Spoke too soon

Well it seemed as if the tummy bug was passing . . . but then after our visit to the doctor yesterday we were back to . . . well, not square one, more like square four (out of ten) or five. The doc checked Jack out thoroughly; Jack is still gaining weight, maybe an ounce or two off target because of his pooping problems, but the doc says he's OK, it is no big deal, Jack just has an upset digestive system that will take some time to get better and we just have to be patient. It's been almost a month of ill baby now so patience is -- well, not wearing thin, exactly, but harder to muster.

Fortunately it doesn't seem to affect Jack's mood, in the main. After our trip to the doctor I had to bring him to school, because I had a meeting and class, and G drove up to pick him up. I introduced Jack to all the faculty who have been asking after him and he couldn't have been more sweet and jolly and happy. He's like this all the time, with the exception of some late night or early AM crabiness, but as long as he has this tummy problem day care is out of the question. I don't want to bring him back there until he is at 100%, and I don't want to bring him back even then. It's a perfectly fine place as these things go, but it is probably the source of his illnesses just by the nature of the thing. Anyway it is very frustrating because we don't really have a choice -- I have classes and drop-dead responsibilities, and of course G has work. The only blessing is that this semester classes are few for me, so we have the option of keeping him home with me. Next term will not be so easy -- in fact I will not be around much at all, because I will be editing my thesis films. So I dearly hope that having these little illnesses now will strengthen Jack's immune system some and make him less prone to these little bugs.

A long time coming

Hard to believe it has been so many days since this blog was last updated. But, there's good reason for the delay. My school schedule for this first month was absolutely brutal, all day and night for several weeks. On top of everything else, Jack came down with a cold, caught another one just when he was getting over the first, and then got a nasty stomach bug which produced an astonishing array of colorful diapers. He seems to be just now getting over that, but in a few minutes we are going to the doctor to check everything out anyway. We've kept him home from daycare to give his little body a chance to heal up -- especially because we have a major event next week, my sister's wedding, which means Jack's first airplane trip.

I have to add that Jack has been an exceptionally jolly patient. Unless he's been wracked with a cough or drowning in his own boogers, or crabbily waking up mommy and daddy in the middle of the night, you would not have any idea he was ill. Such is Jack's sunny disposition and his insatiable curiosity about anything nearby that's even remotely entertaining.

So there has not been a whole lot to report on, but in the interim we did get some darn cute photos.

Jack has kind of been trying to sit up straight but can't quite manage it. His bobblehead-like imbalance is still too challenging for him, so he manages to do this kind of tripod move if we coax him. He's getting better at it all the time.


Nope, doesn't look sick, does he?

Who can resist a relaxing Sunday loungin' in the lving room watching football? Jack loves to watch sports but is especially entranced with football, Jimbo will be pleased to note. The colorful, high-contrast uniforms and whiz-bang graphics and sound really hold his attention.


Far out, man.

Problems with images

I was going to make a brief update here, but there seems to be a problem woth images hosted on Blogger not showing up. As of this writing, the post below has no images at all. Just awaiting a fix.

Jack has a really bad cold which has been progressively getting worse the last 10 days. It seems to be peaking now and for the first time ever he's been really cranky for hours, poor lad. Hope he feels better in a couple of days. Breaks your heart; you can't really talk to him and he can't tell you where it hurts.

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.

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.

Quick photo du jour

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!

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.

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.

The ol' ball game

So last week we went to see the Long Beach Armada play the San Diego Surf Dawgs here at Blair Field in Long Beach. Jack helped Mommy keep score and as you can see, he found it tremendously exciting.

The big thrill of the night was Rickey Henderson -- yes, that Rickey Henderson. He plays for San Diego's independent league team -- apparently still under the impression that a major-league team will offer him a contract any day now, and who knows, stranger things have happened. But still, at 46, he's still spry and a gamer, putting on a good show for the fans and being a supportive and positive member of the team, by all accounts ("Rickey's just one of the guys," said a Dawgs player in the LA Times -- don't remember hearing this when Henderson was a Met, but whatever.)

Meanwhile back at home, Jack has been trying to flip over in earnest and has been successful on a few tries! Also, over the last few days he has become a real jabberjaws, regular holding extended conversations with his dangly mobile and gym toys, the nearby pillow, Mommy, Daddy, basically anything nearby. Just kind of "Aaaah baaah yaahh yahh vaah" kind of noises, with an occasuional "HyAAHHHHH!"or screechy, happy "ayyyyyyAAAHayuuuuAHHH!" hollered out from time to time, going on for hours, really cracking us up. His laugh, such as it is, has evolved too, from a kind of throaty "hurrh" to a more gurgly laughing sound, to an actual laugh today for the first time! G was getting ready to go shopping -- where she is right now, with jack -- and Jack was lying on the bed blabbing away, so I went in for a tickle attack and snuzzled his big ol' chins with my beard. Well I guess this tickled him a lot because we got a whole bunch of genuine chuckles out of him, to our delight. I have shot some video of Jack and I hope to have it online soon.

Here you can see Jack doing his best to flip over on his back.

And here, you can see Jack saying, "Ah, screw it," and flopping over on his belly again.

Meanwhile let it not be said that our lad is anything but the very picture of sartorial splendor. Here he proudly models the very latest bodysuit from the Hyman Roth "I'm a retired businessman living in Havana on a pension in the 1950's" line.

And what I wouldn't give to be able to relax like this:

Teddy bear's picnic

Jack went on his first picnic on Sunday. Mom and Dad took him and a picnic basket full of wine, cheese and Italian salami to Point Fermin Park over in San Pedro, just a few miles from our house in Long Beach. Jack snoozed for a while but when he woke up, seemed to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. I am a little disturbed by his slight resemblance to Karl Rove in this photo, however.

The park has incredible views of the pacific and steep cliffs to the sea -- I gather there are walkways to get you down to the rocky/sandy beach areas below where seals (we counted at least 8, including a momma seal and her three pups) and whales and dolphins (didn't see any of these) frolic and relax in the sunshine.

Also, the park features a beautiful, restored lighthouse built in 1874.

It burned brightly until Pearl Harbor, when the California Coast went dark to minimize the risk of invasion or bombing. Then the top was sheared off and replaced with a boxy radar installation. It was restored in the mid 70's and actually lived in by the park ranger until the last couple of years, when an extensive restoration took place.

There's no light in it presently -- I took a little tour of the lighthouse and the guide told me the actual, original light is the subject of a lawsuit right now and they hope to return it to the gallery soon. Meanwhile there is quite a view from up there:

We had a lovely day and will go back often. On our way back to Long Beach we stopped in San Pedro's shore village area, which has seen better days and is not at all as nice as the one in Long Beach, which we hit to feed my funnel cake jones. But there was a cool little brig there, the Swift of Ipswich:Checking their website I see the vessel is one of four in their fleet, which is used to take young people to sea and teach them sailing skills. There's a volunteer meeting this week, and I think I will go!

Back in Long Beach, Jack patiently let us wheel him around while Daddy pursued his rarely-consumed treat, funnel cake.

Back at home, Jack stands up to make an important point and tries to act tough:


But it's all a charade and within moments his true nature -- that of a jolly little imp -- is revealed:


We have to make sure Jack gets plenty of tummy time! This is fun exercise for a while.... but soon the seething rage emerges from a frustrated little fellow who hasn't quite figured out how to use his arms properly, so he ends up kind of lying there like a figurehead on a sailing ship!