Juggling

Quinn got a hoop and some balls as a new bathtime toy for his birthday. Tonight as I was lifeguarding post-bath I picked up a couple of the balls and started trying to juggle one-handed, forgetting of course that I don't know *how* to juggle. Quinn started giggling. In the history of juggling, there has been no worse juggler who got as favourable response as me. I eventually got up to maybe 4 or 5 in a row, but the failures were as entertaining as the successes to Quinn. It won't be long before I get in trouble with mommy for juggling in the house so we'll have to enjoy the surreptitious giggles while we can.

Obie the Owl

Some time ago Bec bought Quinn a stuffed owl at a local arts and crafts fair. He didn't take to it much at the time. Recently though, Bec tried him again and it seems to have caught this time. The Harry Potter association and owl-woods expeditions with Grandpa make the owl a solid choice I think. We've dubbed him Obie, for the alliteration, a reference to Obi-Wan Kenobe and a nod to a new era of leadership south of the 49th. With that many positive associations, how can we go wrong?!

Quinn is very cute with Obie. He hugs him when he goes to bed. It also calms him and gets him back to sleep sometimes at night, which has been a prop eagerly sought but to no avail these past months.

I sense there will be at least one "turn-around-and-go-back" to get Obie in future. Remind me then that I said now it'll be worth it.

The big sandbox in the sky

So long Luther. I loved you. Maybe I didn't always show it is much as I felt it but it was always true. We did what we thought was best for you. I hope you knew that and thought so too, or at least understood. I hope there is a better place and that it's true for cats too, and I hope you're there now. I learned a lot from you, and we shared a lot of love, and I think that's all anyone or anything could ever hope for in a lifetime. Eight years ago I never would have predicted that I could love a cat this much but you taught me otherwise. You opened my mind so I could learn a lesson. So long good friend.

Some assembly required, Basic Training style

Quinn got a little parking garage for his birthday from nana and grampy. His eyes lit up when he pulled the paper off it (he's beginning to get the wrapping paper thing...) and he started positively vibrating in anticipation. We opened up the box and he started pulling parts out of the box. Unfortunately we had to take all the parts out of the box to get to the instructions, giving him ample opportunity to fling parts about in all directions.

It quickly became apparent that there was a delta between the picture on the front and the pile of parts on the floor. Some assembly required. Well actually seemingly a lot of assembly. With a vibrating, grunting son beside me and incomprehensible-in-8-languages instructions in hand, I set about assembly. Fortunately it was an engineer that designed it before the documentation people massacred it and I only put one thing together wrong requiring do-over. Every time I got another piece together Quinn would want to pick the whole thing up and shake it, thinking it was yet another hapless mommy- or daddy-constructed tower of cups or blocks to destroy.

Keep Quinn from destroying the partially constructed garage, keep Quinn out of the screws, keep Quinn away from the screwdriver, find the thrown parts, match part to cryptic instructions, keep Quinn from eating instructions, put part on, snap into place, hope it's the right place, install screws, realize part's in wrong place, remove screws, reinstall part, reinstall screws, fight with plastic parts that don't quite mate perfectly. In the end, with help from mommy, it went together pretty quickly and easily, and he absolutely loves it. He played with it for 20 minutes right away.

I remember thinking this about diaper changing. In pre-natal class they show you the diapers, how they work, how to put them on to a placid little doll. It was certainly valuable instruction, but it's a whole other thing again to put that same diaper on a wiggly baby madly trying to throw itself off the change table to its death while peeing in all directions and screaming at the top of its lungs. Similarly, "Some Assembly Required With Vibrating Child" is a whole lot more complicated than "Normal Some Assembly Required". I keep thinking of those military basic training clips you see in the movies, where raw recruits commando-crawl under the barbed wire with live fire going over their heads.

Having emerged from the parental barbed wire, we set off into the parental tire obstacles, with parental overhead-hand-over-hand and who knows what after that.

Clop, Scrape, Clop, Scrape, Silence

Clop, scrape, clop, scrape, silence... My sleeping unconscious waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn't. My only-slightly awake conscious then assumed the shoe-drop waiting role. It didn't. I bolted from bed and looked over the railing and there was Quinn, standing on the second stair, grinning up at me. It just takes a few seconds of distraction and he's somewhere he shouldn't be.

Today we're installing another gate, at the bottom of the stairs.

No snowshovels at the table

We gave Quinn a little snowshovel for his birthday (among other things). He was quite taken with it. He carried it around for quite awhile leading up to dinner time. At dinner time, over his loud protests, his mommy enforced the no-snowshovels-at-the-dinner-table rule. I noted that while this was probably implicitly a rule of most mommies, not all mommies have to enforce said rule.

The person inside

Quinn doesn't talk yet, but he expresses himself in so many ways. It's funny, I often feel that there is a fully cognizant person inside Quinn struggling to be understood, and it's our job to piece together what he's telling us. I've always been a proponent that actual words are only a part of any communication, and certainly parenting a not-yet-verbal kid hones those non-verbal communications skills. And not only the perception part - I've always seemed to terrify kids for reasons I never understood, and it wasn't until Quinn that tried to improve this aspect of myself. Slowing down, relaxing more, and smiling more seem to be the biggest keys.

Sometimes Quinn & I read vocabulary books. It reminds me of my Grade 5 year, helping teach a Vietnamese boat person how to speak English. Hing Wong was his name. He didn't speak a lick of English when he got here, and each person in the class took turns reading vocabulary books to him in a separate room every day. I remember thinking that I certainly wasn't qualified to teach anyone anything, but once I got over my initial terror, it really wasn't hard. It was actually kind of fun. He was very bright and obviously was familiar with much of how the world worked, just not in English. He learned blazingly quickly. I remember seeing things begin to click in his mind, associating pictures with sounds and written words. I get that same feeling with Quinn; that he understands so much and yet can't speak a single word (although we choose to believe that some of the mamamama and dadadada babbles aren't accidental...).

Hing went on to be an able classmate over the years and I never thought much about it at the time. Looking back on it though, seeing how well he did, and hearing how well he did for himself after highschool, I was particularly impressed. I still have this image in my head of the separate room off the main classroom, with a high vaulted ceiling in the old Acadia Street School and sunshine streaming in the tall window, teaching Hing vocabulary. I harken back to that day and that sunny image whenever I read vocabulary books to Quinn.

One Year Old!

It's hard to believe that 365 days ago, we (the royal 'we' that is) were in labour with Quinn, on the home stretch, with him to be born at 10:29pm. The time has flown by and taken forever all at the same time. The stages have been many and he's at such an interesting stage right now, interested in everything, exploring, learning and becoming much more interactive.

I have enjoyed each and every stage. This is somewhat to my surprise as I expected to only really enjoy things when he got older and more interactive. I think I have functioned quite ably in most roles, although perhaps there have been times when it should have been more, or more often. This also has been somewhat to my surprise, not having had any experience with children whatsoever prior to Quinn's birth. It's been fun to learn, and fun to learn about Quinn, and fun to watch him learn.

Loves 'em like Lenny

Quinn loves the cats so much. Unfortunately he hasn't quite figured out how to express that love in a way this is mutually acceptable with the cats. Quinn gets this glowing shine in his eyes when he catches sight of one of them and he immediately engages in high speed pursuit no matter what he was doing. In programming parlance, the cats are the highest priority interrupt. Tulsa wisely always flees in terror. Luther is beginning to learn to, but he didn't / doesn't always. Luther is beginning to bat back a little which is concerning. We're having to police relations a little more closely.

It turns out our beloved cat Luther is suffering from heart problems. He had two cups of liquid drained from his chest cavity yesterday which has eased his breathing but his long-term prognosis is not so good. We got him back today after an overnight at the vet. He's not himself yet, but hopefully it's just due to being out of his territory for a day, which he never deals with well.

Luther is smart and seems to understand people. He seems to appreciate when people try to understand him, as I do. He is a very people oriented cat and he's the first animal I think I've ever truly loved. I have to say I have some regrets for not spending as much time with him this past year. I have pared down the number of relationships I maintain in order to try to do each one justice, and of the ones that remain Luther is unfortunately low on the list. Hopefully I can make it up to him in whatever remaining time we have together.

Kleenex facts I didn't know

The cleaners moved the bathroom kleenex box to the bottom shelf this week for some reason. Quinn discovered this early the next day. Until that day, I didn't know how much space an entire box of kleenex occupies when all its contents have been removed. I also didn't realize how quickly one could evacuate an entire box of kleenex by whipping them over each shoulder alternately with each hand. If there is ever a kleenex box emptying race, Quinn will win hands down.

We had a great visit to Quinn's gramma and grandpa's today. He showed off his new walking-behind-the-dumptruck trick, though only once because he had a lot of dog-chasing to do. He did several laps around the ottoman once we got back home though. It won't be long before full-on walking.

A day for the ages

Quinn started the day by climbing all 15 steps from the first floor to the second floor, virtually unaided (but closely monitored however, since climbing down isn't mastered yet). He finished up the day by walking behind his big dump truck, back and forth across the room about a dozen times. Both of these achievements are coming somewhat out of the blue. We had some stair climbing lessons a few weeks ago, and Bec was showing him again yesterday, but today he virtually took off on his own, with little help, except some help focusing half way up when he caught sight of the cats.

We've tried him out walking behind the dump truck a couple times and he seemed to sort of get it. Today he got himself stood up behind the truck on his own and walked a short way. When Bec noticed and started turning him around at the other end of the room, he did it over and over 8 times! He did it again tonight a bunch of times when I got home from work. He's very proud of himself, rightfully so. If he hadn't caught sight of the cats again tonight I think he'd still be walking around in circles.

I've noticed this pattern a number of times now. Show him something once and he sort of does it but doesn't seem that interested; let it percolate a few days and then show him again; then by the third time, he masters it as if he'd been doing it for years. He picks things up quickly, it seems - gotta read up on what things are coming up to keep developmentally feeding him.

Cats and Flying tackles

Quinn has become particularly fond of our two cats, Luther & Tulsa. So much so that he chases them around, and lays a flying tackle on them if he can get anywhere near them. Luther, lacking a strong (any?) sense of self-preservation quite often stands in for the punishment. I fear $800 vet bills but so far there has been no damage. Tulsa, as always afraid of everything, at least this time rightfully so, has escaped mostly unscathed.

For awhile we seemed to be getting through with the "Gentle Pats" mantra. But now the glowing loving grinning compulsion obliterates all thoughts of gentleness as he crawls around in hot pursuit. I will say that it has made his crawling much faster. He is also learning to pounce because he knows they run away, although he missed once tonight and faceplanted on the ottoman.

He truly loves those cats. I think the cats, Luther at least, love Quinn too. This will be a lifelong loving relationship, I'm sure. If they live long enough,that is...

Bathtoys galore

Usually I pick 3 or 4 bathtoys for bath playtime. There are a few that are his favourites and I'd try to mix it up some. Then Quinn started pointing at the bag of the rest of the bathtoys. Recently I've relented and given him the whole bunch of bathtoys right from the get-go. All 18 of them. He gets pretty excited when he sees the bags come out. He still plays with the same 4 toys, but at least he made the decision.

I'm sure that's a pattern that will repeat itself over the years. No need to artifically restrict choices. Let him make his own decisions.

Calamity Quinn

Waking up from this morning's nap, Quinn faceplanted on his crib bars, leaving a red mark on his lip. This afternoon, Bec was pulling him on his sled down the driveway, and Quinn tipped over and fell in a snowbank. Tonight, he was playing with his mom and tried to do some advanced furniture surfing, cruising around the corner of the ottoman at, for him, high speed, toppling over onto the hardwood floor.

I'm sure there will be years worth of these to come, but this has been the most significant day of calamities so far I think.