Random Jack on Halloween

Oh, to Splash the Day Away

Last night we had a bath after a trip to the mall to check the clearance rack at Baby Gap. Normally during bath time we play with our floating friends and crawl around the tub, but apparently that was not what was scheduled this time around. This time we were fascinated with constant and intense splashing. The video is a lot longer than some I've posted, it clocks it at 3 minutes total, but he is pretty cute the whole time.

9 Months = Bipedal

Well, some people don't seem to want to believe me that my son can walk when he only had his nine-month marker yesterday, but guess what? I have video proof. He can go a lot further in one go than he does in these videos, but when he sees the camera is on him he gets a little flustered and gets a bit anxious for some reason. Anyways, now that he can walk basically the length of the apartment I'm moving on from telling people that he is "learning to walk" to saying "he can walk."

And Then He Could Clap

Yesterday Holly noticed Jack doing something new with his hands. Instead of flailing them about like a bird on crack cocaine and swinging them all over the place while growling and groaning, he was watching them very intently as he smacked his palms together. He was starting to figure out clapping after seeing Holly and I do it time and time again.

It didn't take him long because this evening he was clapping up a storm, non-stop, as much as I could get him to do it. He would clap when I gave him a piece of my brownie, when he saw something he thought was funny, or at just about anything else. Even better? I have video proof for all of you to see.

For Aunt Shyla

Lately Jack has taken to finding the most random things to be hilarious. Yesterday it was when I sneezed while playing with him on the floor. He went bonkers, so of course I milked it for all it was worth. Luckily we were able to catch the laughing fit on camera this time.

Not Entirely Sure

I'm not really sure what I want to write about today even if I really shouldn't feel the need to write about anything in particular as this is my blog after all, but I want to write about something, so I think I may just ramble for a little while and see where things go.

This morning I sent of my resume and portfolio to yet another potential employer. Yesterday I followed up on other jobs that I had either applied for or saw new listings for and all of them had been "filled" so I went my merry way towards the next ones on the list. This particular job is actually here on campus in the mechanical engineering department. They are looking for what seems to be a junior-ish web developer to help with the department website. I took a look at the website and can't really see why they need someone but I'm not going to complain.

I called up the contact within the department to ask if they were still looking for someone and they said that they were, so I got a few more details and sent off my information. According to the job listing the only real requirement is that you have a proficient knowledge in at least one of the following programming languages: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, or mySQL. Lucky for me they weren't another employer looking for Flash and .NET programmers, and also lucky for me that I think I could consider myself at least proficient in three or four of the languages asked for.

Seems like I fit the bill, at least at first glance. The contact in the department told me that they would review my resume and portfolio and then most likely call me to set up a preliminary interview. It's a waiting game now I guess.

I'm cruising right along in my efforts to re-read the entire Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan before the next book comes out on November 3rd. I'm almost finished with the third book (my favorite) and will be trying to finish at least 2 per month for the next couple of months. I may want to try and cram as much in before the start of school as I can if possible because I've got a couple of literature classes, but we'll see how things turn out. There are also a lot of other things happening this summer that take up time too.

Conquer Club Trivia is doing as well as can be expected. I still haven't found a lot of time to stock the system with questions (there are only about 300 or so right now), but Russell was kind enough (and much more tolerant with me than I probably deserve) to help me find a bug in the system that was allowing repeat questions when it shouldn't have been. It turns out that I had made another what we now call "Caleb Mistake" in an entirely different place that was backing things up wrong. It's now fixed though, so that is good.

The first day the site was live I had 96 unique visitors, and the next day I had 156, but that has been the record so far. Since then things have tapered off rather dramatically and it seems there are about 25 to 30 visitors a day, which is respectable for something that only fits such a small audience anyways. If I can get more questions in I think it will help a bit, but like I've said before, I don't expect it to be anything that is wildly popular, especially since I'm not making any money off of it in the long run.

I finally broke down and asked my first every question on the BYU 100 Hour Board this week, something I've always refrained from doing on some sort of strange principle before, but I had a fun question after going to dinner with Holly the other day and figured since we personally know one of the board writers I could address it to them personally and have a little fun with it. Now I just have to wait and see how long it takes for them to find the answer I guess.

Which leads me to another thought. The BYU 100 Hour Board is old, like really, really ancient, and as far as I can tell hasn't had a proper face lift in quite some time. It has the appearance of a website built in the late 90s in my opinion and doesn't seem to function all that well according to the writer that I know. Obviously given my current area of interest this has me pondering and considering the idea of making a website with a similar approach, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing way. We'll see if anything substantial comes of the thought down the line, but it's at least something to think about.

Jack is crawling, but that certainly seems like old news at this point. He now stands up next to the furniture with only one hand and steps to the side so he is barely holding on. He also has learned to push boxes against walls and use them as step stools to get to drawer and cupboard handles that he has been a long time in pursuing. Even yesterday I found him unexpectedly hanging onto the cross-bars on the back of our kitchen chairs with both feet off the floor and on the cross-bar between the chair legs. No fear, that's my son it seems.

He is also getting a bit better at sleeping through the night. Sometimes he still wakes himself up, but now he doesn't necessarily need to be fed in order to get back to sleep. Many times I can just rock him in the rocking chair for a few minutes and he's out cold again. If he does eat, he doesn't chow down on six or eight ounces of formula like before, he's lucky if he makes it through two before nodding off. I take it as a slow and steady move towards not eating at all during the night and sleeping more soundly because of his heavily increased physical activity during the day.

Solid food have been an interesting endeavor to say the least. He loves his rice cereal, but basically refuses any sort of "baby food" that we've tried. We have gone with peas, applesauce, peaches, pears, squash, and a couple others, but his reaction is to spit it back out, clamp his mouth shut and give us a look of, "Are you seriously trying to feed me that?" So, we eat a lot of rice cereal, share Daddy's mashed potatoes from time to time, and luckily we've added oatmeal to the list of things we'll eat as well. I'm thinking he is just going to go straight from the rice cereal to the real people food, sort of like Cymbre did back in the day.

I guess that is enough rambling for one day, I'll try to get some new pictures of Jack up sometime soon for everyone who likes to see those. Maybe some from our recent trip to the zoo or something.

Jack in California

Holly recently posted this pictures on her Facebook account, but I know there are several people out there who won't see them there and thought you might like to see them here instead. My favorite is the first one, followed by the one with him staring down Marshall Minor.

Cute Jack Times Two

Here are a couple of recent picture of Jack. One is of him wearing his Disneyland hat from his adventures with Holly in California and the other is of him doing battle with a stuffed monkey at Rick and Shelley's house in Pasadena.

Backwards Motion Achieved

Jack has known how to roll over for weeks now, possibly even getting close to months (alright, maybe not), but definitely weeks and he has shown some great skill in using his rolling to move around the floor or the bed, or his crib to reach things that are not too far away. He has also been doing a great job of getting his arms underneath him and looking around for things and people when he is on his stomach.

However, crawling is what we are really trying to achieve these days, and he has started to make some serious progress... going backwards. Yesterday during the day, and then in the evening when I was home he was on the floor while Holly, Julie, and I were hanging out. Then, all of the sudden he starts chattering like a madman and moves at least 10 feet across the living room, and halfway into the hallway to the bedrooms... backwards. Yes, backwards. He seems to be able to get the motions down at least most of the way, but he has them in reverse so pretty quick I went from seeing my son be happy as a jaybird in the middle of the living room floor to listening to a disembodied happy squeal when he found himself in the hallway.

Quite entertaining to be sure.

Holly leaves to go to Redlands on June 10th, and I think we have a pretty decent shot of Jack crawling pretty regularly before then, but at the very least he is going to figure it out by the time he gets back into town with her on July 1st. I'm sort of really hoping he figures it out before they leave town because I don't really want to miss it. Lucky for me Holly has her new MacBook so if he starts to figure it out while she's gone we can hook up the Skype webcams and she can point the computer towards him so I can watch at the same time. Thank goodness for modern technology I suppose.

A Little More Random Jack

Just a few random pictures we've taken recently of Jack. Apparently one day Holly and Jack decided to spend a little time making faces in the camera. The first picture is of how Jack spends a majority of his time these days. Lying on his back with his feet in the air. Enjoy!

Jumping Jack

Jack is nearing his 5 month mark in just a few days and because he has been so great at learning to try and sit himself up, rolling over, and jumping around he has sort of outgrown the swing that Mom and Dad bought for him when he was born. Even when we strap him in he tries to roll himself out which isn't the safest of things. So, we decided to retire the swing until the new baby arrives at the end of the year and upgrade to the jumper style seat. This video is of Jack and his jumping prowess.

A Baby with No Bones

Yesterday Jack had to go and get his four month immunizations, which meant he spent the majority of the day either asleep or sort of out of it because he was hopped up on Infant Tylenol. He made it through the day remarkably well, but it was sort of funny to watch him because he spent lots of time as a boneless weight on our laps.

The Adventures of Diaper Containment

So, in the past week Jack has begun to sleep through almost the entire night. However, because of this he doesn't get his diaper changed until he wakes up anywhere from 8-12 hours after going to bed. This presents a problem because his current diapers do not seem up to the task of urine containment like they should be.

Apparently this is one of the shortcomings of using the store brand diapers. Sure, they cost 50% less, which means I will continue using them for daytime use, but they definitely are not capable of keeping Jack comfortable during the night shift.

Therefore, after some consultation with a few people in the ward, and with Dad on the phone we've decided to give a try to having a single package of name brand diapers such as Pampers or Huggies on hand to use specifically for the night and see if they do a better job at containment.

Wish us luck.

Jack Loves Clapping

On Sunday evening Jack was being a bit fussy and when it was finally time to go to bed he was having a bit of a tough time settling down to try and fall asleep. It was one of those times when he didn't want to sit up, didn't want to lie down, didn't want to lay on the floor, didn't want to suck on his pacifier or eat his bottle, etc.

The only thing that had worked to any degree for me the entire evening was putting him in his crib and then sitting next to it with my arm hanging over the side so that he could play with my fingers and bend them or squeeze them or lick them to his little heart's content.

So, when he started crying as Holly was attempting to put him to sleep I suggested that she go lay him in the crib and see what happened. She did, but it wasn't helping much until Holly started clapping. Yes, you heard me right, she started clapping. Apparently she does this from time to time to distract him from whatever is making him cry and shorten the crying fit by a good amount of time.

The strange thing was that she was clapping really loud, as in the kind of clapping you do when you are trying to be just a little bit obnoxious about it, not the kind of polite clapping you do at the end of a performance or speech.

Of course, Jack being the strange little boy that he is at times thought the clapping was the perfect sedative and promptly rolled over on his side and got a serious bout of the droopy eye syndrome so common in little babies who just can't stay awake any longer. A few more minutes of clapping and he was basically out, so Holly grabbed the closest book she could find, The Search for Wallace Whipple (my favorite of all time) and read him the first two pages.

He fell asleep and didn't wake up for 7 hours. Ridiculous I say, ridiculous!

Jack's First Sunday

It has been weeks since Holly and I made it to church due to being sick, being pregnant, having a 5 day old baby at home, Grandma Chatfield breaking her pelvis, etc. However, yesterday we made the decision that we weren't missing church yet again for anything, and packed up Jack nice and warm in his stroller to walk over to the church building.

There was snow falling like crazy (huge snowflakes the size of quarters), but we made it alright and didn't have any problems. Jack slept the whole way over there and made it through about the middle of sacrament meeting before he started to wake up.

Once he woke up he needed his diaper changed, so I went looking for a changing table. Turns out that none of the bathrooms for men in our building have changing tables, so I wound up in a classroom with a blanket on the table to change him. It worked out pretty good, so no worries.

He was behaving pretty good, so we stayed through Sunday School, but that was about the limit for him, so we called it a day and went home. Not too bad for his first try. Next week is his baby blessing and tons of people will be in town, so likely it will just be sacrament meeting again, but that's okay. He seems to get a little freaked out by all the noise at church.

The Faces of Jack Flanagan

For all of you who have been begging for more pictures of Jack lately. I had a few extra minutes this morning and took a bunch of close-ups of him making different faces while he was hanging out on the bed. The first one is my personal favorite by about a mile. The last one is after I accidentally dropped my phone and hit him in the leg. Enjoy!

The Adventures of Vomit Boy

Jack is an interesting baby. He has been pretty calm so far in the first three weeks of life with only a handful of really fussy times and only a couple of nights where he didn't sleep very well. Despite all of that he has one talent that truly amazes me to no end.

About a week ago Holly, Jack, and I were sitting on the couch watching a little college football in the morning when my arm started to get a little tired from holding Jack. I figured since he was nice and calm, just sitting there looking around the room I would lay him out on the floor and let him do a little wiggling. He hadn't been on the floor for more than about a minute when all of the sudden he turns his head to the side and projectile vomits across the living room floor everything he had eaten so far that morning. This is where it gets a little strange. You would think a small baby who had just thrown up would be a little traumatized, especially when it came out through the nose as well, but no he just threw up, and rolled back over happy as can be.

Holly was of course mortified and worried that he had hurt himself, but I promised her nothing was wrong, he probably just ate a little too much and his little stomach decided it didn't have room anymore. We got him cleaned up and gave him a bath that morning and life continued on.

Fast forward to about three hours ago at 5:00am this morning when Holly had Jack in the bed with her for a few snuggles following a feeding a bit earlier. I was out on the couch because I couldn't quite get comfortable on the bed at the time and all of the sudden I hear a gasp and a yelp from Holly followed by a "Caleb! I need help!"

Apparently, Jack had accomplished the same feat. He was asleep, snuggled next to Holly, and all of the sudden just turned toward her and threw up like a champion. Out the mouth, out the nose, and even managed to get some in his little ear. We tore the sheets off the bed, threw them in the washer and changed Jack's clothes and then Holly took him upstairs to the guest bedroom to finish sleeping out the morning.

Once again, he didn't make a sound. No crying, no groaning, no red or scrunched up face, nothing. No warning of any kind, just turned to the side and let loose. Nothing afterward either, he just looked at us with big eyes and an expression that seemed to say, "Aren't we supposed to be sleeping right now, Dad?"

That's my son, Vomit Boy, saving the world one batch of throw up at a time.

Learning the Sleeping Baby Rundown

Jack has been home for four nights now, and the first one was alright, he didn't sleep a whole ton, but at the same time he didn't really leave us with no sleep. However, the second night he just cried and cried and cried. Nothing we did could make him stop, so that was a bit of a rough night.

Then, the last two night he has slept the night away, only waking up to eat for 45 minutes at a time twice a night, and then falling right back to sleep. If he can keep that up I might be able to get just enough sleep to survive I think.

Jack and Memphis Save the Day

I figure I'll be posting pictures regularly over the next week or so to make sure everyone has the chance to see little Jack in action. These are all from my cell phone which makes it far easier to get them onto the blog quickly, but we do have some others on the digital camera, including "first bath" pictures, that I think Holly will be posting on her blog sometime in the next few days once things calm down.

The top picture here is of Jack and his hippo, Memphis. I think they will be good friends in the coming years, but lets just hope that his tag doesn't get his tag abused like Cymbre did with Louie.

More Pictures of New Baby Jack