Clark Emmett

Hee

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:20:20 GMT

Yesterday, I gave Clark a banana as part of his dinner. I left him in the kitchen while I was on the computer. A few minutes later, I heard, "Take it off? Mommy take it off?" and I look over and there's one of those banana strings stuck to his fingers and he's just sitting there looking extremely disturbed. Haha.

He's been doing this other thing...when it's bedtime, and if I'm not working at night, then I'll get him ready for bed. When we're all ready and done with reading and it's time to turn out the light, I say, "Say..." and he says "Goodnight Daddy!"

But then he sticks out his index finger. This was something he started on his own a while ago. So, Daddy puts out his index finger, and then Clark starts waving his around until daddy gets there. Then they touch index fingers. And Clark giggles. It's quite funny.

Hee.

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 14:44:21 GMT

Clark was a good boy for most of today while we ran a bunch of errands. We took recycling, and we had the windows down, so after we dropped off the recycling we had the empty paper bags kind of blowing around in the back seat, and that caused a fit of completely adorable giggles.

The child ate SO MUCH FOOD today. He must be in a growth spurt. Three years old, and he begged for food ALL DAY. Two pieces of toast, about 1 1/2 cups applesauce, animal crackers, more animal crackers, some of a mandarin orange, a cup of yogurt, milk, a jumbo hot dog, an order of regular fries (yes, all of them), a small strawberry smoothie, more yogurt, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And another cup of milk. He asked for more applesauce, but I said no because I wanted him to finish the sandwich, and he did.

For dinner, he wanted to keep playing, so he told me he was all done with his sandwich. I figured he wasn't done eating, and then I saw him going back to the kitchen and sneaking bites, and then coming back out to play. When he saw that I noticed, he ran back into the living room, finished chewing, and said, "Yummy!"

No potty accidents and much less screaming today, too. So that's good.

-posted by mommy! or Susan! as Clark likes to say

Another milestone

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:12:22 GMT

Last night, we took down one side of Clark's crib. The crib was a gift from ithilien and gwynn_aaron. I remember being totally freaked out when they brought it, because it made having a baby seem so much more real.

Well, our baby has just turned three, and he was climbing out on occasion, so we converted it to a toddler bed last night. He still needs a new mattress (he's worn holes in the one that he has, actually), but we thought we could still get by with the old one for a while. We got him a Batman blanket and pillowcase so that he can learn what it's like to sleep with those things.

So we fixed up his room, rearranged the furniture, made sure outlet covers were on all open outlets, and moved some of his toys into his bedroom. It looks like a little boy's room, now...*cries* :) It's definitely not a baby's room.

Although we really do have to work on that whole potty training thing!

We woke up a bunch of times, expecting him to come charging out of his room, but he didn't. I think he slept on the floor. Hopefully he'll figure out that it's warmer and softer in the bed at some point. :)

-posted by mommy

Hee hee

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:30:34 GMT

Yesterday, we were at McDonald's and I got a sundae, since I can have a little dairy sometimes and I've read the ingredients on the web site to be sure there's no wheat in it.

So I shared it with Clark. Now, Clark's had ice cream before, but never seemed thrilled with it. Now that he's a little older, he kept saying, "Mmm!"

Anyway, I was trying to space the bites apart, but he got a little too overeager. Suddenly his eyes started watering and he started making unhappy noises at me. His first brain freeze, hee hee. :D I gave him a hug and he regarded further bites very suspiciously.

-posted by mama

The Adventures of Batman and Clarkin

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:20:10 GMT

The other day Clark saw one of the framed pictures of him that we have up on the wall. He pointed at it and said "Clark!", so I pointed to another picture of him and he did the same.

Then we got to a picture of Susan and me. I pointed to Susan and asked him who it was. He was quiet for a moment, before exclaiming "Clark!" At first I thought he was just thinking *everyone* was "Clark", until I pointed to me and asked him who it was and he answered with a resounding "Batman!".

Oh, the hilarity. :)

I got down on my knees and looked up at the picture from his point of view, and if Clark already looked like Susan (which he resoundingly does) he looks even more like her from that distance and angle. So he might have actually thought it was him.

But me, well... I'M BATMAN.

-d

ps - Clark and I built this yesterday
pps - Actually, it's more like I kept trying to build it and Clark kept destroying it as I went :)
ppps - It was just about as tall as Clark is

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 23:29:21 GMT

Clark's newest fad:

Screaming (not crying, not yelling, but SCREAMING LIKE SOMEONE IS STABBING HIM TO DEATH) all the time.

It's way fun.

Just ask his parents.

Oh wait, they've put their heads through the walls from frustration and to save their bleeding ears.

The end.

I think I will go whimper in the corner now.

-D

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 04:37:44 GMT

Better xpost this part from my latest journal entry...

But on the upside, I *do* have my medications now, and I'll see Clark a lot tomorrow. Although he is rather two-ish and so that's a mixed blessing. But he was soooo adorable because I got home before he had to go to bed, and as soon as I walked in, I heard, "HI!" from his high chair, where he was having a cookie. Hee.

Then when I went to put him down, he was throwing a fit, and so I was talking to him to calm him down. I took his socks off, and I said "socks!" which he usually responds to with "fock" (it's fox, and we try not to giggle because it SOUNDS like he's saying "fuck"...). But anyway, he didn't say it, but I was still thinking of "fox" and so I started reciting part of the ABC book.

"X is very useful, if your name is Nixie Knox. It also comes in handy spelling ax and extra fox."

Clark looked right at me and said firmly, "Y!" because that was what comes next. I was shocked because I'd never heard him do that without looking at the pages. So I laughed, and said, "Big Y, little Y, a yawning yellow yak. Young Yolanda Yorgenson is yelling on his back!"

And so I just continued with the rest of the book. You sing the ABC song at this point, and then I ended with, "Y and..."

Clark said, "Z!" (We do that part together all the time.)

I said, "Big Z, little Z, what begins with Z?"

"Ah doo," he says (I do).

I finished. "I do. I am a Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz, as you can plainly see!"

Adorable. :D

-mommy

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 14:29:25 GMT

Clark was obsessed with figuring out how to open his sippy cup this morning after breakfast. He succeeded.

So I'm doing the dishes and he's in the high chair drinking his milk, when the top comes flying off and milk goes everywhere. Much cleaning and mopping later, I refill his cup and give it back to him, figuring I must have not put the top on correctly. I turn back to the dishes...

And he does it again.

So I clean all of THAT up and change his clothes (again, because he was soaked both times) and give him a different sippy cup with a screw-on lid. Aha! He's foiled.

Nope.

This one the milk comes out of incredibly fast, and he just POURS it everywhere.

So I switch to another cup with a screw-on lid (we only have so many because tons of people just kept giving us more, but I don't know why) and that one seemed to work. At least until he figures out how to unscrew the lid. :p

And then we gave him pumpkin pie instead of cake for his birthday (so early because mommy has to leave for work at 1pm so there's no time for it this afternoon) and he takes one bite, says "MMM!" and then refuses to eat any more.

Wheee, Happy Birthday. :p

He's a monster. :)

-D

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:41:20 GMT

Today, Clark got up at 5:15 and I'm pretty sure he stayed awake without falling asleep again. I got up to get him at 7. I would have been up earlier, but I was so tired and I had a bad headache before bed, and it came back the instant I opened my eyes...at 5:15.

He's either being very 2, or he's sick, because he wouldn't eat breakfast and he just kept crying. I tried everything...making him something other than his usual oatmeal, talking to him, singing to him, telling him firmly to stop. Some of those things worked briefly, but then he went back to crying.

I finally gave up and put him down at 8:30 for a nap. Usually he makes it until 10 or later before he needs a nap, but sheesh. I think he went to sleep right away. He doesn't seem to have a fever...I just don't know.

So Jeffrey didn't get to sleep in, I still have a headache, and I have to close tonight. So the exhaustion is really not going to help.

In cute Clark news, a few days ago he did his first 'pretend' thing...he grabbed one of his Sesame Street tiles with the letters on them, held it up to his face like a telephone and said, "Hello? Hi! (insert a bunch of gibberish here), Bah (which is Bye)!"

We are looking for a toy phone for him. :) Whenever I call Jeffrey on my break, a lot of times I can hear Clark say, "Bah!" when I'm about to get off the phone with him. It's cute.

-posted by the tired mommy

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:00:11 GMT

Clark is a certifiable dork in training! Here's what he knows so far:

Superman - "zoopa!"
Batman - "bimma!"
Wonder Woman - "winnawim!"
Chewbacca - "shewwie!"
Darth Vader - "ader!"
Darth Maul - "maul"
Millenium Falcon - "minny-fot!"

Brings a tear to my eye. :D

In other news, boy, do we need to update his user icons. They're so old!

-D

Other stuff that daddy didn't talk about...

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 05:04:32 GMT

Mr. Clark is obsessed with his ABCs. He looks for letters on everything -- our t-shirts, the high chair tray, on TV -- anywhere he sees them, he points them out and says them.

He knows all of them...we think. Well, he doesn't say J correctly, and he's getting better with W, which completely mystified him for a while. For some reason, his J sounds like a soft H sound, but it's definitely different from the way he says H. Daddy says that he doesn't know X, or, if he does, he makes a bizarre noise that he thinks is X. As he has been doing now and then, he's backpedaled on some things he already knew. So "big boy" sounds like "ah boy" and "mama" has become "ahma" and "ahda" for daddy, although he's never clearly said mama and dada. Well, he was saying "mamama" for a while. But suddenly everything begins with A, or something.

He says "uhbuh" (bubble) and "uhbububu" which is "bumblebee" because he is completely memorizing the Dr. Seuss ABC book. He is obsessed. He sits and reads it to himself for hours. He points out the letters and occasionally repeats a few of the phrases since he's heard it so many times. It's so cute to see him sit with the book and point the letters out and turn the pages. He'll also sometimes decide to sit next to me on the couch when he's watching Sesame Street.

I may die from the cuteness of him, but hey...what a way to go. :)

-mommy

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 19:27:36 GMT

Clark listens to everything we say, of course. He's started picking up on things and using them with hilarious consequences. For example, when he gets frustrated now he says "Uhg. Clark!" because that's what I've noticed I say a lot when he's done something that annoys me, like, say, dumping his entire bowl of peas on the floor. So it's funny to hear him exclaim annoyance with himself. :)

We're also working on "Please", which has resulted in many, many tears, because why the hell won't we just give him what he wants? :p He's catching on, though... but instead of saying "please" when he wants something we have, he says "Say please!" because that's what we say to him. He's a little parrot.

In other words sure to please john_m_hardin, Clark knows and says "Chewie!" in relation to his small Star Wars Chewbacca action figure that came with the tons of Star Wars toys his nice Uncle John bought him last year.

If you'd like to see the toys (I warn you, you may die from cuteness), there are some pictures of them here:

http://www.rebelscum.com/sagaswjrmillenniumfalcon.asp

Clark also knows and has tried to say "Vader". That should please Uncle John to no end. :)

Hee!

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 04:18:50 GMT

Today Daddy gave Mr. Clark a piece of a Sun Chip, to his enjoyment.

After that, Clark had decided those crunchy things were WAY better than finishing his ham sandwich. So Clark proceeded to dump pieces of his sandwich on the floor.

"All right," I said in exasperation and started picking up the sandwich pieces. At that point, Daddy gave Clark another portion of a Sun Chip.

"All right!" Clark said.

-posted by mama

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:47:51 GMT

So Clark said "Hi, mama!" today when he saw me. Wow. He's really starting to put some words together. He'll say, "Put it away!" when it's time to put his toys away, and the other day he was holding his book called "Say Boo!" about a little ghost who can't say boo and it's almost Halloween. And I pointed and said it, and he started walking around saying, "Say boo! Say boo!"

It's so cute.

Daddy made Clark some flash cards. He loves them. They have capital letters on them. He's pretty good with A-F and they're working on G, but Clark has a hard time saying G.

He says, "no!" more often. The newest thing is picking up the wrong thing and saying no. So, when we say, "Where's the square?" he'll pick up a star, for example, and say, "No!" He'll also stand up on the couch, and then say, "No! Sit!" because that's what Daddy says.

He loves turning the light switches off and on. He always says "off!" or "on!" even if I'm flipping a switch somewhere.

So. Cute.

-posted by mommy

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 03:49:22 GMT

Clark is crazy. :)

In other news, he's learned the letters "A" and "C". I think he knows "B" but there's not been confirmation on that yet, and we just started working on "D". Capitals only, but still. He can recognize them. He surprised me because the same day I first tried showing him the first couple of letters, he saw a grocery back from Cub foods and pointed at it and said "See!" because there was a big red "C" on it.

Sometimes I think he's not paying any attention to me when I try to teach him things, but then later I am reminded that he *does* pay attention, he's just stubborn and refuses to do/say something until HE wants to. The other day he just FINALLY said "up" for the first time when Susan picked him up. I've been saying that EVERY SINGLE TIME I picked him up for about 12 months straight, and he was just finally in the mood.

Clark's superpower is mega-uber-robo-stubbornness.

So *yay* for his parents... ;)

-d

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:52:20 GMT

It's been a long time since we've updated here. Clark's latest joy is climbing onto and off of our bed, over and over and over again. He gets himself all sweaty and tired and it's rather amusing. :)

We're having trouble getting him to bite, though. Not us, obviously, but his food. He can feed himself pretty well now; he still makes a big mess, but he gets most of the food into his mouth. Well, when he's in the mood to, anyway. When he's feeling lazy he'll just sit there and refuse to feed himself and wait for us to do it. :p

Anyway, he's not grasping the concept of biting into something that's too big for him to put in his mouth all at once, mostly because he tries to shove said things all in there anyway. I've tried showing him but he doesn't seem to get it.

I know he'll get it sooner or later, but we can't even hand him a cookie without breaking it into smaller pieces first. Oh well.

He knows most of his body parts now. He only says a few of them, but he knows where all of the others are (well, main ones... legs, arms, hands, feet, eyes, ears, mouth, hair, tummy, belly button... he has a little trouble with "nose" sometimes, though). Gonna work on "butt" next. :)
Oh, and since he asked what they were, he also knows "nipple". he loves pointing to them on his chest when I'm changing his clothes or giving him a bath and saying it repeatedly. Kids are funny. :)

We have some pictures we're going to try to scan in soon, so some of them should be posted here before too long.

-d

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:11:09 GMT

Clark has suddenly become deathly afraid of falling while we're holding him for no apparent reason whatsoever. He's never fallen at all (farther than from where he's standing to the floor), yet if I bend eben slightly forward, he panics and starts clutching at me for dear life.

What makes this exceptionally annoying is that he doesn't do this by squeezing with his hands or trying to wrap his arms or legs around me tigher, oh no. He grabs little folds of my shirt between his fingers and pinches, usually getting my skin along with it.

And here I'd rather been enjoying him not pinching me anymore. :p

It just seems amazingly odd that he'd try to hold himself up with a thumb and a forefinger grabbing at a fold of material. I know he doesn't know, but I would think instinct would make him reach out with his hands or arms or something. But no, he'd rather pinch to save himself, even though he's in no danger of falling whatsoever.

Hooray.

-D

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:36:44 GMT

Clark has decided that 20 months is plenty old enough to enter the "terrible twos". And enter them he has. Hoo.

He's becoming very independent, to the degree that when I try to help him get food on his spoon when eating, he'll instantly let go of the spoon and drop it, complaining all the while. Of course, when he tries to do it himself he just taps the spoon on the bottom of his bowl and gets no food on it, and so then he gets mad. So I try to help him, and the process begins anew. It's *loads* of fun.

He's also very vocal about letting you know how displeased he is when he can't have his way, and isn't above giving you a sob story, complete with frowns and tears to try to get you to let him do whatever it is that he wants to do. He's a stinker. :)

We had a stretch of about a week and a half where he was saying 1 to 3 new words a day, though that has cooled off somewhat in the past day or two. And he'd say words that we hadn't tried to teach him for a week or so, which means he's learning them as we teach them but not actually saying them until *he* feels like it. Which is very much like him and his through-the-roof stubbornness. :p

He also loves Sesame Street. He doesn't pay much attention to the TV (although he loves the Conan O'Brien theme and will always stop to dance to it), but Sesame Street he'll actually stop and pay attention to. He knows and loves Big Bird, and has even pointed to him on the screen and said his best approximation of his name, which is cute. He also, sadly, loves Elmo. I know Elmo caters to the younger children watching the show (around Clark's age), but ugh, he's so very annoying. The Elmo segment they have every day makes my brain feel like it's going to melt out my ear. It doesn't help that Elmo himself is annoying, but the content is geared towards the much younger children and it's just... it's nearly too basic to stand sometimes.

But the rest of the show is as great as i remember it when I was a kid, and the Cookie Monster and Grover segments still crack me up. They slip jokes in for the parents watching, which is nice. :)

Anyway, hadn't posted about the boy in a while so I thought I should. That's about all I can think of right now that's worthy of mentioning.

Although we're still wondering when he's going to move himself to a more normal sleep schedule. 5pm - 6am is getting really old. :p

-D

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 22:27:30 GMT

So Clark has been saying a ton of new words with alarming frequency, so much so that I can't keep up and keep writing them all down in here. Some he seems to be actually learning, while others is just him repeating what he's heard us say.

But I will tell you one thing... the most hilarious thing he's said was the other day, when he blurted out "Boobies! Boobies! Boobies!"

I shall leave it to your imaginations the circumstances upon which he learned that word. :)

Wed, 23 Jun 2004 14:48:39 GMT

Other things I've been forgetting to mention:

Clark has said blue, yellow, purple, fish and yay (the latter while clapping his hands). I think the colors he was just repeating what he heard us say, however, as he doesn't really seem to know what they are. He presently walks around the apartment calling *everything* "yellow". But hey, he never used to try to repeat what we were saying before, so that's something. :)

-d

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 19:33:58 GMT

So, Clark has been pinching me like crazy. He never does it to his mommy, and always does it while I'm holding him. I don't think he's doing it intentionally... I think he's just trying to grab the fabric of my shirt and missing. Then again, if that were the case it wouldn't be happening ALL THE TIME. And it hurts like crazy. He's mostly been doing it on the tricep of the arm I carry him in, which has caused me to nearly drop him a couple of times. He also likes to do it on my chest. And when I say "ow" and tell him "no", he hides his eyes and gets all sniffly and weepy like I just broke his heart.

I have no idea what that's all about.

He has said two new words, however. Just today he said "fish" while watching Susan's screensaver which is an aquarium simulation (and which he loves). The other word was, much to my delight, "super", in reference to Superman. He's known where my Superman figures are for a long time. I would see him looking at them and I'd tell him it was "Superman", and it got to the point where you could ask him where Superman was and he'd look up at the shelf they were on.

And so we did that with him a couple days ago, and he just blurts out "super! super!", much to our surprise.

That's my boy. :)

-d

Words addendum

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 22:08:29 GMT

words that were forgotten in the big-list-of-all-Clark-words:

ears
bottle
mmm

Okay, that last one isn't a word, but Susan said we should include it because he uses it *like* a word. Anytime you give him something new that he really likes, he "Mmm!"s like crazy. And he'll do it to ask for more of whatever it is you just gave him. Also, if our food choices for him for the day happen to make him particularly happy, he will also dish out the "Mmm!"s like they're going out of style.

One day he kept saying "bee!" over and over and we couldn't figure out what he was talking about. Then I realized that's how he says "beans" and so maybe he wanted them. So he had green beans for lunch that day, and boy did he ever let fly with the "Mmm!"s.

Too bad it seemed lost on him that HE told us what he wanted to eat and then he got it. But I'm not worried; he'll make that connection before too long. :)

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 22:03:16 GMT

Clark has his 18 month doctor checkup a few days ago. All is well. :)

He's dropped from being in the 95% in height, weight and head-size to 90% (but, of course, still grew). We'll also be taking him in for an ultrasound to check his heart murmur, which the doctor apparently wanted done after his 15 month appointment but no one bothered to inform us of that fact (that's a crack nursing staff, there).

So the doctor asked how he'd been talking, and I said he probably had 30 - 40 words. She was very pleased with that, since at this stage he should have around 8. Susan didn't believe me, and I may have been off, so I'm going to make a list here of every word I can think of that he's said.

Some of them he's used (and correctly so), but doesn't use them often. For example, "yes" he's said a few times in the right instances (right when I was teaching it to him), but since then has decided he doesn't need to use it. Same with "no", oddly, which should be the favorite word of a kid his age. Ah well, who knows the innerworkings of Mr. Stubborn's mind? :)

So here's the list, which may be added to over the next couple of days as I remember any I miss the first time:

Mama
Dada
yes
no
cheese
peas
beans
cracker
pudding
shirt
spaceship
circle
star
zebra
bird
seal
car
ring
open
closed
in
out
rest
wave
bounce
poopy
bottle
uh oh
oh
ball
block
hi
belt

So that's 33. Three of these he's just said in the past two days (ring, seal, car), which puts him at 30 at the doctor's appointment which means I was actually right. W00T.

If I can think of any more I'll edit the post and add them in.

-d

New stuff

Wed, 12 May 2004 16:53:56 GMT

bee - Beans. Not all that exciting, but he finally figured it out. :)

payshuh! - Spaceship! Susan bought him this fantastic shirt with rocketships and planets and stars on it and he kept asking what the largest ship was called, and since he was so interested in it he figured it out in no time. It's quite cute. :)

He's also been singing. He'll sing "baa baa" with us when we sing "baa baa black sheep" to him, probably because that's the easiest thing to sing. :p A couple times it's sounded like he's tried to do the "black sheep" part, but he doesn't do it often enough to be sure. He'll also sing to himself in Clarkese while he plays sometimes, which I really need to try to get a recording of.

He's also presently fascinated with mirrors and his reflection, which he says "hi!" to all the time now. Of course, he also says hi to the box fan when he sees it in the morning, so who knows what he's thinking. :)

We took a bunch more pictures of him recently and as soon as we get them developed I'll post them (since we once again have a working scanner). I still need to post the pictures from his first birthday, too! But alas, I have no idea where they are right now (and HOW could it have been five and a half months since his birthday already? AHHH!

-d

New words!

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 17:03:29 GMT

Clark has decided that his long spell of no new words is *really* over, and has said several new words this past weekend:

pin: Open.

cuzz: Closed. He loves playing open and closed and just opening and closing things over and over again.

ih: In.

ah: Out. Same as playing open and closed, he loves to put things in and taking them out again.

sir: Shirt. We've been working on that one for a while, and he just finally said it this morning for the first time.

res: Rest. When we used to talk him around the apartment holding his hands, we'd stop at our bed in the bedroom to let him rest for a second, and so now as he's walking around on his own he stops there and says it to himself.

ways: Wave. He's finally been waving, and he does it all the time. He doesn't say bye (although occasionally he *will* say "hi" with it), but he did say "wave" a couple of times.