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
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Monday, Feb. 23, 2004 - Dad
Before Jack was born, we experienced the basic communications that most parents do. Jack would respond to our activities with increased movement . It got to the point that Misti could tell when I was approaching long before she could see or hear me. Jack would start jumping around in there. Wouldn�t like to try to explain it scientifically!!.
As I have explained elsewhere, Jack was in a lot of pain when he was born, so his first communication with the world was a high-pitched shriek that I�m sure his grandmother could hear in Australia. As luck would have it, that shriek is at the only pitch that I cannot bear to be in close proximity to. (The nature of my deafness is that there is a tiny sub-set of discordant noise that I can hear about 5 times as well as any other sound � Jack shrieks in that range- oh dear!!!.)
That shriek became Jack�s primary means of communication for the first few months of his life, and I had to treat myself for ruptured eardrums a couple of times.
We figured Jack was telling us tales of being frozen and left abandoned on ice-shifts with only penguins for company and polar bears breathing down his neck�. This would be any time the temperature dropped below 75F�. and of course, being alone for a minute was equivalent to being abandoned for two-thirds-of-forever to our tiny baby.
He would also protest at the wanton cruelty of parents who keep his diapers and clothes in the deep freeze for the sole purpose of torturing the baby every time he was changed. Misti and I are both cold-weather people, neither of us cope very well in temperatures higher than 80F. Jack eventually got used to it. But the interim was both noisy and amusing.
We knew, however, that the more secure his environment, the sooner he would develop less painful means of communication. We rode that storm out. From very early on he began to develop less stressful cries until, by 5 months, the shriek became a last resort when the world was just too strange for him, or he was in genuine need.
We refer to the shriek as �Jack�s pet Banshee�, a wee companion he keeps in his pocket and lets out on various occasions to rattle the teeth of anyone within 50 feet and scare the bejeezus out of any would-be attacker. Its effective, I�ll give him that.
Take Care
Rod
