Guess what? Jet's weened. Yep. He hasn't breastfed for about two weeks now. S is more excited about that than anyone as it gives her more freedom. Aside from one rare meltdown, Jet has adjusted just fine. In fact, sometimes he jokes about wanting "nums" and is fine when he doesn't get any.



Jet saw his first fireworks show tonight and it freaked him out. He had a very worried face and kept asking to go home. An hour afterwards, Jet wanted more boom boom.



Jet is using more words than ever, but sometimes it's hard for us to understand him. He recently stumped us with "Bobo". After several days of not knowing what this was, S eventually figured out that it meant "pillow".



Jet is full of energy. He just wants to play and explore and jump around. He wakes up, goes and goes and goes, naps, wakes up and goes and goes and goes, and then sleeps.



Here are some recent highlights:

• Jet learns how to toast and wants to do it all the time now.
• S teaches Jet how to dance like a robot
• Jet starts stage-diving off furniture and onto pillows
• Jet starts talking to stuffed animals, feeding the face on his cup, pretending his food is a car, and playing other imagination games.
• Jet names everything I can point to on one of the pages in his book.
• Jet sings and dances, sometimes even on command
• Jet knows his bedtime routine. Sometimes he asks to get into bed, for it to be dark, for me to rub his back, and for a song.
• Jet learns the word snuggle, and uses it daily.

Jet has developed a silent cry. When he doesn't get what he wants, he makes a face that looks like he is in intense pain, but he makes no sound. For the most part we ignore it or ask him to tell us what he wants.

I attended the Waldo mob in SF today. Despite the perfect weather, the turnout was dismal and it never reached critical mass. I did, however, have a blast walking from the Bay Bridge to Coit tower and back as Waldo. I got lots of attention and posed in many a tourist's photo. There were several moments that just made my day. The first was a a bunch of teens hanging out the windows of their van snapping photos with their cell phone cameras and yelling, "Waldo! Waldo! My life is complete. I found Waldo!" Another occurred at the very end of my journey when a little girl... maybe 7 or 8 years old... got out of her car, started jumping up and down, and yelled, "Dad, Dad, I found him! I found him!"



I also enjoyed discovering the park and fountain at Levi's Plaza for the first time, and getting up close ad personal with the parrots of telegraph hill. I didn't realize that there are about 50 of them now.

The other day as we were arriving at a little party on Angel Island, Jet spontaneously started singing along with "Le Freak" on the radio. S & I heard a little "freak out" come from the back seat. We were busting up! This is a good example of how Jet is starting to pick things up on the fly now. In fact, I read somewhere that at 20 months, kids can learn up to 20 new words a day. Wow. It must taper off at some point because at 37, I have trouble keeping up with my single word of the day. In any case, Jet's vocabulary seems to grow with leaps and bounds every single day. It's amazing.



Jet is starting to sing along with other songs he knows also. He and S go to a music class once a week and he's been singing some of those songs. His dancing is also getting a little crazier and he's been trying hard to jump. This is really fun to watch.



Jet is also pulling off some sentences now. He is quite adept at, "I want xxxxx" where xxxxx is juice, shoes, bite, up, down, kitty, outside, milk, draw, naked, ball, raisins, mama, hot tub, book, pancake, walk, or "that", for everything he doesn't know the word for. He also has some phrases like, "where'd it go?" We've been working on animal identification and sounds (which he's quite good at) and colors (which he hasn't quite figured out yet). I've also been teaching Jet "Marco Polo" which, at this point, is our version of hide and go seek with an audible component. Jet has also picked up "mine", presumably from day care. He grabs things, holds them close to his chest, and adamantly proclaims, "Mine!"



We've been gently weaning Jet from his breast feeding, which is mostly just comfort Mama time now. For the last month or two, it's just been morning and bedtime nursing. Lately, I've been putting him to bed with a story and some songs which has eliminated his nighttime nursing. S has been slowly shrinking his morning nursing which is the last step. There have been a few days here and there where he hasn't nursed at all and he's only had a meltdown about not getting "nums" once. Jet still gets plenty of comfort Mama time, so this is more of a transition for us than it is for him and S is excited about that.



Jet continues to be a great kid with a charming and adventurous personality. We consider ourselves very lucky and we are having lots of fun being parents.

S was out last night, so I decided to get some things done around the house. What resulted, was an ironically bad appliance night.



First, our clothes washer started making funny noises. When I went to investigate, I found that the spin cycle wasn't spinning. I futzed with it for a few minutes and it just wasn't getting better. It was a wash of most of Jet's clothes and, not only were they still dirty, but now they were, literally, soaking wet.



In the process of investigating that, our smoke alarm squealed off for about 2 seconds, for seemingly no reason. I looked around for signs of smoke and there was nothing. I don't know how, but it didn't wake Jet up.



Then our dish washer started freaking out. We have this fancy 2 drawer washer and both drawers were beeping and flashing "F1". I tried turning the power off, but a second or two later they turned back on and started beeping an flashing. I finally scrambled around under the sink and pulled the plug. Upon further investigation, I found all sorts of bubbles in both drawers and underneath the unit and I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I had put dishwashing soap in the washer instead of detergent. Ugh. As it turns out, we use the same brand of dishwashing soap and dishwashing detergent and, aside from the different color flowers on the front and some small print, their containers look quite similar. So I grumbled a bit and then cleaned the mess up.



At this point, I was getting the willies and was wondering what was going to break next. Hesitantly I jumped on the computer and started researching new clothes washers. When I finally found the eco-friendly washer that I wanted and finally accepted that I was going to have to shell out $1k+ for it, I discovered that it wouldn't fit in our laundry space. It figures! I ended up going to sleep thinking that we were going to have to go to the laundrymat today. I grew up going to laundrymats and I hate them. We don't have any of those hip wash-n-slosh places down here in the 'burbs and I've never had one of those "Groove" techno moments while watching the clothes go round.



Anyway, this morning I decided to see if I could find the problem. If the washer was broke, I couldn't do much harm by taking it apart... or could I? I flipped the thing over and found that the motor was turning without rotating the drum. As if it was a car, I pulled the transmission, found a busted clutch, and ran down to the parts warehouse around the corner. When I approached the guy at the corner, I said, "I have a whirlpoo..." He glanced down at the broken part in my hand and interrupted with, "Say no more". He scurried back into the warehouse and returned moments later with an improved version of the part that I needed. He said, "There's only one washer that uses that part". $12 later, I was back at home, putting things back together. Now I'm happily doing laundry again and Jet's clothes are clean (and dry).



It's always something around here...

For those of you who haven't noticed, I've started using flickr a bit more. Most of our photos of Jet are up there, including some recent ones. If you want access, be sure to add me (gadgetshead) as a contact and I'll set you up.