today seb is an absolute grump, so i’m sitting here trying to ignore him and thinking of the charming stuff he did this week to distract myself from yelling at him. a particularly cute thing he did this week comes to mind directly, having already told several people about it this week. so i will record it here for the rest of the world who cares what seb is up to, and also so that i can reference it on future horrid days.

one evening after brian got home from work, the three of us were lounging around seb’s room. usually, if we spend any time playing in seb’s room, he inevitably goes to his dresser and empties his clothes from the drawers. this evening was not an exception. so, clothes piled up on the floor in between where i was sitting and brian was laying, seb trots out of the room, pointedly swinging his left arm at his side (he does this all the time now, along with other balance-assisting items). i’m sure at this point both brian and i are assuming that seb is on his way to our room to void clothing from whatever open drawers there are in our own dressers. but no. instead, seb turns back towards his room and “runs” (as well as he can) back into his room and “hops” (again, he tries his best) into the pile of clothes, rolling around and tossing apparel this and that way with squeals of absolute joy.

and this morning, just hours before descending into said grumpiness, he was attempting to climb everything– chairs, walls, gates, tables–lifting a foot up and absurdly grunting as if it was the hardest thing he had ever tried to do in his young life. fellow climbers may understand this concept of noise accompanying trying very hard to propell the body in a certain direction against gravity. sure. but what i don’t understand is, how did seb ever put these two actions together?

if i continue to try to unlock the mystery that is seb’s mind, i will lose the momentary respite i just received from sharing these things. so i’m done. there it is.

Posted on September 19th, 2004

Today I decided it was high time I clean the windows in the back doors and the mirror in the living room that used to be one of Seb?s favorite play-things. And I decided to do it while Seb was not napping because lately he?s been into ?wiping? things up with towels or shirts or whatever is in his hand at the time, and I thought it would be fun for him to ?help? me. So I gave him a towel and took for myself the paper towels and Windex and began to clean. Spray spray spray. Wipe wipe wipe. Soon I realize that Seb is far more interested in my paper towel and placing his hand in the Windex on the window. ?No, no, no,? I say, ?use the towel. Wipe with the towel,? and he continues to use his hand while I get more and more frustrated.

A big black furry spider distracts him for a minute, and I am able to finish cleaning the back doors before senselessly murdering this nasty spider. And I say to Seb, ?It?s okay. I killed it. It?s dead.? Now, what does that mean to Seb, these words, ?killed? and ?dead?? Probably nothing more than he saw me smash the spider after he saw it scurrying only moments before. I don?t think this will scar him for life, but thinking about it has made me feel sort of careless and scary. But back to the windex.

We move on to the mirror in the living room, and while I?m cleaning it, Seb places his finger on it. Not his hand. His finger. And he does it while he?s looking at me in a sort of defiance which really makes me angry and sort of disappointed. And he keeps doing it every time I pull his finger away from the glass. ?It?s clean,? I explain, ?keep your fingers off.? Then the whole situation dissolves into both of us being angry, Seb biting the coffee table, and me grabbing him and taking him up to his room for a nap. I didn?t even leave his room with my characteristic, ?See you when you wake up, Bud,? but with silence. Ugh. I realize that I?m going to have to discipline Seb occasionally and maybe even a lot, but sometimes I truly forget to maintain realistic perspective: he?s 16 months old, and more than likely his misbehavior at this point is in response to my own inability to control my reaction to something silly that I don?t like. Like finger prints on the mirror. Was it worth the fight? No way.

Posted on September 14th, 2004

didn’t realize that i plagiarised brian’s nutshell statement (see 9.6.04 entry). sorry brian.

Posted on September 10th, 2004

in a nutshell, we drove to philly, wed, sept 1, to manchester, ct, thurs, sept 2, to ocean city, nj, sat, sept 4, and home, mon, sept 6. i will probably never want to do that again. ever. that said, we had a pretty good time.

seb and noah played pretty well together considering they both only wanted whatever toy the other had at the time. there was minimal screaming and gnashing of teeth, and they both tried the sharing thing once or twice. me: “hey noah, why don’t you give seb a different truck to play with if you want that one?” noah: “no, please.” if nothing else, noah is very polite. our favorite noah-word ended up being “ganks”.

after way too many hours of driving to ocean city on sat, through hellacious traffic in spots (people in ct seemed never to have learned how to drive up hill), we arrived in time to take a short jaunt to the beach to show seb the sand and the ocean. he was all about the sand, but when he finally came into contact with the immenseness of the ocean, he cracked. it really freaked him out. so we only stayed long enough for a photo shoot and headed back to the house to eat some dinner. unfortunately, we should have maybe stayed at the beach that evening with sunshine and no wind because we awoke sun am to clouds and 20+mph winds. bummer. we did go to the beach for a couple of hours, but seb and i had jackets on the whole time, and it was way too windy to sit and relax.

here’s seb with ana (4 yrs) and james (23 mos)…

seb like to play with ana, but not when she was using “his” spoon. seb and james were not into playing with eachother. instead there was fierce competition for who could pinch the hardest (i think seb won that contest) and who could take away the most toys from the other (that goes to james, hands down).

man are the boys cute though! (we all know that seb is, so here is proof that james is cute too)

now we’re home. yay!! summer’s over. the sounds of kids playing in the schoolyard across the street are a daily occurence again. and it’s time for me to go eat.

Posted on September 9th, 2004

yet. i’m a big slacker. taking photos has not been at the forefront of my mind lately. today i start school. i’m officially a grad student–i checked, it says so on my i.d. card. jen hemphill, graduate student. sounds sort of cool, don’t you think? well, it may sound cool, but somehow i’m a nervous wreck today with the thought of embarking on this long drawn out task. i hate the unknown. it scares me. i keep telling myself that it will all be fine, it will be good for me, blah-blah-blah. the good news is, unlike taking undergrad courses, i am not the oldest student! hoorah! tonight i get a better idea of workload…. i’m sure it’s like, “you must write 20 pages per week!” or something ridiculous like that.

in the spirit of the new school season, sebastien has become quite the intellect. he reads and reads book after book. if brian or i sit down in seb’s general vicinity, we are guaranteed to be given a book to read to him. some of his favorites are, dr. suess’ abc an amazing alphabet book (four fluffy feathers on a fiffer-feffer-feff), brown bear brown bear, baby einstein’s bard’s rhyme time ( oooh, flaps), among others. i’d be pretty tickled with a little seba bookworm.

seb had his 15 month well baby checkup. he’s grown another 2 inches in length but his weight only increased by a pound, which means he’s still a bit under the 20 lb mark. there’s nothing like a medical health professional telling you you’re not doing a good enough job feeding your kid to make you really feel inadequate. like i had a problem having those feelings to begin with. yeesh. so now i’m in a panic about how to coerce seb into eating things he’s just not interested in eating while at the same time not forcing him. ahhh, the irony. all in all, he’s healthy and smart and stuff. and his head is still growing so i know his brain is in okay shape. so why am i so worried and upset? i guess it’s just my job now.

(if anyone with experience feeding finicky eaters wants to pass along any advice, feel free to email me: jkh+anklebiter.net.)

Posted on August 31st, 2004

Posted on August 12th, 2004

seb walks as though he’s being pulled along by some unseen force holding onto a string attached to his belly button, his little legs trying to keep up, tripping and faultering along the terrain of our house. right now, he’s running circles around the dining room table, making pit stops at his highchair to buckle the buckle, which he is becoming an expert at even in his youth.

camping and climbing a couple of weeks ago was fun for all of us. as you can see, seb helped put the tent up (i knew there was some utilitarian reason for having a kid!).

the great outdoors can be tiring! but seb never seems to want to nap…

or go to sleep at night–he had a ball crawling in circles around the tent and playing with our headlamps.

Posted on August 2nd, 2004

little seba’s walkin’! rawride!

i sing this to seb when he starts walking around the house on his own. he’s doing it so often now though that i’m heartily sick of it and intend to stop. hoorah!

we went to coopers rock last weekend with friends of ours–seb likes getting down and dirty with nature…

and also gets his kicks from taunting darby by invading not only her personal space but also her mother, trina’s.

seb isn’t hard to find these days since his new favorite thing to do is slam pots and pans around in the kitchen. it’s quite loud…

but then when he’s quiet, he likes giving hugs and kisses–here he demonstrates on elmo.

i was quite shocked when i realized how much more of an influence seb’s grandma seems to have over him than i first understood–he sure didn’t learn this from mamma and daddy! (yes folks, that’s a comb)

i think i can say, in no uncertain terms and motherly preference aside, that seb is the cutest thing walking the earth. am i wrong? AM I?

Posted on July 21st, 2004

both seb and i are having letting go issues of late. seb just won’t let go and embrace walking as a new and interesting (and not scary when he falls) part of life. he also is having trouble letting go of his compulsion to play in the kitchen trash. he has a “route” that he takes with his walker that circles the living room then goes through the dining room and into the kitchen. and it always ends up at the kitchen trash, which is cleverly stowed away in a cupboard that pulls out. and he LOVES pulling the large drawer out. technically he is not yet playing with the trash itself, but brian and i know it’s just a matter of time before it leads to that, so we’re trying to nip it in the bud now. and you are probably thinking as you read this, “why don’t they just get some sort of latchy-, baby proofy-thingy?”

I DON’T KNOW!

my issue with the whole “letting go” thing is different. at 14 months old, seb is on his way to being weaned. i only nurse him twice a day now (once when he wakes up and once before he goes to sleep at night), and i’m finding myself being very happy and a little sad all at once. yesterday, i celebrated by packing away all of my nursing bras (i’m so sure i’m talking about my underwear here! if you’re offended or embarassed, sorry!) and getting out the normal ones. and it felt so GOOD to be back to normal! but then i get all misty thinking that seb is growing up and away from me. *sigh* and isn’t this the way motherhood is… a constant battle between the wonder and excitement of watching him grow up (an me gaining more and more personal freedom back!) and the pain of having to let him go. yeesh, and he isn’t even a teenager yet! guess i better get used to it.

seb has entered a new affectionate phase of life, which is making this weaning thing less of an issue, where he hugs and kisses and cuddles everything–not only mommy and daddy, but also his little people garage and his stuffed cows. especially his stuffed cows! oh how he loves them! every morning when he wakes up (i think) he grabs the cows one at a time and lavishes kisses (slowly leaning in his head and making contact in the area of his closed, unpuckered lips) on their little noses. i hope this is a permanent part of his personality now because it’s soooo sweet.

Posted on July 14th, 2004

i can’t believe that june is almost over. the following are pics from the whole month so far… i don’t think seb fits under the table standing up anymore. he’s getting so tall–we’re going to have to rename the website “kneebiter” or something. hm.

seb is 13 months old, and apparently coming into his own. it doesn’t bode well that this means he likes to play with his food, spit out his milk, whine a lot, bite the furniture and bang his head on the floor, now does it. the developmental stuff that i occasionally read for solace says that all this behavioral stuff is normal… but i want my sweet and perfect boy BACK! *sigh* aside from that, he’s fun and happy most of the time, and he sleeps really, really well, so even if we have a hard day, i’m almost guaranteed a good night’s rest. somedays, that’s the only thing saving his cute little… self.

seb still isn’t walking without holding onto anything and everything. he accidentally took up to 3 steps on his own throughout the course of last week, so i know it’s just a matter of time. in anticipation of the grand walking event, which will surely happen this summer, i bought him a pair of “sport sandals” from old navy, and MAN are they cute. when i put them on him, he was entralled and held his feet out in from of him, bending his torso down low, so he could get a good, close look at them. then he started spinning himself around in circles on the floor using his heels, stopping every once in a while to giggle with me and watch me wipe my teary eyes. i wish i wouldn’t feel so rushed to see him do bigger kid stuff, but when we go to the park, i look on in envy at the other kids just running around playing and their mothers sitting on benches reading. i wonder what it will be like when i can finally let him loose and watch him play.

Posted on June 22nd, 2004