First Ear Infection

So a lot of the random fussiness, including a horrible Friday night has an explanation: ear infection! Jen and I can't remember ever having gotten them ourselves, so we had no idea how to spot one. I guess the answer is: If your baby is really cranky and writhing in pain, and it is not gas, hunger, stomach virus, teething, dirty diaper, then it is obviously an ear infection! (He wasn't running a fever and wasn't pulling at his ear, making it more puzzling) He's got a slight infection in both ears, most likely as a result of being sick for the first half of last week. So a dose of Tylenol helps the pain, and we got the proverbial pink liquid medicine.

We were worried that since giving him small squirts of cough and cold medicine was hard, then giving him 1.5 oz of pink stuff would be impossible. So here's what we did: We gave him the large eyedropper along with his pacifier and he curiously checked out the eyedropper and sucked on it. Then we said we are going to give him a "squirt" and he thought it was fun and ate the pink stuff right up - even asking for more!! So fortunately taking temperatures and giving medicine are now fun activities, however I'll bet the pink stuff has gotten tastier over the years. I thought I remembered it being yucky, but I tasted a bit, and it is quite good! Why do we always have to have it worse than the kids these days!?! :-)

Zack's First Podcast

So now we have the audio experience along with the stories and photos. Thanks to the Gcast tool from GarageBand.com this was really easy to set up. All I do is call a special phone number and can record audio directly to this site, so no matter where Zack is when he starts making funny noises or sentences, I can capture it for everyone if I have my phone handy. This should be fun to play around with. Our first posting isn't so interesting, Zack wasn't very talkative today. More audio clips will appear in the upper right of this blog page as we make them.

Update: Ear Thermometer

So I went out and got one of those digital ear thermometers. It was only $30 at Safeway. And now, getting our temp taken is fun! Zack holds still and he likes to imitate the beeps that it makes. You only need to do it in one ear, but Zack likes it so much he demands his temp be taken in the other ear too. Who knew this could be so much fun. And it only takes 3 seconds in each ear. Soooo much more helpful!

Fussy Fussy...Flop

12142005.jpg, originally uploaded by Drumbone.

We must be approaching the "twos". Zack's been sick and had a fever yesterday, but routine things that used to be easy are becoming more difficult. Giving him medicine was as easy as showing the eye-dropper to him and he would eagerly suck it down. Now it takes two people and a lot of restraint and tears to give him medicine. Even taking temperature under his arm is no easy feat (i should look into those ear temp tools), and even putting on a bib at times is too much.

We just did all three while restrained in the highchair for a snack, which lead to a lot of crying, not much eating, and an instant nap in the chair. I'm not kidding, this picture was taken 20 seconds after a 5 minute crying session ended.

End of the high chair?

Recently Zack has been asserting himself as a big boy in certain ways. Most recently he has demanded to sit in the booster seat, or big boy seat, at the table instead of the high chair. that way we all eat together at the same table. he's been sitting on the potty more frequently but no other progress there yet.

Zack is getting into counting now. We count trucks on the highway as we drive. Unprompetd, here is how he currently counts to ten:
"One, two, three, four, six, five, ten!"
I'm sure this will change by the end of the week because we are counting so much.

He got his flu shot last week, and cried after he felt the needle, but stopped abruptly when he got a band-aid on the arm, saying "sticker!". I guess stickers do the trick!

A Ham for the Cam

A shot today of Zack having fun at daycare. When he is asked to smile, he cocks his head and shows his teeth. Very cute.

Here's another criblet:
Smile Pants - He said this after seeing my boxer shorts that have smiley faces on it.

Stay tuned for the Zack Podcast Channel coming soon! Hear Zack's latest squeals, words, and noises! I'll be using GarageBand.com latest offering

Big shoes to fill

Heres a video of zack walking in mommy's shoes. Turns out i stopped the recording a few seconds too soon, because just after i stopped it he said "Bye Bye. Working" as he walked away, apparently imitating his mommy.

http://www.gracks.com/zachary/12022005(2).3gp

Here are some new Criblets: (Criblet - Meaning)

Play Lotion - He heard both of these words in the same sentence and though they sounded good together i guess. he repeated it a few times.
Andy Pandy - His new nickname for me. He recently learned our real first names, and thought "Andy" sounds funny. Flashes of grade school name-mocking memories are suddenly flying back to me now.
Santa Closet - Santa Claus, but i think he likes using other words he's familiar with.
Goofy - Excuse Me. He thinks burps and farts are funny, so we are trying to get him to say "excuse me" after it. However, he says "Goofy" instead, which unfortunately perpetuates his funny aspect.

First computer

Here is a pic of an old dell laptop that barely has enough memory to run windows XP, but i reconfigured for Zack to use. I removed the keys for all the F1, F2, Ctrl, Alt, etc. and left the others so that he wouldn't get himself into too much trouble. He loves it and loves the simple web-based games we've found.
When he wants to use the computer, he'll say "Tickle Elmo" or "See Froggies" which are two fun keyboard-only games to play on Sesame Street website

Sick Day

And boy, was it. For some unknown reason we all got sick early this morning and were miserable all through the day. Zack threw-up at 1am in his crib, and after we woke up we both felt bad too. Jen spent the rest of the morning sleepig on the floor of one bathroom and I spent it sleeping on the floor with Zack in the other bathroom. There is nothing that makes me feel more like a dad than to be caring for and sleeping with a little guy who keeps throwing up every 2 hours.
It's pretty sad watching a toddler throw up and seeing him not care anymore because he'd been doing it off and on for the last 12 hours. The secondary problem was getting rid of his hiccups afterward, since drinking water would be kept down. Accidently bumping his head on the wall is the only thing that worked so far.
As Jen said "I used to think the worst thing was throwing up, but now I know the worst thing is throwing up while hearing your son throw up too."
Anyway, he was very happy and seemed healthy tonight, Jen and I can't say that unfortunately.

First time ice skating!

Zack really really wanted to try skating when we all went up to Squaw Valley. He wanted to have skates on his feet and after we started out in the corner of the ice he said "Skate with big people" meaning he wanted to go around the rink with everyone else. He was a champ and didn't get upset at all, except for when we stepped off the ice too early after a few rounds, and he said "More Ice Skating". I thing someone may get skates for x-mas...

First Conversation

Zack is now 22 months old and in the final stretch toward turing 2. Yesterday I got a call from day care reporting that he took a big tumble off a bench and hit his head on the gravel. He was fine by the time I arrived, so on the way home in the car, he said at some point,
"Zacky fall down."
"Oh, you fell down today?" I asked.
"Yeah" Zack said sheepishly
"Did you bump your head?"
"Yeah...Zacky Cry"
"Oh, did you cry?" I asked.
"Yeah" sheepishly again.
"That's ok, its OK to cry. Are you happy now?"
"Yeah!" he said more excitedly.

Also, he is starting to say phrases and more correct sentences. Yesterday he said "Fire truck in the castle!!!" which is the first complete use of a prepositional phrase I can remember after he put his toy fire truck into a barn silo that looks like a castle. When we went outside last night, he commented, "It's dark".

How to eat meat

Zack is a carb-loving baby and it has been more and more difficult to get him to eat anything other than bread-related foods and certain fruits. However this weekend we had a breakthrough and we were able to get Zack to eat a whole slice of meatloaf by using the following techniques:
1) tell him it is chicken. chicken seems to be OK, and when it it cut up to look like little chicken bits, it is just like "dark meat", right?
2) play hide-and-seek with the piece of food, but tell Zack to hide it in his mouth. He will stuf the piece in his mouth and then eat it and quickly exclaim "all gone!"

Draw Face

From the Funny Story of the Day dept:
We all went our for dinner at Applebees last night and Zack was having fun with the crayons, scribbling on the kiddie activity placemat. There was a section that had a blank ghost with the instructions to draw a face on the ghost. We said to Zack, "Zack can you draw a face?" Then he proceeded to bring the crayon up to HIS OWN face, closed his eyes, and tried to scribble on his cheeks and nose. He then stopped, smiled and said "Draw face!" We couldn't stop laughing.

New Criblets:
Tickle Treat - Trick or Treat.
Oat Email - Oatmeal, Zack's favorite breakfast food. He started saying ee-mail for Oatmeal, and then realized that it wasn't quite right, so he added "Oat" a few days later, but kept "ee".

His pronunciation is great except for a few expections, like "Oat-e-mail", and "Budder-boon" (balloon)

Bounce Video and Criblets

Here are some new criblets:
Criblet - Meaning
Mommy Tights - ???
Slippery Cows - Describing how animated cows look walking across the screen
Piggy Forklift - said after looking at his fork at dinner. He said "Fork", then "Forklift", then "Piggy Forklift"

Also, here is a video clip of the bouncing castle. It is in .3gp format, which works for me, but i don't know if it will work for you. Let me know, if it doesn't and I'll try another format.

http://www.gracks.com/zachary/10262005(002).3gp

Bouncing and FireTruck

Zack is becoming a physical rough-and-tumble little boy. We stopped by an inflatable jumping castle by a pumpkin patch yesterday and allowed Zack to jump in it. Alone, he was cautious but happy, but when two 10 year olds entered, he went crazy and had a blast. He would imitate how they would jump, run around and fall down. And even joined in the play tackling - the bigger kids were very nice to let themselves be tackled by a 21-month-old. I've got some good video of this but need to convert the format and upload. Should be available soon.

And there is a brilliantly written funny article about a child's encounter with a Fire Truck at theOnion.

'Noofy and Role Playing

Zack just discovered Jen's family of Snoopys in his closet. He pulled them out and was very curious about them. Very quickly he began arranging them against the wall calling the two big Snoopys "Mommy 'Noofy" and "Daddy 'Noofy" and the two smaller ones "Girl 'Noofys". After playing with them for a bit, he decided to put them to bed back on the closet shelf. So he then started saying "Nite nite 'Noofy" and started putting them back on the shelf lying down. He then started whispering "Quiet" and looked at me and said "Shhhhhh" with his finger in front of his mouth. It was all I could do to keep quiet and not laugh. He then closed the closet door and waited.

And if that wasn't enough, he then realized something was unfinished. He opened the door and took out the two small snoopys and put them on the chair and opened up one of his favorite bedtime books "the Corgiville Fair" and started to read it to them. I was so curious to see how he would do it. He was saying things like "fix car" or "race, yea!" or "wash goat" which is what he could identify on the pages of the book. It was very cute, and we'll see if he starts to become more attached to the Snoopys going forward.

Halloween costume preview

Well, that last video post generated a bunch of requests for more video. So here's another. Zack is trying on his bear suit for halloween. Take a look. 20MB.
http://www.gracks.com/zachary/zackybear.mpg

funny noises

Zack has discovered funny noises to make on his arm. Here's a link to the video which is 6.8MB. If that link didn't work, try this: http://www.gracks.com/zachary/funnyzacky.mpg

It's Potty Time

Zack is now 21 months old. The criblets aren't coming at the pace they used to. But here are some more
Criblet - Meaning
Car Sleeping - a toy car that is upside-down
Moose Muffin - his favorite book "When you give a moose a muffin"
Cinco Seis - ??? it sounds like he's saying 5, 6 in spanish, but he waves his arms at the same time. I hope I find out what he's trying to say.

He is excited about Halloween saying "Halloween Coming" and yesterday learned how to walk around like a zombie with his arms out going "arrghhh!". He is very interested in identifying people, and now says "Who's that?" when he sees someone new, and can identify all his friends, AND his friend's parents. I picked him up the other day from daycare and he saw someone getting out of a car and said "Kalya Daddy" and he was right!

We bought our first potty over the weekend, and zack has been excited about it. He currently practices sitting down on it and saying "Zacky Peeing" but I suspect he's just pretending. As long as he's getting used to it though, that's good. That's step #2 along the potty training path.

Zacky and Zackaroo

These are two new names he's given himself. I assume Zackaroo is what someone called him at daycare and he picked up. He now uses the word "hurt" correctly in short sentences which is VERY helpful, he can now say "foot hurts" or "teeth hurt" which helps us identify what is wrong. Also he has started to announce his #2's, saying "Zacky poop", which is the first step in getting potty trained.

We also invented a new game called "Poof!". Zack sits on the edge of a beanbag and I sit down hard on the rest of the beanbag sending Zack flying. We discovered this by accident of course, but Zack was so amused that he demanded More More More!