The Little guy

He is a bundle of energy, and incredibly headstrong. He seems to not even realize that he's thirsty at times. He takes a 25 ug pill of throxin, and we mix it into his milk or juice. He loves salty things, chips, and chicken; so, to kind of get him to drink his juice or his milk, I give him chips, so he gets thirsty. When he gets thirsty enough, he drinks the fluid with his medicine. Sometimes, though, he gets thirsty, and I think it must hurt him, because he starts to scream, and he seems to forget that the solution is to drink the fluid. If I try to stick the bottle into his mouth, he resists, and sometimes even tosses the bottle. If I tease him with the bottle, I often have a better shot at getting him to drink, because at some point he realizes that he is thirsty and he grabs the bottle. Lately, he has taken to rearranging our kitchen to the chagrin of my wife (and me). When we aren't looking, he will push a chair towards the kitchen counters, climbs on them to reach the cupboards, then he goes to great lengths to move the plates and things in the cupboards from one shelf to another. He is very careful, almost nothing gets dropped (in the last three weeks of this behavior he dropped exactly one coffee mug, and the handle broke, it just happened to be my wife's favorite, I just ordered two coffee mugs to replace it). He has a play school, and a farm with little people and animal toys. The toys came with a dvd which had them animated. He will sit quietly and watch this dvd for up to about half an hour. Well, since he was about ten months old, I have been playing abc songs and counting songs to him, there is wealth of them on You Tube, and lately he finds these tiresome. So, we have progressed, his interest seems to be in combined sounds and letters and in activities and actions of cartoon characters. I tried some of the Gumby cartoons which are on You Tube, he seems to like these too. The way I define like, is he will sit and focus on the material. Marginal liking is when he will not sit still, but will periodically return to see what is going on, and no longer liking is when he leaves and does not return to see what is happening. We have a video, which did the abcs phonetically, he listened to that for about half a year, and now when it comes on, if he doesn't leave he has a tantrum (lies on the floor kicking the floor). He seems to know his letters, he says them on sight for me and his mother. So, as I said, we are up to letter sounds and combining them on sight. He seemed to stay focused the last time we tried it, which was yesterday. More will come today, I hope. It's kind of amazing, he is almost 27 months, he doesn't exactly talk yet, but he almost seems ready to read. Today, his mom, him and I will go to the zoo. The petting zoo is a great thing, you buy these food pellets for half a buck, and they have these miniature goats, who want the food, so I sprinkle the pellets around him, and the little goats mob him. He is not afraid of them, and he seems to enjoy their attention. When he gets a little restive with the experience, we leave. This zoo has a small mammal exhibit, in which the second or third enclosure, is mercats behind a glass. When the little guy sees these animals, he tries to pet them through the glass, and he talks to them too. Those are all the small mammals he wants to see, he isn't particularly interested in monkeys or rats or squirrels. This zoo has an extensive aquarium, and the little guy likes to walk through that, he likes the area of the penguins, but not when they are in the water. My purpose at the zoo, is to motivate him to stay active and walking, after about an hour, he is usually done. We tried a merry-go-round, on the fourth spin, he had had enough. The operator was very gracious, and allowed us to get off. Every day is an adventure with the little guy.

A congenital sleep disturbance

I don't sleep much, haven't since college. Maybe due to how drinking might have affected my sleep center in my brain, perhaps because of being an athlete, and when I didn't work out, I just didn't feel like sleeping. I have enjoyed my extra time awake, I get to write, study and whatever else grabs me when I am awake that extra time, when no one else is available. In medical school, I had a painful abcess in my mouth, which kept me awake at times, and it enabled me to stay focused on my studies for more hours. And more is always better when you have so little time to learn so much. I finally went to the dentist, who pulled out a few rotten teeth, and then I was in my internship, we worked somewhere between 75 and 105 hours per week; after a call (when we worked for essentially two days, something we did in my hospital, every three days)I went to the gym, worked out for an hour, then went out dancing. Then slept a few hours, and went back to work. A day of call started normal time (usually about 7 am in the morning, when you went on morning rounds, that was when you told the resident supervising you about the patients you were following, and he told you what you had to get done that day for them). The call ended the next day, you were supposed to be allowed to go home early, but a typical day required you to go home at around five pm because you really had to get all your normal days work done before you signed out to the next intern on call. The reason you had to do all of your work, is because if you didn't, you ended up getting a similar extended list when you got back the next day, and your coworkers would dump on you, so you did your work as quickly as you could, and you made every effort to finish, and you did it as correctly as you could, because you would get reamed at morning rounds if anything was incorrectly done. The system worked to teach doctors to be thourough and quick, but it killed any regular sleep system you might have had. On call you might go to your call room and try to doze, but a nurse working the night shift might call you any time because she might need a signature or a doctor to figure out how to help a patient in distress. You were lucky to sleep two hours on a normal call, but you really couldn't complain, because it really helped you to become a doctor, it helped to drum in the language of medicine so you could speak it and think it no matter how tired you were. It was quite an interesting process. But the sleep part of it, well, I still don't sleep much, I sleep about three to five hours most nights, and I don't seem to miss the sleep that much. However, Jason seems to be aware of when I wake, and sometimes he anticipates it, and he is awake already. He wants me to do stuff with him at two and three in the morning. I don't want to, not because I'm not awake, but because I'm a little selfish, and I want to write, or read email, of just goof off. Lately, though, I have decided to play games with him on the computer, or watch educational videos with him or sing songs. This usually lasts about an hour to two hours, eventually he goes back to sleep, but not without some serious protesting, then he sleeps later, and I usually can get my jogging in. I fear he's kind of learning my erratic sleep habits. But, I think sleeping is over rated anyway.

A walk through the neighborhood

Jason likes to walk. Yesterday, for the third day in a row we went to the play fort. The Play fort is a jungle gym, with things to climb and slides and a large tub with lots of balls in it. Jason is two, so, mostly he watches the other kids, runs around all of the gizmos, and screams. I stay about five feet behind him, occassionally, I throw him onto an apparatus, he laughs, quickly extricates himself from the experience, and runs away. He has not mastered stepping over things, so, as in going down the stairs, he backs his way over and out of things. Sometimes he gets angry, and he will lay on the floor and scream, usually it is because he is thirsty, and for some reason, he has not been able to generalize that sensation and understand that what he wants is something to drink. If I offer him his milk or juice, often he will reject it with the first offer, a second or third might get rejected, but usually by the third offer, he takes the fluid, and is usually happy about it. This little boy is amazing in how he withstands pain, when he trips, he usually brushes himself off, gets up and continues; if he falls hard, he might cry for a minute, at most, before he focuses on what he is doing and puts the fall behind him, this also applies to innoculations and blood work, he cries for a minute and then he seems okay, because he appears to be already focused on other things.. The other day at the Fort, when I followed him around, he found a little recess in the apparatus, he placed me in it, and every time I moved, he would scream at me, and direct or pull me back to where he wanted me to stand, it was fascinating. He has two stuffed animals who are his buddies and a little blanket and he conferences with them daily. On several occassions I have witnessed his attempts at feeding his two friends (Tigger and Pooh). Several times, he has avoided allowing me to take him out of his crib, he is basically teasing me; when he has done this, I have picked up Tigger or Pooh and have begun to diaper them, he promptly gets angry at me, and pointedly demands that I pick him up and take care of him. Having a son is incredibly exhilerating, none of the books about it have prepared me for this. Each development is somehow special, and enables me to understand him, and connect to him a little. Another fascinating thing about this is how personal this experience is, nobody empathizes enough to understand my experience. Other parents kind of remember similar experiences, but, often the memories are dim, and somehow, they cannot really remember what happened. I like to think that these thoughts are indelible, but already, there are experiences from a year ago, when Jason was much younger, that kind of meld into the current experiences, and so my memory is not so clear about what happened. Hopefully, by writing, I will have a clearer picture of the experiences. I also got a video camera, and hopefully I will be able to capture some of the essence of Jason's time with me. However, I am finding that this is difficult too, for example, last week, I took Jason to the zoo, they have a petting zoo there, and there are about two dozen miniature goats there. I bought some of the pellet food the zoo sells, and I figured that if I put the food near enough to Jason, he would have this experience of the goats kind of mobbing him, and it worked, perfectly. Ten or fifteen little goats surrounded him and kind of pressed against him as they vied for the food on the ground. He had a grand old time of being pressed by them. Unfortunately, I had no camera, so I could not record the experience. A week later, I brought the camera, but the zoo was more crowded, and there were more children in the petting zoo, so, I was prepared, but the goats had too many other attractions, so they didn't mob Jason, so, I could not record the experience; but, I will try again. Jason and I often walk in my neighborhood, about half to three quarters of a mile. Linnette is one of our neighbors, she owns a horse named Diesel, and Jason and I always stop on our walk, to feed this horse a carrot or an apple. We were very pleasantly surprised to be recognised by Linnette in our local supermarket by Linnette, who works in the Deli department. Jason loves going to the supermarket, he loves the multivaried stimuli which the supermarket has; he loves helping to place things in the cart, and he loves sharp turns and quick stops as he is being pushed through the market. Jason is capable of about an hour of focused sitting while we are moving around the supermarket, it is fascinating to watch him.

Jason today

He walks, he babbles, he talks to his three cats, he talks to his dog, he shares his food with the dog. Every bowl of vegitables, every fig newton, Ruby, his dog gets one bite for every bite he takes. Bed at night, is a battle, brushing his teeth requires me to hold his arms, while his mother brushes; after which he takes his brush and goes over what we did independently with the brush. He smiles a lot. He is not one of those terrible twos who says no to everything, he often says yeah. He does have some horrendous tantrums. He reminds us of who is in charge. He is Jason, the master of all he surveys.

Jason at 25 months

The terrible twos in action. He screams, he rants. He pushes chairs all over the house to reach stuff that used to be out of his reach. When I take him out for a walk, he demands a trip to the play fort or the zoo. And pulls me to the car. He still talks to the cats and the dog. When he goes to the zoo, he talks to the mercats, and the miniature goats in the petting zoo. He refuses to be placed in a stroller, he will not sit still in a restaurant, he is Jason. He will watch DJ Otzi sing the Burger Dance, he will listen to Agadoo, a lively song about Hawaii, but he no longer sits still for his ABCs (every now and then I hear him reciting his ABCs to himself). Jason likes to glue his ear to the telephone. I do not know what he is saying, but he speaks to it for hours, and he will find a phone he can reach any time me or his mother pick up a phone. He has a radio control car, which he spent a day playing with, now it deserves about three minutes a day of his attention. He is Jason, a very oppinionated little guy, my son.

observations of my new son

Jason is 10 months old. He is thirty inches long, he weighs 23 pounds, his hair is red and curly. His favorite foods (to the exclusion of everything else tried) are bananas and chicken mixed with sweat potatoes (pureed), he likes roast chicken (little bits offered at the table while he's in his chair), he doesn't like salmon or tuna. He currently gets through almost a quart of formula a day (I do not see how a little person can drink so much). He enjoys it when I pat his mouth while he is voicing, this makes a staccato sound which enjoys. A week ago he said Da-Da, followed rapidly my Ma-Ma, I called my wife, and fortunately for me he repeated Ma-Ma for her. He is able to walk several dozen steps if supported (for balance, he bears weight). He still has not figured out crawling. He is constantly wiggling trying to get off my lap when I am feeding him, but he really can't go anywhere yet, because he can't walk independently or crawl. He is able to go from prone to sitting unsupported independently. He has listened to Youtube videos extensively, primarily focusing on counting, abcs and language skills. He also listens to videos which work on geography and history geared for children slightly older than him, but he is engrossed any way. He also seems to enjoy Gene Kelley's Singing in the Rain video, he has his own little dance which he does to that film especially when there are tap dance breaks. He can almost pull himself to stand. My father used boxing ring ropes to challenge balance in developmentally delayed children, I have been using a footstool which also rocks, his balance has improved dramatically in the last month. When I walk my dog through the day, I give her a treat, if Jason is awake, I give him the treat to give to her, he likes the texture of the treat, and he keeps it just beyond her grasp; fortunately she is an incredibly patient dog, and waits until he allows her to grasp the treat without touching him, and then she pulls it away, yesterday he finally realized that she was suppose to get the treat (yesterday he laughed when she got it, prior to that he'd cry, because he was upset to lose his toy). That's Jason in a nutshell, by and large very happy, irritable just before he goes to bed or when he's wet or needs a change. Remarkably he has had no infections in his life, to date at least. Hope you enjoyed the update, I realize, the parents always think it's a bigger deal than it is to every one else.
S