house. Nothing except one big fat "NO" after another. And this, dear reader, is our child's favorite book. So I suppose its no surprise that his first word was what it was...

All this ranting aside, I do have to say: it's still incredibly cute to hear Jonah read along with "Where's Spot" in his quiet, hesitating, little baby voice. I know at some point (really soon, probably) I'll have heard more "no's" than I can bear. But at the moment, there's still a sense of wonder that -- whatever the words -- my baby is finding his voice.
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Saturday, February 16, 2008

Tahoe :-(

We gave a try to a vacation last week. It sounded good in principle. But in practice it turned out to be more or less a total bust.
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"Have fun, dammit," says Jonah.
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The concept was to go up to Tahoe with our friends Laura and Dave and their baby Judah. They're fun to hang out with (and moving at about our speed, owing to the fact that they also have a 1 year old), and, really, the hanging out with them part was about the only thing that worked out.

Plan was to leave Thursday night. However, all day Wednesday and Thursday Jonah was miserable and wouldn't settle for anything other than being held. Then Thursday a major storm blew in and we decided against driving up at night. Instead we stayed home and tried to comfort an increasingly distressed and unhappy Jonah as he woke every hour or two throughout the night. At about 6 am, after a luxurious two hour uninterrupted period of sleep, Jonah woke again and we decided to make a break for it. We did manage to get to Tahoe (with minimal crying, at that) but Jonah only seemed to get worse, and we ended up at a doctor's (out of network...) with a diagnosis of bronchitis.

Saturday a storm blew in again, Matt spent about 2 hours trying to ski in miserable conditions, and Ruth Ann got the bronchitis. By Sunday morning we had a good two feet of new snow, and (in the highlight of Matt's weekend) had a good ol' time trying to get the Civic dug out and onto a road that was somewhat plowed. Neither happy nor willing to risk more snow, we drove back as the sun came through the clouds, looking at the glorious skiing weather on fresh powder in the rearview.

On Monday, Matt got the bronchitis.

Here's all the pictures we managed to take:
Tahoe 2008

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Jonah Turns One!

It's official: Jonah is one year old! We now understand why parents are always commenting on how fast the time seems to pass. The first year certainly went that way for us. We spent our time working through the everyday challenges (and joys) of life as two working parents with an infant, and suddenly we looked up to find that our son had grown from a helpless tiny grub with no voluntary muscle control to speak of to... well... a somewhat bigger and more wilful grub -- one who can crawl, babble and generally get into far more trouble than a year ago!

So how is Jonah at one year? Well here's a picture of our wild-haired little one, demonstrating his delicate eating habits -- we kind of think this says it all!

To tell you a little more: He crawls (very fast!), though doesn't yet walk. Babbles vociferously, though doesn't yet say much we can understand. He sleeps through the night almost every night. He loves people and is quick to give (and generate) smiles from everyone he meets. Though sometimes exhausting, he's generally a joy to be around!

In fact, the other day we were commenting to friends that after all the struggles and sleepless nights that we had in those early months, Jonah has actually seemed to transform into a remarkably easy baby! That night, Jonah came down with a fever and woke every hour or two, screaming inconsolably. It was just like old times! I can't say that it made us nostolgic, but at least we knew it would pass.

I don't know that we're going to be any better at updating this blog in the new year. We'll do our best, but I think we've now figured out what our rhythm is -- we hope you can live with it. In the meantime, enjoy some pictures from our winter adventures.
December 2007

More Pictures from the Fall

We didn't do so well on updating the blog this fall -- but we did take a few more pictures. Enjoy!
Fall 2007 #2