We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
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July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Saturday, Oct. 01, 2005 - (Mamma)
Home again!
The boys are home!!! Well, OK, they've been home since Tuesday and it's now Saturday.
I'm sorry to be so long in posting. Both boys arrived home just exhausted and the jetlag has kept them sleeping strangely and feeling out of it, and Jack hasn't wanted to let me out of his sight.
It sounds like they had a decent flight home -- though it was long and exhausting. I got to the airport at 11:00 pm on Monday and found that my only option in meeting the flight was to stand next to the ticket counter and wait for them to come out of the secured area, so I joined the small crowd waiting there.
At 11:28, they came around the corner -- Jack on Dad's shoulders and both looking almost transluscent they were so exhausted.
Rod spotted me first. Jack was looking around and people watching -- I don't think he expected to see me. When he did spot me, it was because Rod was putting him into my arms. I think if he'd had any choice, Jack would have demurred. He didn't look frightened, but he certainly held back a bit as Rod handed him over.
I carried Jack out to the car -- it was an old part of the airport and that was quite a short walk -- and even so Jack had started to relax a little by the time we got there, but seemed relieved to be put in his old familiar car seat.
The next day and a half or two days, Jack was a 'pushmepullu'. He wanted to be in physical contact, but he didn't want to look at me or talk to me. Well, except when he forgot that he was being "shy". That gradually passed, of course, with the shy peiods becoming the intermittent part and finally dropping away.
(Rod here- From the time we left, Jack assured himself with "Mamma at work" and he flatly refused to deal with the reality of going home. It is my guess that life had been pretty tense leading up to our departure and Jack truly didn't know what was going on. He could cope with Mamma being elsewhere, but he really didn't want to cope with anything more. It did take a day or two for us to normalize, and jet-lag has been a real pill... its Saturday afternoon, and I'm still struggling to get back on track)
It was completely up to Jack, I never mentioned it, but Jack did indeed go right back to nursing and it seems to have helped his adjustment a lot. Whenever he's just feeling too strange, he asks to nurse, and then it's OK.
By Thursday, Rod and Jack were feeling rested enough that we could start back into our routine, though we started slowly. But as we did more familiar things and went to more familiar places, Jack settled in more and more. When we made it to "Tay-joes" (Trader Joe's grocery store), Jack finally seemed settled in his skin. He and Dad shop at 'tayjoes" almost everyday, and Jack is well-known there, so when we shopped there, Jack seemed to truly know he was home.
Daytime progress in settling in is pretty linear, but neither Rod nor Jack is sleeping well and night time adjustment is coming oh so slowly. Both Rod and Jack are exhausted most of the time, but they can't seem to get to sleep and stay asleep at night. This has been a bit frustrating for me, but it could become a real problem when I return to work on Monday.
Development
While he was gone, Jack continued on his path to being 29 months going on 35 years old.
He now sings a lot -- recognizable songs, even! Current favorites include "I'm being swallowed by a Boa Constrictor", "We are a Circle", "Old MacDonald", We all come from the Goddess", the "I love you" song, and the ever popular "Name" song. Of course there's lots of humming between the lines he remembers, but those lines are very clear. Watch out Pl�cido Domingo!
He uses a lot of words, too, and is now very good at remembering his "Please" and "Thank yous". His conversations are now rather complex, and one no longer needs to "speak Jack" to understand, though it helps a lot to spend a lot of time with two and three year olds. There are the occasional "charming misunderstandings" that are so cute at this age. When Jack doesn't want to do something, he says "I don't have to". At first I thought it was an assertion, but I have come to realize that he uses it more broadly. "I don't have to eat cake. I want yogurt." That sort of thing.
Jack no longer walks. He runs and skips and jumps instead. Then, when he's worn himself out, he sits down. It doesn't matter where he is, he just sits. The middle of the concourse at the airport in Denver, the middle of the room at home, the middle of the street when we're at the shops. Doesn't matter. Dad has started to refer to these as "sit ins" because when he does it, he absolutely refuses to move another step -- and he refined his technique on the trip. That *had* to be frustrating!
I can't decide how many of his numbers Jack recognizes and can name correctly, because he seems to be able to identify any one number between zero and nine correctly about 60% of the time. But then he'll mislabel it the next time he sees it, so my guess is that he's not there yet and the correct hits are more or less by chance, though he does have some idea.
Sick Baby
We hosted a simplicity circle last night (Friday). It was wonderful to meet with other parents like us, who want a simpler lifestyle for themselves and their kids and who, like us, were struggling with the intrusion of "consumer culture" into our lives in various guises. Wouldn't you know it? Jack was fine right up until Friday morning. Then he got a slight runny nose. Of course, by the time folks were here, with babies and small children all, Jack had started to hack and cough and sneeze and be clearly ill.
I expect it's a late blooming case of the airlibe virus -- the illness that hits me just about every time I travel by air. But instead of a day ot two later, this hit four days later.
I felt bad exposing other children to it. I wish we'd realized!
But, though he is sneezing and coughing and has a runny nose that makes his poor face raw, he seems to be in pretty good spirits except when he's tired.
Now I think I may be coming down with it -- I just reread this post and it's barely coherent and I feel wooly...
I will post more later when we're all feeling better and are back to having adventures!
