Baby Joe Update

It's awful tough chasing after my little buddy, I barely have time to update his blog. Here's a quick recap of what he' s been up to:

• Walking? Not quite yet. He is in the cruising stage, where he stands himself up on some (usually) stationary object and then slowly walks to his destination, always hanging on to something. He has, on a few occasions, gone to a standing position with no support, but he quickly flops down on his little diaper bottom (which cracks me up every time, I don't know why). He can crawl faster than anything, especially when he sees one of the cats -- he gets this impish look on his face and just takes off for them.
• Speaking? Not quite yet. He has completely skipped the phase of speech development involving consonants -- his favorite word is still "Eeeeee", with the occasional "Hi", or a screetch, or his ever favorite raspberry.
  
• Teething? Yes. He has five teeth now, and makes the funniest face where he grinds his front teeth together. I call it his "Bruiser" face, and he looks for all the world like some Bowery street tough saying, "Why I outta!!". He likes to chew on everything -- furniture, toys, people, pets.
  

Joe added a new word to his vocabulary during bath time last night. The new word is "duckie", and is prounounced "khzkhz".

Joe has also abandoned his favorite word, "Eeeeee", and has replaced it with "Hi".

Joe is having an interesting time with language lately. I was quite impressed when he came up with the word "eddie", which originally meant "cat", but now I think it means "mammals" in general.

He seems to have decided that his language system really only requires four sounds. First is the word "Eeeeeeee" (which I'm pretty certain came out of the word "eddie"). He also has a delightful screech, and the ever popular raspberry (his main form of communication with Daddy). He just recently introduced a low-pitched "Aay" sound.

It's fun to watch. I'm the youngest of six, so I've never really been around a baby for this amount of time before. My oldest sister, on the other hand, had five younger siblings by the time she was 9. However, for me, this is really the first time I've got to experience a baby, and I realize that I am probably gushing over things as new discoveries that most people have already experienced, but heck, it's my blog!

Cristin put Joe to sleep last night by laying him down in his crib, and he promptly fell asleep. This is a radical departure from the norm, because the usual standard operating procedure is to rock him gently to sleep while he wails over the injustice of it all.

He slept really well, too. I was ripping up the old parquet floor in our kitchen (we are having a tile floor put in) and he slept right through that. He slept well all night.

Joe's been cutting some teeth, and has been having a lot of trouble getting comfortable to go to sleep at night. We've been letting him play in his crib until he gets real sad, at which point we pick him up and rock him asleep.

This will hopefully allow us to go into the Ferber method with him a little easier, as the transition won't be so abrupt, now that he's getting some practice just laying down in his crib while he's still awake.

Joe and I felt like laying down some chill ambient tracks this evening.

This is the result of our evenings labor.

Enjoy!

Joe hit another milestone yesterday, when he finally figured out how to crawl forward. He's had the concept of crawling down for awhile, but he had never managed to connect the series of motions needed to actually propel himself forward yet. He was quite good at moving sideways and in reverse.

He's now working on velocity. He quickly grasped the idea that crawling forward is a great way to get to the cats (or, in Joespeak, the "eddies").

Cristin is convinced that he figured out how to crawl forward because he was actually trying to stand up, and in the process of doing that he stumbled (so to speak) on the secret to foward propulsion.

Originally posted 8/3/2004

For your listening enjoyment, here is an original composition by my son Joe.

I recorded Joe banging away on the keyboard in my studio and saved the data in a MIDI track. I then ran the MIDI track through an arpeggiator and routed the output through a Korg Wavestation, and added a little reverb and delay.

Originally posted 8/2/2004

Wow, I managed to both update Joe's website and mow my lawn!

I added two pages to the site - photos from Spring and a bunch of photos taken in June and July.

I still need to update the page with the photos from the Fourth of July party we went to.

Originally posted 7/30/04

Heh...

I neither mowed my lawn or updated Joe's website. :)

Instead, I went to Wegman's to get pool chemicals and got sidetracked on the way at Grandma's house (where I had some absolutely delicious tilapia).

Upon my return home, I ended up watching John Kerry's acceptance speech. I gave him an A, Cristin gave him a B+.

Went to bed, finished reading The Perfect Storm, and went to sleep.

I promise I will update Joe's website by the end of the weekend!!

Originally posted 7/29/04

Okay, I didn't get around to updating Joe's website. I'll do it tonight. Promise.

I did mow my front yard, even though it had just rained, so now I have a mowed front yard with big wet cloppets of grass all over the place. Hopefully it will remain dry today so I can hit the back yard and the side lot. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow.

Joe had a great time watching the Democratic convention -- especially the part where he and Mommy danced around to the Black Eyed Peas.

I also rearranged one of Joe's original compositions (I sit him down on my lap at the keyboard of my computer music studio and let him bang away while I record). I ran everything through an arpeggiator and routed the signal into a Korg Wavestation -- I'll try and remember to post the mp3 file when I do his website tonight. Promise!

Hopefully, John Kerry's acceptance speech will have some more fun music for Joe to dance to!

Originally posted 7/28/2004

This is Joe on Easter morning.



Why am I showing pictures from last Easter? Because I haven't updated his website in a while, and the last time I did update it was Eastertime.

I have a bunch of new photos of the cute little guy (including the Fourth of July party he went to and the party that was held last weekend in his honor at Grammie and Grampies house).

I will hopefully be updating the webpage tonight (after I mow the lawn, which I haven't mowed in about two weeks).

This is Joe's new blog site. I will transfer the messags from his old blog over to here.