No Nap Dalton

For the last two or three weeks, Dalton has gone to 90% no nap. It's been a long time since he has napped reliably at home, however, he used to get a regular nap at school. He minimally has to lie quietly for 45 minutes there and he's decided that the minimum is his best available option.

The new schedule has some benefits. He generally goes to bed sometime between 7 and 8 pm. This allows Cathy and I some adult time to play computer games or board games or maybe even very occasionally to clean the house.

One less optimal effect of a paucity of nap is that he starts getting crazy around 6 pm. Sometimes it is aggressive crazy with throwing things and hitting. Sometimes it is cranky crazy and meltdowns occur. Sometimes it is silly crazy or staggery crazy. Tonight it was jump on (or off) the furniture crazy.

Dalton started by jumping off his stool (about 6 inches high). I had to jump off it too as part of the game. He then moved up to jumping off of his crib (does it count as a crib if he's never slept in it?). He wanted me to jump off this too, but I declined on grounds I was too heavy and the crib is too cheap. I suggested that maybe we would want to jump off the coffee/game/craft table (shown in Figure 1) in the playroom. We jumped off this a few times with Dalton upping the ante by requiring spins in the air. Then he discovered that he could leap from the coffee table to the couch. We had about 15 minutes of this with him even timing his leaps so I could get some action shots. Go go flying toddler!

3 Johann's looking photogenic

I was setting up the digital picture frame in my office today and I came across this picture. It's really a great one of my parents with Dalton. This is frankly amazing when you think about it. Johann's are notorious for taking bad pictures. I have two wedding albums to prove it.

I generally have 5 pictures taken of me for any occasion in hopes that one will be acceptable.

Dalton used to have these perfectly natural smiles whenever he realized that we were taking his picture. Somewhere in his twos, genetics took over and they became the forced rictus that we Johanns are well known for.

To emphasize the improbability of this picture, lets do some math.

Assume that there is a 20% chance (overestimated I assure you) that any given Johann will have a moderately natural facial expression in a given picture.

If you have three Johanns in a picture then your odds of everyone looking natural are...

20% x 20% x 20% = 0.8%

So, if you want a good picture of 3 Johanns, you should plan to take over 100 shots to get it. Of course, one of us is likely to go berserk around shot 12.

Bon Appetit

We were eating dinner last night and Dalton took a fancy to my wine glass. I can't remember how he asked. It was probably somewhere between, "May I have water in a glass like yours?" and "I want that glass now!" (accompanied by the throwing of objects and turning lobster red).

The title reminded me that they do a blessing song before eating at school. I think it goes as follows.

"Oh, the Lord is good to me. I thank him for the sun (Son?) and the rain and the apple tree. Oh, the Lord is good to me."

I'm not sure that Dalton understands "the Lord" part of the blessing. He says something more like "Gamore" which I'm pretty sure is a villain monster in one of the old Godzilla movies. Given that interpretation, it might still be an accurate blessing.

I've been trying to get him to replace the blessing with "Ruba dub dub. Let's eat some grub." He insists that we do not eat "grubs". Apparently they are something a kin to tomatoes and peppers in his world.