We're very lucky. |
Monday, Aug. 02, 2004 - (mamma)
Man New teethJack's current favorite!I Spy : An Alphabet in Art by Lucy Micklethwait
Well, Boo started the weekend with seven teeth and ended it with 11 teeth -- three of them molars! No wonder he's been off his feed and not sleeping well lately -- that's a lot of new teeth at once! There is evidence that the fourth molar is on its way, too, so the drama may not be entirely over, but he seems reasonably calm today, so it may be a few weeks before that last molar comes through. This should also portend a new interest in foods with a 'harder to chew' texture. He may decide that vegetables are OK, now that he can grind them up. I sure hope so. Fruit is good. As are potatoes, yams, squash (pumpkin) and carrots, but they're a pretty slim selection, nutritionally. Oh, and Jack has a new word. Bum. Bum refers to anything under his diaper, and to the analogous bits of Mamma and Dad. And they are a hot topic for discussion these days. He hasn't been able to articulate what is so fascinating yet -- but he points and names several times an hour. I'll be glad when he has a new 'new word'. (And I'm even more glad that after one utterance, he dropped the previous new word. I was carrying him and tripped over a toy on the floor, and Jack piped helpfully up "Damn". Yeah, this boy spends a lot of time around Dad. Oh, and Jack has also mastered the drinking straw -- until last Friday, Jack could only use a straw by the "baby bird" method. I would fill the straw and block the top as I put it into his mouth, and then drop the liquid in. It was tedious and required that the straw be in reasonable shape. Then, last week, he suddenly "got it". Hurrah! This makes my life so much easier! He's never been really fond of "sippy cups", though he'd use them if he was really, really, really thirsty. Now he can drink as much as he wants with a lot less hassle and he's staying a lot better hydrated! And he has also gotten to the point of taking "bridging steps" -- that is, he can now let go of one piece of furniture and take a step to get to the next. That and his new hobby of holding our pants legs and pushing us around the house so he can practice walking lead me to belive that he is going to be walking fairly soon. Then again, we say that almost weekly. Jack is a much more methodical learner of the physical arts than he is of linguistic arts. (Either that, or he's a lazy chatterbox.) We're making progress on the "swimming" concept, too. Every so often I take Jack to the pool. At first he was sure I was planning to abandon him on an ice-flow with only polar bears and penguins for company, so we rarey got past sitting on the steps into the water. The last couple of times, though, Jack has let me get out to a depth where I could stand and be immersed to the waist. He doesn't relax yet, but he has stopped clinging and whimpering. and instead he clings tightly and watches the other kids with interest. Glacial progress is still progress, right? In the NewsIS EXCESSIVE TELEVISION VIEWING IN CHILDREN LINKED TO ADHD? People who watch violent television as children behave more aggressively even 15 years later
Cost of the War in Iraq
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