It is time to take a quick trip down memory lane. Sometime around 2 a.m. on March 14, 2013 I learned something extremely important to my immediate future. I learned that my little, adorable infant son could make a noise so piercingly loud that no human ear was meant to hear it – and that he seemingly enjoyed shrieking in this manner. All my years of attending rock and roll concerts couldn’t prepare me for this air raid siren. My son had (and still has) the ability to melt your heart with adorableness. So how could someone with such an adorable disposition make a noise so unfit for human ears? I received some sage advice to not wish myself past this phase—that every stage of fatherhood will pass way too incredibly fast—something that is very true. He needed a way to convince his parents of his hunger. He seemingly needed a way to convince anyone within a 5-mile radius of his hunger, but that’s another story. Still, to wish myself past this phase didn’t seem right. It is not like when he stopped making that noise it would be followed with bouts of logic. Right? Fast forward back to present. (22 months old) Jamie’s vocabulary has increased immensely as of late. He has demonstrated his ability to continue hitting the high notes, but not nearly as often or to the degree that he did as an infant. He now has the other ways to tell us that he is hungry. For instance my wife found him the other day hanging on the refrigerator door saying “This? This!” He has also gone through and named every food that he likes for us in a hurry when he is hungry. “Bull Shish(Goldfish)! Eggs! Peezzaaa!” Sometimes this is all happening as early as an hour before he is supposed to eat. But boy, was I right about the logic thing. With the vocabulary does not come an immediate understanding of concepts. Mom and dad: “Jamie are you hungry?” Jamie: “No. Yes. No?” This type of answer is given for several types of questions when he gets flustered, and he is almost always meaning no. The questions “Are you ready to go to bed?” “Do you want to take a bath?” and “Did you poop?” have all received some variation of the same answer. And it is an answer that seemingly raises more questions. For instance: How am I supposed to interpret that? Why can’t you just give me a straight answer? Can I give you this answer later in life when you ask pressing questions about having a friend sleep over, or ask to use the car?  Jamie is almost 2. When...

Kids grow up so fast. Jamie is already 22 months, and it still feels like yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital. In that time frame, he developed from infant to little boy. He went from sleeping and crying to running and bouncing off the walls. I’m sure Jamie’s childhood will continue to feel like a total blur right up until the moment he enters high school, takes the car keys, and starts applying for colleges. He is growing into his personality every day. He is more and more vocal, whether what he is saying is in discernable English or Toddlerese. He is young and there is absolutely no pressure, but sometimes it is fun to analyze those developing personality traits to determine what he could be when he grows up. Here are a few of the possibilities, based on the evidence: A Politician—This theory is based on his answer to the question, “Jamie, did you poop?” The answer is usually something along the lines of “No, yes, no,” as he shakes his head violently from side to side in denial. Just because the evidence is sitting in his diaper (and sometimes alarmingly noticeable from across the room) doesn’t mean it came from him. He sticks to his answer no matter the mounting evidence. An athlete—Well, he’ll have to learn how to take the stairs a little better, or run without falling to make this a reality. He does sometimes favor his left arm when he throws, however, so maybe baseball is his thing. An actor—Jamie’s got a strong flair for the dramatic. The less sense that whatever he is saying makes, the more emphatically he will deliver the line. Meg and I are spending a decent amount of time staring at each other with puzzled looks as he attempts to convey some of his gibberish. Put on the song “Let it Go” from Frozen, and he will lift his hands and sing with Elsa. He has a flair for the dramatic. He also lives to make us laugh with goofy faces and silly phrases. The boy knows how to steal attention in a room. An electrician—One of his very first words was light. I suppose you spend that much time looking up, you’re bound to take note of the scenery. Lawyer – As his vocabulary increases, so does his desire to alert his parents to whatever he wants to do. The boy is already working on his powers of persuasion. Doctor — He loves his toy doctor set. He’ll walk around the house yelling “shot!” carrying his toy syringe. He’ll want to listen to your chest with the stethoscope. Here’s to hoping he develops some steadier hands...

Anybody who’s spent time around a 2-year-old understands that just because they grow up fast doesn’t mean that they automatically settle into a pattern of reason and logic. Our 2-year-old has a generally pleasant demeanor, and I count myself lucky as a father. But that doesn’t mean he won’t turn on a dime. Below is a list of the things that my son routinely asks for right before he’s about to lose it:...

I beamed with excitement the moment that the ultrasound technician broke the news to my wife and I that we were having a boy. Healthy and happy were first priorities, but this news just made me smile. I knew from the beginning that boys transitioned into toddlerhood as steaming balls of energy nearly impossible to contain. I had seen others’ children in action enough to understand this. All that said, I figured that the phrase “bouncing off the walls” took on a figurative meaning. I figured wrong. Jamie is 22 months old and he almost always resides in some state of motion when he is not sleeping. One of his favorite things to do is run from one wall in our front room to another, while yelling as loud as he can. Except when he arrives at his destination, he doesn’t stop. His momentum carries him into a hard surface with a thud, and his voice shakes. He bounces off the walls. The contact doesn’t phase him. He doesn’t stop. He isn’t hurt. He simply turns around and does it again, continuing on his quest to burn energy. It really is tiring to watch, but there is no alternative for him while the subzero frigid winter temperatures rage outside. We recently took a family vacation to South Carolina, and Jamie behaved extremely well on the hour-and-a-half flight. By the time we were driving to the rental house after we landed, he became a little stir crazy. So when we settled in, we drove Jamie down to the beach, where there were no walls to confine him. And he ran, and ran and ran. He yelled, he stretched his arms out, and he ran some more. And dad ran with him. It was a refreshing break from winter to watch him run like that right next to the ocean. With young toddlers, there is no logic or reason as to when to turn this mode off. Our southern vacation was to attend a family member’s wedding. When we entered the Catholic church, Jamie made a break for the canister of holy water in the corner yelling “Wa-Wa!!!” the whole way. I credit some early morning runs that I have made in an attempt to stay in shape for the ability to stop him before he figured out how to start drinking. Life with a toddler is nothing if not interesting. There is no off switch for Jamie’s energy. You cannot tell him to slow down because you are tired. But it is contagious.  I hope he is able to channel it into various aspects of his life when he is older....

As I sat down on the floor to play mega blocks with my almost 2-year-old son, I showed him the picture on the box. A choo-choo train and a station built from the blocks in the set graced the cover. I fought back the urge to open the box and begin explaining how they could be created. Why? There is plenty of time to build what the set is intended for later. The concept seemed a little bit over his head, and I don’t think he would have learned anything from it. Instead, I wanted to see what else he could come up with. Granted he is at an age where he is just beginning to see how the blocks fit together at all, but it is refreshing to see someone play with a toy totally new, and the curiosity they bring to the endeavor. I don’t care if he used the train set to build a used car lot or a lemonade stand, all these toys are sparking his imagination, and it is great to watch. Instead, he pulled the blocks out of the box, and simply experimented with how they fit together. I showed him what a couple blocks looked like assembled, and he was content simply playing with them. No urge to build anything complex yet existed, but that’s alright. Once he figures out what he has and how they work, the creativity will flow. He has plenty of opportunity for following instructions later in life. There will be plenty of moments where he will be told “do this” and “don’t do that.” It is important for him to use his toys to spark his own imagination—especially since he is an only child. The process has already begun. For instance, he regularly plays with a toy kitchen that his grandmother bought him for Christmas. He heats up coffee in his fake coffee pot and hands us empty plates telling us it’s fish. This always cracks me up considering it is not something he eats with any great frequency. However, when we eat what he cooks he lets out a “Yay!” and continues playing. I know he is young, but I want him to value his play and creative time – before somebody tells him that something he creates is good or bad, or that it must be done in any certain way. Kids seem to have that innate ability to create without judgment, but somewhere along the line it is pounded out of most adults. As a writer I always struggle with my inner editor. I need to simply get ideas down on paper or on the screen, and then go back and tweak. However, if...

My son’s first visit with Santa, as well as his Christmas went better than this picture would seem to indicate. I just love the honesty of the moment. In what seemed like a Christmas miracle unto itself, Santa was able to turn my son around and make him smile as he gave him a high five while sitting on his lap. Jamie also showed a tremendous amount of joy and excitement as he unwrapped each of his presents on Christmas morning. He tried to play with everything all at once. He showed a lot more awareness of what was going on around him this year than he did in his first Christmas, and it was great to watch. Christmas has definitely taken on a new focus in our house. At the same time, I am glad it is over. I’m really not the bah-humbug type, it’s just that watching the collective consciousness shift out of whack can be exhausting.  I don’t participate in any Black Thursday (otherwise known as Thanksgiving) or Black Friday shopping. Instead I watch news reports roll in about fights for the latest and greatest thing, and shake my head. I love supporting small businesses, but Christmas is a very Amazon event for me, since it keeps me out of retail establishments during December—and that can only be viewed as a good thing. Christmas also seems like a good way to wind down the year. So once the tree is down, the toys are shoveled into their appropriate place, and the New Year’s resolutions take hold, it is like starting fresh. I regain my house back from the Christmas bomb that includes the tree, toys, and boxes of decorations that occupy our storage closet and garage for 11 months out of the year.  That feeling of a fresh slate has always outweighed the stresses of Christmas. The calendar provides that natural reset point with New Year’s, and I see why it becomes that obsessive moment for so many as they adjust their work habits, go on diets, and make countless resolutions. You really need to perform all sorts of mental tricks to survive a Chicago winter, and Christmas acts as a natural dividing point on the calendar. Any major cold or snow occurring after Christmas can be viewed as something that will at least end eventually, since winter will be on its way out within two months or so. The thermometer is on an eventual uptick. No matter how nice the celebration, I always feel better starting fresh. Bring on the rest of the year.      ...