tfl: The Flatiron Life

This video is from a few months ago, when it was still dark after dinner. Jonah got so good at his puzzles that we started doing them all at the same time.

Jonah is developing his musical abilities.  He and Jos go to music class every week where they sing and dance.  He picks up new songs quickly.

Over the Easter weekend Jonah heard the Battle Hymn of the Republic once.  On Monday he could not stop singing it.

Bonus: Here you can also see how self-congratulatory he can be.  He often tells us “I did it!” and claps.

Update: I just wanted to share the story of how Jonah came to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In the car on our way to Minnesota we were listening to a Bluegrass Pandora station and heard “I’ll Fly Away.” We love this song, so we sang it a few more times. The next morning, Jonah climbed into bed with us and started singing “Fly away, Lori! Fly away, Lori!” Confused about who “Lori” might be and what he could be singing, we just smiled. Then I got it! He was singing “I’ll fly away, Oh Glory.” After teaching him the right words, Jonah was hooked on the word “Glory” for the weekend. Then on Easter morning, I taught him “Halelujah” which was also a hit, so hearing him walk around the house saying “Glory” and “Halelujah” brought to mind The Battle Hymn of the Republic. I broke out a few stanzas of that and on Monday, I came home to what you see above.

I have been singing to Jonah prety much non-stop since he was born. (Not that I’m any good or anything, It’s kind of a benign OCD thing on my part.) It’s a lot of fun to hear him start to pick up songs. He does a pretty decent job of matching tones, too. ~Joscelynn

Last week, Jonah had his 2-yr check-up.  It was 3 months late because, even though the staff at the doctor’s office will make you feel guilty for not calling 6-mo early to schedule an appointment, the doctor’s office does not remind you to setup an appointment.

Here are his updated stats:

• Weight: 27lb 14oz, 36th %tile
• Height: 34in, 21st %tile
• Head Circumference: 20in, 88th %tile

These are all consistant with where Jonah’s growth has been all along.  He continues to be our hearty, big headed boy.

The doctor was impressed with is development.  I take this with a grain of salt because every parent seems to report that.  The doctor was also impressed that Jonah just let her examine him with no struggles.

He only needed one immunization this visit.  He is now immune to H1N1 after having a booster.  We had the option of the mist or shot and chose the mist.  Jonah took it without crying and with a sense of curiosity.

No more visits until he is 3.  I think we will be in and out of the doctor’s office enough this fall to remember to schedule the 3-yr check-up.

Aside from physical growth, Jonah is developing very well.

He has started talking in complete sentences.  He has also started to use transitive verbs, however the direct object is usually just “it”.  He is picking up the names of things that we do not directly teach him.  For instance, he knows what my and Joscelynn’s real names are.  We have stopped responding when he says them though.

The puzzles we have are old hat now.  Trains continue to be a big hit.  He can sit down and leaf through a picture book and entertain himself for a while.  He has also taken to drawing.  He can draw a straight line, although his works are generally very abstract.  Simple shapes, like circle, triangle, square, star, and cross, are mostly conquered.

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, “Do Re Mi” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” are probably his favorite songs and knows the opening bars.

It is not reading, but he can identify J-O-N-A-H as his name and I think M-O-M-M-Y and D-A-D-D-Y are not long behind.  We sing the alphabet when we wash hands and he will mouth the words, but he does not know the alphabet yet.

He also seems to be trying to anticipate which number we are going to say when counting, but he still has a logarithmic mind and has not been conditioned to our linear world yet.  When I ask how many vitamins he gets before bed, he always says “six”.  I say “No, how man do you get?” He says “twelve” and then I coax him to “two”.

Colors are the last area we are focusing on right now.  When asked what color something is he often defaults to “green”.  That has a 1 in 10 chance of being right most of the time, so perhaps he is playing the odds.  However, list night he asked for his brown PJs and was able to correctly names the colors of the dinosaurs.  He needed just a little help with blue which he calls black sometimes, which I think is just because they sound alike.

One last thing.  Jonah loves to help.  We give him all kinds of different tasks to do around the house.  He really likes to help cook.  Every night, he helps Jos in what ever way she can find to include him.  She told me last week when I was going to be late coming home that he did not understand why she was starting dinner late and pushed his stool to the counter to get her to start.

I could go on with a lot of other little things he likes to do, but I don’t think I would ever stop.

Continuing my trend of posting some photos that got past me last year, I have a set from Jonah’s 2nd birthday party.

Jonah is very blessed to have a healthy and active great grandma around.  We are trying to get him to call her “Oma”, which is colloquial German.  This picture of Jonah and his Oma is my favorite one of the set.  I also like this one of him in the middle of the action because that is how I remember birthdays as a child.

With Jonah turning 2 last month, it was time to transition Jonah into bed.  The crib we have is a “4-in-1“.  Only 2 of those 4 really make sense, nonetheless we wanted a crib like this so we could convert it to a bed of sorts.

Saturday was set as the day of transition.  After first nap, I broke out the Allen Wrench, took off the drop side of the crib, and installed the side guards.  Jonah was very excited and was ready to pretend nap in it with Pooh.

However when it came time for second nap, he needed more convincing than normal that a nap was a good idea.  Eventually he talked himself down.

Things got interesting at bath time though. When Joscelynn undressed him in the bathroom, he bolted out of there and ran straight for his bad and jumped in.  It was as if he had always wanted to sleep in bed naked and he was finally going to do it.

We coaxed him back to the bath and the night went normally.  The last couple of days have also gone well.  He needs to be a little more tired than what was normal for a nap.  I don’t think he knows he can get out of bed without permission, so he will stay in bed trying to convince us to come get him and eventually talks himself down.

I have expect to find him on the floor in the morning.  Either because he got up to play and then went back to bed or because, like his father, he is a faller.  I fell out of bed up to an age that is embarrassing.  I remember falling out of bed in “my room” in Flat Iron long after if was mine but before the divorce, so at least I was 5 or 6.  I think Jonah’s transition is going better.  When we travel and he sleeps in our room, I have not noticed him tossing and turning a lot.

So, congratulate Jonah the next time you see him and enjoy these pictures.

A few weeks ago, Jonah got a hold of my camera and started taking some pictures.  The camera is nothing fancy.  It is just a point and shoot that I am not too worried about him braking.

I have given him the camera a couple more times to see if he can figure it out more.  He likes to look at things on the screen.  I am trying to help him figure out how to aim, but some of the random stuff he gets is interesting nonetheless.

Two years ago, this little coneheaded monkey was forced into the world.  I cannot believe it has only been two years.  He has grown so much and it seems like he has been the little boy we have now for a long time.

If you look through this set of photos you can see how much he has changed just this year, but it will not give you any information about how well he is developing in other ways.

• We have better and better conversations everyday.
• He knows the words for colors but does not know which colors they go with which word.
• We are on the verge of potty use.  He lets us know when he is going, but it is too late to do anything about it.
• He sits in a booster seat and mostly feeds himself.  It is only mostly because he still gets distracted easily and needs to be reminded he needs to eat.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  We just don’t focus on what he can do but are always looking forward to the next thing to teach him.  I loose track of how well he is doing today.

Happy Birthday, My Son.

Before Jonah there was George. I think I have written before of the Middle East Conflict nature of the Jonah-George relationship. One of the things George had before Jonah was a dedicated bed. Sure he would sleep anywhere, like a normal cat, but he had a little bed that we bought for him. He seemed to like it. It would get full of fur and then we would wash it.

When Jonah came along and started to crawl, he was like every normal baby and was attracted to the dirtiest things in the house. He has never had a strong interest in the litter, but this bed was a target. Once this became apparent, George lost his bed and was relegated to sleeping on the couch cushions. And storage is where the bed has been for 16 months or so.

I have been trying to sell, give away, or donate a lot of things we don’t use but are taking up space in storage. I thought I had a buyer for the old cat bed and, so, into the living quarters it came. The sale fell through because the buyer had a medium sized dog and not a small dog and the bed did not make it all the way back to storage. Joscelynn mentioned that maybe we should try to reintroduce the bed for George.

This morning, I think Jonah may have shown me why this is not a good idea this morning.

I am still digging out of tasks at work after going to Montréal and on-campus interviewing at IU. Both will probably generate some blog posts, but I know you all come here for Jonah.

Here he is in a hang-me-down robe his Aunt Dawna gave him.

Jonah is the amazing learning monkey. Which is great; I love that he learns things. However when he is figuring something out he wants to do it all the time.

Friday night we had a backyard picnic and Jonah ate nearly all his yogurt all by himself. Saturday night and last night at dinner he threw tantrums (huge full-on temper tantrums) and only calmed down with a walk and some pudding he could feed himself. Tonight we let him play with a spoon before dinner and try to eat some with it at dinner. He was much calmer but this also might not have been why he was crazy at all the nights before.

Even if his tantrum was not because he wanted to practice eating, the video below is a great example of how our little primate is becoming a master of tools.

(Also ignore the bad habit I have of providing Jonah’s inner dialog with an odd voice.)