News Flash

As many of you know, we have some news. For those of you who don't...well, um, we have some news.



I think Jonah is figuring it out. Are you?

If not, see if this video helps:

Happy Hanukkah!

December is over, as -- so they tell me -- is the whole of 2008. But nonetheless, here's wishing you a (slightly belated) Happy Hanukkah!
_______________________________________


_______________________________________

It's been a quiet month of December in some ways. For various reasons we've been sticking close to home. It's also been a month of big events: Matt finished his second semester of teaching, to a mixture of satisfaction and relief. Ruth Ann has left her job, wrapping up 5-1/2 very accomplished years as Executive Director of Rebuilding Together San Francisco.

And Jonah Baer turned two years old on December 14, wrapping up a year of mind-boggling change. Everyone who's ever been a parent seems to tell you that kids really grow up fast -- and let me tell you something: they aren't kidding! It's hard to fathom that just about a year ago Jonah was truly an infant -- just learning to crawl with competence, not yet saying anything we recognized as a word. In the relatively short span of a year, he's learned:

* To walk, then run (so much so that now it often seems he's got only two speeds: stop and running full speed!)

* To talk up a storm, stringing four or more words together at a clip.

* To recognize shapes -- circles, squares and stars -- and colors (albeit less reliably) -- red, yellow, green and his favorite purple.

* To begin to count by numbers -- one, two, three... although more often than not skipping around... three, seven, eight.

Even in just the last few weeks his communication skills have seemed to grow leaps and bounds. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels like in some ways his talking has become, well, more "grown up." I think it's not just the words he says, but the growing intelligence that is clearly at work in the background -- for example, he often links concepts: sees the picture of scissors and says "haircut"; or (my recent favorite) hears "mac and cheese" and says "Karen and Mac" (Mac being Karen's dog). For a being who couldn't get out a single-syllable word a year ago, this is truly rocket science -- what have any of the rest of us done in the last year that compares!

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:

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:

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.

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?
____________________________________________________


In the backyard, with chalk, it's the cutest baby ever.
____________________________________________________

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!)

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.