Swinging

We are experiencing a swinging renaissance of late. Isaac figured out how to swing in a big-boy swing last week and simply cannot get enough.

He doesn't have the patience to listen to me when I tell him how to pump his legs, so he requires a pusher. At least half of his swinging enjoyment comes from describing to his swing facilitator how he wants to be swung. He does this in an almost nonstop drone of repurposed Einsteins-ese. For the uninitiated, the Little Einsteins enjoy recklessly throwing around cumbersome Italian musical terminology as though everyone should be using such language while ordering a pizza. It actually translates perfectly to swinging.

Verbatim Isaac Swinging Orders:
"Uh-oh, Mommy, I'm going adagio. Can you push me allegro?"
"This is moderato. I need to go PRESTO!"

I sent him outside with the babysitter on Wednesday. When I came to claim him, he was barking his Einsteinian instructions to her from his swing. "Is he saying what I think he's saying?" she asked. "Presto? Where'd he learn that?" Lucky for Isaac, Meghan comes from a musical family.

Jacob has taken in kind to the baby swing. "'Eeeee!" he will softly squeal as he goes back and forth, in imitation of me saying "whee". There was quite a while there where Jacob wanted nothing to do with the swing at all. I wonder, with his insane tooth eruption and then head-cold troubles during the winter, if his stuffed-up head may have played its part to decrease his swing enjoyment. Not that it matters now, because all that is behind us. Here he is combining his new love with his old love, Mama's iced tea.


The boys and I took Dada to a playground this evening, and at one point we had the two boys in the baby swings side-by-side. They enjoyed watching each other, how high the other one was going, whether the other one was shrieking with delight. After about 5 minutes with no sign of disinterest from either miniature human, Dada asked me, "How long can this go on?" Not at all exaggerating, I said, "Oh, about forever."

For the inquiring minds that want to know

I only post this because lot of really sweet people have asked me when my books will be published. I googled myself on a lark this evening and, thanks to the fourth-or-so hit down, I now can tell you when all three of my books are coming out, which is especially interesting because one has not yet been written. I guess I ought to get crackin' on it. (yes, I noticed that "Artemis" and "Jacobellis" are misspelled)

Just sos you know, I wrote all of these for a local publisher of nonfiction aimed at elementary schoolers. Of course my books are all totally awesome -- I would know, wouldn't I? -- but there is no floofy frivolous literary Madonna-style-tea-party stories here. If, however, you are a second grader and you want to know all about the gritty awfulness of the influenza pandemic of 1918, I'm your girl.

Surely this too shall pass

When I was freaking out last year, just after Jacob had been born and Isaac decided he needed to run around and push people because their bottoms were obviously too high off the floor, a wise blogger and seasoned parent told me something very important about parenting. "Trust me," he said, "it will get easier. And then harder. And then easier. And then harder. See a pattern here?" It's funny, when there was just one of them, how devastating I found parenting to be at times. 'Why on earth is Isaac doing this?' I would wonder. 'Is there something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with me? He's never going to quit waking through the night/drinking milk from a bottle/pushing his little friends! Our lives are over, and I am a terrible mother!' And then Isaac would stop doing those things, can you believe it, and such feelings would subside for a time.

I know there are bloggers who are expecting their second and who also stop and read about my boys every once in awhile. I've been meaning to share something with them for far too long, something that nobody ever told me that I've discovered from parenting two young people. Yes, it is very hard, much harder than it is with just one. But it is also unbelievably refreshing in one particular sense. With every phase, every antic, every tantrum, from somewhere inside you lives an overwhelming calm that comes from really, truly knowing that This Too Shall Pass. And not just because all Those People tell you it will, since anything Those People know to be true seems to get immediately discounted in our household, because our children, they are special! and like no other! No, the second time around you realize that you really have lived through this horrible episode of tantrum-throwing, this exact moment really, and seen it turned under as your son plows through the months.

That being said, we are officially entering into the Dark Ages here at the O'Neal estates, where we have two full-fledged and highly opinionated toddlers under the roof at the same time. With highly mobile and highly vocal Jacob, we are entering into a new era, one designed as Mommy's one-way ticket to the looney bin. She shakily tells herself that This Too Shall Pass, and yet in the meantime her house is a complete disaster, her family is eating frozen things most nights, and her book assignments, oh, we will not speak of their lateness because it is just too depressing.

On the one hand, there is Isaac, who recently discovered that he really is three. For the last year, all he needed was the threat of time-out and I could mold him to my will. That delicious time is now gone. You can almost hear him saying, "What's that? You mean I don't have to do what my Mom tells me to? Cool!" What he really does say is "I'm busy." or "Just a minute!" or just flat out "No, I don't want to do that." You know, exactly the phrases that Mom and Dad use all the time when talking to him. He has uncovered the Devil's Playbook, the one that instructs him precisely which of our favorite phrases to use against us that will incite the most incredible animal-like screaming from me.

And just in case there was any doubt as to where Parrot Isaac learned these special words... this evening we were taking in his new favorite show, a Nature special on PBS about a sea turtle. It's awesome, by the way. Think live-action Finding Nemo. There are all these colorful and interesting sea critters, many of which were unfamiliar to him. Of course he wants me to tell him what they are. "Mommy," he asked me not once, but twice, "what the H is that?"

DADA! You are totally grounded.

And then there is Jacob, who should be renamed as His Royal Screaming Toddler Lordship Edmund Hillary. If he is not suspended in mid-air climbing something he should not, then life for him is not worth living and he will likely tell you as such. Just this evening he protested loudly, including fits of throwing his body on the floor and hurling his teeth into table corners on purpose, unless he was sitting atop one of the following things:
*a wholesale-club pack of paper towels
*the toilet
*my bed
*an endtable
our rickety shoe rack (the only thing I did not allow him to summit)
*a dining room chair
*our computer desk chair

Then, while I was helping Isaac use the potty, Jacob exited the bathroom to climb feet-first into Isaac's potty-training potty (AKA our second upstairs bathroom), screamed because he was stuck, started thrashing about, and then fell over, taking the potty with him. And none of these exploits, not one, account for the massive diagonal slash of a purple bruise on his forehead.

While my human children are surely going to kill me or themselves in no time flat, my cat-child is making a remarkable recovery. After three days of peeing all over the house, Dada locked Moses in our bedroom with some food and the Poop Condo. Miraculously, that was all Cat-Brother needed to remember his passionate love for his Poop Condo and now there is no more bloody kitty pee on my chair. He is completely back to himself, including meowing loudly while everyone is asleep to let me know that I need to come, quick, and give him his precious Soft Food before he has to deign to eat his kibble. At least for Cat-Brother (knock on wood), the worst really has passed.

Then and now: fountain-splashing edition

Isaac at 14 months, with a fountain at University Village in Seattle:


Jacob at 14 months (with his big brother), with a fountain at the Philadelphia Zoo:

Is it even the same little dude?

I took one David Cassidy-looking baby in for his first professional haircut on Wednesday. Observe his elongated shapeless flyaway hippie coif:



He was mistaken once for a girl on the playground. Also, when wet, his hair in the back lay below his shoulders.

I left the shop with this dapper gentleman:


If he hadn't sat on my lap, silently and patiently observing throughout the whole thing, I'm not sure I would have recognized him.

Cat-brother and his defective bladder

Our least-discussed family member decided to take his scary turn at sickness this weekend. Dada noticed that Moses hadn't been eating much, but on Sunday morning he hissed at Dada, and he never hisses at the grown-ups in our house. He was meowing, almost screaming at times. He was licking his nonexistent kitty package. His behavior kind of threw us, but we didn't know what could be wrong. Dada noticed that he hadn't pooped or peed by lunchtime, and also noticed that he'd been munching tiny bits from our mother-in-law's tongue in the kitchen. Perhaps, we thought, his tummy was upset. We bought him some kitty Pepto Bismol. After taking it he seemed a little more comfortable for a time.

But by Sunday evening, he began to freak me out at how very, very unlike himself he was behaving. He'd thrown up at least 5 or 6 times. He was moving in peculiar way -- holding his body gingerly, stepping lightly -- or not moving around much at all. It became obvious that he was in a lot of pain. He wasn't crying much anymore. He hadn't eaten, drank, peed or pooped all day, and we watched him strain to go once in the middle of the hall, this from a cat that has never in his 7 years gone outside the litterbox.

The babies had been such a handful during the day that I hadn't had time to use Dr. Google for veterinary purposes, but I knew Moses was going through something serious. When Isaac and Jacob went to bed, I looked online about kitty constipation and came across a site suggesting that most cats who appear constipated, especially if they are male, are actually suffering from a blocked urethra. Apparently this is a pretty common issue with male cats, whose urethras are particularly long and narrow. Over time, a cat's pee can start growing crystals if the food he eats makes the pH of the pee too basic. For male cats, these crystals can plug up the urethra such that no pee can come out. Having a cat who has been completely healthy his entire life has sheltered me from a knowledge of cat-health problems, but you can probably guess that a blocked urethra is a death sentence. A "blocked" cat requires immediate medical attention; death from kidney failure can occur in as little as 48 hours from the onset of symptoms.

Of course I found all this out at 1 in the morning. We called the local VCA veterinary hospital, part of a national chain which had gotten terrible reviews online, and they basically told us that we would have to sell our children to the gypsies to get enough money for them to see Kitty Moses. Not joking -- they tout on their website that they saved a 6-month-old puppy who had eaten rat poison by giving him a blood transfusion and keeping him in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber for two days. Not being veterinarians, we weren't sure that Moses was blocked, and decided it would be best for him to be seen by a real doctor first thing in the morning. Though he is just an animal, he is my animal and I am ashamed to admit that our pocketbook was also a factor at the time.

Between 8 and 9 the next morning, Moses still had not peed or pooped and was sitting as still as possible and trying to sleep. We haven't taken Moses to the vet since we moved to Delaware, so I called six different veterinarians about him. Every single one told me they weren't accepting new patients, perhaps in part because Moses had the wisdom to get sick during this awful pet food recall business. Finally Dada got us in at the vet at our local Petsmart. I piled everyone in the car and went, dropping Dada off at work along the way.

At Petsmart, the receptionist suggested that we should leave Moses and they would check on him, and I quote, "sometime" during the day. This was after she told Dada over the phone that he had a 9:00 appointment to see a vet. I basically screamed at her that he needed to be seen, like, NOW, because he could be dying. After conferring with her colleagues, she reversed her earlier position and told us that they in fact had no time to see him at all today, and that if it was really an emergency we needed to go to this particular veterinary hospital in Wilmington, insert flicking out of pamphlet here. We had been trying to avoid the overwhelming pocketbook-bleeding required by veterinary hospitals, but what was I to do? There was no room for Kitty Moses at any inn. I ushered all of my boys back into the car, where I cried for a few minutes in sheer frustration that my cat was possibly dying and no one would help me.

Meanwhile, I called the veterinary hospital in Wilmington, which was not the poorly-reviewed VCA, and the receptionist was understanding, helpful, and reassuring. It was not far, and when I showed up we were immediately ushered back into an exam room. I left Kitty Moses there to take Isaac to the bathroom, and when we got back Moses was already being felt up by Nurse Lisa. Nurse Lisa told me without hesitation that Moses was blocked as I had suspected, and we agreed he should be treated immediately. Kitty Moses was then seen by Dr. Tuffey, who confirmed this and discussed what they would have to do for him, all of which was pretty standard according the Dr. Kitty Google:

1) He would be "unblocked", AKA heavily sedated and poked repeatedly in that most tender of male areas to dislodge whatever was lodged in his urethra.
2) He would be catheterized until his pee was without blood, probably for the better part of two days.
3) They would x-ray and ultrasound him to determine why he was blocked and if there was serious damage to his bladder and/or kidneys.
4) Lots of blood tests to check how his kidneys are performing.
5) IV fluids to help him rehydrate.

We left Kitty Moses in their friendly and capable hands, but not before cutting off my right arm at the desk in prepayment. When they first worked up Moses's blood, his kidney values were off the charts. One metabolic indicator was so high it could not be read by their machines. But after 24 hours of freely peeing and IV fluids, Moses was almost completely back to normal, and he was released from the hospital Wednesday at lunchtime. I will not tell you how much this cost, except to say it was an enormous lot and yet cheaper than the VCA. For comparison, a month ago we bought a very nice new couch. Kitty Moses's hospitalization cost more than that. But it was worth it, every penny, to fix something that was fixable; something that, provided we stick to this new vet-prescribed diet food for him, may never happen again. It was important to me to do it because I knew there has a high probability that after treatment he would be back to his old self.

Well, he is not completely his old self. His bladder is understandably traumatized from the experience and he is incontinent. Poor guy pees wherever he can, even in his bed, leaving the fur on his rear constantly wet with pee. He is on meds to help with bladder spasms. He should be better in that respect soon. But he is already better in almost every other respect. Just this evening he begged for table scraps from Dada's bowl of beef stew.

I like to pretend to complain about how much I hate cat-brother, how he wakes me up at night with his batting at the bedroom lamp's chain or his screaming for his precious soft food. But he is my kitty, and it turns out I do love him and want him to be happy and healthy, especially now that my babies are old enough that I can pay attention to him again.

Jacob got rain boots, too

Whereas Isaac got cowboy rain boots, Jakey got frog ones. He digs them.

Buh-bye to the chokey

Perhaps you vaguely remember that our kitchen used to have a pantry closet. Well, to create our new kitchen, Dada put up a wall where the pantry was and sealed it off. He also removed one of the pantry's walls in order to completely drywall the backside (the basement stair side) of the new wall. What all this made was a strange little three-walled room above the stairs, with no obvious way to get in or out of it, lit by a bare lightbulb. Perhaps you've read that most fantastic Roald Dahl book, Matilda? Well, Dada gave us a "chokey" of our very own. We used to tease all the little people who came to our house that this "room" above the stairs was for Baby Solitary Confinement. This was made all the more hilarious because, to help him reach the top of the drywall, Dada left a chair sitting on the floor in there. Why did I never take pictures of this? Why?

Anyway, Dada got a wild hair today to take the chokey down, perhaps in part because Isaac's birthday party is tomorrow. Our breakfast this morning was accompanied by ear-splitting noise from the Sawzall.

"What's that noise?" asked Isaac.
"Daddy's using his saw," said the mommy.
"What's a saw?"
"You use it to cut wood."
After thinking a minute, Genius Monkey says, completely out of nowhere and on his own, "Like a drill, Mommy?"
Mommy and Daddy together say, "YES!! Yes, buddy. A little like a drill."

The scary kind of innocent

Isaac's 3-year checkup was today. For the most part, he was fantastic, really into it, and cooperative. He stepped up on the scale all by himself (where we found he weighed 33 or 34 pounds, about the 60th percentile), and he also stood up tall and still so the nurse could measure his height (37 inches, also about the 60th percentile). Dr. M checked his ears, his heart, and his lungs. New this year: she checked his reflexes by hitting his knee with the hammer; she made him bend down and touch his toes so she could check the curvature of his spine; she asked him to jump for her and draw her a circle. All of these things he did, and everything checked out completely perfect in everyway. Except for one thing.

While listening to his heart, she hovered over his chest for a long time. It was long enough for me to start worrying, long enough that I almost asked her if his ape-heart transplant was throwing her off. When she stepped back I asked if everything sounded okay. "He has a heart murmur," she said, "an innocent one. It could just be the sound of blood rushing through." And then she went on her checking way, as though it was the most normal thing in the world to tell a mother that her three-year-old has a heart murmur. She was so casual about it that I felt I should bring it up again. "Can you tell me more about this potential heart murmur here?" I began. "Oh, there's no 'potential'," she said. "He definitely has a heart murmur. It's not a problem, but we'll keep an eye out for it at his 4-year appointment."

After that, her mouth kept moving. I knew she was still talking, but my mind had already switched gears into Mommy Fantasy Mode, wherein I imagined him at 6 years old, gasping for breath on the sidelines of a soccer game, or in a few weeks from now, on a cardiologist's operating table. Occasionally I may have heard such snippets as "normal" and more "innocent" and "may resolve on its own", but none of that made sense, and I really couldn't tell you for sure that she said any of that crap. She could have been telling me that she was just kidding and that in fact I had won the lottery! and I wouldn't have heard her. I told myself not to cry, and I didn't, and for that I deserve to eat all the Easter candy I am downing right now.

The rest of the check-up was uneventful -- I briefly brought up his picky-eating disorder, and got reminders from Dr. M about locking up the meds since Isaac's now old enough to understand that dragging a chair over to the cabinet makes him the tallest guy ever.

We left the doctor's office for home and, when the babies raced to Isaac's room to play, I followed them with my laptop and asked Dr. Google to help me fill in all the stuff I didn't hear when my brain shut down after the word "murmur". Dr. Google told me to calm my junk down, because apparently an innocent heart murmur really isn't that big of a deal. I will quote you from some resources I found:

---

"Heart murmurs is a common finding on routine examination of infants and children. 50% of normal children have an innocent heart murmur." -- Pediatric Cardiology at the University of Chicago

"Heart murmurs usually don't mean there is anything wrong with your child's heart. Your doctor may call these murmurs "innocent" or "functional." An innocent murmur is just a noise caused by blood flowing through a normal heart. These noises are commonly heard in children because their hearts are very close to their chest walls. An innocent murmur can get louder or softer depending on your child's heart rate, such as when they're excited or scared. Doctors often hear heart murmurs when they check children who have a fever. Many innocent murmurs become hard to hear as children grow older and most usually go away on their own." -- familydoctor.org

"Kids with innocent heart murmurs don't require a special diet, restriction of activities, or any other special treatment. Those old enough to understand that they have a heart murmur should be reassured that they aren't any different from other kids." -- kidshealth.org

"Most of the time a murmur is INNOCENT, caused by the sound of blood flowing through the chambers of the heart or the arteries coming out of the heart. The heart structures themselves are NORMAL. You might compare this to when you turn on a faucet and hear water running through the pipes in the wall. There is nothing wrong with the pipes, its just that as the water flows through them you hear a noise. It is the same thing with the heart. The blood has to make several hair-pin turns as it goes through the heart and out to the lungs and this can create some turbulence. Sometimes the sound or murmur may change in quality when the child changes position or turns his neck." -- Carson & Appleton, M.D.

---

As much as I dislike hearing that anything at all is wrong with my obviously healthy child... well, there may really be nothing wrong at all. Thanks for freaking me out, stupid mommy brain.

After I learned all this, we went to the park with AnthonyCarlos. There, I learned that AnthonyCarlos's perfectly healthy grandma was diagnosed with a heart murmur when she was little, and it resolved on its own when she was a teenager. Meanwhile, all three boys, including the one with the murmur, ran full-speed up and down hills, climbed all over tables and play structures, pretended there were monsters in trees, and built sand castles in the horseshoe pits. No one complained of shortness of breath or turned blue in any way. So, as scary as "murmur" sounds, I will try to remember in the future that the "innocent" part comes first.

To the birthday victor go the spoils

Dear Isaac,

How can we spoil thee? Let me photoblog the ways. This year the spoilage was almost pornographically out of control.

1) Meemaw and Poppop flown in, fresh and juicy from Indianapolis, for your birthday pleasure. They treated you to ice cream both at birthday lunch...


...and birthday dinner.


2) Picking out half your birthday presents by hand at Toys R Us. Meemaw and Poppop bought you:
*a spiralling Cars race track
*a gigantic set of linking cars
*two movies (Happy Feet, which we have watched twice, and Peter Pan)
*oversized cardboard blocks
*this other Cars race track you've used so much we've already replaced the batteries:

*one of those pony-head-on-a-stick toys, perfect for playing Naked Cowboy:


3) From Uncle Chrissy and Aunt Jean: a personalized backpack. It was full of lizards.


4) From Mamaw and Dadaw: a groaningly overweight box full of presents delivered by the postman, which included
*wooden building blocks
*a Cars metal lunch box
*a Fisher-Price Rhinocerous/Ostrich/Chameleon combo and Dinosaur/Caveman combo which you have played with nonstop
*these unique and awesome magnetic face books in which we can build all manner of freaky Frankenstein critters

*about twenty Curious George books and two Curious Georges, for the man who insists we buy at least two of everything so one can be the Mommy or Daddy and the other can be the baby.
(*****WARNING! The picture you are about to see shows my husband in a way that is NOT his practiced stone-cold expression. It may be shocking to know that, in real life, he does occasionally make stupid faces for the benefit of our children. Avert your eyes -- it may be too much.)


5) From your great-grandparents, you got some money. No toys with that, bruiser -- that stuff goes into your savings account. (Hi Grandma and Grandpa Ross!)

6) From me:
*a boxload of books, including your new favorite, Harold and the Purple Crayon
*lacing cards

7) From Dada, AKA Lord of Fun, an aquarium to house our newest family members, Goldie, Weenie, and Tickles O'Neal:


8) From the both of us, a trike. It fits you perfectly because you are huge. You can pedal, but you are not yet an expert steerer. Perhaps you got this trait from your mom.


Now if only we could find somewhere to put all your new crap.

Love you,

Mom

Your moment of squishy playland zen

This evening we were bored and decided to show Meemaw and Poppop around Delaware a bit. After passing the Jersey Nuclear Power Plant and the stately home of Ryan Phillipe, we ended up at a family fun center I had taken the boys to once before. This particular family fun center has, among other things, a ginormous indoor squishy playland. After two wild running hours spent exploring the far reaches of said playland and the Skee Ball machines, we brought home one crazy boy and one sleepy boy, along with what are quite possibly two of my most favorite pictures.

First, I bring you what would ordinarily be a terrible picture -- blurry, horrible flash, red eyes everywhere -- except for the fact that it is only the fourth picture, ever, taken of the O'Neal Boy nuclear family, AND that the entirety of said family is enclosed, monkey-like, in the third story of the squishy play structure.



Secondly, I present to you the Future Heroes of Dance Dance Revolution:

The original Angel Monkey turns 3

He had a great day and we officially never need any more toys in our house EVER. A more detailed list will follow soon.

We love you so much, my precious turkey bunny. In this silly little blog, I can't possibly hope to express how very very wonderful you are, nor can I adequately capture the sheer and increasing joy you bring to our everydays. As you get older and continue to amaze me with your delightfulness, I hope you don't mind terribly that I try.

If a baby falls in the woods, does he make a sound?

The answer is yes, and it is loud.

It is my deepest desire to raise my children outdoors as much as humanly possible. I am one of those people who could live outside, and I notice a serious difference in all of our moods when the weather takes a turn for the better and we can spend most of the day in the back-a-yard. For those who may be looking to get the boys something useful? Galoshes. I have some dedicated puddle-splashers. Just this very morning, as we were headed to the car, running late for Jacob's doctor's appointment (more on that later), Isaac takes a shine to a puddle near the porch and jumps in it full-force, soaking his shoes, socks, and jean-bottoms completely through. And how can I be mad? Puddles rule. (**update: at my own urging, I just bought some rain boots for the fellers. Go eBay!)

I took the boys on a hike on Sunday to enjoy the (then) luscious weather and to leave Dada alone with his precious and unending home improvement projects. Though I didn't know it at the time, this was the beginning of our group illness, and Jacob was unusually unwilling to walk. I carried his lard butt up and down the trail. Here is Isaac, getting impatient with Mommy and Baby Slowsky.



Both boys, in their boy-like nature, discovered the wonder that is The Hiking Stick:


We walked to Cattail Pond, named by someone perhaps related to Captain Obvious. Therein we saw two ducks flying away, frogs, more sticks, perhaps a few cattails, benches, and lots and lots of puddles. It's enough to almost drive a girl crazy with laundry, I tell you. But to encourage a deeper fascination with our local park and its offerings, I bought Isaac some books for his birthday about frog and duck life cycles.

So, here we are a few days later, and we are all sick, again. Not that sickness ever really left, since little people have a special talent for hanging on to coughs and runny noses far past a virus's expiration date. Jacob spent the mornings of the past two days screaming basically nonstop, and the remainder of the day screaming if I was removed in any way from his line of sight. I took him to the pediatrician at lunch today to see if there was anything that could be done, but she said he was clean of raging infection, and there was nothing to do but shoot him full of Tylenol and hope for the best. And just like last time, to add to the fun and unrelenting pain, he is also cutting his fourth primary molar. Lucky for us, help comes in the way of Meemaw and Poppop, who arrive tomorrow to help us celebrate some big occasion happening this weekend. No, no, not Easter! You have to go to church for THAT. I mean Isaac's third birthday, hooray!!!

Jacob's verbal skills at one year

Our first baby genius was a verbal machine, generating at least 80 recognizable words by 18 months. His mini-me is on track to defeat even that mark, though this is to be expected, since this time his 35-year-old librarian of a brother is doing the training. Far more interesting than that boring old ma. In short, here's a list of words that escape the pouty Jolie-esque lips of my Jakeford.

Says every day and in context:
Dada
Mama
Dog
Kitty
Uh-Oh
Tickle
Ruff-ruff (barking)
Moo
Meow
Roar (as though he were a lion)
Hoo-hoo (as though he were an owl)

Has been heard to say:
Isaac
Jacob
Jean

I have to admit that, for the longest time, I was seriously worried that the second-child syndrome might apply to reading skills as well. I read to Isaac so much when he was little, and I'm sure I remember him being much more attentive than he really was...but it seemed to me that Jacob just had no patience whatsoever for books. Not that I ever made much time for it, but if I sat him down with a book, to snuggle alone with me in our rocking chair, or even just in my lap in Big Brother's room, he would wrestle and wriggle like a worm on a hook (not the bookworm kind) until I'd let him go.

But suddenly, at one year, it became as though someone flipped his reading switch on. He now has a voracious appetite for lift-the-flap books and brings them to me regularly, pleading with me to read to him using his signature phrase, "EH! EH!" He is psycho in love with Karen Katz. We have two of her books, "Where is Baby's Belly Button?" and "What Does Baby Say?" so I got him two more for Isaac's birthday. But perhaps his very favorite book in all the world is Open the Barn Door by Christopher Santoro, which was also a favorite of Isaac's from the time it walked through our door in Meemaw's suitcase in October 2005. Jacob wants me to read this to him nonstop and, if I'm not reading it, he'll sit and look at it by himself, stopping to moo loudly and obnoxiously in my direction when he finds the cow under the cow-flap.

"What Does Baby Say" has a special place in my heart because I think it set him off in this fantastic direction of imitation. The babies all say simple syllables, like "Ga-Ga!" and "Uh-Oh!", and when we read what each baby says, sometimes he tries to say it himself. Usually he gets stuck ala the proverbial broken record on the first baby's "Ga-Ga", and each response becomes "Ga-Ga", but when he can get past that, the results are magical. You can tell, even as young as he is, that he is really trying to make his mouth move in purposeful ways just as often as not. It is pretty awesome.