A boy and his dog

Yesterday, Jonah was resting his head on Patches's head.
Jonah: Mom, me and Patchy are connected.
Me: At the head?
Jonah: Yep. I learned it on Minecraft.
Me: I think you're connected at the soul. You and Patchy share a heart.
Jonah, grinning wildly!

Tonight, Jonah didn't make it up for story time. I found him crashed out, with his soulmate.

"Nature versus Nurture" or "Reparenting My Brother"

If you asked me 15 years ago, having just earned a biology degree, whether nature or nurture mattered more, I would've emphatically responded nurture.  DNA codes for eye color and height and heart disease, but our behavior is certainly a result of our upbringing and life choices.
Today, I have a different answer. As a parent, watching my children show behavioral traits of their uncless--people they see a few days a year, I am confident that nature holds the trump card. As a parent, i hope to hold some sway--to be able to guide and shape these little people into quality citizens. As time passes, I doubt my influence. Today, I'm on the precipice of becoming a fatalist. Perhaps every action we ever make was predetermined by our genetic code.
I learned to believe in nature from watching Jackson's slight head cock; hearing him talk and talk and talk; and being contradicted by my son after every statement I make. I'm sure he has a lot of Dodge traits, but those are hard for me to identify. So I see Wesley, Jacob, and Frank.
Then Jonah was born--a pale, redheaded duplication of my brothers. At first I wasn't sure which one. My memories tell me it's Ellis, but that must be the greater age difference because photos show a better match to Morgan. Once he started to crawl and climb and get into things, I knew. My child is my brother, Morgan, reincarnated during his lifetime. I am reparenting my own brother. It's clear from the mischievous twinkle in Jonah ' s eyes, from the way he expresses his eyebrows--one at a time, and his drive to turn every situation into hilarity--when Jonah seeks out funny, there is no stopping him.
For those reasons, I believe in nature. I offer 2 stories that are suggesting fate:

When Morgan was almost 3, a girl was murdered in our neighborhood. It was tragic and traumatic for children and adults. We were lectured ever after about stranger danger and how to keep ourselves safe. That summer, Morgan came up with his defense. He said that "if a kidnapper ever grabs me, I'll just pull out my 'kidnapper trick', shove it into his face, and the kidnapper will let me go and I'll run away." He demonstrated by reaching into his pants and pulling out a wad of dirty/used toilet paper and waving it in everyone's face.
Last summer, Jonah told me "If a bad guy ever gets me, I'll shove a used pullup in his face." Thankfully, Jonah doesn't know about child abductions, and he wasn't wiping himself yet.

Jonah has started fibbing to avoid getting in trouble. His answer to the question "who did ______" is now always "ghosts did it." I've had the conversation a dozen times with him now. It's always "ghosts." Was it you, Jonah? "Ghosts" I think it was you. "No! Ghosts did that."
When Morgan was little, between the ages 3 and 8, every mishap was done by Freddy Krueger.  My little brother's imaginary friend/scapegoat was Freddy Krueger.  I'm pretty sure that if Jonah knew that name, he'd be using it.

I love and miss Morgan. He is full of fun, his conversations are engaging and lively (even when he purposefully picks an antagonistic side of an argument--say global warming.) Morgan was a delightful child. He was sweet, spirited, and found the fun in everything. It makes me happy to have Jonah surprise me with wonderful memories of my childhood and brother. Two souls connected through space and time by one double helix.

Numbers

I am one beaming, proud mother these days. Jackson has suddenly hit the I-can't-get-enough-numbers phase and the duh-duh-duh-daddy phase.

With numbers, Jackson used to count to 3, then 5, then struggle with 6 but whiz through 7-8-9. All last year, he could make it to 13 before the rest of the teens came out garbled up. Around Christmas, he found a dinosaur math app on the iPad with addition and subtraction quizzes. He is able to tap out the solutions with just an occasional mistake.
This last week, he's been hitting his stride with counting. He easily makes it to 19, then struggles a little because he really wants there to be a number called "eleventeen". Yesterday, we were working through it: me--20, 21 Jackson--22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, twenty ten me--that's 30...31 Jackson--32, 33, 34... We made it all the way to 100 this way with jack trying to make 3010, 4010, etc and me correcting him to the next series. There was a lot of enthusiastic cheering when we reached 100. I think a few more times together, and he won't need me anymore. My kindergarten self would count to 100 to pass the time during car rides or waiting in line. I remember going with my father to the gravel yard and counting to 100 over and over while we got a truckload of pea gravel. I'm thrilled that my boy enjoys numbers too.

Jackson is also sharing his knowledge with his "mini-me", Jonah. This is great, because Jonah copies everything his big brother does. Jonah will sometimes count on his own as high as 4, but mostly he has the counting rhythm down. Jack will show Jonah how to count, but gets really frustrated that Jonah mixes up numbers or repeats one number over and over. This has all been prompting me to think about how math (or anything really) is learned. One night when jack was really frustrated and yelling at jonah how to do it the right way, I was able to get Jack's attention and talk to him about how Jonah was learning.
I explained how Jonah was new to it, and didn't know how to say the words for all of the numbers yet, but that was OK. He was learning how there was a rhythm to counting: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7... and even if Jonah just said, "9-9-9-9", he was learning the rhythm. I pointed out the numbers I had heard Jonah say "1-2-3-4-6-9" and explained how he would learn more numbers, and that saying the numbers even in the wrong order was helping him learn to count. I must have explained the process really well, because it really sunk in. Jackson cheerfully went back to helping Jonah count penguins, and I shot this video. Yeah, I know the video isn't super polished (even by my standards). I really think it captures the process of learning though, and the elements of the learning process.

Jack has made big strides in reading also. He is attending Lebanon Elementary Preschool now. It's just 3 hours a day, but it's been great. I've had a difficult time getting jack to pay attention to letters at home (except for the alphabet song, which for a while last summer was the only lullaby he'd accept). His preschool has succeeded where I couldn't. He has learned to write most of the letters now, and spends a lot of time writing his name. He's writing his first and last name now. A few months ago, it was just Jackson, and the focus was on making all the letters appear somewhere on the page. If he forgot the "c", he was happy to add it at the end. He also drew a very wonky "s". Now he writes the letters in order, although he struggles with writing left to write. When he writes it right to left, he also inverts all the letters except for the J.
He will sometimes ask me what letters he needs to spell other names like jonah or Evie. I usually write the new names once for him so that he can copy. This last week, he's been working on adding the dodge to his name. He can write it forward or backward now, although sometimes he picks up the g at the end.

Tonight he hit a major reading milestone. We were having bedtime stories, and "Gossie" was up. I like Gossie, and it was a nightly repeat when Jackson turned two. We really haven't read it since, but I've started picking it up since Jonah is just shy of two now. Jackson doesn't remember all the words, but he has the plotline down. A few days ago, he was "reading" it by repeating the parts of the text he has memorized and adlibbing the rest of the plot.
Tonight, his technique was completely different. He used his finger to underline the words as he went through the story, saying much of it from memory and filling in much of the rest. Then (and this was really magical for me) he started sounding some written words out!! "They were wuh-wuh-wuh-walking. On suh-suh-someone else's eff-fuh-fuh-ē-eet." This was such a moment of pride for me,to see the lights suddenly go on like that about how reading works. Really joyful pride on my part. We high-fived and exchanged pounds with fireworks and I laid the praise on thick (not in the forced, yay-another-tiny-success way, but in the -You-are-a-super-genius-and-I-am-overwhelmed-by-it kind of way) and I kissed his smart little head. I don't know if they cover how to sound out words at school, but when he quizzes me at home on spelling words, I usually say, "Pants start with P, puh-puh-puh-pants."

School has also been working on the concept of patterns, and jack is incorporating it into daily life. He gets really excited to find patterns. A few days ago, he found a pattern on a background wallpaper border in a picture book, duck-ball-duck-ball. I just noticed a duplo block tower with 8 dot red blocks stacked on side by side 4 dot green and blue blocks, stacked on 8 dot red blocks. Kind of a big deal for a kid who a year ago would still only use one color block at a time.

Have I gushed enough?! I can't help it. I'm really excited about all of the new, sudden progress my boy has made. I'm also fascinated by how the learning process works. It's amazing to see it unfold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbytGWG50-U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39yz8VL-Fsg

documenting life in motion

Here are some videos from the last couple of months.  We had some after dinner silliness on the last barbecue-able day of the year (or so we thought at the time).



Here is some dancing from Jackson.  Just the first 30 seconds are watchable.  The last minute involves trying to get the skeleton to glow in the dark. I think this is a different night than the previous video.




Jonah crawling.  This is about a month ago, when he only used his left leg.  You can tell by the grunting that it took considerable effort to propel himself.  Now he's moved on to using both feet.  His range tripled, and the grunting has passed.



Jonah taking a bath last week.  He splashes the daylights out of the tub, but on this night could not splash without holding the crab in his teeth.  By the way, I LOOOVE this tub.  It has always kept him upright and no slips.  I put him in it dry every morning when I get ready for school.



















And one more, from tonight..

Baby Hugs

Jonah is lying on his belly next to me. He is leaning over to rest his head against my chest for 3 seconds followed by 30 seconds of laughter and cooing. It's like he's saying, "Look, Mom! I did it! I gave you a hug all by myself!"
I love you, baby.

Mohawks

I keep seeing little boys with faux hawks, and have been holding in my rant.  I think its a stupid haircut, it's so Angelino Jolie's kids circa 2007, and on some level I am surprised that so many people give it to their children.  Then I come back to the reality that 7 year old boys tend to select their own haircuts.  The boys in my generation wore such things as "spiked", "ducktail", and "mullet" (I bow my head in shame). 

I just noticed that my own dear Jonah is sporting a sooweeet baby hawk underneath his combover.  So today I'm hating the faux hawk a little less and thinking I should put a bit of effort into reversing the combover Jason insists on and instead showing off Jonah's hawk.

Sand Box Bullies

Jackson 7.5 weeks

Jonah 8 weeks

Happy One Month Day, Jonah

Today is Jonah's One Month Day.  Jonah celebrated by pooping through 3 outfits in between naps.  The rest of us celebrated by grilling.  The rest of the world celebrated with fajitas and tequila, it is Cinco de Mayo after all. The Earth celebrated by sending out the first of the season's fireflies.

I should've put my little boy on the scale yesterday when I had a chance to see just how much he's grown.  Since I didn't, I just have the stats from last week.  9 lb 10 oz (Look how chubby he is already! That's up almost 2 lbs from birth) and 22 inches.  Up a fabulous 2 3/4 inches (a reminder that the stretch the baby on a piece of paper method is very inaccurate).


Jonah is for the most part an easy baby.  I take him to mom's group, and the other mothers of newborns marvel at how easy going he is.  He sleeps for 3 hour stretches, is willing to sleep in his bed.  Cries only to eat or burp.  When he's awake, the eating and burping are constant--every 20-30 minutes for 2-3 hours in the morning and evening.  This makes it difficult to get the rest of the household fed and dressed.  Fortunately Jackson has been a good sport about it.  At first he was very nervous about the crying and would get upset himself.  Now he's taking it in stride.  If I'm right there, he will ask "Mom, why is Jonah crying?"  and if I've stepped away, he comes to find me and tell me "Mom, Jonah is crying!"

 In some ways, he is also a difficult baby.  The need to eat so frequently am and pm is hard to comply with.  Jonah has also decided not to take artificial nipples--no pacifier, and no bottle.  I'm somewhat envious of the people I know with toddlers who won't give up the binky, it sure would be nice to let the little guy suck himself to sleep.  I don't know what he's going to do in 4 weeks when I have to go back to work.  I got a couple of different types of bottles to try, and hopefully he'll accept one of them and not starve to death.

This picture is totally staged.  Jack was coerced into letting Jonah lean against him, and coached into putting his arm around him and holding his head up.  Jack is actually laughing at Sponge Bob on TV.  It turned out to be a great picture, though. 



Happy One Month Day, Little Jonah.

Jonah rolls over

Baby Jonah is already trying to keep up with his big brother. I brought him home from the hospital, set him on the bed on his belly, turned my back, and he rolled over--twice.  Jason saw him do it a week later on the couch. Last night, he was on a roll (ohh, sorry for the pun), but I managed to capture it on film.  Here is my brand newbie 2 1/2 week old baby rolling from front to back:



It's a three step process.
Step 1 (optional): Get Really Mad
Step 2: Lift up giant head and fling it to one side.
Step 3: Allow giant head to pull rest of body over.

And lest you think my bed is sloped giving him some unfair advantage, he goes left!

Introducing Jonah Dale Dodge

 

It's [finally] time to welcome Jonah Dale Dodge to the world.  Born Monday, April 5, 2010 at 8:56 pm: 7lb 15oz and 19 3/4 inches long.  He looks very much like baby Jackson, but with a twist of Daddy this time instead of Mom.  Jonah has blue eyes and a surprising cap of silky dark brown hair. 

We were, of course, thrilled from the first moment.  And so far, things are just getting better.  Jonah is not following in the footsteps of his big brother on many accounts.  First, Note the size--less than 8 lbs (vs the 9lb 6oz of baby Jackson).  Jonah caught on to the art of breastfeeding right away.  He followed that trick up with the ability to sleep, in his own space, and on his back!   Like his brother, he is a breathtakingly beautiful child with a matching disposition.

How is big brother Jackson doing?  Pretty well.  He is doing a good job of checking on Jonah, helping to get things for him, and shushing us to be quiet when Jonah is sleeping.  Jackson is also very nervous about the baby.  He doesn't want to sit by him, and I've only seen him touch him twice.  Definitely no hugs or kisses yet.  Jackson is also alarmed by the crying, he will ask why he cries, and if it goes on for more than a few seconds he retreats to another room.

Here I am just before heading out to the hospital. 

 

Look at that yawn! 

That's it for the picture posts.  For those of you who are detail hungry, I'll get to the birth story soon.