a portrait of my son, once a week, every week in 2016
Ok, so he's running through a field of them, but the joy is the same because the seeds fly away and it's wonderful. So is Michael's camera work.
Thursday, 28 April 2016
17/52
Ok, so he's running through a field of them, but the joy is the same because the seeds fly away and it's wonderful. So is Michael's camera work.
16/52
a portrait of my son, once a week, every week in 2016
Jimmy: Ice cream on a stick...
There was a bus ride with Daddy to Cico Park, and a visit to MATC and they found vending machines... including one with ice creams (!!). Needless to say, it was a hit and Michael took some sweet photos of our boy.
Wednesday, 27 April 2016
15/52
a portrait of my son, once a week, every week in 2016
Jimmy: Going through tunnels...
Seriously, this is one of Jimmy's favourite things to do with Michael. It's a thing Michael did as a child and he may yet write a blog post on it, but for now there are these photos, taken by Michael of course.
I love these photos. The joy. The energy. The long limbs and changing face. My baby boy is changing into a boy and I'm getting glimpses of a school aged boy. (Not yet, not yet! There's still a few years!)
14/52
a portrait of my son, once a week, every week in 2016
Daddy took Jimmy to the Discovery Center on a Saturday when I wasn't feeling well, so yes, Michael took this photo. Jimmy will spend an hour or so playing with the train set there because he's obsessed with trains, but after a while he gets bored and wants to play in the tunnel and go down the slide. And in the tunnel there is this porthole which looks out over the ground floor - it's a great spot.
Tuesday, 26 April 2016
It's not jacaranda season, but...
It feels a bit like it, but in a good way.
Now, for anyone who lives outside of the Brisbane university/higher education circuit, "jacaranda season" refers to the manicness and stress associated with end of semester assessments and the last few months of the calendar year, and summer holidays. Jacarandas just so happen to be flowering.
It was a term I first heard from a friend who was not studying but working at a Brisbane university. Over the years working there, he had noticed the two events kept coinciding. In a way, he was right, but after living in Brisbane as a non-student for a few years any sense of doom and university-related panic that (probably should have) picked up at the first sight of jacaranda blooms had faded away. It was the change in the air, the warmer days and still cool nights...
And the other day I was reminded of the way the air feels when the weather changes and jacarandas are in bloom. I had a work deadline coming up, but the air was just too nice to focus.
And the dandelions are out.
And we've recently had spring break.
So, perhaps Kansas State University has "dandelion season" instead.
Photo taken by Michael.
Thursday, 31 March 2016
13/52
a portrait of my son, once a week, every week in 2016
I was really excited about this capture. Jimmy has a thing for dandelions and there're images like this from previous years - but this is the first one for Spring 2016. On a lovely Manhattan afternoon we took a journey to the park; only to never make it because we got sidetracked on the way by pipes and dandelions.
Thursday, 24 March 2016
A toothy subject too...
As a sequel to K'la's post about the biting incident I was making some light conversation with the resident 2-year-old over dinner, and I mentioned that one day... in the future... but not too soon... his teeth would fall out."Jimmy, do you know that one day all these teeth that you have now are going to fall out"
Now, I tend to think I have my biases as daddy, and that those biases are usually to assume Jimjim to be the brightest, spunkiest, and savviest possible dude that could possibly be - to the point where I wonder if I tend to overestimate his comprehension. But on this occasion I think I underestimated, and so the news of his dental impermanence may have been delivered a little too bluntly.
CUE SHOCK AND AWE
As soon as I saw his reaction I knew I had a battle. I couldn't well back-pedal, so I had to qualify. In a moment between forkfulls of shell pasta the words left my lips, were processed in gory detail and extrapolated in the full-spectrum imagination of the soon-to-be-gummy-jim.
It was not that he was upset, but he was swept over with a small kind of terror that I've not seen in him before, as his eyes widened and his face paled at the prospect of being left without the tiny white pegs he was so attached to. He asked Mummy to tell him it wasn't true. She said it was. He said he didn't want it to happen. We said it would happen regardless.
We assured him it would be years before it happened.
We assured him new, big teeth would grow to replace them.
We assured him that M and D had been through this process too and that he could still eat his dinner without it happening tonight.
Losing and replacing teeth is something all human adults have been through, and it was so easy to take the normalcy of this process for granted. But in the mind of a 2 year old whose entire experience of their body is additive development this must have been a horrifying thought.
Giving him these little insights into his future - watching as he conceptualises these words - is one of the most rewarding things about parenting. It's this lesson in delivering a message to a profoundly uninformed little person in such a way as to prevent horrifying misconceptions. Even if the thoughts are scary, it's pretty cool to see how he responds and know he's a bit more prepared for the messy business of growing up.
Now, I tend to think I have my biases as daddy, and that those biases are usually to assume Jimjim to be the brightest, spunkiest, and savviest possible dude that could possibly be - to the point where I wonder if I tend to overestimate his comprehension. But on this occasion I think I underestimated, and so the news of his dental impermanence may have been delivered a little too bluntly.
CUE SHOCK AND AWE
As soon as I saw his reaction I knew I had a battle. I couldn't well back-pedal, so I had to qualify. In a moment between forkfulls of shell pasta the words left my lips, were processed in gory detail and extrapolated in the full-spectrum imagination of the soon-to-be-gummy-jim.
It was not that he was upset, but he was swept over with a small kind of terror that I've not seen in him before, as his eyes widened and his face paled at the prospect of being left without the tiny white pegs he was so attached to. He asked Mummy to tell him it wasn't true. She said it was. He said he didn't want it to happen. We said it would happen regardless.
We assured him it would be years before it happened.
We assured him new, big teeth would grow to replace them.
We assured him that M and D had been through this process too and that he could still eat his dinner without it happening tonight.
Losing and replacing teeth is something all human adults have been through, and it was so easy to take the normalcy of this process for granted. But in the mind of a 2 year old whose entire experience of their body is additive development this must have been a horrifying thought.
Giving him these little insights into his future - watching as he conceptualises these words - is one of the most rewarding things about parenting. It's this lesson in delivering a message to a profoundly uninformed little person in such a way as to prevent horrifying misconceptions. Even if the thoughts are scary, it's pretty cool to see how he responds and know he's a bit more prepared for the messy business of growing up.
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