Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Bath time!

Jack was in an exceptionally good mood today! And good thing too, because it was a big day for Jack. It was his first day at school! Well, daycare anyway. (Dad is back in school this week, of which, more here.) And it was only kind of 3/4 of a day to start him out. G dropped him off this morning and picked him up this afternoon. "He sure does like to roll around a lot!" said the daycare lady. Yep, he does! Apparently Jack was a happy and playful little boy all day and was in a great mood all night. He really responded to the whole thing very well. My turn to drop him off tomorrow. It was bath night so G was getting him ready and he was so cute I grabbed the camera, which was still on the nightstand from earlier, and snapped off this quick shot. Blurry -- didn't use a flash and the ligth's low, heck it's only a point n shoot with limited settings -- but really gets the sense of the moment. Which is, happy baby bathtime!

I really love playing with Jack and getting him laughing. He's my Boo-Boo Bear. If you think that sounds totally wussy or something, you don't have a baby.

This one's for Auntie Fish. 'Nuff said.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Tale of the Tape

By the way, Jack's official weight and height as of his Dr. visit yesterday: 17 lbs, 4 oz, 26 1/4 inches, 90th percentile for both. He's a big fella.

The best baby in the world



Feast your eyes on the very best-behaved baby in the world. As many of you know Jack went in for surgery today at Cedars -- outpatient surgery, a small 90 minute operation, but it invovled a general anaesthetic so one worries a lot. Well, the staff at Cedars are just so wonderful they really put us at ease. But the real star of the show was Jack. By the time these pictures were taken he had not had a bite to eat or drink in almost 7 hours! And yet, he was all smiles and love for the nurses. Just a sweet-natured and jolly little boy. There was a little grousing here and there, but very little. And he was better in the recovery room than I would have been and certainly better than the groaning man in the next bed. Just amazing, a great little guy! The surgery went great and we are back home this afternoon -- Jack and mommy enjoying a well-deserved snooze at this very moment.

Ladies' Man



Well, the nurses were instantly in love with Jack. "We've got to show him around," they said, and before we knew it they had him out in the halls meeting all the nurses, who adored him. And why not? He is adorable!

Have fingers, will travel.


Born free . . .



Jack had to get changed into his hospital outfit at some point, so it was naked baby time. He was so smiley and jolly I tried to grab a quick pic but I had my camera set to small picture size. Still looks cute.

Handsome as ever



So Jack was whisked off to the OR where the ever-brilliant, gifted folks at Cedars had him all ship shape right on schedule. Everything went exactly as planned and when Jack woke up he was a little uncomfortable but soon calmed down and was his old self, just a little blearier. What a brave little man!
A Multi Media Share!, originally uploaded by laughograms.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Yo-ho, yo-ho!


Avast there, ye swabbies! It's Captain Jack's great adventure on the high seas coming at you! But first . . . a few catch-up photos.


Jack's Nanny bought him this neat 4th of July outift on her last visit (on the shirt and matching cap you can see the little ants carrying off the picnic items, and on the back pocket a little ant is waving the flag). He has worn it twice since but unfortunately has managed to horribly soil it on each occasion (in a manner which does not need to be detailed here) before we have been able to get a good photo of him in it. So we made a special point of getting a good snapshot today.

Shot this while home alone with Jack -- trying to further document his patented "Retired Businessman Living on a Pension in South Florida Bodysuit" look which is all the rage here in Southern California. Jack is pretty fascinated by the blinking orange rangefinder on the camera.


What better dessert after a nice dinner with Mommy than rich, delicious fingers? Please note enormous puddle of drool above Jack's left hand. I am reasonably certain we could irrigate certain portions of the Sahara with the amount of drool emanating from Jack these days.


Tummy time . . . always an adventure. It's only so long before being on his tummy will make Jack crazy. Have to shoutout a big thank you to our friends Isaac and Julie for the Boppy pillow seen here . . . it has really helped out with this all-important tummy exercising and made it last much longer for Jack, and makes for cute photos besides. Jack is really getting good at turning over, except he gets one arm pinned under him and has not yet really grasped the function of arms yet (apart from their immense usefulness when it comes to jamming hands into his mouth), so he gets about 2/3 of the way and is just like, ah, to heck with it.

He does make some sort of flapping clutches at his bottle at feeding times and is really good at grabbing the little toys that hang off his gym. It's really cool to watch him slowly pick up new skills . . . but especially to see him flash that absolutely beaming smile which is on his face almost all day long. He really is a very sweet-natured, cheerful little baby who only gets grouchy when he is very, very hungry or sleepy or both.



Today Jack and Mommy and Daddy drove over to San Pedro to take in the LA Tall Ships Festival. Jack really enjoyed getting out and about and really got a kick (for a while) out of his first extended time spent facing front in his Baby Bjorn.

Jack and his enormous chubby jowls cut a fine figure in the Bjorn as you can see.


The Tall Ships event was nice to look at. The lines to get on the ships were incredibly long and the San Pedro seafront complex is just kind of unpleasant and inconvenient for walking around with large numbers of people. So it only took us about 90 minutes to see all the ships as well as we could and enjoy them. Because of the peculiar design of the prosaically named "Ports O' Call" complex it was really hard to get a good angle on any of the ships for photography purposes, but it's neat to see them up close.


After all that seafarin', Jack needed a good old snooze.


After the quick trip home and a delicious meal, it was time once again for a fine dessert of baby arm, that succulent treat.


That's all the photos for now -- see ya later, Dudes!

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

RAAAARRRR!!!


Sorry for the lack of updates. There really hasn't been much to share. The other day we took Jack to what will be his daycare facility come the end of August, when school starts again. It will be a little traumatic, I think, to be dropping him off there every day. I'm not anxious about it, as it seems like a very kind and loving and well-run place, but I am also not looking forward to it much.

While we were there I managed to get jack actually giggling for the very first time. G was talking to the day care person about the place and Jack was kind of cawing for my attention. I let him grab my two index fingers and then pretended he was shadow-boxing with them as I shook my head back and forth and made a funny noise. Well let it not be said that I am less than the very soul of wit, because this produced a long string of throaty chuckles rising to a giggling shriek. So uplifting to hear!

I repeated it until he finally was like, phew, that's exhausting, I need to suck on my hands for a while to calm down. That's his new favorite activity -- it's what he's trying to do in the pre-bathtime photo above. He often makes such large popping/sucking noises it's hilarious. Sometimes he has his hands crammed so far in there he's gagging on them like Lindsay Lohan.

But not much to report other than that. A nice photo, below, of Jack and Mommy curled up after a long day at the job.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

It's good to be the king.


It must be nice to just kind of lie around most of the day, not doing much, pooping your pants. Wait, that's what I did for most of the 80's. Not the pants-pooping part. At least, not often.


Our good friends the Soyes, Paul and Kathleen and George and Maddy, sent us an awesome little rocker/beach chair for Jack. You can't see it, but it's embroidered with his name on the back and a little shamrock. So darn cute!


If you click the link below you will here a kind of toned-down version of what I listen to all day while Jack plays on his little mat. This is the low-key variant of Jack's little coversations with his toys. Sometimes he's really lecturing them in a loud and strident voice, but every time I tried to record that for an audio post, he of course clammed right up.
this is an audio post - click to play