Dad often had an old AM radio sitting around and would be listening to a baseball game while working. As it got darker, lights would come on, and the bugs would start flying near them. Sometimes dad would be working just inside the barn, and the bugs would start flying in there, while some light poured out the big front door. There’s something about that scratchy AM signal, the evening slowly getting darker, the slow pace of the baseball game, and just being around dad and a peripheral part of whatever he was doing that stirs a wonderfully fond recollection in me.

I don’t remember the specifics of any one of those times, nor do I really remember how often it happened, but it does stick with me.

We’ve had a routine in our house, starting early enough that neither of our boys know anything different, where right before bed, I read a book and sing a song to each of them individually.

Last November, I was looking for some books to challenge Jacob a little more than what we had been reading. I found The Complete Winnie the Pooh used for $4 on Amazon. This contains the original A. A. Milne stories, not the Disney series. It had a few line drawings, but there were many pages without any. It’s 352 pages and written in a rather dated form of British English. So for all these reasons, I wasn’t sure if Jacob would like it. But it was $4 so I bought it.

And Jacob was hooked. Each evening, we start bedtime with looking at the “map” of the 100-acre forest, just inside the cover. He gets to pick out 4 things for me to describe, and then we turn to our story. We usually read somewhere between 2 and 5 pages at bedtime, depending on how well he got ready without wasting time. And then we sing.

A. A. Milne has his Pooh character make up songs throughout the book. They are printed with words only, no tune, so I make up a tune for them as we go. Jacob has taken to requesting these songs for his bedtime song as well.

Jacob always gets to choose his bedtime story, and sometimes he chooses a different one — but about 75% of the time, it’s been Pooh.

A few weeks ago, he started noticing that we were almost to the end. He got very concerned, asking what we’d do next. I suggested a different book, which he didn’t like. Then I pointed out that we could restart the Pooh stories from the beginning, which was exciting for him.

Last night, we finished the book. The very last story was an interesting one, suggesting Christopher Robin growing up and no longer having imaginary adventures with the animals, but making Pooh promise to always be there for him. I don’t think Jacob caught onto that meaning, though. When we finished it, we had this conversation:

Jacob: “Dad, is that the end?”

Me: “Yes.”

Jacob, getting a big smile: “Yay! So can we start back at the beginning tomorrow?”

Me: “Sure!”

Jacob then gave a clap, shouted “Yay!” again, and was a very happy boy.

Sometimes I wonder what our boys will remember in 25 years of their fun times with me. I don’t know if Jacob will remember all the days reading about the animals in the 100-acre wood when he was 4, or maybe he’ll remember watching train and combine videos, or playing radio hide-and-seek, or maybe something entirely different.

But I have no doubt that I will remember sitting on the couch in his room, holding him on my lap, and reading a 350-page book to a loving 4-year-old. As Pooh aptly put it, “Sometimes, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

So here’s why that made me happy. Well for one, it was the first time Jacob had left stuff on my computer that I found later. And of course he left his name there.

But moreover, he’s learning a bit about the Unix shell. sl is a command that displays an animated steam locomotive. I taught him how to use the semicolon to combine commands. So he has realized that he can combine calls to sl with the semicolon to get a series of a LOT of steam trains all at once. And was very excited about this discovery.

Also he likes how error messages start with the word “bash”.

The only train service from here leaves at about 3AM in both directions. So starting about November, Jacob started asking me, “Dad, will you wake me up in the middle of the night to go to the train station TODAY?” He didn’t seem to get it through his head that we didn’t have another trip planned, although we surely would at some point. It just couldn’t possibly be, right?

So around Christmas, I booked a round trip from here to Galesburg, IL for just Jacob and me. We’ll get on the train at 3AM Saturday morning, get to Galesburg about noon, and then head back home at 5PM, getting home again at, well, 3:30AM.

Jacob is super excited about this. When the tickets arrived, he didn’t yet know about the trip. I thought he’d be excited then, but the ticket sleeve had a picture of a toy train that he didn’t own, so he was somewhat sad. But starting the next day he was very excited. We wrote “Amtrak” on the Jan. 15 spot on his pharmacy calendar (a local pharmacy gives them away free each year). He carefully checked off each day as it went past. And he’s been getting increasingly excited all week.

Tonight he couldn’t really think, couldn’t really play, couldn’t really calm down. He jabbered about how he would sit by the window, how precisely I would wake him up, and his eyes would open up “right away” and we’ll go straight there. He talked about how he will look out the window at the dark night, and was extra excited when I told him he’d see snow out the window like one of the Amtrak videos he likes to watch on Youtube. He already placed his order for breakfast in the dining car: “French toast with syrup on top.”

He ran past the computer while I was looking at things to do in Galesburg, and saw I had a map up, and immediately noticed the train tracks. Then he pointed to the station, and said, “Dad, that says ‘Galesburg Amtrak’.” A rather stunned dad replied, “Yes indeed it does, Jacob.” I guess it was some combination of pre-reading and detective skills, but that surprised me.

Anyhow, this is the first trip with just Jacob and me. We’re going to have a blast, I’m sure. I may, however, wind up going 24 hours without sleep if his adrenaline level is any guide…

Really dark blue,
really dark blue,
really dark blue…

The tune changed a bit, but the words didn’t. Terah and I wondered what was really dark blue, until finally we heard:

Really dark blue,
really dark blue,
really dark blue sky.

Really dark blue…

Then a little while later, we heard:

Really dark blue,
really dark blue,
really dark blue with morning stars.

It was such a cute moment that it’s hard to convey it in words.

I even got an audio recording of it on my phone, which I’ll perhaps post someday.

Update 21:05: For Jacob’s usual bedtime song tonight, I offered to sing the “really dark blue” song for him. When I sang “really dark blue with morning stars,” he said, “no, that’s not it. It’s MOONLIT stars.” So I guess my 3-year-old just corrected my blog post.

I see a career in copy editing in his future…

When we got on the train, in the middle of the night as usual, Jacob couldn’t stop chattering about how “great”, “fun”, and “exciting” it is. He told us about all the lots of great things on the train, the fact that we were on a “night train”, and generally couldn’t stop chattering. For an hour. At 3:30AM.

This was a typical sight from Jacob:

It wasn’t as relaxing as usual for Terah and me. Oliver is at the “grabbing everything in sight” stage. Which worked fine when Jacob was at the age, but with Jacob also along it was a bit more difficult to manage. I suspect that our next trip, when Oliver is a few months older, will go easier.

A highlight for both boys, as usual, is the dining car. Oliver loves anything related to eating solid food — it’s still novel to him — and Jacob loves anything relating to trains. What could go wrong? (Parents will probably identify the capability for two hyper-excited young boys to have plenty of things go wrong at a table in a restaurant here… fortunately we didn’t have anything go terribly wrong.)

Oliver turned out to find the things outside the window to require intense concentration — intense enough to stick out his tongue while he worked it all out.

And Jacob, of course, wanted to get the wrapper off his straw by himself. Which he can do, but takes a minute.

They also enjoyed the lounge car.

We were in a sleeper room on both trains. That was nice, and when we needed to go “explore”, we could. Jacob’s favorite part of the trip was when I folded down the upper bunk during the day for him to play. I pointed out that it was like a “train treehouse.” His face sure lit up. He loved that he had his own window up there to look out of. He climbed up the ladder, and after awhile of playing, said, “Dad, would you like to play with me up here?” Of course I would — it always makes me happy when he asks if I want to play with him.

As I was playing with him, I asked him if he was having fun in his train treehouse. He gave me a sweet smile, and said, “Dad, this is the best place of ever!”

In Chicago, Jacob and I went outside and walked around. He enjoyed walking across the bridges over the canal by Union Station. I checked some work email when we got back, tried but failed to reach some local hams with my handheld, and then we got on the train for New York.

The boys loved it too, and Jacob was very ready to be in New York when we got there. We got out at Penn Station — which was, I think, pretty much what my mind had imagined of an underground station robbed of its former glory (especially having been in that part of Chicago Union Station). We found the connection to the 2 train uptown, bought some MetroCards for the subway, and got on. Jacob was very interested in the subway. He sat very, very still — I thought he was scared — but on asking him some questions, realized that he was just very interested and engrossed in it all.

I had been trying out my HF antenna for my amateur radio setup a few days ago, and by some coincidence, kept making contact with people that grew up in New York. A guy from Fargo, ND — a native of Brooklyn — told me to make sure to get pretzels from a hot sauce vendor, Pastrami on rye or corned beef on rye from a Jewish deli (because they have the best meat), pizza from guys wearing red and white shirts, and don’t be afraid of rats on the subway tracks, and that our boys will love to feed leftover bits of pretzels to pigeons and squirrels. He got so excited about NYC that he went on and on, saying, “Man, you’re making me hungry now.”

During times I’m not at sessions at Debconf, we’ve found some time to do some things as a family. We went to Grand Central Terminal, just to see it — it is indeed still Grand. I knew there was a Jewish deli there, so I thought — hey — try out his advice. It was closed, and when I realized it was Saturday, I realized why. Oops. We hopped on another train to Brooklyn and checked out the New York Transit Museum, which is great and has a lot of exhibits about the history of the city’s subway and bus systems. It’s housed in a former subway station, and they have a lot of old subway cars down there dating back to 1905 — most of which are open to go inside of.

It’s been nice to meet people at Debconf that I have only known via email or IRC. The organizers of this conference have done a fabulous job. I have every expectation that this will turn out to be the best conference I’ve been to in at least 12 years — this is my first Debconf. It doesn’t skimp on the technical details, people are friendly, and there is a sense of common purpose. But just as important, while there is a set schedule, there is an easy way to add other ad-hoc sessions to the conference schedule. People can get together a group interested in a topic, and schedule an event about it for the next day very easily. I’m quite impressed by that, and am looking forward to the virtualization discussion that grew out of a question to the mailing list.

It was also neat to meet people that sort of knew our family from my blog posts. I had no idea that there were all that many people that actually read these things ;-)

The Debconf kick-off was great. As I was walking across the campus of Columbia towards it, it was a nice temperature, with some light rain, and I heard bagpipes in the distance. Beautiful. And when I left after the evening sessions, I still heard bagpipes. So I went to check it out, and ran into Gabriella Coleman, one of the Debconf organizers — and the person that gave the talk I just left — on the way, with the same idea. The Columbia campus is beautiful and historic, and it is an excellent venue for the conference.

New York is a great city and I’m sure we’ll be back. It is great to walk out of the hotel in the morning, buy a fresh peach or two from the street vendor 20 feet away, and then go buy a roll or two ($0.75 each) from the bakery down the street. I have been so missing rolls like that since we got back from Germany in March. These weren’t quite like the German bakeries, but the closest I’ve had to it.

It is interesting to note how differently people from different places look at things. Terah has told several people how we live 6 miles from a town with 500 people in it, and people that stop to think about it realize how different it is from New York. It was a surprise to me to hear that some New Yorkers think of Columbia as “country”. It is beautifully landscaped, and feels different than the rest of the city.

The numbers I’ve seen suggest that a typical fall weekday has more people on the Columbia campus than in the entire county where we live. And that county is twice the size of New York City.

That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with New Yorkers thinking of it as country, any more than there is of me thinking of a town with 15,000 people as a pretty big town. It’s a different perspective, and I enjoy different perspectives — which is another thing I like about Debconf. There are so many people from all over the world there that different perspectives are inevitable.

[H]is shop is a lone outpost; in a single generation, the American who built, repaired, and tinkered with technology has evolved into an entirely new species: the American who prefers to slip that technology out of his pocket and show off its killer apps. Once, we were makers. Now most of us are users.

I remember as a kid eagerly awaiting each year’s new RadioShack catalog. I’d read them pretty much cover to cover for fun. And who wouldn’t? The catalogs had fun things like radios, telephone gadgets, calculators, tape recorders, electronic “lab kits”, books, components, LEDs… I loved the catalogs and loved the store.

My parents bought me a electronic kit (if memory serves 20 years later, it’s the “deluxe 160-project electronic kit” from page 156 of the 1988 catalog, though it may have been purchased a different year). I had endless fun with that thing. It had resistors, diode, capacitors, oscillator, speaker, LED, relay, etc — plenty to make a bunch of kid-friendly projects.

Just looking at the catalog makes me excited even today. On the next page from the kit I had is a $5 crystal radio kit which needs no power source — “Solderless. With earphone, instructions, theory.” On page 28 there was a revolving red light, and some microcassette recorders on p. 36 (I had one of those for awhile).

I had enthusiasm for building and figuring out things for a long time. My dad let me take apart an old lawn mower for fun once — I’m sure he knew ahead of time it would never be back together. One of his friends from work built homemade contraptions out of things like an old vacuum cleaner (attach a cardboard tube to the exhaust and you get a great tennis ball shooter). And there was always all sorts of fun junk to discover up in the barn.

I eventually shifted to a different sort of “making things”: programming. It has kept me busy for quite a number of years.

But the Wired article has a point. RadioShack is struggling. Many people have no interest in making or fixing things anymore. The best-selling smartphone in the world comes sealed in a metal case where not even the battery can be replaced, the software is dictated by a company in California, and good luck trying to program for it without signing your life away first. A far cry from the first computer I used, a TRS-80 Color Computer II, bought, yes, at RadioShack. Turn it on, and in a few seconds you get a BASIC prompt. Can’t really use it without programming. Being able to read its manual was an early motivation for me to work at learning to read.

It is sad that so many devices can’t be worked on anymore, and that so many people don’t care. It is difficult for me to give Jacob (and later, Oliver) the sort of experience I had as a child. Companies would love to sell us $50 DVD sets, $300 “educational” game systems, $40 educational games, and any number of $30 plastic toys (some of which we have and the boys enjoy).

I’d rather give him a $10 bag of resistors, capacitors, wire, battery holders, LEDs, and a book, and see what he can come up with (when he’s a bit older, of course). And, in fact, he and I built his first computer together. We installed the ultimate in operating systems for tinkering: Linux.

This all brings me back to RadioShack. I’ve been working on ham radio lately, with an eye to that being a project for Jacob (age 3.5), Oliver (just turned 1), and me to enjoy in the future. I needed some cable, and had been told by many people to visit the RadioShack in Derby, KS. It’s like the one mentioned in the Wired article: huge, selling everything from washing machines to bulk cable, except this one specializes in amateur radio.

I asked Jacob if he would like to come with me to a radio store. “Dad, I would LOVE that!” He brought his little semi-broken walkie-talkies with him to use during the hour drive there. At one point, he was concerned that a radio store is like a library and he might have to leave them on a shelf. I assured him he could keep them.

We got to the RadioShack and he loved it. He couldn’t even really contain his excitement. He ran back and forth along the bright green stripe running down the middle of the carpet. He excitedly watched them measure out 60ft of RG-8 coax for me. He pushed buttons on the demo clothes dryer, looked at all the antennas, and just had a great time.

And he’s been interested in my radio, too. When I was talking to somebody on it the other day, he said, “I think he is at the radio store. He is having fun there.” Right now, everybody I talk to on the radio is at the radio store to him. Jacob loves the fact that the backlight on my FT-857D can change colors, and often comes into the office just so I can put it into setup mode and let him spin the big wheel to change the colors. He enjoys opening boxes of components, and came out to help (and run around) while I suspended a dipole from some trees last Friday.

I had told Jacob when we got to the store that “This radio store is called RadioShack.” He obviously took that to heart, because now if he hears me talking about “a radio store”, he will say, “Dad, actually it is radio SHACK.”

So I say thank you to the Derby RadioShack for keeping the magic of making things with your dad alive for another generation.

Yesterday, though, I introduced Jacob to several bits of technology that really got him excited.

We have a pair of FRS radios. These are low-power “Family Radio Service” devices, with a maximum practical range of maybe a mile, and are about as cheap a radio as you can buy that still has any sort of practical use. Anyhow, the receive circuit on one broke. I ordered a pair of TriSquare digital radios to replace them, which are incompatible. So, I have two radios, one with a broken receive circuit. What to do?

GIVE THEM TO JACOB! I explained that one radio is the “talking” radio (the broken one) and the other is the “listening” radio. Then I demonstrated how I could use the talking radio and he could hear me on the listening radio. That was great fun. I encouraged him to go to the kitchen and see if he could still hear me in the next room. Cackles of laughter gave me the answer. Then he discovered the “call” button would make the other radio sound like a telephone, which was all the more exciting. He and I took turns with the talking and listening radios.

Then I used the belt clip and attached the listening radio to the back of his shirt. I pointed out to him that this was sort of like a loudspeaker. Anything he said into the talking radio while holding town the transmit button would sound louder because it would also come out the radio on his back. Much cackling followed, and he ran around the house yelling “MEOW!” at the top of his lungs into the radio, then saying, “Dad, did you hear THAT? It was VERY loud!” He has spent hours listening to himself, listening to me, and generally enjoying life with radios.

Jacob’s second discovery was a cassette tape player. Awhile back, Terah rescued an old cassette tape player that was being thrown out, and bought a few 15-cent tapes for Jacob at a thrift store. The idea is that we can just let him play, and not care if he smashes it to bits. He enjoys it, but like the computer, didn’t really get excited about it. Until yesterday, when we had this conversation:

Me: “Jacob, would you like to record your own voice on a tape?”

Jacob: (excited) “Sure!”

Me: “OK, bring me your tape recorder.”

Jacob: (exasperated) “Dad, it’s not a tape RECORDER. It’s a tape PLAYER.”

Me: “Jacob, it is a tape player, but it’s also a tape recorder too.”

Jacob: (paused for about 5 seconds, then…) “Ooooo! That is silly!” (scampers off to find it)

He found it, and I helped him put some tape over the write-protect tab on a cassette he had. Then he recorded his voice. He eventually figured out the stop, rewind, play, and record buttons with my help. But he’s still confused: while he’s recording, why doesn’t he hear anything? Our first recording had me asking him some questions, and then telling him to press the stop button when he was done. He listened to it dozens of times, and each time my recorded voice asked a question, he answered it a little before his recorded voice did. And each time my recorded voice told him to press the stop button, he would say, “I don’t want to” while his recorded voice asked “is this it?” He pretty well understands what the radios are about, but doesn’t really “get” the tape recorder yet. Nevertheless, it has just become a far more exciting device in his eyes.

Terah has been rolling her eyes at me today as I’ve been trying to think up what other broken or old bits of technology we might have that Jacob would enjoy. My latest plan involves adapting his broken old batte
ry-operated fan into some sort of lego-related car. I think he’d have fun working on it with me too.

All this reminds me of things I did as a kid. My dad worked with a semi-retired man (Herb Miller) that loved to build weird contraptions. One of my favorites was a ball shooter made out of an old vacuum cleaner with a cardboard tube attached to the output spot. I also remember building a motorized car out of an erector set that sort of bent the rules at a school science class project. The idea was to launch a vehicle down a ramp and person whose vehicle went the farthest got a prize. There were no rules against using batteries and a scavenged motor to get that extra little edge over gravity. My car was the only one to manage to crash into the wall on the far side of the gymnasium. The science teacher, in a bit of fast thinking perhaps, announced my car the winner of the “electric division.” For some reason, I seem to be poised to encourage this sort of thinking in Jacob…

So I wound up taking 824 photos. Hurray for digital cameras. We narrowed that down to a few of our favorites, which you can view as a slideshow. I’ll highlight few of those below.

Jacob walking down the drive way, gazing at all the beans coming up off in the distance

Hmm, Oliver, let me see too…

Running is fun!

Peek-a-boo

Goerzen’s Law of Child Photography: If you attempt to get them to pose, a minimum of one boy will have a weird expression at any given time.

Also, chances are good that a cat will sneak in and also do something.

My imagined conversation for this one: “Here Oliver, this is how you use a piece of bark.” “Quiet, I’m trying to eat this grass.”

Oliver decides that grass stuck on his teeth isn’t fun

No explanation for this one.

Classic brothers. Jacob is using a piece of bark to mess around in some dirt, while Oliver quietly learns how to do it. He never said it, but I can easily imagine him saying, “Here Oliver, here’s what you do with bark: you dig up dirt like this! It’s funny!”

BONZAI!!!

Guess I better watch where I point that camera…

Here kitty — get ready for some more petting… *thwack* Strangely the cat seemed to love it. Our other cat avoids Oliver.

Jacob deriving a great deal of joy from telling us that his shirt says “big SPIDER”. He came up with that joke himself and thought it was hilarious.

This is one of a few photos of Jacob wearing a suit that I once wore.

It’s hard to stand still when the hammock has a great “train whistle” on it.

I have no idea what he’s planning here. But really, I think I should be afraid.

It’s… a fridge door. Yay?

We did that this evening, and wow — he loves it. While the Debian Installer was running, he kept begging to type, so I taught him how to hit Alt-F2 and fired up cat for him. That was a lot of fun. But even more fun was had once the system was set up. I installed bsdgames and taught him how to use worm. worm is a simple snake-like game where you use the arrow keys to “eat” the numbers. That was a big hit, as Jacob likes numbers right now. He watched me play it a time or two, then tried it himself. Of course he crashed into the wall pretty quickly, which exits the game.

I taught him how to type “worm” at the computer, then press Enter to start it again. Suffice it to say he now knows how to spell worm very well. Yes, that’s right: Jacob’s first ever Unix command was…. worm.

He’d play the game, and cackle if he managed to eat a number. If he crashed into a wall, he’d laugh much harder and run over to the other side of the room.

Much as worm was a hit, the Linux shell was even more fun. He sometimes has a problem with the keyboard repeat, and one time typed “worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm”. I tried to pronounce that for him, which he thought was hilarious. He was about to backspace to fix it, when I asked, “Jacob, what will happen if you press Enter without fixing it?” He looked at me with this look of wonder and excitement, as if to say, “Hey, I never thought of that. Let’s see!” And a second later, he pressed Enter.

The result, of course, was:

-bash: worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm: command not found

“Dad, what did it do?”

I read the text back, and told him it means that the computer doesn’t know what worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm means. Much laughter. At that point, it became a game. He’d bang at random letters, and finally press Enter. I’d read what it said. Pretty soon he was recognizing the word “bash”, and I heard one time, “Dad, it said BASH again!!!” Sometimes if he’d get semicolons at the right place, he’d get two or three “bashes”. That was always an exciting surprise. He had more fun at the command line than he did with worm, and I think at least half of it was because the shell was called bash.

He took somewhat of an interest in the hardware part earlier in the evening, though not quite as much. He was interested in opening up other computers to take parts out of them, but bored quickly. The fact that Terah was cooking supper probably had something to do with that. He really enjoyed the motherboard (and learned that word), and especially the CPU fan. He loved to spin it with his finger. He thought it interesting that there would be a fan inside his computer.

When it came time to assign a hostname, I told Jacob he could name his computer. Initially he was confused. Terah suggested he could name it “kitty”, but he didn’t go for it. After a minute’s thought, he said, “I will name it ‘Grandma Marla.’” Confusion from us — did he really understand what he was saying? “You want to name your computer ‘Grandma Marla?’” “Yep. That will be silly!” “Sure you don’t want to name it Thomas?” “That would be silly! No. I will name my computer ‘Grandma Marla.”" OK then. My DNS now has an entry for grandma-marla. I had wondered what he would come up with. You never know with a 3-year-old!

It was a lot of fun to see that sense of wonder and experimentation at work. I remember it from the TRS-80 and DOS machine, when I would just try random things to see what they would do. It is lots of fun to watch it in Jacob too, and hear the laughter as he discovers something amusing.

We let Jacob stay up 2 hours past his bedtime to enjoy all the excitement. Tomorrow the computer moves to his room. Should be loads of excitement then too.

And, more importantly, last night I introduced him to the Linux command line interface, which I called the “black screen.” Now, Jacob can’t read yet, though he does know his letters. He had a lot of fun sort of exploring the system.

I ran “cat”, which will simply let him bash on the keyboard, and whenever he presses Enter, will echo what he typed back at him. I taught him how to hold Shift and press a number key to get a fun symbol. His favorite is the “hat” above the 6.

Then I ran tr a-z A-Z for him, and he got to watch the computer convert every lowercase letter into an uppercase letter.

Despite the fact that Jacob enjoys watching Youtube videos of trains and even a bit of Railroad Tycoon 3 with me, this was some pure exploration that he loves. Sometimes he’d say, “Dad, what will this key do?” Sometimes I didn’t know; some media keys did nothing, and some other keys caused weird things to appear. My keyboard has back and forward buttons designed to use with a web browser. He almost squealed with delight when he pressed the forward button and noticed it printed lots of ^@^@^@ characters on the screen when he held it down. “DAD! It makes LOTS of little hats! And what is that other thing?” (The at-sign).

I’ve decided it’s time to build a computer for Jacob. I have an old Sempron motherboard lying around, and an old 9″ black-and-white VGA CRT that’s pretty much indestructible, plus an old case or two. So it will cost nothing. This evening, Jacob will help me find the parts, and then he can help me assemble them all. (This should be interesting.)

Then I’ll install Debian while he sleeps, and by tomorrow he should be able to run cat all by himself. I think that, within a few days, he can probably remember how to log himself in and fire up a program or two without help.

I’m looking for suggestions for text-mode games appropriate to a 3-year-old. So far, I’ve found worm from bsdgames that looks good. It doesn’t require him to have quick reflexes or to read anything, and I think he’ll pick up using the arrow keys to move it just fine. I think that tetris is probably still a bit much, but maybe after he’s had enough of worm he would enjoy trying it.

I was asked on Twitter why I’ll be using the command line for him. There are a few reasons. One is that it will actually be usable on the 9″ screen, but another one is that it will expose the computer at a different level than a GUI would. He will inevitably learn about GUIs, but learning about a CLI isn’t inevitable. He won’t have to master coordination with a mouse right away, and there’s pretty much no way he can screw it up. (No, I won’t be giving him root yet!) Finally, it’s new and different to him, so he’s interested in it right now.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo) II. Its primary interface, a BASIC interpreter, I guess counts as a command-line interface. I remember learning how to use that, and later DOS on a PC. Some of the games and software back then had no documentation and crashed often. Part of the fun, the challenge, and sometimes the frustration, was figuring out just what a program was supposed to do and how to use it. It will be fun to see what Jacob figures out.

The Train to Indiana

Our last train trip (to Chicago) was in May, before Oliver was born. Jacob always has enjoyed the train, but this time — wow.

We told Jacob about the trip the day before we were to leave. Several times in the day, he’d get a sly smile, and ask, “What are we going to do?” Terah or I would spell out the day’s activities, and when we’d get close to the part where I’d wake him up at night and we’d go to the train station, he’d have a big smile.

The big hour (2AM) arrived and Jacob woke up while Terah was putting his shoes on. I was there a moment later. Normally Jacob is terribly grumpy after waking up, even more so if somebody else woke him up. That day, I saw a very groggy-looking boy. I asked him, “Jacob, are you ready to go to the train station?” He answered, “YEAH!” while rubbing his eyes. “Dad, let’s go!”

We had Amtrak’s family bedroom for the first time this trip, and it worked out great. Jacob actually slept, despite his extreme excitement.

He’d been talking about eating in the diner car for quite some time, and was really excited when breakfast time rolled around. We sat down, and he pressed his nose up against the window right away. He counted the freight trains the he saw, pointed out train tracks and “crossing guard lights”, noticed barns and trucks, and gave us frequent updates on how fast we were going. His voice was high-pitched from excitement, and sometimes we’d have a running commentary we could barely interrupt, and other times he’d sit there silently just soaking it all in.

But he didn’t eat. He didn’t want to turn his head away from the window for a second to take a bite. I kept reminding him to take a bite, and finally, fearing he’d be really hungry as soon as we went back to our room, fed him a few bites for the first time in ages. I don’t believe he realized that happened. He just opened his mouth by reflex — and once I had to tell him to close his mouth around the fork that was in it.

It was much the same story for lunch, and for dinner on the train — though less so for dinner since it was dark outside. At dinner, a man sitting across the aisle from us said, “If you weren’t getting your meal free [since we're in the sleeper], I’d buy it for you. Your boys are amazingly well-behaved!” I thanked him politely — Jacob and Oliver both were doing well — but didn’t really think it was that unusual.

Oliver and Jacob were both big hits on the train. They got smiles from so many people on board and in the stations. Several of the dining car staff seemed to linger at our table longer than elsewhere, looking at them (and especially Oliver).

Oliver slept well on the train:

And here are a couple of typical Jacob photos:

In Indiana

I’ve got to start this out with one of the family gatherings at Terah’s aunt’s house. They have a large kids’ area in their basement, and a swingset with a slide outside. Jacob loved all of this, and spent hours playing with me. Sometimes if I’d go upstairs with the adults, I’d hear Jacob’s voice from the basement a few minutes later:

“DAAAAAD!!!! Shall you come back downstairs? DAAAD!”

And, of course, it’s hard to resist a 3-year-old that wants to play with me, so I inevitably would. We played air hockey — Jacob shrieked with delight whenever anybody scored a goal in any way. At one point, he stood up, looked around, and said, “Hmmm. Where are all the trains?” Apparently he expected every home to be stocked with toy trains, and this one wasn’t. A few seconds later, he was all excited. He ran over to a toy semi, and said, “I will use the semi train!”

Outside the short slide had a ladder going up to it. I held Jacob’s hands while he climbed up the first few times, but I knew he could do it himself. I started helping him less and less, and eventually refused to help him at all. He was rather frustrated with that for a moment, but a couple times later, climbed up and said, “Dad, I got up here all by myself!” A few times later, it looked like he was having trouble, so I tried to help, and got shooed away with, “No, dad! I can do it.”

The best moment of the weekend came during the drive back to Terah’s mom’s house where we were staying. Terah was driving, and I heard Jacob say, “Shall you come closer?” Not sure how to do that from the front seat of the car, I reached my hand back there and he held it. He held one or the other of my hands for 20 minutes until he fell asleep in the car. It’s funny what feeling needed by a 3-year-old makes a person feel, but that was surely a happy day.

Jacob got to see all of his Indiana grandparents on this trip, and loved playing with them. He especially liked using a “perfect red train” (his words!) he drug home from the nursery at church on Sunday, and a child-sized tent in the basement. I’m not sure how many times I heard “Gampa Mike! Shall we go to the basement?” that weekend. One point he wanted me to come down to see it and play with him, so I did. Then he decided we all needed to be down there, and told me “I’ll go pick up mom. I’ll be right back. Stay downstairs, dad.” Fearing that Terah wouldn’t know what to do when Jacob attempted to “pick her up”, I tried to discreetly follow at a distance. That was no match for a 3-year-old. He looked back at me from the top of the stairs, pointed an accusing finger at me, lowered his voice, and said, “Dad. Stay.”

Terah and I spent a day in South Bend and stayed at the Oliver Inn while Jacob and Oliver got some time to themselves with their grandparents. We had dinner at the beautiful Tippecanoe Place, just next door.

The Trip Home

We had a few hours in downtown Chicago on our way home. We went and ate at a small Indian restaurant. Jacob kept alternating between three things: “This food is very spicy! I like spicy food. I need another drink!” A little while later, Terah decided we should have some dessert. So she and Oliver stayed in the waiting area while Jacob and I went “asporing” (exploring) to find something. We walked a block or two to the nearest Dunkin Donuts, then to a Starbucks, and then back. Jacob carried the sack of donuts, guarding them so carefully that I was afraid he might smash them. (They were cream-filled so that wouldn’t have been good.) He had a lot of fun exploring Chicago Union Station, and also enjoyed walking in Chicago (though not quite as much; it was all a little too loud for him.)

In the train station, he loved the escalators. Up and down we went, whenever we wouldn’t get in people’s way. I had to eventually drag him away from them as I was getting a little self-conscious at all the people standing around watching us repeatedly go up and down the escalators.

Jacob has found a 3-year-old way to express his feelings: he’ll pretend to be a kitty, and say “the kitty is sad” or something like it. All day he had been saying “the kitty is hungry.” He hadn’t had a big breakfast, but he had plenty of opportunity to eat at lunch, and a snack. We were a bit confused, but I think we finally figured it out on the train back to Kansas. We didn’t have time to eat breakfast in the diner on the train from South Bend to Chicago, so Jacob missed out on the dining car then, and I think he was disappointed or confused about that. Once we had dinner in the dining car, he was happier.

Since we’ve been back home, he’s been talking about our next train trip. He says which suitcases we’ll take, that we’ll eat in the diner, that it will be a night train we take, and generally is still very excited about it.

It was a fun trip.

Jacob used to go to daycare twice a week, but with Terah being a full-time stay-at-home mom, that’s not happening anymore. Thursday was his last day there, and I think he and I both are going to miss it.

Jacob always got to ride with me to and from daycare in the car. We’d have conversations about all sorts of 2-year-old interests: what sort of crops were in the field, what was in the silos, how soon we’d go over the train tracks, whether the crossing guard lights would be on, how many water towers there are.

He also evolved sort of a routine. When I’d drop him off in the morning, he was usually moving slowly. He’d get to his room, and then dive into playing with some sort of toy, and completely ignore me.

When I’d come to pick him up in the afternoon, as soon as he saw me, he would come running and crash into my legs as hard as he could, giving me a sort of hug in the process. Sometimes he’d see me before I got to the door; those days, he’d stand on the other side of the glass smiling impatiently. Then, after pointing out any fans in the room, he’d run for the door. I had to let him open it. If I opened it, he’d insist that I close it again so he can open it. Then, we’d have to “check out the fish”, which consisted of him standing beside their aquarium counting them, occasionally banging on the glass or sticking his tongue out at them.

Then all of a sudden a run to the outside door and on to the car, stopping to jump off the sidewalk and making sure to walk on any yellow lines along our path. On the way home, he’d speculate about whether or not Terah would be home before us, and maybe tell me what he had for lunch at daycare.

One day they had a fire drill, and the blinking light and buzzer made quite the impression. For weeks after that, each afternoon he would tell me whether the buzzer came on and was flashing that day.

Sometimes on his way out, we’d have to stop to “check out the turtle.” They have a short gravel path through some plants, and along it is a stone shaped and painted to look like a turtle. Sometimes it would be on the ground; other times, in a dish. He’d stop and look, then say “OK”, and run off.

As for other things happening: we’ve got a 3-week-old baby in the house, so that of course creates change. One of my brothers is going off to college this month for the first time, and the other one started a job as a pastor yesterday (after having been my colleague at work doing programming for awhile).

Meanwhile, with Jacob no longer going to daycare, I’ve been able to bicycle to work more often. Which is nice, except when it’s 100F with 25MPH winds.

We made some hurried phone calls (I was supposed to pick up her mom at the train station at 3:30AM), and went to the hospital. And Oliver Goerzen was born by about 4:15!

As the doctors were finishing up Terah’s surgery, I held Oliver for awhile. He was awake, alert, and looking around the room. He had so much fat on him (9lb 11oz) that he couldn’t help but make a scowl the whole time.

We’ve had lots of visitors, of course, but the one we were most curious about was Jacob. Terah’s mom brought him by on the same day Oliver was born. Jacob was very interested in the baby. He came over to where I was holding Oliver and took a look. He really wanted Oliver to wake up, and was disappointed that he stayed asleep the whole time. We talked with Jacob about using “gentle touches” with Oliver, and he really came through well. He felt Oliver’s hair. I suggested he might want to touch his nose. Jacob said, “I touch his TIIINY nose!” And gave it a gentle touch.

(That’s my mom holding Oliver with Jacob looking on; he had to touch Oliver’s nose several times.)

Jacob had several presents waiting for him, which he liked. He had gone to a sibling prep class, where he had taken a photo of himself and made a border for it. The photo was supposed to be in the baby’s crib, so he can “get to know” his big brother. I showed Jacob that it was there, and he seemed really proud of that.

Terah had the idea that we could take Jacob to Build-A-Bear a little while back. Jacob built a bear for himself, and another for the baby. And when he came to visit, he gave a bear to Oliver. He was very serious about it. Pretty soon, he really wanted us to put Oliver back in his crib, and we finally figured out that he wanted that to happen so he could put the bear in with Oliver.

I took Jacob to eat in the “hospital restaurant” for supper, while Terah and Oliver got to spend time with other visitors. Jacob was on pretty good behavior, though it was difficult to keep him away from all the buttons on Terah’s hospital bed.

As I was taking pictures of Jacob and Oliver, Jacob said, “Flash will wake Oliver. Need more flashes!” He was puzzled when the flash didn’t wake Oliver.

Oliver definitely has a distinct personality already, but also of course likes to eat and sleep like any newborn. He has enjoyed lying and sleeping on many laps already. Also, we will still not need to invest in a baby monitor. Like Jacob, Oliver’s cry is plenty loud to be heard just about anywhere in the house.

On day 2, Jacob came back with Terah’s mom. This time, Oliver was awake, which made Jacob happy. Jacob was particularly proud that Oliver would hold his finger. I took Jacob to lunch while Terah’s mom got a chance to hold Oliver. I’ve been trying to spend as much time with Jacob as I can, so he doesn’t feel left out. I think he feels a little left out, because Terah can’t hold him right now, but this helps.

Jacob enjoyed his hamburger and ice cream for lunch. Then we came back to the hospital and went “exploring”. We walked (or, in Jacob’s case, RAN) down some halls in a semi-purposeful manner. We walked through a walkway that connects to the clinic where our doctor’s offices are. We stopped by the clinic, where Jacob’s favorite receptionist was very happy to see him (and gave him some yogurt as a “big brother” treat). Which he managed to devour, despite just having had a large lunch. He jumped all the way back down stairs, ran back to the hospital, pausing only to point out the C, A, and R in the word “CANCER” on the Cancer Center sign.

When we got back to the room, Jacob walked in, breathless. “Go sploring again?”

We had an “I’m a big brother” sticker for Jacob today. He loves stickers, and we figured he’d proudly put it on his shirt. He took it, and seemed to ignore it for a minute. Then he said, “Put sticker on baby.” I think he wanted to give Oliver a gift.

So our two boys seem to have really gotten started on the right foot, which is great.

Meanwhile, we’ve been enjoying Oliver’s baby noises, his already expressive face — his glare at bright lights, his interest when I stick out my tongue at him.

Terah is doing reasonably well — about as well as can be expected, and a lot better than last time. Oliver is healthy too.

He really likes our digital piano (an oldish 88-key Roland model, complete with integrated floppy drive). He likes playing it a bit, but he likes experimenting with it more. It has some features where it can generate a beat or an accompanying tune in various keys, which he has throughly figured out. He also knows about the power switch, volume settings, and the like. Not bad for a 2-year-old.

The the real fun has begun since Terah got her SoundBridge Radio last week. I discovered the album 8-bit lagerfeuer (campfire), a free download on Jamendo. I played it in the kitchen on Terah’s player one evening. Jacob was doing something, and when he heard it play, he just froze. He was thrilled.

Now he’ll go over to the counter, and say “Hear 8-bit music, mom.” We’ll play it, and he’ll stand — still — listening to it, getting as close as he can. The first track is “Sad Robot”, and one of the refrains is “He’s a sad, sad robot.” The other evening, Jacob, out of the blue, said, “He a sad, sad robot, mom.”

Then I put on some orchestral music during dinner one day. One of the first albums I bought after I got a CD player was a compilation of some loud classics (Valkyries, the Anvil Chorus, 1812 Overture, etc.) Jacob loved it. His favorite part is the cymbals — every time he hears one, he’ll yell out “CRASH!” He can also usually identify violins, drums, trombone slides, and sometimes trumpets. He will request the “crash music” occasionally.

He doesn’t like quiet passages as well. At first when he heard them, he’d say, “Maybe it be louder again?” Now he knows that it WILL be louder, and he’ll comment, “It louder soon!”

The other night, we were eating dinner, talking about it. He was talking about cymbals and trombones, and I asked him what he heard now. There was a long pause, as he was picking apart a strawberry with his fingers. Then he said, “There lots of seeds in strawberry!” I guess Wagner can’t compete with dinner sometimes.

Then last night, Jacob was in bed while I was out mowing. His bed is right next to a window, and apparently he was watching me mow. Terah kept hearing him saying, in a cute and tired voice, “There you are! I see you!” Checking on him later, he had fallen asleep, his head resting on his hand in the windowsill, as if he was still gazing out the window.

Here’s what I think

A recent conversation after Jacob had been misbehaving.

John: I think we should have some consequences for that.
Terah: Do you think he should have time out?
Jacob, eavesdropping: I THINK NOT!

He managed to evade time out that time because once we got over our shocked silence, we were both laughing too hard.

The Post Office

Every time Jacob and I drive past a Sonic (a drive-in restaurant), he says, “See post office over there. Have cherry limeade!”

Yes, he was there with Terah to get a cherry limeade once. The post office thing was a mystery to me. Near as we can figure, he had gone to Sonic with Terah right after the post office one day, and got them confused.

Then I took him to an actual post office last week. I told him we were going to a post office. I started getting him out of the car. He looked confused (after all, post offices don’t look like this, right?) But then he said, “This post office. Have cherry limeade inside!” I had to tell him it is a different kind of post office, with mailboxes inside. “Hmm.” I gave him a piece of junk mail to carry to the car, which I think may have been more exciting for him than even a cherry limeade.

Terah has tried to explain that a Sonic isn’t a post office, but he doesn’t believe her.

Trains and Chicago

We took the train to Chicago for a quick weekend last week. Jacob loved it. He jabbers on and on about going to the train station to “get on the night train” (we did get on the train at 4AM), eating in the “train diner car”, and seeing all the conductors on the train. He also loves to talk about the elevators in our hotel, riding on a city bus, and seeing ambulances on the streets.

Didn’t Notice It

We got a new Roomba off Woot the other day. Its box has been sitting in our kitchen for a few days now, since we didn’t have time to unbox it yet (already have another Roomba). Finally Terah started unboxing it.

Jacob said, “Ooo, a SPECIAL Roomba! I didn’t notice it there.”

Terah: “What makes it special, Jacob?”

Jacob: “Comes from Walmart.”

Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Colors

Terah read in her “What to Expect” book about the toddler years that, at Jacob’s age, there’s a small chance that children can identify one color. Jacob can identify more than a dozen, maybe even two.

Navigation

This really shocks me. As we’re driving down the road, Jacob will — correctly point out directions to me:

“This way to day care!”

“That way to grandma’s house!”

“That way to Newton!”

What really shocked me, though, was when he pointed to an entrance ramp to an Interstate — one which we never take with him — and correctly told me where it went. And when he pointed down a country road that we have never even talked about, let alone driven on, and told me where it must wind up (in Newton, yep). I have no idea how he managed to figure that out.

Scary Memory

Last week, Jacob got a balloon. It reminded him of a balloon he got last Halloween — six whole months ago. He was at a Halloween event for kids, and they gave him a black balloon. It was filled with helium, and it rose up high enough that it touched a sharp edge of a fire sprinkler and popped.

Jacob told us about all of that, right down to it being a black balloon that popped on a sprinkler. They gave him another balloon to replace it — orange. Jacob told us, “Orange balloon not pop.”

Six months ago.

I think it’s time to get him signed up for the debate team…

Days of the week

Jacob doesn’t know what day it is, or in what order they come, but he does know that we go to church on Sunday, that he goes to grandma and grandpa’s house on Tuesday, and to the clinic and Walmart on Wednesdays.

So I leaned back gently a bit, and said “squish!” Jacob yelled, laughing, “QUISH!” “Quish again, daddy!”

So I’d lean back a bit, gently, again, this time reaching behind me to tickle him a bit as I leaned. “Squash!”

Louder laughing. “QUASH!!!” Right in my ear — ouch, but I didn’t mind. “Do it again, daddy!”

Right now, being a dad seems complicated enough. You’ve got to have the right touch to “squish” a 2-year-old without really squishing him. Or have the presence of mind to realize that when Jacob was happily playing outside, then suddenly comes running over, very upset, saying “Go inside!” it means he probably needs to use the potty urgently, or just had an accident. (Or both, as it happened today.) Or to recognize that little walk that means he really does need to use the potty even though he’d rather not. And, of course, there’s figuring out what he’s saying, when his words can still be a bit garbled.

But these all seem simple to me, compared to what will come. How will we help Jacob to grow as a person of good character? How will we meet his need to be challenged intellectually? Will we be able to maintain a good relationship, and yet still have the judgment to have the right set of rules, when he gets to high school? Will I have a good relationship with him as an adult? And how am I going to react when the day comes when he tells me I ought to move into the nursing home?

Jacob, of course, doesn’t care about any of that right now. Each night, when I put him down for the night, he wants me to cover him up with blankets. Once I’ve done that, he peeks out and says, “Have a good night, dad!” I always reply with “You have a good night too, Jacob!”

If we can get along that well for the next 60 years, I guess we’ll do all right.

Today, I woke up feeling like vomiting. I haven’t yet, but it’s been really close. Terah and I explained to Jacob that my tummy hurts. Jacob came over to me and said “kiss it!”, and kissed me. (If he gets hurt, he wants a kiss where it hurts.)

I’ve been in bed sometimes, at the desk sometimes, and at the couch sometimes. It’s one of these annoying things where I can’t sleep, but the only way I can not feel like vomiting in bed makes me sore after awhile, and sitting at the desk or reading something only works for a little while.

As I was sitting at the desk, Jacob came in and wanted to watch some train videos. “See old train! See old train IN SNOW!” He usually sits on my lap, his squirmy 2-year-old self, and watches the videos off Youtube. Today I told him he would have to be very still, and he did a very good job of it.

Later he saw me on the couch. “Dad sleeping,” he said. He gave me a hug, then said, “I sleep there too.” For about a minute, he had his head on the pillow facing me, with a big smile on his face. Then he was off to find a book or something. “Dad have ouchies.”

It’s very sweet to see his sense of compassion developing already. Even if the bounciness sometimes made my stomach more queasy.

This evening, Jacob had a new first. He requested I read him an owner’s manual for his bedtime story. Yes, I’m sure years from now, he will still remember how to operate a Motorola W376g cell phone. He had found the manual in its box and had been carrying it around, “reading” it to himself for days already. I can feel him following in my footsteps – I remember pulling the car manual out of the glove box on long trips and reading it. For fun.

So yes, Jacob chose an owner’s manual over nice children’s bedtime books involving caterpillars.

This morning, I set out on what would be a 43-mile bike ride – home to Wichita. It was about 28F when I left. I had been wanting to ride from home to Wichita for some time now, and finally found the right day. The wind was at my back (mostly), the sun was shining (I even got burned a bit), and the ride was fun. It took me about 4.5 hours, including the 1.5 hours I spent for lunch and other breaks. I didn’t take a completely direct route, but that was intentional.

This is my second-farthest ride in a day, behind the time I rode 55 miles in a day for charity. But it is the farthest I’ve gone in winter.

I was taking the bike to the bike shop for its free 6-month tuneup. So I even had the perfect excuse to ride it. I hope to ride it back home if the weather is cooperative.

As for the third milestone, while I was riding to Wichita, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were riding a train to Washington. I recorded it, and have been watching it this evening. Remembering all they said during the campaign, seeing how they act — it really does give me some hope in this country’s government, some hope that some important things will be accomplished in the future. One TV commentator pointed out that the Bush administration carefully avoided using the word “recession” as long as they possibly could, while Obama is trying as hard he can to be straight and direct with people about the situation. I appreciate that. What a milestone the next few days represent for the country.

One day a week or two ago, I got tired of singing the same song, so I sang a bit of “Home On The Range” for him. The next night, I asked him which song he wanted me to sing, and he said “Home Range.” Pretty soon, he stopped saying “ready sing” and started saying “home range” when he was ready for me to start singing.

Yesterday, we were on the train and Terah happened to be singing Home On The Range to him. She was congested, and started coughing when she got to the chorus, which goes like this:

Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Since Terah was coughing, Jacob surprised us both by “singing” the chorus himself. Just imagine this in a 2-year-old voice:

Home, home on. . . range,
There is deer here.
Skies not cloudy all daaaaaaaayyy!

He didn’t get it all, but we were both stunned that he knew it that well.

That’s Jacob over at the pumpkin patch near us. He found something to inspect, and spent awhile doing it. As he does.

He’s taken a liking to our cat, Nash. Jacob calls him “cat Nash”. Never just “Nash”. When we get home from somewhere, if the cat is around, Jacob will say, “Hi cat Nash! Hi cat Nash!” Then he’ll bend over, touch his head to Nash’s back, and try to give him a hug. Nash, surprisingly, doesn’t mind this.

Jacob enjoys being a part of — well, everything. He will repeat back new words and phrases, trying to learn how to say them, even if he doesn’t understand what they mean yet. His favorite recent outdoor discovery is that grain silos are all over the place. He’ll point them out excitedly as we drive down the road. I had never noticed just how many there are.

One day, he pointed at a water tower and said “SILO!” I understood why he said that, but I told him it was a water tower. He remembered that, and learned to tell them apart in a day or two. Then one morning he surprised me with, “Water tower. Water inside.” How he figured that out, I don’t know.

There’s another photo of him at the pumpkin patch.

The other day, I accidentally triggered our smoke alarms while checking one for a battery. After that, Jacob loved to say “BEEP! BEEP!” Sometimes followed by “Smoke larm. Hurt ears.” We learned how to say BEEP BEEP loud and also quiet.

He’s certainly a lot of fun at this age.

I thought one day that he might like to look at pictures of our train trips on the computer. So I brought him over, fired up digikam, and he sat on my lap for literally half an hour looking at train photos. He’d jabber the whole time, pointing out that there were trains on the screen, whether or not they had open doors, whether people were on the train or not (“on toot!”). This from a boy that was about 21 months old at the time.

So now, when he sees me arrive home, or sees the office door, or just about anything that reminds him of trains, he’ll run over to me and say “chain? chain? CHAIN?!! CHAIN DA??!!” (“dad”) I’ve had to set limits on how many times we go over to the computer and look at train pictures in a given evening.

After a little while of this, I started to get tired of looking at the same set of photos over and over. So I went to flickr to pull up some train photos. Jacob loved this, too. One evening, I must have used slightly different search terms — maybe railroad or something. I hit the button to show the slideshow of the results, as I always do.

And here is where I forgot something — that flickr now supports short videos. Here we were, happily looking at photos of trains, and all of a sudden we see a video of a steam engine in Ireland. Jacob looked surprised, and sat perfectly still while watching it. Then when it was over, he excitedly yelled, “CHAIN GO!!” He wanted to watch the train go over and over again.

You can imagine that I tired of that before long, so I figured that I could find more trains going on youtube. Sure enough. Dozens of videos of trains. Lots of them with someone standing with a camera aimed down the tracks and then a train simply goes by. Jacob loves to here the “DING!” from the gates these people usually stand by, then the “TOOT!” from the train approaching, and then watch the “CHAIN GO!”.

That time Terah said he was sitting on my lap for 45 minutes solid.

So now Jacob wants to watch trains even more than before, and if I try to show him train pictures, it’s “chain go? chain go?”. Ah well. At least he’s found a hobby.

Maybe an hour later, I walked into the kitchen. Jacob and Terah were there. Terah proudly asked Jacob, “What is dad?”

Without missing a beat, Jacob said “Fun!”

He must have seen me smile, because a second later, he added “Happy!”

Can’t argue with that.

For awhile, he was on a whole hugging spree. He wanted to hug anything happy. It could be me, a stuffed animal, a rock, or even a book. To hug something, Jacob holds it up to his cheek, leans his head over onto it, and says “Awwww”. Very cute!

Then he started saying “hi” to things. He’d greet people, toys, rocks… Seeing a pattern here?

Lately he likes to say “bye”. He gets a big smile when he says bye to someone and they wave and say bye back to him. As I leave for work in the morning (on the days when I don’t take him to daycare), I’ll say bye to Jacob. He will keep saying bye to me, smiling all the while, as long as he can.

Last weekend, we had some heavy rains here. I had the idea that Jacob would love to play in the water puddles left on our driveway. Terah wasn’t so sure, but we got Jacob dressed in old clothes and took him outside. He loved to run through the puddles, splashing water as high as he could, cackling the whole time. Then I showed him how he could throw a rock into a puddle and make it splash. So, he would run through a puddle, then carefully select a rock, run to the next puddle, throw the rock in, splash through, and repeat. He’d always want the rock first.

I knew when he was done playing because he said “bye” to the water puddles.

That was me on my first birthday.

You might need to view the large version to see that yes indeed, I was very intent on that fire and probably would have loved to touch it.

Now, Jacob is about 8 months old right now.

I have every reason to believe that if I were to set a lit candle in front of him, he would not focus on it and reach one finger towards it. No, I’m sure he would focus on it and lunge for it with at least two hands. Possibly so suddenly that we’d have trouble keeping him back.

This sure does keep us on our toes.

I also have no doubt that Jacob’s first birthday cake will wind up looking like mine did:

Jacob gave out his first smile Sunday morning — and, much to Terah’s shock, it was to me. He’s a lot of fun to be around when he’s alert.

But he’s also preparing for a promising career as an opera singer, late in the evenings. He’s got a voice that projects well. So Terah and I are still not getting a whole lot of sleep.

I’ve posted a few new photos of him as well.

Terah was in labor most of the day, but eventually the doctor determined he was too big, so was delivered by C-section. Terah is still sore from all that, but otherwise is doing well, too. And of course we’re both trying to catch up on sleep. (Not that we really expect to be able to…)

It’s already been so wonderful to have him here. He already has a personality in some ways, and just is wonderful to be around. We’ve had a number of visitors, but the one that was extra special was when my 91-year-old grandmother stopped by and held him for awhile. Terah managed to get a photo of Jacob, me, my mom, and grandma — 4 generations.

We’ve got a lot to tell, and I’m sure you’ll be seeing more from both Terah and me in the next couple of days. But to start you off, I’ve got the first 5 pictures online already.

Here’s one of the earliest pictures of him. This one was in the operating room, just a couple of minutes after he was born. The nurses had done their inital check, and gave him to me. I took him over by Terah so she could look (the doctors were still finishing up the operation). One of the people in the OR took the camera and got this picture:

Make sure to click here for the rest of the pictures in this set.

Debian folks — do you see anything striking about Terah’s gown in the photo of her holding Jacob? Something oddly familiar, perhaps? Something that my brother recognized instantly — and burst out laughing — when we asked him if he “noticed anything special” about the gown? More on that later…

Sorry, Cliff, for not posting sooner. Hopefully no more bait will be necessary…