¶ It's new dual action Jonah!: With easy roll over and massive attack poo doo.

Kids' draw over their parents can be considered one of the great mysteries of life. What would it matter that I don't see Jonah for a few days? Erin and I have been apart for a couple weeks at a time (when she was in France), and though we both agree it that two weeks is too long, we bore the deprivation without major complaint. Three days away from Jonah and I pined for him every day. I kept myself distracted through work and play, but I'm obviously quite emotionally attached to the boy.

Erin told me that Jonah appeared to be longing for me too while I was gone. That may or may not be polite fiction but I enjoyed hearing it nonetheless. He's begun rolling front to back in my absence, so he can move about the floor using that trick. Super parental x-ray eyes now become a required part of the job requirement package. Jonah's also eating lots of barley flakes mixed with breast milk, and I got to see the diaper-side results this morning. Whew, what a poo doo. I think I'm permanently scarred psychologically.

The weather dropped below freezing last night and probably will do the same tonight. If we take Jonah out, it was to be in my old Tarzan outfit, but now I think the King of the Jungle might wear some fashionable (and warmer) polar fleece clothing as well.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

¶ On the road again: It's hard, what with missing Erin and Jonah and all, but Joe and Carol's company and hospitality soften the blow.

Sometimes SiteRev.com stuff takes me up to Portland for a few days, and these were a few of those days. Big thanks to Joe and Carol for opening up their home to me so I didn't have to make repeated treks up and down I-5 to Salem every night.

In the evenings, Joe and I played with the iTunes sharing features, the FileMaker Pro 6 Open Remote feature, and Alien v. Predator's kill everything that moves feature. OK, that last one is more of a tactic or strategy than a feature, but it's kind of the way the game works out. Cooperative multiplayer over Airport was cool!

I stopped by Powell's Tech Books one evening after work and picked up a bunch of freebies on Linux, Javascript, and Unix. I also bought a nifty book on web site color schemes which while not revolutionary, certainly should save me some time. I can't believe I got out of the store without spending more than $13.

¶ Jonah does us a solid: The boy is simply more impressive than words can possibly express (said his father).

We started Jonah on solids today, to the extent that a tablespoon of organic barley flakes mixed with a tablespoon of breast milk until thoroughly liquified counts as a "solid." Either way, Jonah loves the stuff, and the little plastic spoon we feed him with is his new best friend. He'll be on this barley stuff for a week (in addition to his regular complement of breast milk). Next week we'll try some other flake-milk mixture and see how that goes.

Jonah also discovered his feet today. Not that he wasn't aware of them before, but today he found out that they can be mighty tasty. Through an amazing act of contortion he's able to grab either foot (though he prefers his left) and shove it in his mouth. He's quite content doing this, and it's plenty amusing for the rest of us, so expect to see pictures soon. (Not in Jonah Gallery 13, Happy Jonah, though. These latest pictures came too late to make the cut for that album.)

Jonah's floor skills continue to improve. He can inchworm his way here and there, traveling a few feet with great effort. Today, he got his knees underneath him and pushed up with his arms into a "ready to crawl" position. The new experience soon confused him, though, and back down he went (much like the first time I went waterskiing).

¶ Party all day long: Who knew we were party-hopping kind of folks?

Our thanks to the Roses in Colton and to Elaine and Jim here in Salem for their most excellent respective parties today. We met up with Dennis and Maria in Colton at her parents' beautiful home for a Halloween-style family and friends gathering. Along with other football fans in attendance, we saw large parts of 'Bama's 5 OT loss to Tennessee. I'm sure all my friends who are Crimson Tide fans have been placed on suicide watch by concerned family members. It's no worse than being a Cubs or Red Sox fan in the last couple weeks, but that's small consolation, I know. Anyway, Erin, Jonah, and I had a great time at the party, and we really enjoyed meeting Maria's family (and extended family).

After our return to Salem, we went to Elaine and Jim's "Fall Back" party. Elaine was a teacher at Sprague last year, so it wasn't an entirely unfamilar crowd. (I nonetheless spent a lot of time talking with Rick, a Sprague science teacher, who I'd never met before.) Big tip of the evening from Erin's friend Heather, an English teacher at Sprague: Digital photo processing at Costco for only 19 cents per image. Best price I'd seen was 49 cents. (Am I wrong in thinking that it's tidbits like this that keep Davison Online from being utterly useless to all but the most hardcore Davison fans?) We really enjoyed seeing Heather and David, and hearing about their son Liam (who is a couple of months older than Jonah). Good times, good times.

¶ Parenthood, right between the eyes: Sometimes it gets downright exciting. And, hey, hey, Jonah's half birthday is coming up.

I doubt Jonah will be crawling before six months. He seems right on the verge with a see-sawing of his little butt in the air and head on the ground followed by his head in the air with his butt on the ground. In truth he is getting a little locomotion out of the process, but I don't think anyone would mistake it for actual crawling. If he manages the crawling trick before October 28, it'll be something since babies rarely achieve that prior to six months.

I assembed Jonah's high chair over the weekend, and he's seemed pretty pleased with it. It's got four different recline positions, eight separate heights, and two individual trays. All this, and we won't even begin feeding him solids for at least another week or more. He's slept in the high chair now, too, and he seems comfortable in it. It's rated for up to 40 pounds so he'll be hanging out with it for a while, so it's good that he's cottoned to it early. It's also got wheels so we can Mario Andretti him around the upstairs, something he's obviously delighted by (and which the manufacturer specifically recommends against). Trust me, we're more careful in wheeling him about than I'm making it sound.

The question many folks want answered (if email is any judge) is just how it's going for me watching Jonah every weekday. It's been about two months since I started, and I'm having a great time. No always, mind you. Some days have difficult elements (this morning's 4:30 AM wake-up call, for example), but for the most part, I feel so overjoyed and priviledged to watch and to help Jonah grow. It remains a very odd sensation to love someone so much when he just seemed to kind of pop into existence.

My mental state would be considerable worse if not for the help of family and friends. It seems obvious and silly to even mention, but if Erin weren't such a great mom (and wife) I'd be in trouble. She's done a remarkable job thus far balancing family with what is undeniably a very time-intensive job. My parents have been terrific in their willingness to watch the boy at the drop of the hat and for extended periods for SiteRev.com stuff rears its head. The rest of the time, Jonah and I hang out and play. He laughs a lot.

For some reason he finds the removal of other people's clothing hysterical. Erin took off her shin guards after a soccer game a few weeks back and I thought Jonah was gonna bust a gut. We've been handing over various household object for Jonah to explore, by which I mean he grabs them and sticks them in his mouth. Sometimes he tries to put as much of the object in his mouth as he can fit. Other times, when the object is overly large, he contents himself with simply licking it like a postage stamp. He's not the only one doing a lot of laughing.

¶ Monday's Jonah news: Because a week without Jonah news is like a week without bullet points: Unthinkable.

Finding the time nowadays to get in all the web site updates I'd like has proved difficult. I had some SiteRev.com assignments last week that took precedence and even if they hadn't most of my discretionary time—what little of it there is—is spent recuperating from the time I'm spending with Jonah. He is a time- and energy-intensive being!

So let me talk about Jonah for a bit. His bottom two front teeth are in, and he's started, much to Erin's dismay, to use them occasionally when breast feeding. (Ouch!) Her yelps have perhaps given him the clue that this is bad behavior, but perhaps they haven't. We'll see how it goes tonight. Regardless, he continues to feed just fine. We're only a few weeks from starting him on solids, so if nothing else his diapers are going to smell horrible (OK, more horrible) soon. Not exactly looking forward to that, but as I say, we'll see how it goes.

Another thing we'll see about is just how well he gets to bed. This has proved mightily difficult in the last week. Jonah simply hates going down when he's tired, and it's taking a lot of effort to get him to drift off to slumberland. Once he's there, he's usually OK for the night (which is terrific), but the nights are presently our toughest challenge with him. I don't think there's any benefit yet to letting him cry himself to sleep, because I think it's a mistake to have him feel like his crib is a prison. When he cries—the only effective communication method he has in these circumstances—he needs to feel like someone will be there for him. My attitude on this will change once he's older, but at five months I think the best thing we can do for him, at all times really, is assure him that he's safe and secure and that the everything will be OK.

Which it is. Other than these two issues, life is happiness. He's generally speaking a very happy child who enjoys cuddling, playing with toys and people, and looking at a variety of different things. He's in the midst of the oral exploration stage, by which I mean that the way he experiences an object is to put it in his mouth. It's made us very deliberate about what items we hand him, which is a good thing, I'm sure. It's a lot of fun watch.

Since the weather has turned colder, we've had to shut the doors to the bedrooms at night. That's meant using a baby monitor to keep tabs on Jonah, and I dare say that so far it's a strategy that's worked well. Plus we get lower heating bills, which is nice. Our repeated and continuing thanks to everyone who helped in the remodeling of Jonah's nursery. Ya'll did a great job, and the insulated walls make a world of difference for the boy.

Jonah's outgrown his infant car seat. We can still squeeze him in, but it's really time to set him up in the new Britax Marathon. That means no more carrying him around the house in the car seat, because the Marathon is huge and doesn't have handles in any case. The upside is that he'll be a lot safer in the Britax (not to mention in a car with antilock brakes and dual airbags for his parents).

Jonah's six month Well-Baby appointment comes at the end of this month. I anticipate nothing but good news.

¶ Monday's bullet points: Headline News ain't got nuthin' on me.

Several of the stories we're following here in the Davison Newsroom:

Gov. Gray Davis may be almost thoroughly unlikeable, but that's not a legitimate basis for a recall. Arnold allegedly groped a number of women over the years. Does anyone out there believe he's innocent of these charges? Me neither. Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised if we have Gov. Terminator come Tuesday night, as sad a prospect as that is. Of course the next recall will start Wednesday morning.

Erin and I watched the rather lame comedy Undercover Brother over the weekend. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the best bits of the movie, but there are a couple other moments that are OK. Don't think it's worth the 90 minutes, but your mileage may vary.

I've started working on crossword puzzles for morning mental exercise. I've not been doing them long enough to be much good, but I completed today's, which is nice. Of course I hear Monday's are the easiest, so that figures.

Congratulations to my friend Helana and her husband Mike on the birth of their son, Brett. 8 lbs. 2 oz. and cute as a button!

The trailers for Matrix Revolutions and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are out and lookin' pretty fine. Of the two, I find myself more interested in the Rings conclusion, which is sort of strange since I've read the books and know how it ends. I'll see both in the theatre, though.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean raised almost $15 million last quarter, tops in the field. Even with Clark in the fray, I like Dean's chances. (Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, whose campaign never got any traction, quit the race today.)

Jonah's only five months old, but already his clothing is in the 6-9 month range and has been for a couple of weeks. His bottom two front teeth are in, which means that he drools a lot and that you should not put anything in his mouth that you're not prepared to lose. Those chompers are sharp!

This evening's NFL game between the Colts and the Bucs was the craziest I've ever seen. The Colts trail by 21 with less than four minutes to go in regulation and then win by a field goal in OT. Even the field goal was wild. The Colts kick the first one and miss, but a Bucs guy gets called for leaping(!), an unsportsmanlike conduct foul that most us had never heard of. (The rules says, apparently, that you can't run up, jump, and land on anybody.) The Colts kick it again, and it hits the upright and goes in. What a comeback, what a game.

More news after these commercial messages.

¶ At least it started well: No day is a good day when both the Steelers and Team USA go down in flames.

The closest Babies R Us store is in Clackamas. Well, maybe Tigard, but we went to the Clackamas one today. Yesterday we looked at the fine print on our current car seat only to find that the limits were 20 lbs. or 26 inches. Hey whaddya know Jonah passed 26 inches a couple weeks ago. So we picked up a Britax Marathon today which comes courtesy of my parents as a generous gift. Britax in general is top-of-the-line awesome, and the Marathon specifically is rated up to 65 lbs. Jonah will be riding in this baby for a few years to come.

We returned to Salem only to watch the US Women's World Cup Team go down 3-0 to Germany. From what I saw, the US outplayed the Germans, with the last two goals coming after we'd pushed just about everybody forward in an attempt to score late in the game. The US may have deserved to win, but you've got to give the Germans credit for not wilting under the US attack.

At the same time, I was channel surfing a little to watch the Steelers get blown out at home 33-13 by the Cleveland Browns. Defense is stout again the run and iffy against the pass. Offense is solid except that Maddox is tossing lots of INTs and they're being returned for TDs. That changes soon, or we need another QB—a very distressing turn of events.

I was pretty bummed after both these losses, so I'm not planning to write them up in Sports or, really, to do anything other than try to erase them from memory. I'm consoling myself with Jonah's nifty new carseat. At least it's a winner.