Post TV Camera

Jack has introduced a new pre-bedtime ritual: taking pictures. After his milk and post-bath TV show he says, "camera!" and runs downstairs to retrieve my digital camera. He only wants pictures taken so he can view the pictures on the camera. This activity is related to the I-need-to-push-buttons-on-things-that-are-not-toys mania. As I've written before, he expresses this desire by wanting to push buttons on remotes, buttons in the car, and my wife's iPhone.

Tonight, I convinced him to swing around a toy that has two plastic balls that light up when under centrifugal force.

Hi There

Jack says hi to his baby sister.

Hey Now, Hey Now

One of Jack's favorite music videos from Noggin is The Dirty Sock Funtime Band's "Dino-Soaring." The band and the song were featured on "Jack's Big Music Show" on Noggin but we caught the video on the tail of a "Wonder Pets" episode. The chorus features the phrase, "Hey now, hey now," and that's how Jack refers to the song (and when asking to see it on the upstairs TV).

The video shows the very psychedelic band members dancing around with kids on a rainbow like sound stage. The song has a great beat and is very danceable. You can see for yourself:



Tonight, I snapped the following pictures of Jack dancing to the song.

At the Park

Today both my attractive wife and I accompanied Jack to the park. When we arrived, we saw Jack's Day Care playmate James and his mom. Jack and James love hanging out together and were thrilled to see each other at the park. We spent well over an hour trawling around the park together.


At one point, we reached the Big Kids Swing Set. For some reason, Jack has an aversion to swings and has not yet tried the kiddie swings in the 3-5 year old play structure. My attractive wife got on a swing and Jack asked if he could push her. I snapped the picture below. Quite possibly the cutest picture I've ever taken. :-)

Few More Minutes ...

Jack firmly is into testing boundaries and limits, especially at bed time. For the last three nights, he's opted out of story time which usually follows bath time and saying goodnight to mommy. Jack's favorite line these days is, "Few more minutes," which is used to extend whatever activity he's currently involved in. He's used to try to get more TV time, more bath time, more play time, etc.

"Few more minutes..."

I first heard the phrase at the park when I told Jack it would soon be time to go back home. I can only imagine he heard my attractive wife or myself say it on some occasion. He loves to say it while taking bath and after I say something like, "it will be rinsy time soon."

Bye Kitty

Today Dewy and Day-Day's' cat, Bibi Kitty, had to be put down. She was seventeen years old. Jack loved to play with her, especially outside in our condo association's shared back yard area. Like most cats, it took some time for her to warm up to us. She was especially patient with Jack. As they got to know each other, she eventually would let him pet her in his ham-handed way. If he got too bothersome she would gracefully move just out of reach. It seemed to me she knew that Jack was a human kitten, so to speak. She never once bit or scratched him.

After I returned from my year in Iraq, she seemed to warm up to me too. She actually let me pet her when we were outside and, more recently, when we visited Dewey and Day-Day in their unit next door. Jack would see her and say, "Kitty is here!" and pet her while saying, "Nice." It was very cute to watch.


In the last week, Kitty's health took a dramatic turn for the worse. Dewey and Day-Day said they though they might have to put her down. When I came home with Jack this afternoon, Dewey told us that they had gone to the vet and had her put to sleep. They came back and buried her in their unit's back yard. We will miss you, Kitty.

These pictures date from June, 2007.

Achmed and the iPhone

Jack still can't get enough of our iPhones. He's partial to my attractive wife's because she has loaded more games on it. There are some really cool ones. One is TappyTunes where you can play a number of familiar songs by tapping on the iPhone's screen. There's also a drawing program, a Majong game, and a ball puzzle game. The problem is that Jack keeps touching other icons on the home screen and calling up the iTunes store, texting random people in my attractive wife's contact list, and rearranging the icons on the iPhone's desktop.

Yesterday, after waking up from his nap, my wife gave him her iPhone to play with. When I went up to check on him he had the SMS text screen up and was composing an indecipherable text message to our city's police department (I'm only hoping they don't have the ability to receive text messages).

Jack hiding the iPhone under the blanket

He's also knows how to access YouTube on the iPhone. For some reason, he keeps pulling this video of ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's "Achmed the Dead Terrorist" routine.



It's not at all appropriate for a three year old but he likes the expressive skeleton dummy Dunham uses. He laughs maniacally while watching it. After watching the first few minutes of the video, Jack went around saying, "I'm a terrorist!" Oh boy.