in the realm of the fictionman

Kid Logic

This morning Jareth said, "When I'm big, I'll be in Last grade."

I can see how that makes sense to a kid who knows he'll be starting First grade next year...

Potty Training

Yesterday we had a potty party for Jareth, based on material presented in Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day: Proven Secrets of the Potty Pro.

The basic idea is to turn potty training into a fun and rewarding event. He started off by getting his first "doll," (Paul) which got to be his own baby. He had been pretending to be a daddy to his stuffed puppy, so the groundwork was already there. The doll is one that wets, and came with his own potty.

We spent the morning with him teaching Paul how to use the potty, and to keep pants clean and dry. Along the way were little treats as reward for each success, or even good try. Lots of encouragement. And when the doll failed, we reminded the doll that we don't do that in our pants.

The book mentioned the widened, suprised eyes the first time the kid finds the doll with wet pants. Yep, right on that count.

Now, this kid is smart. Despite my trying to be discrete about it, he noticed that the doll has to be sqeezed to pee. At one point Paul is sitting on his potty "practicing" after having already had an accident. "Skoosh him so he can tinkle, Daddy," Jareth insists.

The turn around came when I sent Jareth to go get something, and squirted some choclate frosting in Paul's pants. Eventually we found it, after both Jareth and I decided it wasn't our poopy I smelled. His pants were clean. He looked a little stunned that Paul had done that. There was that clear click in Jareth's head. Paul can do that?!? We reminded Paul that big kids don't poopy in their big kid pants.

Some point not long after that Jareth did. Oh, how he tried to deny it. He didn't want to admit to me or let me find out that he had. He wanted to be a big boy and didn't want to have done that in his own pants. I explained it was okay, sometimes accidents were going to happen.

It did not take long at all before he was able to pee in the potty just about every time he sat on it. He had the right proud/excited "I'm tinkling!" reaction when he succeded. He got rewards for staying dry.

So he now can use the potty. What he hasn't grasped, and what I'm kinda at a loss to figure out how to teach him, is how to know before and how to hold it to wait.

Potty, yes.
Bladder control, not yet.

Partial victory. We'll see how today goes. Amy'll do some of it on her own while I'm helping Lindsay and Scott move. After that I'll come over and help out more with Jareth.

Today's KidQuote

I go into Jareth's room to get him when I get home.

He climbs up and turns on the light.

"I turned on the light so you can see the Dark," he proudly tells me...

Of Growing Vocabularies

Jareth has picked up another Mommy-ism. One of Amy's expressions.

I was putting some dishes in the dishwasher while he was sitting in his chair after breakfast. He sees a big serving spoon:

"That's a big honkin' spoon."

Okay, thanks for checking...

Amy's out at class, leaving me with Jareth and a short to-do list. One item on the list: Laundry.

So I'm in the laundry room emptying the dryer, folding each item as it comes out. Jareth is in the room, naming things as I pull them out.

Towards the end, for each of the the last five or six items, while I'm folding he pokes his head inside, then looks back at me to declare:

"Nobody inside."

I don't know where he got that one, but I couldn't help but laugh.

Another First and Sense of Humor

Today Amy had an appointment to get her hair cut. I met her there. While she was getting her hair cut Jareth got thirsty. His sippy-cup was in the car, but we had a water bottle. He was willing to learn to drink from that, and it was a success.

Of course, it occurs to me that we forgot to get a picture for Amy to post. But she'll blog about it, no doubt.

Tonight, just a little while ago, he applied that learning to figure out how to drink from a regular cup on his own. He's so proud of doing it, too.

Very cute.

On a different note, someone at work accused me of not having a sense of humor. I replied, of course I did--like so many other things it's in a box in the garage.

Just before I left today I sold a 1970 pop-up camper for $500. We had it priced at almost $600, and most people who looked at it thought it was overpriced at that. Because I was literally on my way out at the time, I had John (the original salesman) finish the paperwork for me. Tomorrow I'll make a show of asking if anyone can make change for a quarter in case I need to split the commission... :-)

One hour short

He's 20 months old. For the first three months there was a lot of no sleeping. At his three-month checkup his doctor said he'd start sleeping through the night soon. I think it was two nights later that he did. Since then he's only woken us up twice three times.

This time it was 4am. I hugged him, gave him some water, changed him (just wet), everything. I even made and offered him a bottle, which he wanted nothing to do with.

No, he wanted to be on the floor playing. But that won't do. His room is safe for him to be loose in for a while, but he's not ready to be just playing on it for several hours at a time. And it'd be another four or five before it's actually time for him to officially be up.

In the end it took putting him in there and letting him cry it out. It took him about 45 minutes, but it sounds like he's asleep now.

G'morning world...

Little Boy Stuff

Because Amy blogs every day she often blogs about the things in my life before I've had a chance to.

But, at the risk of repeating things she's already said, Jareth did some of the cutest things yesterday.

He's definitely watching what we do and trying to be like us. Yesterday Amy and I were snacking on chips and salsa. Clear Tupperware bowl of white chips, small glass dish of salsa (a bit orange in color...the relevancy is coming). Knowing he'd want to munch on stuff if we were, and knowing he doesn't chew chips all that well, we set him up with snacks of his own. Clear Tupperware bowl of white crackers, small little plastic dish of kid-friendly fruit snacks, largely orange.

He saw us dipping our white chips into the bowls of orange-ish stuff, and then I saw that he was dipping his crackers into his little bowl before eating them. Too cute.

And he's drinking from his sippy-cup by himself again, which he had stopped doing for a while. Sometimes he wants to be pampered, sometimes he wants to be independent. But yesterday he even started putting it back on a coaster, just like we do with our drinks.

And yesterday morning, while we were all hanging out on the bed waking up Mommy, I was massaging part of her back that'd been troubling her. A couple of times Jareth came over and rubbed her back, too.

So yesterday we all played and kept getting to say, "Oh, that's sooo cute!"

After my post on Quick Shtick Writing I'll go wake up Amy and then we'll get Jareth up. Who knows what today will bring...

I Think Productivity Will Be Low Today...

Jareth got a piano toy from Jenna back at his birthday. When he presses the keys, an animal band on the top dances and plays instruments.

It was a very cool toy.

But it has this demo button. When you press that, it plays a song for twenty seconds or so. It also seems louder in demo mode.

Yesterday Amy taught him to press that button.

Now he won't stop! Over and over, back to back!

He's mostly distracted by something else at the moment, but we just sat through half an hour of not being able to concentrate over it.

It might have to be an "other room" toy for a while...

(Oh, I searched and searched looking for a picture of it, but I can't find it online anywhere.)

Discovery in the Bath

Today was bath time. No bubbles this time. Partly I forgot.

So there he is, sitting in the warm water with me, when he finds something.

Water.

All over the place.

Splish.

Splash.

Splish.

Splash.

And then splishity-splashity-splishity-splashity with both hands.

Oh, and gleeful smiling. Did I mention that?

Today's lunchtime PB&J has pretty much undone much of the bath-time cleaning effort. Oh, well. He's still really cute.

Learning

I love watching Jareth learn things.

He's getting better at dexterity lately. He likes turning the stiff pages in his books. He has an abacus-like thing on his swing. It's rings that slide back and forth. He likes to stand in front of it and move the rings one-by-one from one side to the other, and then back again. Usually he's doing that with just one finger.

For his birthday I got him the book Tails, by Matthew van Fleet. It's about animals and the different kinds of tails they all have. On each page there are textures to feel. There are fur inserts for furry tails, and scaly textures for scaly tails, and shiny plastic foils on the peacock tail, and so on. At first he was fascinated by the colors, and being able to turn the thick pages. Now he has realized that there are those things to feel, and he loves checking them out. (By the way, I highly recommend the book as a gift for toddlers!)

He also got from my sister-in-law Jenna a piano thing. on the top of it is a little symphony of animals playing instruments, and they all move whenever the piano keys are pressed. The whole thing can also do five or so different instruments. He loves watching it go. At first he kept trying to manipulate the animals to try and make them go. I've been gradually working on getting him to figure it out. Now he knows that it's the keys that make it happen, he just isn't quite pressing hard enough. But watching the development has been great.

I love that he's letting me see the world all over again. I thank him for that on a regular basis.

Jareth at 9 months, one of my favorite pictures so far...

Jareth Irony

It's time to wake up the finally napping baby, change him, and put him to bed.

Sometimes life's funny like that.

Baby Army?

The things I find myself thinking because of this little boy of mine...

That's it, grab that ducky by the head and throw it, that's a good boy...

And today he's in some of his new clothes from yesterday (blogged by Amy). Today's is a camoflage shirt that says

Pee
all you
can pee

Ball!

Tonight I played ball with my nine month old son.

No, really.

His Great Grandma Howard knits stuffed balls for babies as a charity thing. They're soft, pastel colors, a touch bigger than my fist. She gave us one back while Amy was still pregnant, if not even before that, for our first child.

He's at the point now where he picks things up and lets go of them while his hand is in motion. Most of the things that get picked up get tossed.

So he was sitting on the floor, and I rolled the ball to him to see what he would do. He picked it up, and it got tossed back to me. So I rolled it back. He picked it up, and tossed it again. We kept going like this for ten or fifteen minutes. Sometimes he'd toss it behind him, and sometimes it would end up right there by him. But no matter where it did or didn't go, he would wait for me to pick it up. He knew it was my turn. Definitely reminded me of the Indigo Children article I read.

Part of today's adventure

Part of today's adventure was cutting Jareth's hair. He has already had his official first haircut; we have the cuttings for the baby book. But for at least the basic trims, it makes sense to learn how to do it ourselves, rather than pay $10-15 at a time. Me, my hair gets trimmed once every year or three, so I don't cost us much, but his hair should be kept shorter than that.

And now is the time to learn and practice how to do it. Now, before he ends up self conscious about it later. At least this way if we mess it up, he won't be aware of it.

All things considered, it turned out pretty well. Bangs a little shorter than they needed to be, and not quite even, but it doesn't look bad. Plus, I learned from it, and I can do it better next time. Amy wasn't feeling brave enough, so it looks like hair cutting will be a father thing. My mom cut my hair for the longest time, so it's an interesting reversal.

I keep seeing examples of people (some of whom I work with) who get more satisfaction out of their work than out of their families. Maybe other men don't get the same experience and adventure out of fatherhood that I do. Maybe my job just isn't as cool as theirs. In the end, I don't think it's me that's the one missing out.

He was definitely unhappy.

He lay on the ground, helpless.  He lacked the strength to walk.  He could not even crawl, his legs would not obey him.  He propped himself up on his arms, but he was unable to drag himself.  He collapsed to the floor.

He could see it—but it was so far away.  Just out of reach, it might as well have been a world away.  He reached with all his might, what little he had, but he simply could not reach it.  It was taunting him, eluding him.  He had to have it.  He cried out in frustration, but no help came.

But he could roll, after a fashion.  With his arms, he could turn himself slowly.  And then he could roll himself closer.  Aha!

At last it was his.  He had it.  He was happy.  For happiness is a fuzzy elephant.