From the very beginning…
Father’s POV
Crisis of Age
114 years
by morgajel
in Father's POV
During the night, Jackie awoke to Ian sleeping in our bed again. I didn’t catch what they talked about, but Ian whined and stormed out of the room. Afterward, Jackie leaned over to me and said something along the lines of “I think he said he wishes it was the way things were before.”
My 6am memory is fairly muddled, but I think the point was Ian is finally starting to realize that things are changing. Ian has to go to school, Simon gets all of the attention, and now Ian can’t do some of the things he is used to (such as cuddling with momma).
I feed bad for him – getting old sucks. After I got up, I went and laid down on his bed next to him and told him that sometimes I wished things were like they were before Simon was born, too… and sometimes I wish things were like they were before Ian was born. Or before I married momma, or before I started going to kindergarten…
But I’m happy that momma is here, and I’m happy that Ian is here, and I’m even happy that Simon is here. Things change, and sometimes they’re not always good changes, but you have to accept them. Once you accept the change, you realize the new thing might be better than the way things were before.
colors
216 years
“reh”
“owhn”
“lell-low”
“gweeh”
“byuu”
“papah”
I got him to repeat those after me while going through his “what makes a rainbow” book.
Maybe tomorrow we can get him on video doing it.
Story Time
016 years
So I realized the other day that I hadn’t been reading to Ian much since he started walking (and climbing) and decided to remedy that. The previous nightly routine would go something like this:
- Bath
- Brush teeth
- pajamas
- say goodnight to me
- lights off and put him in his crib
- close the door
- one cry, then lay down and go to sleep
This has been the pattern since we moved into the house and it’s mostly worked well. I keep outta jackie’s way for most of it and he goes to bed peacefully. The last two nights it went like this:
- Bath
- Brush teeth
- pajamas
- say goodnight to jackie
- put him in his crib
- read one story
- lights off and close the door
- lay down and go to sleep
The first night he threw a tantrum when I stopped reading and turned off the lights- cried for maybe five minute before laying down and going to sleep (normally it’s just one ‘waaaaaahh!’).
Tonight he was bouncing around on the bed and yelling and such and I’d have to stop every other page and tell him to lay down and be quiet (which he did for a few minutes). The book I’m reading is a bargain book from B&N full of fairytales- the two I’ve read so far were about 8 pages each. When I finished tonight’s story, I said goodnight, turned off the lights and closed his door. Not a peep or complaint out of him.
That’s almost as cool as him gobbling down the peas.
Molars
016 years
So Ian’s first molar broke through the other day- that might explain why he’s been such a brat the last few days. I think they are more on the way- he woke up twice last night screaming bloody murder.
Hurray for children’s motrin.
I’ll try and snag a picture of it if I can get him to hold still later.
I see you…
016 years
by morgajel
in Father's POV
So for those of you not aware, we’ve had some technical difficulties with the move- we still don’t have a stable internet connection and were forced to kick AT&T to the curb. This site, along with our other sites, will be migrated to gopedro.net for hosting to prevent this issue in the future. If you want to set up your own site, he handles both hosting and domain names and can hook you up for a good price. Pedro also has excellent customer service- according to our logs he has an army of testers making sure our youtube videos are functional (but maybe that’s just because Ian rocks).
All of our images will be hosted at flickr, meaning:
- images will download faster and be a more reasonable size
- all current images are broken and need links fixed. Since this is post 222 on the site, that means there’s a lot of links to fix.
I’m still working out some bugs with this site (in particular, you can only see the main page, and I can’t even preview this post), but things should be up and functional in the next few days.
Not the Momma
316 years
So Ian still hasn’t called Jackie “momma” yet. He’ll babble “momomomom” for 10 minutes, but he won’t call her that. Today during dinner, I asked Ian, “Point to momma.”
He turns his head and looks up, then waves to her.
I ask “Ian, say ‘Hi Momma.'”
His reaction? “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
He just laughs this little machine gun laugh. Each time you ask him while Jackie is standing there, he does the same laugh. I feel sorta bad- his vocabulary keeps growing and growing, but he won’t say the one thing Jackie wants to hear.
Terrible Twos
116 years
I think Ian finally hit the terrible twos… he’s starting to repeat “no nononono” and screech when he doesn’t get his way. I think I’m enjoying this a bit more than Jackie because I have no problem telling him no.
Jackie seems to be unable to scold him at times- especially when he slams the laptop lid closed. She requires continual prodding to get after him when he misbehaves. I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it soon enough.
Right now he’s screaming in the kitchen because Jackie won’t pick him up while she’s cutting strawberries.
Fun times.
Decorations for Ian’s room
216 years
Being somewhat of a geek, I want to introduce Ian to learning as early as possible. I need to keep that little melon of his learning so that he can buy me a retirement home as a father’s day gift when he’s 22.
Since Jackie and I are looking for houses and Ian will get his own room soon, I’ve been thinking about some non-conventional decorations we could put in his room to immerse him in learning- visual things that can soak into his brain over time. I’d like to keep away from the simple bland cutesy decorations that you’d see in many kids rooms. I want to challenge him and make him think. Something else we’ve considered is some non-obtrusive features we could add. Take the following examples:
- Magnetic Paint –
Someone had the brilliant idea of mixing iron filings into primer. When the paint dries, put a durable kid’s paint over it and they can use magnets to hang things on the wall. The church were we got married in had this in their daycare room and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. - Music Staff –
This is one of those things that would be easy enough to implement and would work well with the magnetic paint. Basically put a musical Staff border around the room(or a single wall) at a height Ian could reach. With the magnetic paint underneath, Ian could stick notes to the wall and would be a great way to help teach him music. - Solar System on the light –
Jackie found a setup where a model of the solar system ran across the ceiling, with the light in the middle of the ceiling as the sun. That in combination with a white ceiling and a small jar of glow-in-the dark paint would give him something to look at at night.
Along with the items listed above, we could also put up the following posters:
- Periodic Table of Elements
- Map of the US
- Map of the World
- Proportional Scale of the Planets
- Common North America Animal footprints (rabbit, dog, bear, squirrel, etc)
- Common North America Trees (Leaf pattern/tree height scale)
- Dinosaurs
- Fish
- Planes
- Dogs
- Musical Instruments
- super-busy-posters-with-lots-of-stuff-to-find
Do you have any suggestions?
Dad Wins
016 years
Ian’s hair has been getting long- long AND curly. He looks like freakin’ Goldilocks. Jackie’s been insisting that we not get his hair cut for a few months now, but today she finally relented and we took him in to get it cut. Now he looks like a boy again instead of Shirley Temple.
Hurray!