This and That

Uncle Tony asked for more close up shots of Jack. It's hard to get Jack to sit still long enough to oblige, but hopefully these will do.

There's something intriguing to me about this shot of him and St. Francis staring off in the same direction...


Kiddo has only been going to daycare in the mornings for the last few weeks, so we spend almost all of the afternoons outside. The little red and yellow cozy coupe from Aunt Melanie sees a minimum of one hour of use (and usually more) on every day that weather permits.

Jack has such a larger-than-average noggin that he's outgrown every sun hat that he has, and I couldn't find any in any that fit in the bigger kids departments around town. I ended up buying an adult hat from a camping store. It adjusts down, so hopefully this hat will last until he graduates college.


We just installed a swing from one of our backyard trees, so another significant part of a day in the life of the young master of the house includes that. Says Jack daily, "I want my ssssfing!" Because it's in the shade, he's happy there for an hour as well. His favorite swinging songs include 'On Top of Spaghetti', 'London Bridge', and 'This Old Man'. These YouTube videos did a lot to push 'On Top of Spaghetti' and 'London Bridge' to his top five. I don't know why, but I find the the 'On Top of Spaghetti' video almost as hilarious as he does.





Click here for London Bridge.

A note about 'ssssfinging': We've been helping him with his consonant clusters that start with s (he was always omitting the s) -- as a result most words that have such a cluster are now pronounced with a little more keenness and spittle than we anticipated. In each of the following examples, the ssss is its own syllable: ssssss-ger-etti (spaghetti), up-sssss-tairs, sssss-chool, ssssss-tar, sssss-poon. Part of me laments that it's been so easy to help him correct those pronunciations. It highlights that he really is so much more a little boy than he is a baby. Before I know it, he'll be a teenager and I'll get misty when I remember the days when he shouted/sang 'Lit-tle Tar! Lit-tle Tar!' (what we refer to as the baby metalhead version of Twinkle Twinkle.)

On the pregnancy front, we are doing well. 24 weeks and change with lots of movement. It took a bit longer to feel this baby stirring because of a somewhat anterior placenta, but now Little Bit seems to kick and stretch with much more strength than I felt with Jack at the same stage. No little flutters of butterfly wings with this one. It was nothing for weeks and weeks and weeks, and then one day it was ninja time.

Sometimes it seems like Jack has a bit of a clue about the entrance of Little Bit into the world. When he's cautioned about rough-housing too much with Mama, he volunteers that Mama has a baby napping inside. He's also getting a bit more big brotherly to his doll, JJ. In addition to feeding him and helping him go down for naps, Jack has started talking about some of the things that JJ is too little to do. Still, the phrase 'big brother' seems to elicit no reaction at all from him, and any old bright shiny object can distract him from discussions of the new baby. We don't worry about it, though. We hope we can make as smooth a transition for him as possible by talking about it as much as he is willing and able, but we're not putting any pressure on him to go ahead and accept something so abstract as a future little sibling.