Cracker Hat

Zack decided to wear a bag of goldfish crackers as a hat. Notice how Tobey is watching him VERY carefully...

First Lipstick Experience

Well it was bound to happen at sometime. Yesterday Zack discovered mom's lipstick containers under the sink in our bedroom, and I walked in to find him with two different shades of red, one on his cheek and one on his upper lip. (they were very light, so a picture wouldn't have captured it well) Fortunately he didn't know how to twist up the lipstick or else his art creation would have been much more grandiose. I cleaned him up and put away the lipstick, but sure enough, he got into it again this morning. I didn't see anything on his face so i thought nothing of it, but put the makeup out of reach for good. Then after I got to work I noticed my khakis. I've got two nice red streaks on them, so I guess he had put the lipstick on his fingers this morning and grabbed my pantleg as we were getting into the car. Jen is out of town on work, so I'm blogging this as proof that if she finds lipstick on my clothes, she won't get too suspicious. :-)

2 Year Update

Well he had his 2nd birthday party past weekend, and while it was fun, I think that we underestimated what over a dozen toddlers will do to our house. I think we'll do it smaller next time. Someone jokingly suggested never invite more kids than the age of the birthday boy. Zack had a period of 30 min where he wasn't too happy, because it was the first time that many other kids were playing with his toys, and he was initially trying to protect them.

Here are the latest stats:
Weight: 32 pounds. 90th percentile
Height: 34.5 inches. 90th percentile
So he's still on the large size, time to move away from whole milk! He's safely wearing 3T clothes.

Zack is running, jumping, and starting to hang on bars for a few seconds. He's shown an early interest in skating, and a strong interest in soccer and kicking balls. His favorite toys are toy cars and trucks. He can spend time doing independent play well. He likes dancing to music, playing drums. Doesn't like art so much, but enjoys reading and being read to. He is very chatty and likes to talk a lot. We've lost track of how many words he knows. His pronunciation is quite good except for not using "L" and "S" at the beginning of words. He can correctly say "Yellow" but not "Little"; he will say "Ittle". He can say "Tobey's Ball" but not "Star"; he will say "Tar". He is getting better with colors, but our doc said that may not fully develop until age 3 or 4. I had thought that since there are toys for infants and toddlers to teach colors, that color recognition and ID was instantly developed in the early months.

His sleeping is still very regular from 8:15pm to 7:00am. with a 12:30-2:30 nap. Although recently, he's been getting sleepy around 11am and will sneak a cap nap if he's not engaged. He still uses a pacifier, which he used to call "Patter" but now says "Pacifier", but only at night. He hasn't shown much interest in using the potty now that we got one, we'll see how that goes. Our doctor said not to force it too early with boys. The bit of mischief he's been doing has been in occasional rough treatment of the dog usually by trying to kick him, which doesn't really bother the dog as much as us.

So off we go into "'Nother" year!

Birthday Cake!

01152006.jpg, originally uploaded by Drumbone.

New Toys

We are back from a week vacation over Christmas in Puerto Vallarta. We went with Jen's parents and we had a great time. More pictures and stories will be forthcoming, but for one of the highlights, check out Jen's amazing gallery of Humpback Whales photos we took on our whale watch!

Some of the highlight of what Zack got for Christmas were a pair of skates and all the safety equipment. These skates are sooo cool. they look line in-line stakes, but they have lateral stability, they fit over any shoe, and one of the wheels on each skate have 3 settings: it can lock in place to help with walking, only roll forward for learning to skate, and free roll for when the skate can go forwads and backwards.

Also, since he had shown some promise and interest on my drumset, we found a deal on a 4 piece starter drumset for him, and he loves it. It comes with stickers of colored shapes on each drum and cymbal, and flash cards you can show the drummer to get him to play the drum that corresponds to the flash card. This works surprisingly well. Today we mixed things up, I would show him a flash card and tell him "soft", and he would play that drum soft. Then I'd show him another card and say "loud", and he would play that drum loud. But, after doing this for a while, Zack wanted to reverse the process and took the cards from me, and said "Daddy's Turn" and showed me some of the shapes and said "loud" and "soft" while I was at the drums. It's funny that he enjoys the role-reversal as a part of learning and playing!

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.