Taking the Edge Off

In the mighty winds of Desmond’s second (I suppose technically 3rd) year there are still frequent moments of delight and joy for us. He’s regularly entertaining with his speech, play, and physical activities. His imagination takes on new colors everyday.

This pic was taken after a particularly rough day (Sunday – they seem to be the hardest days for me) after finally getting him into bed for the night. I went in later to check on his progress and found him thus collapsed. My heart softened and the earlier tension caused by his boundary-free enthusiasm eclipsed into laughter. Again and again, I’ll take the whole DesmondPJones package! He is so precious to us.

Catching Up

When Heidi visited for Easter weekend she brought a borrowed camera and we've been trying to take as many pictures as we can -- she's left it with us for acoupla weeks. Nicenicenice!

Following are some highlights of the last two weeks.
Having some family time -- Easter Sunday. We went walking around Fort Tryon Park. Desi is taking pretty well to his new big boy position on the stroller.

desi&zoe

Desi and Zoe continue to get used to each other. Des seems to be a little more playful than Zoe is ready for. She now sizes him up quickly and sometimes before he even approaches her will signal her reluctance for a cuddle. Early mornings are the best times for her to weather Desi's big loves. He doesn't yet seem to understand the idea of gentle loves. :::sigh:::

Zoe is three months old now -- she is a love. I miss her quite a bit when I'm not with her. Those dimpled smiles! I can't bury my lips deep enough into her cheeks. Thankfully she can handle my loves! I often get gleeful squeals from her accompanied by these little happy jig movements she does with her whole body. Des enjoys helping Zoe hold her bottle when they are with their dadda. We praise him generously.

Click to see many pics here

Desi Candor II

I’ve gotten an overwhelming response from you regular familyjonesblog readers regarding this segment (perhaps the only good thing to come out of the loss of my camera) so I thought I’d make this a regular on the blog.

After giving DPJ one of those ‘yournamehere’ creditcards that come in the mail, he promptly bent it out-of-shape and came to me dramatically and said, “My card is ruined! Mamma hold me!”

We spent the day with some friends on 181st St. My friend Guadalupe and two toddlers, Kayden and Ruby. I like to go over the things we did and the people we spent time with at the end of the day -- so I was saying what a nice woman my friend Guadalupe was and Desi repeated, “Lupe nice woman.” Then he paused. “Mamma nice woman… mamma nice girl… mamma big woman!”

Desi came to me one afternoon and asked for a drink. I repeated the request as I usually do by saying, “I want a drink PLEASE mamma” to which he replied, “I want a drink NOW mamma.” ‘Now’ is his new favorite replacement for that old tired word ‘Please’.

During our morning routine of raising of the shades in the bedroom and greeting the city with a “good morning New York!” We noticed the weather was gray and rainy and Desi commented, “its snoring outside!” (As in the song, “it’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring”.)

Tonight I asked Des if he was ready for dinner and he responded, “I wanna be a robot first”.

We were watching a children’s program about a cat and his little boy owner and Des turns to me and says, “Sometimes I have a kitty in my house? When I grow up? Big & strong like mamma&dadda grown up?

“I have pizza last year?” He actually meant to say, I think, last week. He’s been trying out many phrases having to do with time.

Desi and I were under the covers creating a cave. He introduced a couple of hangers he’d found as edible presents – so there we were gnawing on hangers in the dark when I finally said mine was “almost gone”. He smacked his lips for a few seconds and said, “Mine’s almost more.”

“I was crying two weeks”

“BabyZoe is a baby? Soft baby? Lovely baby?” I agreed and he went cheering, both arms in the air, out of the bedroom saying, “Lovely baby!!”

I walked into the bedroom one afternoon to see Des silently looking outside the bedroom window. I asked him what he was doing and he replied, “I’m hanging up”. As opposed to I’m hanging out, I suppose.