Jack

The many meanings of “up”

2 Comments

Jack says “up” a LOT, and the word keeps getting new meanings (without getting rid of the old ones).  It started out just meaning “pick me up”.  Then, sometimes “up” meant “move, please” or “get out of my way”.  Next, “up” started to mean “down”, as in “put me down” or “I want to get down” if he was already up.  (And if he says “up” and you say, “do you mean down?”, he’ll say “yup”.  He just won’t attempt to say down.)  After that, “up” could also mean “on top of” something or “higher than something else”.  Like, he’ll lift the ladder on top of his fire truck and say “up”, or he’ll stack a toy on top of another toy and say “up”.  Most recently, like new yesterday, Jack looked at John, pointed next to him on the rug, and said “up”.  He very clearly meant “sit down right here, Dad.”  A couple hours later, he was sitting in the big gray chair and he did the same thing to me.  Pointed to the cushion and said “up.”  So I sat down next to him in the chair, and he was happy.

(Up is a super weird-looking tiny word.)

Social distancing is not a problem in this household

Leave a Comment

This whole coronavirus thing hasn’t changed our lives all that much yet.  We’re already basically hermits.  Jack and I had been getting out a lot, and we do miss our baby friends (and their moms) and the library story times, but the weather is getting nicer and we’re compensating by taking morning hikes and then collapsing into naptime.

“Hikes”, I should say.  We’re walking on level paths through some woods or around a pond, at Jack’s pace.  He’s been doing great – he walks on his own more than half a mile before he asks to be picked up, and even then he still walks a little more.  Then we have a snack and a diaper change, and he falls asleep on the way home and through the transfer into the crib.

We’ve only seen a handful of people, all keeping their distance.  Jack has discovered the joys of scuffing his feet through leaves, pine needles, gravel – whatever the path is made of.  Then he runs, he falls, and he giggles when I brush off his hands.

A very merry unbirthday to you

4 Comments

I have decided that we are going to celebrate half-birthdays in this house, primarily because it’s an excuse to eat cake.  No one is fighting this decision.

We started with Jack.  He turned 18 months on March 26th, and to celebrate, we sang “happy half-birthday to you”, showed him the giant bunny head balloon I found (he likes bunnies, calls them “hops”), and gave him a chocolate-frosted cupcake for breakfast.