Fire-Mom

Jack's hearing is so much more keen than ours that he sometimes seems to have a Radar O'Reilly-ish sixth sense. He'll say, "I hear a bus." Many minutes later, long past your deciding that he's said just another random Jack-ism, a school bus will drive by.

And then there was the time when we were getting ready to leave a parking lot and he remarked, "I see dogs drivin' a red truckkkk." We began to playfully dismiss his comment, but then we looked at the next spot over. Of course, there was a red truck with two dogs in the cab, one in the passenger's seat and one in the driver's. So yeah...dogs drivin' a red truck.

Last night, he paused at his play, and said, "I hear a fire-mom." It took a moment to realize that he was referring to a fire alarm, and not one in our house. We never figured out if he was being random or if there really was some beeping somewhere far away that only he and the cats could hear.

I fancy that Fire-Mom might be my cool super hero alter ego if I were to have one.

Now if we could just figure out what in the world he means when he runs around the house squealing, "Its-a-big-o-bawa!"

Jack hits the big 2.0

Mama made a German Chocolate cake for this year's festivities. Our stove is a little off-level so the layers came out a bit crooked. Nevertheless, the cake may have had the best texture of any made in the B-C household in recent memory. Thanks Cindi for the recipe! Jack's grinning commentary: "There's caaaaake." Hard to believe how grown up he's starting to look...



At our several Christmas celebrations, Jack was fairly inundated with presents. We kept his birthday small in scale. One of his favorite new acquisitions was a motorcycle....

Jack was also gifted with JJ, the doll that Daddy had when he was a little boy. Jack has shown a remarkable amount of affection for JJ, even going so far as to share some of his toy cars and trains with him. (We haven't seen him do as much with a live kid. We theorize that he recognizes all of his own gotta-look-out-for-number-one tendencies in other young children so he refuses to try very hard at collaborative play.)


This weekend we'll have to get pictures of him in the kiddie coup from Aunt Melanie.

Merry Christmas to all...

Christmas was quite an affair this year in the Chamblee Basham household. The tree was up more than 2 weeks before Christmas (probably a new record for us). We went to a night service on Christmas Eve at our church, and Jack got through the whole thing with nary a peep. As a matter of fact, he seemed to be stunned speechless by the music and the number of people. He stayed in Mama's lap the whole time pretty much just taking in all the new sights and sounds.

We celebrated Christmas Day in the morning at home (with Mae Mae and Papaw) and in the afternoon at Silly Goose Ann's house.

We haven't tried to make Jack into your guy's guy type of kid, but he is more than a little fond of cars and choo choos. Such is his love for vehicles, that he often falls asleep at night clutching one. He was thrilled to get a small fleet of matchbox cars and Thomas friends to add to his collection.

Ann hosted the big extended family Christmas party this year. When we arrived, Jack was hungry and feeling somewhat intimidated by the large crowd. An hour later you'd have never known he ever had a lick of shyness in him. The pictures may say it best...

Planes, trains and automobiles...

Jack does the hokey pokey with Elmo...

Silly Goose Ann teaches Jack how to bowl...

Aunt Mimi introduces Jack to Frankie the race horse...

Daddy loves this picture because everything that isn't moving and everything that is moving seems to be reversed...

Jack gives a smooch to sleeping Baby Layne...

Baby Layne breaks in her rocking lamb...

Where the time went...

For the last 2 months I've almost daily told myself that this would be the day that I finally update Jack's blog. Most folks know how that goes. Finally, Mama's blogless streak ends. Ahhh...but I hear Jack stirring on the baby monitor now...so maybe not.

On a side note, Jack usually says these two sentences in varying order as he first wakes in the morning: 1. Time-a-find Mama 2. Time-a-eat sausage. You have to have priorities in life, you know.

* * * * * *

(Jack just went down for his afternoon nap, so now I can finish this post.)

I thought I'd post some pre-Christmas catch up pics before I chronicle the swirly whirly yuletide celebrations. In a nutshell...

A) We finally got some studio portraits made. Here are my favorite digital proofs. It's strange how the mood seems so still in the photos...the session was really quite kinetic. The photographer's wife was practically doing handstands with her tongue and eyes wagging out to get Jack to look up and stay put. Jack also spent all of the next day at the doctor's office and hospital getting breathing treatments for croup that took an overnight turn for the worse. Hard to believe from the photos...





B) Jack has developed intermittent empathy. MA and I saw a glimpse of it in October as Jack initiated a hug for the first time. I think E. said something about love, which Jack (apparently) took to mean that she needed some. He reached to hug her, and she recoiled in surprise. I didn't see him do much loving again until recently. For the last few weeks, he's been occasionally given to caring for Kermit. He feeds him pretend oatmeal, puts him down for naps, walks him in a stroller, and gives him pretend milk. The milk part is pretty weird to watch at times. Kermit's quite floppy, so Jack will hold his mouth open and jam the sippy cup down his throat (the kiddy equivalent of a frat boy hazing, I guess).




C) We did Thanksgiving at Mae Mae and Papaw's house, but we didn't get the camera out enough. Jack ate copious quantities of pumpkin pie and butternut squash, so we saw orange in his diapers for at least 2 or 3 days after that. Photographed highlights included walking around in Papaw's shoes and throwing rocks in the fish pond with Lola.



D) Jack seems to be cutting the last of his baby teeth...he hasn't complained much, but he's back to having his fingers in his mouth a lot. Here we admired our miniature nativity scene as Mama guarded the holy family from excessive drool from on high.


Not a whole lot of newsworthy stuff happened prior to Christmas. Historically December has been a crumby work month for me, but this year there were no deadlines. I decided to enjoy of the time leading up to Christmas as much as possible since I've missed out on much of it in the last decade or so. I did a good bit more sewing, knitting, shopping, housekeeping and cooking than in holiday seasons past (my excuse for not getting any paper Christmas cards out).

Soon it'll be nose to the grindstone again. But first, I'll do another post on the Christmas festivities.

Another aside: People who know me know that I am really bad at remembering the precise wording of 'stock' phrases...here's a Rube moment for you : in expressing this sentiment to John, I actually said, in wistful tones, "It'll be back to the old bump and grind."

Trick or Treat

We considered dressing Jack up as Elvis (he's got the hair for it), but we decided to stick with something he could relate to. The boy has an abiding love for choochoos. In a rare show of artistic and engineering fervor, Daddy constructed Thomas the Tank Engine by mounting one of our old moving boxes onto the very same Radio Flyer wagon he had when he was a little guy 30 years ago. Daddy was just as surprised as Mama that it came out so well. After Mama acquired a conductor outfit, Jack was pretty much a happy boy. We suspect that this is one costume that will outlast Halloween by quite a bit.

Jack trick-or-treated at a grand total of 4 houses and had a fine time. He even said "thank you" -- which is something we've been working on recently with less than complete success. Once we got back home, he had great fun moving our give-away candy back and forth from vessel to vessel. (There were over 300 pieces of candy to move, so this game kept him busy a good long time.) Occasionally he would stop to say, "Happy Halloween!" or "Bye Bye Superman!"

Kudos to Mom for the well-rendered Thomas face!
Jack loves his train/wagon........

....but does he love it more than Daddy?

thanks to our neighbor for giving Jack his very first Halloween candy.

At the going rate of 40 cents a pound...

...Jack is about a ten dollar pumpkin.

Last weekend we took him to the pumpkin patch in the costume he wore for his first Halloween. Surprisingly, we were the only ones that day who dressed our kid up like a pumpkin. Many times we heard "Aaaaww! I'll take that one!" or "What a cuuuuute little pumpkin girl!" (We don't take offense to the little girl comments; he is pretty cute after all.)

Jack really enjoyed himself (as did Mama, Daddy, Papaw, and Mae Mae). He doesn't 'get' Halloween, but he has noticed that pumpkins seem to be everywhere lately. He also recently starting getting his colors straight, so every chance to point out 'orange pumpkin' is pretty cool in his book. Jack got to ride a cow train, follow a tractor on a hay ride, and sit on many different pumpkins.

The fun of the last might merit a little explanation: Jack does two maybe-more-weird-than-average things: 1) recently he has been experimenting with carrying various things with his neck, and 2) for a long time now he has enjoyed experimenting with whether or not something can be sat upon. The pumpkin patch was evidently a place where Number 2 was a fine, fine game.

Here are several pics...our faves from both last year (pre-blog and MONTHS pre-first-haircut) and this year so you can see how much he's changed. It's strange to look at the older pictures...in my mind's eye he never had that chubby a baby face. He's certainly a skinny kid now. He's got the baby belly, but his waist keeps him in 9-12 month pants. As a matter of fact, he still wears the pants he wore in last year's pumpkin patch pictures. They're like baby capris now, but we just can't keep much bigger pants on him!

Florida in his blood?

We just got back from a week's vacation in Cape Coral where we celebrated Papaw's 70th birthday. Most of that time was spent in the pool at Mae Mae and Papaw's rental or in the pool at Aunt Mimi's. Aunt Mimi's pool is his favorite. It has a good sized plateau of sorts where the water is about 10 inches deep. This part of the pool is known as "Jack's Beach". He spent so much time on Jack's beach that he actually only got one tub bath the entire week we were gone!

Mae Mae put some water wings on the boy to see what would happen and lo and behold, the kid swims like a fish. Sort of. It takes about a hundred kicks for him to get one inch of forward momentum. Not bad for a 20-month-old, though! When he has his wings on, he loves to stand on the edge of Jack's beach and fall forward into the deep part.

Mama and Daddy also took Jack to the real beach at Sanibel. It's a beautiful spot...there aren't a lot of people and you can walk 30 yards out before the water gets above your knees. Jack seemed a little perplexed by the saltiness of the water, but he loved the freedom of getting in and out at his leisure. (This is in contrast to the tight leash we keep on him at swimming pools as he attempts to run around the edges and scale their concrete steps and hop in at random depths.)

This was one of the best vacations we've had, but such fine times do have their drawbacks. We came back on Saturday, and our little Florida boy has made it clear that we are boring because we can't hop into pool or watch boats on a daily basis. Aaah the fickle nature of toddlers...sometimes a house full of toys and books and outings to the park and undivided parental attention just aren't enough. This was just the vacation we all needed, but Mama and Daddy caught themselves praying for Monday so that Jack could enjoy the much loved distractions provided by his daycare teachers and playmates!