Warm Springs Picnic pics & short update

Just wanted to take a sec and post some pics. These are from our picnic up at the Little White House in Warm Springs GA. We had a blast, come to think of it I believe that this was Sammy's first picnic table picnic.

Few updates as well before I get to uploading. Sammy has begun to walk. Seriously, he is taking five and six steps at a time! I suppose this means that he is a Toddler now. Our little Sammael is not longer a baby. Such bittersweet days!

Flat Rock Park

I took Sammy to Flat Rock Park here in Columbus the other day. Sammy had his first swing ride! He also had his first slide which was fun for him and disasterouse for me. I held him on my chest and went down with him. This was one of those yellow plastic covered slides deals. Needless to say I did not check the slide for obstructions. Right at teh bottomthere was a distinct spash and suddenly my entire backside was soaking wet! My loud grumbling seems to amuse Sammy. My Firent Kevin, who came out with us, seemed to think it was pretty funny as well. So that ended our outing. We had been there for a good hour anyway.

There are trails and little playgrounds, and a lake. It really is a nice park, I cant believe I had forgotten about it.

This video was taken with my cell phone camera so the quality is not what I would like it to be, but I was just glad I had a camera on me at the time.

Lucky for Sammy

Lucky for Sammy I am a much more dedicated father than I am a dedicated blogger. Whew so long since my last update I hardly know where to begin. So I will do this as a stream of consciousness.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. We made the 3 ½ hour drive to Athens starting at 8pm, just a bit past Sammy’s bed time. This gave us an easy drive there. Sammy did eventually wake up but was very content to sleepily watch the lights outside the car window.

We arrived at, Alicia’s brother, Wes’ house somewhere between 11:30 and 12:00 with a wide-awake, raring to go, amped up Sammy. I mean AMPED. I Don’t believe I have ever seen him crawl as fast and furious as he did that night. Back and forth, around the table, to the door, back to me or Alicia then to Tammy, Wes’ wife, then to Wes and around again.

Tammy prepared an absolutely mouthwatering thanksgiving dinner that included some of the best vegetarian cooking that I have had in some time. And she definatly got Sammy approval!

On the way back Sammy got a chance to see Atlanta. He was wide eyed. The windows of our car suddenly became the viewing screens of a strange never before seen world of concrete, glass and glowing flashing signs. And I thought that McDonalds advertising on Sesame Street was bad. But whatever, Sammy thought it was cool. We stopped at our friend Jacqueline’s house in Newnan for a visit (where I have my third thanksgiving dinner) and then shot off toward Columbus. Sammy did great until about 70 miles to Columbus. He never really blew his top or anything but was a bit fussy.

All in all a wonderful trip and Sammy did great for such a long drive. I am glad. We are thinking of driving over to Statesboro so that Sammy can participate in Dr. Jan Kennedy’s Strange Situation research. For those of you that don’t know that is Bowlbey and Ainsworth’s experimental design for testing the attachment style of kids.

Today we visited the Coca Cola Space Science Theater. Sammy thought it was pretty cool but got tired of it pretty quickly. I think the Omnisphere Theater was a bit much for him. Not that he didn’t like it, he did for about 10 minutes. He seemed pretty overwhelmed though so we had to head out early. I think he thought I was going to try to put him to sleep every time the lights went out. During these times he fussed and wiggled a lot. When the lights came back on he seemed okay. I think his tooth was bothering him as well. All in all a good trip. You gottah know when to cut these things short so a good time does not turn into a disaster. I wish I had some pictures but he was in the sling and it was just us two. Next time we will defiantly photograph our adventure.

I believe Sammy’s favorite thing, and mine too (aside from the theater which is just the unsaid coolest) was a new planetary display they had. There was a black backdrop with tiny light as stars and a spherical screen in the center. A touch screen computer allowed you to choose what planet you wished to view and then a projector cast the image of the planet onto the spherical screen disco ball looking thing. There it was in miniature, the planet of your choice. Sammy pointed at this one a lot, which is how we know he thinks something is cool lately. He will point and sometimes point and say, “wudis” (translation: what’s this) or beign going on in his native touge so fast we cannot keep up.

So now for the bullet bits of info…
· Sammy has four teeth, two big ol front teeth, one bottom tooth, and another bottom tooth on the way. The past few days (nights rather) have been pretty rough. Lets put it this way; he opens his mouth willingly when he sees you have baby ambisol on your finger. This is thebest shot i have of his teeth, he's not too happy about it. This is the best pic i have of his teeth so far, he's not too happy about it.

· Sammy is taking steps to get from the couch to the ottoman. Not many, two at tops so far. He can stand pretty much as long as he wills and can play with things in his hands while keeping his balance.
· Sammy has several words. He began with “buby”, and will sometimes waves along with this one. He is now pointing at things saying “wudis” which we are figuring is his attempt to mimic us when we point and say “what’s this” So when he does that we name the thing he’s pointing at. He seems to like this game.
· Just today Sammy pointed to the light fixture on the ceiling and said “wudis”, so I responded “light”. He began trying to make L sounds, not much luck. But later when I said “Sammy where’s the light?” He looked up at it and pointed. Alicia and I were quite impressed.

I will try to update the Garcia Family Productions webpage pretty soon with all the pics from thanksgiving and some videos etc. It’s hard to find the time at home. I have been coming to the library to write at night when Alicia gets home and I don’t have the Google applications on this computer. I suppose I could get it and keep a flash dive for photos. I will look into that. But for now, this will be my primary mode of disseminating family news.

Doctors ALL DAY!

Today was relatively uneventful, unless you count spending all day a the doctors office eventful. I should not say that really. My grandmother had a doctors appointment today and I often take her to these appointments. The doctor's assistant did allow me to call in and find out what the wait was before going in. She saved us about two and a half hours of sitting in the waiting room. This would have been unbearable with my 89 year old grandmother and my 11 month old child. So my grandmother and I spent the morning here at the house. This was nice. She got to play with Sammy and we spent some quality time with one another.

We got to the doctors office at 12:00 noon and got home at around 3:00pm. This feels like all day. And this dominated my day. No worries though, Sammy was a champ the whole time. We did have one major milestone this afternoon. When we got to my grandmothers house, after the Dr.s apt. we decided to stay for awhile and have pizza. My wife was just getting done with school and called from the house for me to pick her up. So I got int eh car and drove off, without my child. I left him with my sister and her boyfriend for the few minutes it took to get to my house and back. I know I know! But this was the FIRST time I have EVER left Sammy with anyone other than my wife. He, as expected, did wonderfully. He didn't cry or fuss. He just kept being his awesome little self till we got back. HOORAY for attachment style parenting! :)

This is your infants brain on caffeine

This evening my wife, Alicia, and I were getting some things done and left Sammy to his own devices for a bit. We do this pretty often. He seems to enjoy the freedom and trust that it entails for short periods of time. The way our house is set up we have basically sectioned off the front of the house as childproof and the back as adult room. The front is the living room/play room and the bedroom/Sammy library. Then the back of the house is the kitchen and study.

Well, I left for a moment to go get some creamer for some afternoon coffee. When I got back I went into the study to speak with Alicia and left Sammy in the front room to play. We heard him making his normal giggling and googling sounds when of a sudden we heard him make a new sound. This was a very sad sound. Not an upset cry or a holler to get our attention, but a kind of sad whimper, as if he had seen something sad in a movie or just finished reading a tear jerking novel. I wasn't in a hurry but I did begin to make my way to the living room door to peak in on him. AHHHH, I had forgotten a cup of coffee that i left on the coffee table earlier. Double AHHHHHHHHHH! Sammy had the cup to his mouth and was leaning back. I rushed in and he looked up at me as if he knew that he was not supposed to be doing that. He has often gone for my cup and just as often I have deflected his attempts. He knew this was not within his realm of allowed activity. I believe that the expression of sadness that we heard was his knowing, his cognitive dissonance with what he had just done. That to me is the truly amazing thing about this moment.

Then came the wait. We had no idea how much coffee he had actually consumed and were anticipating the worst. Shortly after this episode Alicia had class and I was left trying to get dinner prepared. Sammy began to wail. I was unable to comfort him at all. This is the worst feeling, not being able to comfort your child. He did eventually go to sleep but not before I held him for a good hour, crying in what seemed to be agonizing pain. He did break a new tooth today so this may have played a part. I put baby ambasol on his gums to no avail.

After he woke up and we had dinner, of which he ate precious little, he went wild! Alicia usually does the bedtime routine and he was all over the place. Crawling at comically top speed, standing and falling in the bed, leaping forward to fall into his mothers face. I played with his a bit too. He laughed uproariously when I swung him to toss him lightly into the pillows. He chased the dog, almost over the edge of the bed. He finally asked to nurse by pointing at Alicia and smiling, then nestled in frantically. I left them to it. It must have been another good hour before Alicia came back into the study frazzled and exhausted from the effort of this nights bedtime rituals. Moral of the story, infants react fairly strongly to caffeine! Keep it away from them at all costs.

My Parenting Paradigm (and 2 recipes)

There is nothing more beautiful, nor painful, than watching your child's development. Sammy has cut another tooth this weekend. One of his top teeth. So now he is going to have one bottom and one top tooth. He is standing on his own and of his own volition now. Walking is around the corner. I anticipate that my life is going to change significantly when this occurs. It is strange how the parenting experience comes with such yin yang occurrences. I will be on the run and much busier in one respect, but then in another we will be on our way to all kinds of fun adventures. I look forward to Sammy being able to walk beside me on the trails. I also look forward to his new levels of exploration, but this will come with an added responsibility.

Perhaps I should spend some time thinking in text about the paradigm from which i am coming as a parent. First and foremost my wife and I practice attachment style parenting. Dr. Seers is a great source for those who may not be familiar with the basics of this style. For a mroe in depth study look into Bowlby and Ainsworth. Second I am an evolutionary psychologist. So where does this leave my philosophy of parenting?

Attachment style parenting is very focused on attentiveness and responsiveness. This means that when your baby cries you pick them up. You don't leave your baby to cry for hours in her crib. Remember that your baby is brand new to this world, they have not formed associations between the physical things outside the womb and themselves. Your baby has entered the world having had nine months of consistent and instantaneous needs met. Why should their most formative years be any different? A baby should trust the world, and most importantly babies should trust their parents. This cannot happen if a baby's experience indicates otherwise. Speaking from an evolutionary perspective a child that has been left to "cry it out" has been abandoned. The child eventually stops crying, not because she has learned that she will be okay, but out of a learned helplessness. This baby has learned that there is no use in crying, no one will help them. This learning is then hardwired in the brain and is continues to influence the development of the child into adolescence and beyond.

There is also the parents urge. Most parents will report that having to hear their baby cry is the most painful heart wrenching experience they have ever known. The immediate urge is to pick their baby up. And well they should! There is a reason we have evolved such boding techniques. A child with a secure attachment style is a happy child. A happy child is more often than not a well behaved child. The parents of a securely attached child are likewise happier and more secure in their parenting. There is a trust between the parents and the child that extends well beyond the traditional parent child roles. This mutual trust creates a feedback loop, and parenting as well as being a child, becomes a wonderful experience of exploration and learning.

It is not our job as parents to force our children to conform to our wills. It is our job as parents to create a safe environment in which our children can experience their lives and learn how things work. To include experiencing their own personal interactions with their environments (i.e. to learn who they are).

There will be more on this subject. For now, I just wanted to get some thoughts down and out.

I also wanted to share a couple of finger food recipes that I came up with. These I am sure are not new to the world, but they were certainly new to my kitchen!

Apple toast

1. Toast some bread
2. smear organic apple sauce all over the bread
3. Allow to soften
4. Cut into strips
5. Serve

Cheezios

1. Using organic cheerios and organic sliced cheese
2. Squeeze the cheerio and the cheese together squishing the cheese into the cheerio
3. Serve

My boy likes the apple toast and loves the cheezios.

catching up

Well there is quite a bit to catch up on. I will do my best. I have been working nights on my writing. making a modest but respectable bit for a stay at home dad. I am happy with it. But this has kept me up late and I haven't been fulfilling my obligations as a blogger. Sorry about that.

Halloween was AWESOME! There will be pictures up on Garcia Family Productions this evening. I will also be posting a video diary of Sammy and I's first solo hike up at Pine Mountain (11:03:2008). This one will need some editing so it may be late this evening or tomorrow evening.

So Sammy was a frog, Alicia borrowed a witch dress and cape costume from our awesome neighbor, Dana, and I wore a black robe. The three of us, the two witches and their toad offspring headed down the road to crash the costume contest in the ritzy subdivision across the street. We carved pumpkins before we left and had a blast! Halloween is absolutely the coolest holiday.

So we only trick or treated two houses. It became quickly apparent that Sammy was a bit tired and not willing to tolerate being given something cool and having it taken away too many times. But he did Trick or Treat. His first ever trick or treat candy was a Three Musketeers candy bar.

Sammy has been perfecting the art of handing things to us when we ask him for them. It is a fun game of pass the toy back and forth. This only works with toys however. It does not work with finger nail clippers or anything else that he is not supposed to have.

His Memaw came by and visited today. Sammy was very excited about this. I was too, it was nice to just hang out with my mom and son.

Ahh what else. Oh yeah, Sammy stood unattended spontaneously and without prompting this evening for near 30 sec on several occasions. He discovered that he could manipulate objects better with both hands if he balanced a bit. He honestly looked a bit surprised but his own ability.

Oh yeah one last new development. Sammy has perfected the art of scarring the hell out of me. He has discovered that pretending to be choking gets my attention. And I am going to tell you, he is good at it! He holds his breath and his face turns all read and he makes noise as he strains his inhale. When I panic and straighten him up or pat his back, or begin to respond in any fashion he begins to laugh. I am gonna get the little booger one day for this one. So I have a panic attack about twice a meal now due to his excellent acting skills.

That's it for now.

Peace In Xaos

Tomorrows Halloween!

Today was a good day. A bit manic but a good day. I only had to suck snot out of Sammy's nose three or four times and it was not much and still very clear so all is good. Still don't feel confident to venture out too far with him. I am going stir crazy! I don't suppose, this being my second blog, that I mentioned that Sammy has been sick for the past week, I have been sick for seemingly 3 weeks. I am pretty much better, Sammy still has a bit of a stuffy nose, especially at night. It was crazy at first though. His eyes were all red and leaking and he couldn't breath out of his nose. This was his first really bad cold (at 10 months). I figure were not doing to bad.

So what did a stay at home dad do today? Probably something very similar to other stay at home moms. The day begins by begin woken up by a little demonic monkey crawling all over me, slapping me, pulling my beard, and chattering "da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da" Then when my one eye opens I see him. He smiles and my whole being is filled with joy. This is the first thing I see int eh morning. My smiling happy son.

I put him in front of his toy shelf and put on Jack Johnson's Curious George soundtrack. We dance a little together.Then we move on to breakfast. Organic cheerios in some freshly pumped Mommy Milk (fresh being the night before).

The rest of the day is cleaning, playing, cleaning and playing. Its like a yin and yang. Pleasure and pain. When Mommy comes home Sammy nearly crawls out of his Onezy (sp?) trying to get to the door.

Tomorrow is Halloween and Sammy has a frog Onezee (sp? I'm trying here). I don't care what anyone says, Sammy and I are going door to door. He is way too young for candy but it seems to me that the experience of heading down the same road we walk down every day and adding an new experience, knocking on doors, will be terribly exciting for him. I wonder if he has even realized that there are people in those big brick and wooden boxes that line the street. He recognises our house, and his Great Mamma's house. But has he thought that people, other people, new and different, strange people, live in each and every one of those houses? Who knows? But it will be worth it just to give him the experience, as he has never had that particular one before.

In the first place

So here I am ten thousand years from where I thought I would ever be. I am a stay at home father. I am father to Sammy Garcia. I have had to ask myself in this quest, not who I am, but who I was. As things shifted so drastically. I knew without question who I had become. I am Sammy's father. But who had I been? Who was this person that had another path and another destination?

I have always desired to be a professional writer. Now I have the opportunity. But my goals, aspirations, desires, fantasies, have suddenly changed. I am still a writer, but not the beatnik, smoking, drinking, starving poet writer that I was. I am now a parent. The smoking and drinking are gone, the late nights and barfly days of my youth have morphed into changing diapers, making baby food, and spending hours on the floor. This is where the drum circles happen now.

Sammy is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. He is my inspiration. Thus, my writing will adjust accordingly. I am now a parenting journalist. I will report on the new and upcoming delights like teeth and learning to use a spoon. How to make good baby food, attachment style parenting cloth diapering and... Well, I will leave some for my articles.

My hope is that this will turn into somewhat of a career. Being a stay at home parent it is difficult to make money. Being a stay at home Dad is hard on the pride. This sense of pride that has been instilled in all young men of our culture. You must be the bread winner. Even though I feel the job that I am doing is the most important job of my life, I still have this tiny pinprick of discomfort, like the princess and the pea. So this will be another topic of interest for the blog.

But more important than all of this will be the star, Sammy. His milestones and moments of triumph will be posted here. This will be a place for Sammy and me.