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Jago is like probably every little boy his age.  Sometimes he is a little too rough, hits, throws things etc.  Luckily, more times than not he seems to be simply testing us or looking for the limits, or just trying to entertain himself.  Sometimes when he is playing with us, he will hit us, and we always redirect by saying “Ei mama” or “Ei Papa” which is kind of the German way of saying gentle or soft.  Ei is pronounced like “eye” or simply the letter I, and its easy to say.  And we usually accompany the phrase by softly stoking him or whoever he happens to be hitting.  So needless to say, he hears Ei mama, Ei papa quite frequently, and it’s been extremely effective, because he almost always immediately changes his behavior and kind of mimics what we are doing.  Well, for Christmas he received this radio controlled little school bus, and he likes to watch us drive it around.  For some reason, he picked the bus up and threw it on the ground.  I tried to calmly explain to him not to throw the bus because he would break it, and then he wouldn’t have it any more.  He then went over to the bus, bent down, started softly stroking it and said Ei Bus, while looking at me the whole time.  It was all I could do to keep it together while he was looking at me.  Its been about a week now, and I’m still cracking up about it.  Just thought I’d share.

As I eluded in my last couple of posts, he is really starting to exercise his free will.  Luckily for us, he still has “the attention span of a fly” as Mama has so eloquently articulated.  He is really starting to protest when you want him to do something he doesn’t want to do.  And again, sometimes he is just protesting to protest.  And then, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a restaurant (or some other public place) being those people with a screaming child.  Luckily, “look over there!”, still works really well.  I pulled that trick in a very small but crowded restaurant the other day.  A father sitting at a table with three teenagers looked at me and gave me a big “thumbs up”, as he was laughing and trying not to spit out his beer.  Sitting with three teenagers, he had obviously been there before, but the vote of confidence was kind of amusing and a bit reassuring on some level.  Jago seems to be doing that kind of thing more and more, and you really have to remember to just stay cool and not let him influence our behavior.  Wonder how much longer “looketh over there” will work.  Soon I will need to be more cleaver with my redirections!

Well, it seems like we’ve reached that stage where everything is No Papa! We are currently traveling, so I am getting to spend more time with him than normal, which is fun for me, Mama, the family and hopefully fun for him too.  And, as Papa, I am naturally the fun parent so I am always kind of gently poking at him or trying to get his attention or trying to get him to do something.  In return, I am currently getting a lot of “No Papa”.  I say it back to him because I think it’s funny.  Grandpa thinks it’s funny too, he laughs whenever he hears him say it.  Sometimes, I think he is just saying no for the sake of saying no, not because he is necessarily rejecting whatever I am doing. And sometimes he laughs, so it seems like he is just trying to be funny.  Further evidence of his free will and personality developing.

Just something I said to make myself laugh one day while we were at someone else’s house, and he was beating on everything.

Sometimes it feels like one long day since he was born.  And time always runs fast and runs together, but I simply cannot believe how much faster it has been running since Jago joined the fold.  And when you see someone every day, it can be easy not to realize exactly how much they are changing, but when I look back over 20 months, it’s really unbelievable.  When he was born, he was so small I could hold him in my hand, he mostly just slept, and he could barely move (which is completely normal for a newborn baby).  Now, he can walk, is starting to talk, he can feed himself with a spoon, and when he spills something he can clean it up and then throw the rag away (or try to eat the rag).  The change is just amazing, and it has been so interesting to watch.  In some ways it’s like watching slow motion.  The incremental changes are so small, but when you look back and see how much he has changed its really incredible.  He is starting to develop his own will and personality too, which is very interesting.  He really is a sweet baby though, and I’m not just saying that because he’s my kid.  He offers us food, gives other kids toys.  But he can be not so sweet too.  Sometimes in a funny way, like he will offer you a cracker, and then pull it back and eat it, and smile like a son of a gun.  Kinda like a sour patch kid I guess (first they’re sour, then they’re sweet).  And, then other times he’s a whiny little baby, exactly like every other little baby.    One thing that has stayed consistent, he has always liked being around people.  We call him our party baby.  Hopefully that will never change!

Little Jago is getting more vocal every day.  We still play the baby guessing game quite a bit, even more than before actually but his vocabulary is definitely expanding and his ability to communicate and articulate what he wants improves with every passing day.  Meh-Nah is banana.  It is usually repeated multiple times in a somewhat whiney voice, and could be accompanied by a mild temper tantrum if he doesn’t get one at dinner time, or if he happens to see one at any given time in any given place, and you don’t give it to him immediately, without delay!  That little kid freakin’ loves bananas. He can now say Mama, and has been saying Papa for a while.  He says bye bye when he’s leaving (or you’re leaving him), and he has started saying Hi, although I don’t think he fully appreciates what it means.  He has also started saying Yea, but again, I don’t think he really means “yes”.  Then there’s Oh-no, which is pretty cute.  He know’s what a sheep says.  “Bah”.  He knows what a cow says.  A frog says “wibeh”, which is accompanied by this adorable little head shake.  The girls at the daycare love that one.  And we have this book called the Alaskan Train Story, and it is known as dcu-dcu., which is Jago for Choo-Choo.  He really loves birds and planes.  If he hears one he stares and points up to the sky.  He is very observant, and it’s really fun to just watch him watch stuff.  And he loves to mimic short sounds.  He will echo short bird calls.  We stayed at a hotel the other day, and when the elevator changed floors, it would make a noise that kind of sounded like “EH”.  And he keyed in on that sound, he learned it and would wait for it to happen, with the biggest grin on his face.  The elevator would go “EH”, and he would go “EH!”, and laugh.  I would just take him up and down in the elevator to watch him do it, it was so funny.  He has always been very observant.  Sometimes we just stand next to the road and he just watches the cars like it’s the most fascinating thing ever (and for him it probably is).  And he waves to them too, and most people wave back.  And he thinks it’s the coolest thing ever when I turn the light on and off.  At bed time, when he knows it’s about time for the light to go off, he stares at the light with the biggest grin on his face, waiting for me to switch it off.  Seems like his little light is getting brighter every day.

Well, we’ve had a lot of baby’s firsts.  Baby’s first car trip.  He was about 6 months old at the time.  Piece of cake.  We drove from Florida to southern Virginia, a total of 8 hours across 2 days.  By means of comparison, that’s a moderately long day on the bike.  But, we did it, in 2 days.  We’ve learned to plan in lots of contingency.  On this trip we also attended baby’s first wedding, and on the way home we had baby’s first fever while traveling.  We went to the doctor when we got home, (I think we drove straight there), got some medicine, and that was that.  Baby’s first house party.  We started those really early.  Its actually much easier when he couldn’t move around much, because everyone wanted to hold him, so there was always someone there to entertain him.  We really had to dial that back when he got to be about a year old, and could really move around. Baby’s first solid food.  This little guy had a mouth full of teeth at a very early age.  The real excitement was really just relief that he ate it without choking.  I was nervous about him choking for weeks, (and as much food as he stuffs in his mouth, I am still nervous about it!) Baby’s first pontoon boat ride.  Baby’s first plane ride.  Just last week we went to the post office to get Baby’s first passport, as we plan for baby’s first trip oversea’s.  I guess the main point of this post is, life goes on.  But it certainly is different, and man do you take a lot of stuff.  I think nothing has been quite as exciting as baby’s first steps.  Can’t wait to see which first comes next.

One of my mentors and a well-seasoned parent once said to me, “the baby guessing game”.  He must have been about 14 months old at the time, as I was probably recalling some comical event that must have just happened.  Due to Jago’s development at that time, I thought he meant, when you are trying to guess what is wrong with the baby.  But as time went on, I realized, that was only a very small component of the baby guessing game.  The real baby guessing game can be best characterized by when you child is emphatically saying “DAAAAH!!!”, and pointing at god knows what, and then kind of looking at you like you’re an idiot as you desperately try to figure out what on earth he is trying to tell you.  It is said that 93% of communication is non-verbal, and communicating with a small child certainly confirms that.  But for the 7% that is verbal (and it feels like so much more than that at time), DAH sometimes just isn’t enough to completely get the point across.  Dah!  Do you mean this?  Dah!  This?  Daaah!  This??  Daah, Dah!  Well, you’re breathing, you don’t seem to be hungry, and nothings on fire, it can’t be that important.  Time to redirect!  He does have other words which are a little bit more discrete, like “Ba” and “Baba” and “Dada”, which generally mean mama, papa, or the little Ba Ba Blacksheep book we got him (its multiple choice).  Sometimes he does say mama, he’s getting better at that.  And he has a pretty distinct sound for bird, which kind of sounds like buuu followed by a “raspberry”.  Meah still appears from time to time, but now it generally means “stop doing that”, and the pronunciation is much different than when he was little.  The daycare teachers are teaching him sign language too, and he can make the sign for more, please, water, milk and eat, and he sticks his tongue out and makes a panting sound to say dog, which is the sign for dog (at least according to the baby signs book).  Its really incredible to watch his little brain work, and it really is like trying to learn a new language.  But, like most things, when we really pay attention, you can understand the important stuff!

This is how we actually referred to our child in the early months of his life.  He wasn’t much of a crier and was generally pretty happy, but he made lots of sounds that to us sounded more like a little billy goat, than a small human baby.  So much so, we kind of started calling him Billy,  or Bill-e-goat.  To me there was also a bit of a South Park reference in there (Stan’s grandfather would always call him Billy) but my wife never really caught on to that.  I would think to myself, well we did say we wanted a “kid”, but we meant a baby, not a baby goat.  Over time, as he reached six months or so, and I assume his vocal cords matured some, he grew out of that phase and started making different noises.  I think his first word was Meah.  And he just repeated it a lot, Meah, Meah, Meah, usually accompanied with a very soft almost slapping motion, which truly was his way of showing affection coupled with excitement and or happiness.  Unbelievably cute, my wife and I would walk up to each other and imitate him.  Meah, Meah, Meah.

Then there was floppy fish.  For the first 3 months or so, babies are sooo small.  He was in the higher end of the band for weight and height so from a developmental point of view he was fine, but man, infants are just so tiny.  And along with that, they are just kinda floppy.  You really have to support their head, and make sure they can breathe, and they just kind of lay there and can’t really move around or do that much.  That phase didn’t last long, and by 4 months he was starting to get strong, roll over and everything just took off from there. Which brings us to WIGGLE WORM!  As he continued to develop, get stronger, and gain more control over his body movements, we realized he was very good at utilizing his body control to make tasks like dressing him, cleaning his nose, giving him antibiotics, or anything else he generally wasn’t in the mood for, very difficult to accomplish.  Giving this baby any kind of medicine when he was between about 4-10 months was one of the most frustrating yet hilarious things I’ve ever had to do.  It was a 2 person operation, one of us holding him in a way that wouldn’t hurt him or overly constrain him, while the other one tried to give him a syringe full of medicine while trying to avoid impaling him with it as he thrashed about, all while we sang some song in the hopes of keeping him (and ourselves) calm.  It was really nerve racking because you’re so afraid he’s going to zig while you zag and end up impaling himself with that stupid syringe.  When you’re done, you just kind of laugh and think to yourself, that would have been so much easier if you would just hold bloody still. We sing a lot!  🙂  And it helps!

I cannot tell you how many times I have thought, said, googled, worried, discussed with my wife, that exact phrase.  From babies first fever, which naturally happened when we were out of town, to baby’s first cough, to first ear ache, to first cut….and it goes on and on.  I think the coughing is the worst.  I don’t know what it is with this kid, but every time he coughs, and I do mean EVERY TIME, it sounds like its coming from the bottom of his lungs and I always think he is coming down with pneumonia.  And then we take him to the doctor, very frequently at first, and then only when he has a temperature, and the doctor says – nope, lungs sound great.  Man, we are really trying not to be those freak out about everything kind of parents, but,  when you think there’s something wrong with your kid, it’s just really hard to be relaxed about it.  But, we have tried to turn to more objective things like, what’s his temperature?  It’s 100.4F.   Well, Dr. Google says if the baby is less than 6 weeks old, you should go to the emergency room if his rectal temperature is 100.4 or greater (or something like that – check for yourself don’t take my word for it). Well, holy #$%^, what do we do now?  Oh, and from 6 weeks to whenever, then he can have a 101.2 fever before you have to take him to the ER.  Well, hmmm, he turns 6 weeks tomorrow.  In 2 days, he’ll be more than 6 weeks.  Great timing son!  Man, I don’t want to sit in the emergency room, just so they can tell us he’s fine, which is what there gonna say anyways.  Right.  RIGHT?  But maybe he’s not fine.  Well, let’s wait for 2 hours and check him at his next feeding / diaper change.  Mind you, now its 2 am, and we’re both lying sleeplessly in bed for 2 more hours waiting to stick a thermometer where the sun don’t shine to see what the magic number is.  By the way, what’s the accuracy of this thing.  And, well, there’s no calibration sticker on it, who freakin’ knows what his temperature is anyways!  And on and on and on….Can’t wait until the real problems start.  Hopefully he goes easy on us. !!   🙂

Until next time…..