Jack was asking about twenty-thousand why/who/what questions the other day, about something or other to do with my work; when he asked where I was going today, rather flippantly, I said ‘Switzerland’. It wasn’t true, but it was somewhere that wasn’t where he’d know, but it (almost) had the desired effect, as he paused for thought about it.

“What’s that?” came the reply, in keeping with the rest of the conversation, and so it went on until  I asked Jack if he could say ‘Switzerland’. 

He tried a little and failed after a decent attempt, bearing in mind that he’s only two years old. And so, Claire stepped in to help him with his pronunciation.

“Swit. Zer. Land" – she said.

Quick as a flash, the little blue-eyed monster replied, “Well done, mummy!”, clapping his hands with a look of happiness across his face.

Made us both laugh, although Jack was looking at us in confusion, as mummy had, indeed, said it correctly.

Priceless.

That’s all he does. He jabbers on about all sorts from the moment he wakes up.

Some things that are totally ‘in’ the flow of the conversation but, occasionally, when you think he’s waffling on about something unrelated, he’s usually just working off at a tangent, but the point of what he’s got to say is bang on the money.

He’ll tell you that he’s needs a drink, wants to watch ‘Peppa Pig’ on TV (or DVD!!), that he had cried at nursery that day, that he loves you, or even that he’s grumpy. (But he will not admit to being tired!!)

Over the past several weeks, Claire and I have noticed how well his ‘jabbering’ has improved on a weekly basis. That’s to say that this week is much improved on last week, and that on the week before and so on.

Sometimes his pronunciation is a little off, but he’s trying! (And he is only two!)

Jack is now speaking in sentences, rather than just mumbles, grunts and one-word-burps. He asks for things, tells us things and everything, which may sound perfectly normal, but I still do not have a benchmark to compare Jack to, as I have never spent any significant time around any kids of friends or family. I don’t know what age they’re meant to be able to do something, or say something, etc, so to me, this is as it comes.

It’s the speed that his little brain is soaking up the information and processing it, that gets both Claire and myself. It’s fascinating to watch unpeel before your eyes, really.

One of my lecturers at university said, within an Artificial Intelligence module, that if we wanted to create something that could learn organically, then we should simply “have a child”.  And he is/was right, as the mind boggles at how much computing power and software creativity would be needed to create a computer that could do what Jack’s brain is doing, as well as being able to swing arms and legs in a motion that we call walking or running.  Computers can learn a specific task by repetition and trial/error, but seeing something, learning the word for it, and then being told that it relates to something else and understanding what is going on… remembering where he is, without a GPS device… asking questions about new things, or saying sorry for hurting someone else… that’s crazy-computing-thinking.

If you recognised that quote from a movie, then well done to you!

It was, indeed, a quote from the 1986 movie entitle ‘Crocodile Dundee’ and is the new phrase of choice of Little Riggers, as taught to him by my father, aka Grand-dad Riggers.

Jack has got one of those Little Tykes cars that is a bit like a Flintstone’s car whereby peddle-power makes the world go round, and inset in the steering wheel, is a little horn.

Well, partly through that and him driving my boy around their garden in his 4x4, Jack now know that if you pip the horn twice, the next thing you do, naturally, is to say “Get out the way, dopey!”.

He also tends to justify his actions with “Grand-dad says!”, which is great when people here him say that for the first time, such as in Tesco’s the other day, as I was pushing him around in one of those trolley’s with a kid’s car stuck to the front.

“Thanks, Pa.”

… but it is very funny. Makes me smile just thinking about it.

If you ask any parent, there’s a good chance that they’ll backup my claims that it’s absolutely crazy about how the human brain learns. You can see this process happening over the course of days, weeks and months in a small child, by simply watching and listening to them and the things that they do.

Note: I cannot, nor will I try to, compare Jack to another 2 year old – the ‘About me…’ part of this blog is still true, in that I am still new to this baby lark and have only ever spent any proper time with him. So, my observations are directly as a result of him and his actions.

The things that he remembers is quite extraordinary; when we’re talking about something, he’ll throw something completely random into the conversation, but if you pause and think for a moment, you can ‘see’ the conversation links that got him from talking about this, to what he’s thinking about that.

What I mean is, I mentioned in the last post about the conversations that we had about his Grand-dad and his whistling, but as well as that, he actually understands what you’re talking about and is thinking through from one topic into another, but remembers details about things too, that I certainly don’t expect at the time!

A few weeks ago, Claire had to go into work last minute and so couldn’t take Jack for his swimming lesson in Peterborough, so I took him, but my dad brought Jack from our house to my work in Peterborough so that I could take him. Yesterday, when Jack and I was talking about something or nothing, I mentioned Peterborough as Claire and I were going out for the evening. Instantly, he mentioned that daddy works in Peterborough, and that he’d been to my workplace and that his grand-dad brought him, and without very much pushing, he remembered that we went swimming too.

This might all sound a bit ‘yeah, so?’, but it’s amazing about the things that he picks up and why. And how! For instance, I’m a software developer at heart, and the basic idea is that the program that you’re writing does nothing by default, until you make it do it. But his little brain is learning as each day passes. All those little neurons are firing and connecting as his brain develops over time. Relating it back to the techie-world again where my knowledge is more in-depth than babies and the like, trying to get a computer to learn at the rate a child does like that is almost impossible! Computer processors can ‘learn’ but that’s not even the same thing, as they’re coded by a human to learn in a specific way.  This is organic learning as a result of evolution or something, and not some Hollywood sci-fi movie where robots learn ‘stuff' instantly.

I know that you and I went through this process ourselves, which is part of what makes us human, but to see it unfold before your eyes is very interesting.

Two weeks ago, I blogged about Jack’s favourite phrase, namely “No, Daddy!”, but now, he’s completely different, which is really good.

Sure, he still shows off at me a little when his mum is around, but nowhere near as bad as it was.

It was a little upsetting at times, not to the point of crying or anything like that, but to be sent away when I first walked in from work was a little harsh, or when I’d get him from Claire’s parents house.

Now, it seems as though a fortnight has made the world of difference, as he laughs when I tickle him, and even ran at me when I came to collect him from the in-laws’ house, going as far a giving me a kiss too.

The articles that I read on the BabyCentre website, that Claire found for me about it, made it sound like an on-going thing.  I don’t know if Jack has just snapped out of it, or whether it is really something that comes and goes, or just lasts a few weeks. But I thought I’d mention this in case the previous blog post came up on a Google search and you’re the dad looking for some answers!!

Just as an aside, he actually thinks I can do magic at the moment, as I have the power to instantly wave my hands, say my magic words ‘Piff Paff Poof’ and then all of a sudden, his favourite TV programme, namely Something Special on BBC’s CBeebies channel (with Mr Tumble!!) appears. It’s almost like I know it’s coming on, or something.  Either way, I left him to it earlier, and snuck back in to find him trying to do the same magic, waving his arms like I did and muttering words that can be related back to what I did. Made me smile, anyway.

Yes, t’is that time of the year again, where Christmas is but a few days away.  This year, by way of comparison to last year, should be totally different, as Jack is now running around a lot more, and certainly playing with toys a lot more too.

I don’t mean that in the sense that he didn’t play with toys previously, but rather than just knocking down the Lego buildings that I put together, or throwing the train-track sections, he’s actually playing with them.  He’ll get Lego blocks from the bucket and stack them up higher and higher, or he’ll push the trains around the track after attaching carriages, and so on.

He’s a lot more fun to be around, and again don’t read that as that he wasn’t before, but I think as he’s saying more and more things, as he’s slowly learning about the world, he’s doing more things that kids do, rather than babies.

Maybe I’m not wording this properly, or laying this down on paper screen as it is in my head, but I’ll carry on and see if this makes some sort of sense.

His talking is getting much better as the weeks go by.  I went away from work a few weeks ago, for a week, but when I came back, I noticed how much more words he was able to say, or see how pronunciation had improved of words he could say before I left.  I’m sure that before I went away, he was able to say/repeats words that were of three syllables; now, he’s onto four syllables, or say short sentences of around that length.  At home, we’re trying to talk to him properly, as we’re away of the words and phrases that we use, as he repeats them back like a parrot in seconds.  Because we knew this was going to be like this, we wanted to make others around him aware that he could repeat ‘stuff’, and something that we wanted to make sure he didn’t start repeating, was swear words. So much so, we’re quick to jump on someone that uses any form of profanity in his presence, threatening that they’d owe him a £5 for each curse uttered.  It’s not that people wanted particularly to swear in front of him, it’s just that I think sometimes they simply aren’t aware they’re doing it.  I know that the day will come when he mutters his first, but I’ll get the bar of soap ready for him to wash his mouth out. Or something.

Last year at Christmas, we didn’t really make too big a thing out of it for him, as he was, to be honest, totally unaware that anything was going on, except seeing more of our family members within a short space of time.  Presents weren’t really anything to him, except that he liked getting into the empty cardboard boxes.

This year, however, he’s a bit more aware of things going on, and it’s an opportunity to get him to do more things – Claire has been teaching him to sing Jingle Bells, which… is…. getting there…! Maybe next year, we’ll be teaching him to hush it up a bit, after the fifthteenth time!  Claire has also been telling him who Father Christmas is, and he’s getting much better at saying it too!  He’s had the occasional present to unwrap already (naughty, I know) but he now knows that if you rip off the paper behind a big box, there’s a gift inside just for him.  Call it ‘preparation work’ for Christmas day!!

He’s also getting much better at telling us what the problem is, which is something that I think we, as grown-ups take for granted.  For instance, if he falls over in the other room and bangs his knee, by telling mummy where it hurts means that she can kiss it better quicker and the tears (and screaming) stop sooner.  Or if he’s getting tired, he’ll actually say ‘Tired.’ – short and sweet maybe, and admittedly we’re probably aware of this before he was anyway, but his own internal diagnostics have told him that, rather than us trying to tell him he’s tired and that he needs to go to bed!

There is one slight downside recently, in that we struggle to get him to clean his teeth.  So much so, it’s my job (bad cop) to pin him down on our bed using both arms and legs to do so, and then somehow manage to get a toothbrush in his mouth to give them a twice-a-day scrub.  He screamed originally because of the teeth coming through, but more nowadays because he’s being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, but simply will not do it himself.  Both Claire and I are conscious that we want him to look after his teeth and if he gets used to cleaning them regularly, then maybe he will, but if we don’t make the effort ourselves to do so, then how can we expect him to when he’s older?  He’s got lovely little teeth and I’d hate for him to not look after them and for them to go bad and horrible.  My teeth aren’t so pretty to look at like Claire’s are, as mine are a bit twisty and irregular, but neither of us have any fillings or fake teeth, etc.  (Hell, I still have a baby-tooth!) But my point is that, independently of each other and with help (and/or restraining!!) from our respective parents,  we’ve both made an effort when we were young to look after them, and so far so good.

Anyway - All good fun. And I am looking forward to Christmas this year, in seeing his little face when he opens the mountain of presents that we’ve bought him.  Failing that, the look on our faces should be a picture when he goes for the boxes again this year.

The days are flying by, and the little lad is still crawling by.

Despite our best efforts, Jack is still crawling around the house and not showing a great interest in walking much.  Which is fine, as I’m sure that when he does walk, he’ll be a nightmare to keep in one place!

He will, however, climb up and over almost anything that will support his body weight, as well as hanging on things too.  These include things like radiators, speaker cabinets, or anything in sight that a 1yr old kid can grab enough of.  He’ll even lay facedown on top of one of the speakers next to the television, legs and feet up in the air, with his arms stretched out in front of him trying to reach the wires behind the telly!

He’s also getting a dab-hand at using the phone too.  Each time he picks up the phone, he looks at it, pointing and saying ‘Daaa’ at the same time expecting to see a photo of his pa. He even managed to get hold of the cordless house phone the other weekend and phone his grandparents down the road – Claire’s dad had to call my mobile to tell me that they could hear everything that we was saying, as the little monster had dialled and then wandered off to play with his tractor!  Good job it was someone we know, and local too!!

He’s getting better with his identifying of real-world objects, with some thanks to the flash cards that we’ve put around his room. I still like to test him regularly with where the Bus is, or where the Tank or Digger is. He’s getting much better and now when we look out the window and he see’s a car, it goes' something like this:

Daddy: Jack, what’s that?

Jack: Kaaaaaa

Daddy: Yes that’s right – what noise does a car make?

Jack: brum brum

It’s quite funny. Well, it makes me smile anyway!