Happy Hannukah

Wishing family and friends a very warm Happy Hannukah (and Merry Christmas, too).  Jeremy really "gets it" about all of the holidays this year, with the festival of lights as no exception.  He sings the dreidel song at the top of his lungs, said he wanted a menorah as his 'big gift' when asked at school during circle time, and will explain that you light "one more candle each night".  He even understands about giving gifts (not just receiving them).  He has received many wonderful gifts, but an extra special one this evening was from his Aunt Trisha and Uncle David- a 6' keyboard!

BTW, we are in the process of sending out our holiday e-letter; if you don't get it in the next week or so, check your spam filter!

Jeremy rides tricycle and gets new bed

Jeremy got an early Hannukah gift as a result of requesting to sleep "on the floor" for the last couple weeks- his first bed, thanks to Craigslist.  There was a long drama around trying to get the bed (I'll spare you the details), but in the end, when we went to pick it up, we were astonished to see that the previous owners had written "Jeremy" in huge letters on the plywood under the mattress!  Apparently he was meant to have it.  He loves the bed, talks to it, kisses and hugs it on occasion. 

In other news, Jeremy is now a pro on the tricycle (and also his two-wheel Skuut) and loves to bike the 4 blocks from our house to the Wash Perk coffee shop for pumpkin bread. 

Final note: Jeremy's new instrument craze is his own voice.  Jeremy is singing up a storm these days, including such complexities as "Favorite things" from Sound of Music, "Henai ma tov", and we are even starting to work on a chant of the four questions for the next Passover.  Mama is in heaven.

Jeremy's first time skiing, peeing in potty

Two big milestones in one week... wait, make that three: Jeremy has also transitioned from sleeping in his crib to the mattress on the floor.  This evening, without any prompting or encouragement at all, he peed in his potty.  So proud!

Here's the story of the skiing: We spent last weekend at Vail (no, we weren't witness to the shooting by the crazed vet, although we did walk by the CBI van and wondered what was up).  I was giving a lecture on leadership to the Colorado Nursery and Greenhouse Owners and Managers meeting (that's another story), and we got two comped nights at the Marriott (Jeremy loved jumping on the bed).  Anyhow, we borrowed a pair of kiddie skis from a neighbor that just strap onto regular boots and took Jeremy to the only slope that had snow (Golden Peak) where the racers were training, including the under-10 yrs old set.  Jeremy was really excited about skiing and about the skiers.  Mommy and Mama each held a hand and we skidded around on the icy fake snow for a few minutes, including going down a small slope.  What a big boy!

Happy Halloween!

This is Jeremy's third Halloween (he was a turtle the first year and a puppy dog last year- do a search on Halloween and they should come up), but it is his first that he "gets it".  He's trick or treating with the best of them, with very sweet "thank you"s and all.  But his favorite part has been growling at people and showing off his dinosaur costume!  He's had three events to do it: First, at school, then at the Highlands neighborhood event with Uncle Eric, Dorrie, and best-friend Jacob, and finally for the neighbors. Check out a video montage (2 min) of the events! http://ia311024.us.archive.org/3/items/ASimonHalloween2009/Halloween09Medium_2.m4v or http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=ASimonHalloween2009

First Big Snow

Check out this short film showing Jeremy playing in the snow and sledding for the first time:

http://www.archive.org/details/ASimonSnowfun2009/

Jeremy's first camping trip

Last weekend we went up to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the aspens turning and hear the elk bugling with our friend, "Uncle Eric". Jeremy had his first experience with sleeping in a tent, cooking over a campfire, and looking through binoculars. His favorite things were playing in the tent and finding "musical instruments" in the forest.  Check out a 9 min video with photos here: http://www.ourmedia.org/media/first-camping-trip
or here: http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=asimonfirstcampingtrip

Big Day out with Thomas

Jeremy loves Thomas the Tank Engine! Jeremy brought Papa and Jacob for our first experience with the Thomas Fest at the Colorado Rail Road Museum (see previous post on our first trip to the museum). Check out two video montages of the "Big Day": Click here for the 5 min video of the whole day: http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/ASimonDayoutwithThomas/ and here for the 3 min epilogue on the car ride home:http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/ASimonDayoutwiththomasepilogue/

Our climbing boy

Jeremy is in love with climbing- climbing rocks, climbing the jungle gym at the playground, climbing furniture... you get the idea. It all started with our trip to Albuquerque (thanks, Lyn!), and has just taken off since. Now Jeremy is doing the monkey bars only slightly assisted (mostly, so that we don't have a heart attack), and has discovered jumping off things that are getting higher and higher. The playground by our house has 6' tall fake boulders that he has mastered getting to the top of, and Mama found him jumping from the couch to the coffee table and back this afternoon.

On the health front, Jeremy seems to be responding well to the double-dose of Nasonex plus the homeopathic nose spray (poor dude, we're squirting something up his nose every chance we get). He still doesn't sleep through the night reliably, but at least we get a few each week now, and often he isn't as distressed when he does wake and can put himself back to sleep. We hope that his adenoids are actually shrinking, but we might have to do a second x-ray to be sure of that.

Summer Travel Recap

In the words of Mommy Fran: "Our vacations were great. Good quality time for Jeremy with Papa and Grannie, Mimi and Tate (the godparents) in CA. Then we had a lot of fun in Albuquerque staying with our friends. While Anna was at her conference, Jeremy, I, my friend and her son who is Jeremy's age went to the children's museum, gymboree, on a bike ride, swimming, to the botanic gardens, rode a train, went up the tram to the top of Sandia Mountain (the part Jeremy keeps talking about)."

Jeremy's nasal passages

Alright, not a great title for a blog entry, especially considering that we haven't blogged for a while, but I thought I'd get back into the habit, with just some short notes about what we are up to. The biggest news currently is that Jeremy just had his head x-rayed to help us figure out why he continues to have bad congestion. Our suspicions were confirmed that he has very large adenoids. These make his breathing passage quite narrow, causing him to snore, mouth-breathe, etc. There are two courses of action: surgery, or nasal steroid. For the time being, we are going to up his dose of nasal steroid but will discuss with the ENT specialist. Current medical research is very promising for the nasal steroid; a recent study showed significant improvement in 80% of young children tested using the same steroid we are using. Wish us luck in our quest to get this figured out!

Great Video of Jeremy with Bubbe

Check out this video from Bubbe's recent visit from Cincinnati. Too cute!

Jeremy Turns 2 & New Photo Album site

We have a new site for photos, which includes pictures from his 2nd birthday party last week. Check it out: oursimonfamily.shutterfly.com Let us know what you think.

Trains and Trumpets

Although Jeremy still loves violins, his new passion is guitars, followed by drums.  However, it must be noted that he truly loves all instruments and his Mommy found him a real trumpet (for $3, no less) at a garage sale this morning of which he is quite fond already.  His hot pink synthesizer keyboard also got some good action today (Mama can't stand that it plays "Jingle Bells" when Jeremy pushes the demo button, but it is quite jolly).  While he still asks for "Pearlman Violin" on YouTube on a regular basis, it is hard to sustain interest in the actual instrument when the sounds one can produce are so disappointing at this stage.  He got his first small guitar (shown above with Auntie Lyna who was visiting from CA) last weekend and has barely put it down, in addition to playing Mama's nylon-6-string upright while standing- "Jeremy play bass!"     

Of course, Jeremy has other interests, including remaining enamored of trains. In fact, his favorite song is still the spiritual, "Train is a comin'." We got to go to the Colorado Train Museum for the first time last weekend which was even better than expected. We'll be going back this fall (if not sooner) for the "Day Out with Thomas", featuring a life-size Thomas the Tank Engine. For those not in the know, this is a franchise owned mostly by Ringo Starr that capitalizes on train-obsessed toddlers. Jeremy got his first Thomas engine at "The largest train store in the world," Caboose Hobbies, which happens to be walking distance from our house. As his Papa said of their giving it to Jeremy free, "It's bad enough that they gave him an engine... Did they really have to rub crack on it?"

Video of Jeremy with Violin

Click here for a video of Jeremy getting his first real violin: http://ia301514.us.archive.org/3/items/ASimonJeremy_Violin22mo/JBviolinshortweb.mov
or here: http://www.archive.org/details/ASimonJeremy_Violin22mo/

Major update

Where did April go? This has been the busiest month, by far; I do apologize to our readers. Here is a quick run down of the last month, with photos: Our first photo is from passover- we went to two seders this year, including our first LGBT seder at the DU Hillel (aint Jeremy dapper!).  Jeremy was calling everything "shank bone" for a few weeks afterwards, including sticks, tater tots, etc.  Then, Fran turned 40 this month and we resumed our "annual" spring party with about 50 guests, including lots of young ones. 

At some point in there Jeremy had a wonderful visit from his god-parents (Mimi and Tate), and more recently a visit from Papa and his Uncle David Judah (and his girlfriend, Aviva). Jeremy just eats up all this male energy!


Finally, two important things happened this past month: first, Jeremy was given a real 1/32 size violin by his Bubbe Ellen (so now he has three violins to play with- two real and one toy), and he had minor surgery (yesterday, in fact) to insert tubes in his ears. He is responding beautifully, already seeming to have better balance and mood. The doc also says that his hearing will improve significantly; it is hard to know what that will mean, considering his verbal and musical development so far. An example of both can be illustrated in the following story: After watching a 7 yr old's violin lesson (for a half hour), Fran asked Jeremy if he wanted to take lessons. His response, "Jeremy's turn violin lesson" (!)

Bubbe and violins

We recently had a very satisfying visit from Jeremy's Bubbe (rhymes with "cubby", grandmother in Yiddish, for those who don't know), who came in from Cincinnati for a week with us. Every morning, Jeremy would chant "Bubbe, Bubbe!" as we came down the stairs to breakfast, eager to show or be shown something new and interesting. Every day was a musical treat, for example, with Bubbe playing flute, or drums, or recorder, or singing harmonies with Mama. But the most exciting and satisfying was Bubbe's gift to Jeremy of a real violin. As you can see, Jeremy's love of this instrument has not waned, and in fact while Bubbe was here, reached new heights as he began turning every day objects into his own 'violin'; as shown here, where he decided that a section of a drinking straw was a violin and a toothpick a bow. Currently, his favorite tunes are the ABC song and "Train is a comin', Oh yeah."

Simons by the Sea

Jeremy's first trip to the ocean! As you can see, Jeremy is crazy about his Grandma and Grandpa, and they showed him a very good time in Boca Raton, Florida earlier this month. Jeremy's first reaction was that he didn't like the sand between his toes (as Mommy predicted), but after Grandpa taught him how to make a sand 'cake' and Grandma and Grandpa got him to jump waves, we couldn't get him to leave!

Jeremy's verbal development is staggering (to us, anyway)- he is saying full sentences now and counting to 13 (or at least, can point to random things and say the numbers in order). He also seems to know his colors; he identifies them correctly either by pointing or by saying the color about 65% of the time. That includes red, blue, green, yellow, orange, black, and white (he gets white correct most reliably). Oh, and purple. He loves the purple crayon best.

Jeremy Movies update

Life has been as busy as ever, so here are a couple of movies, one several months old, but a goodie. Jeremy has had a verbal explosion over the last two months and now knows in the neighborhood of probably 300 words (and about 100 signs). We stopped counting over a month ago when we literally couldn't keep up anymore; it seems as though he's learning about 5 new words a day. Some recent ones are "bird house", "stories", and "cracker" (he used to only sign that one). he's also saying sentences now, such as, "Mama, strawberries more cut please?" It's getting late, so I'll upload my two movies and get to bed.

Here is a movie about Jeremy at the Farmer's Market last summer- swooning over a kitty and enjoying some live music: Click HERE:http://ourmedia.org/node/487155

Jeremy is quite obsessed with violins, incidentally. Has been for several months now- gets very excited when he sees a picture of one, hears one on the radio, etc. He mimes playing one making a high-pitched sound like a squeeky violin. The ultimate was when Mama found a YouTube video of Elmo playing a violin! He loves violin so much, that we spent over 20 minutes the other night looking at and talking about one page in one of his board books that has a photo of a violin in it. We video taped about 15 minutes of it just to document it- I'm not uploading it because it is pretty boring to most folks! Maybe I'll edit it down though- is pretty funny how excited he is about it.

Here is a video of Jeremy saying that he is "two" (even though he is one and a half now). He is starting to count- can count to 8 on occasion! Click HERE: http://ourmedia.org/node/487156

Jeremy the artist

One of Jeremy's favorite things to do is to draw with 'cran' (crayons) in the tub (special ones for the purpose).  This time, we really let him go at it...

In other news, Jeremy's verbal development has really been exploding of late; we count at least 135 spoken words now, and over 65 signed words. There is a new word (or two, or three) a day. Of course, this doesn't hold a candle to some of his amazing friends (e.g. Brayden with over 300 words and sentences, just two months older), but it's enough to impress us!

Also, Jeremy went to his first stock show today to watch his friend Ari win FIRST PLACE in the "small fry" division of the Western Stock Show Fiddle Contest (click here for the posting from last year, when he won second place). Jeremy sat through over an hour of live fiddling, mesmerized, clapping when appropriate. The boy certainly loves music!

Finally, we have a few more cute videos to share: Here's Jeremy giving his cat, Lincoln a big hug (note that he says, "hug" right at the beginning): http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/ASimonJeremylovesLincoln/
And here's another of him discovering a new way to eat Annie's cheese shells (a kind of mac n cheese): http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/ASimonJeremyeatscheeseshells/

Jeremy movie palooza

Happy New Year! We just had a wonderful holiday, including a visit from our friends Rita and Lyn (with son Kasen), a visit from Papa and Grannie, Jeremy's first trip to the aquarium (he LOVED it, and even wanted to swim with them- Papa had to hold on tight), and a trip to see the ZooLights. Mommy and Mama got to have a few "dates" the last two weeks, including bike riding, eating out, and movies- some of our favorite things.

Since we're behind in blogging, I thought I'd upload a few videos for our fans' viewing pleasure.

See Jeremy playing recorder with his Bubbe (who is in Cincinnati but was on video conference via iChat): http://ourmedia.org/node/475535

Jeremy playing basketball with his friend Kasen:http://ourmedia.org/node/475562

Jeremy dancing with his friend Jacob: http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/ASimonJeremy17moDancing/