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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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

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

Naked Time!

The fall has been even busier than expected -- go figure! I (Matt) am certainly enjoying teaching, but I'm also looking forward to a time when I can reduce my workload to a mere one full time job. Ruth Ann has finally hired for some of the open positions at her organization, so that in theory should help her out. But busy we are nonetheless.

Jonah meanwhile keeps on growing. He's nearing one year (coming up December 14)! And he's certainly not an infant anymore -- it's amazing to look at the difference between now and the early pictures on this blog. But there's one thing about Jonah that's been constant across the months: he loves being naked!

Sure, it's true, who doesn't love being naked. But it's apparently a very special thing for babies. Every time he gets naked, whether for a temporary clothing-change, a short term bath, or a longer-term naked romp in the backyard, his delight and enthusiasm is the same. We, on the other hand, have some mixed feelings. On one hand, there's sharing in Jonah's delight with his natural state. On the other hand...well, it's mostly too disgusting to write about in much detail, but suffice it to say that naked + not potty trained has led to some very unsavory situations. Were that we were our youthful hippy selves from days of yore, unconcerned with niceties like sanitation. But since we are who we are now, we do our best to strike a balance between our needs for basic sanitation with Jonah's need for naked time... and we hope that we all come out ok through the occassional (and, ideally, well timed) extended bits of naked time in the backyard!

Fall 2007

Fall is here, and this freight train called life keeps rolling along. We're both busy at work, in mostly a good way -- I (Matt) am even more busy, having started a second job teaching part time at a law school, but so far the joy of teaching is worth the extra pain and late nights, so I'm dealing as best I can.

Jonah just keeps on growing. One bit of good news: he's now sleeping through the night! After my optimistic blog post in May, his sleeping regressed again, and we had a few more months of night wakings (albeit a little less frequent, at least). However, a few weeks ago we woke to discover that he'd slept all the way 'til morning. We'd like to think the "sleep training", sleep consultant (yup, for real!) and/or innumerable sleep-related books we read finally came together to produce the desired result, but more likely Jonah just made up his mind that now was the time to start sleeping better. In any event, for the last few weeks, he's been reliably sleeping from 7pm to 6am, and whatever the reason, we're counting our blessings.

It's more than just the sleep, though. There's been a real change in Jonah's personality and demeanor these last few months, and I think both Ruth Ann and I would say that he has become a real joy to be around. In fact -- dare we tempt fate? -- we might say he's become an "easy kid"! He's a smiley, happy and remarkably even-tempered. He rarely cries, except for the occasional trouble going to sleep. And he has an insatiable curiosity, and a contagious sense of wonder, about all that the world has to offer. While being a parent has always been a special experience, we certainly feel like we took some lumps early on, and so this new phase has been especially welcome.

And last but not least, as of a few days ago he's got two new teeth! You can see the teeth, and a whole lot more, in our newest picture roll. Enjoy!

Fall 2007

New Adventures

After several weeks of backing himself into corners, under beds, and into other akward spots, we're proud to announce that Jonah has finally mastered the art of crawling forward! Trouble is soon to follow, but for now his crawling is very cute.


Another new adventure for Jonah has been going on bike rides. I (Matt) found a used tow-behind bike trailer and have taken Jonah for several rides. Jonah is remarkably content to sit in the trailer and watch the world go by, and I can now get a workout in on weekends while entertaining Jonah at the same time. So far we've taken the Bart out over (through, really) the hills, then rode out by Orinda and Lafayette. We're not breaking any speed records, but at least I get some bonus perseverance points for towing Jonah up big hills!