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In honour of St. James' Day, and thus my son's name day, I'm happy to announce that, after considerable delay, I have finally gotten around to updating the movies on his picture page (password required). These include:

• His friend Ines' 2nd Birthday Party
• 18 months old (discovering his new trike)
• 22 months old (playing with his godmother)
• 23 months old (goofing around on a sick day)
• 26 months old (at the petting zoo)
• James in a bunny suit (for Mardi Gras)
• Opening a present from Grandma
• Hunting for Easter Eggs
• Running and yelling "Tummy!" (there's an explanation that goes with that one!)
• His 2nd Birthday party with his friends
• His main 2nd Birthday party

There are a lot of bookshelves in our living room, so part of raising a toddler is keeping him from trying to climb them or pull all the books out of them. Since the books that are closest to his toy shelf (and therefore his most frequent targets) happen to be Greek and Latin poetry, I quickly devised a system of "punishment" whereby if he pulled one of these books off the shelf he would be subjected to listening to me read it to him.

It turns out that this is quite an effective deterrent.

On Easter Monday, however (a holiday in France), my adorable little son woke me up by climbing into bed and giving me a big hug. A few hours later, he actually deliberately pulled out a copy of Virgil's Eclogues and brought it over to me, then climbed up into my lap! (This is exactly what he does when he wants me to read him one of his picture books.) I duly read the discourse of Melibœus and Tityrus to a surprisingly attentive toddler for a good five minutes before he quietly whispered "all done", and climbed down. And to top it all off, later that day he also came over and sat with me to watch the Red Sox opener! I don't think there was any way possible that I could have been prouder of my son :-)

We may be embarking on the "terrible twos", but this age so far is by no means all bad.

It's been a while since I've written a James update, but that isn't because he hasn't been growing! He now feeds himself, and is starting to talk—in both English and French! A lot more French than English, but unfortunately that is to be expected since his mother and day care both speak French to him, and he only sees me for about 20 minutes a day on weekdays. So the only things I've heard him say in English so far are "ball", "shoes" and "bye-bye"—and just today he repeated "I love you" back to his mother, which had her bouncing with joy :-) In French he can say "au revoir", "regarde", as well as "nez", "bouche", and probably about a dozen other words, although not all of them with much regularity.

This is because James' own priority is not on learning to talk. It is on playing with his toy cars. Those are his obsession and he enjoys driving them around on everything: bookshelves, tables, floors, and even up the wall! Usually the first thing he will do when he gets up in the morning or when we get home from somewhere is go running to his toy box to dig out the toy cars and start driving them on the coffee table. He's also a voracious reader, and my twenty weekday minutes a day with him are usually spent by him gradually stacking up books on my lap until he decides that I have a big enough stockpile, then he climbs on the couch next to me and waits for me to read them to him.

New pictures are up on his web page (password required), showing highlights of the last three months, including trips to the zoo, his great-grandmother's 100th birthday, and some of his aforementioned toys.

Well I'm not sure whether to call James a baby or a toddler yet, because although he has walked on his own, he isn't doing it with any regularity yet—but he's fine if we hold his hand, which shows that it's more a question of his confidence and fear of falling than his motor ability at this point. So far he's only dared walk in our office, which is a fairly confined space in which he never needs more than about four steps to get where he's going. I suspect that the larger living room sends him looking for his walker rather than trying to do it himself.

No new movie to announce this time, but I have put up new photo galleries (password required), and finally gotten around to updating the previous months, so there are a few dozen new photos included in the earlier months' galleries as well, although I expect most people will be more interested in seeing the more recent photos that I've just added.

James also 'graduated' from baby daycare last month. Now he is taking his summer vacation at home with his mother, but next fall he'll head off to a new daycare with the other toddlers. There's a new photo gallery that recaps his first year at daycare too.

It's been too long since I posted another video of our little guy (password required)—his behaviour has evolved a lot since the last one!

In particular, we can tell that it won't be long before we have an official toddler on our hands—already he's figured out how to use his walker to get around the house, and is starting to prefer moving around on two legs to crawling. It's really mostly a question of confidence at this point—he probably could walk if he wanted to, but he's visibly concerned about not falling down, so he's waiting until he's absolutely sure he can do it. As his father I am much happier to see him take his time if it means fewer bumps and bruises, so I think this is a good approach.

It's official: James is now one year old!

He had two birthday parties, one with family on the evening of his birthday, and another with his 'friends' on Sunday: four babies and their parents in all. The house felt like a day care that day!

The best thing about both parties is how much James enjoyed them. He was just smiling ear-to-ear, and his happiness was quite contagious. I think he has taken a definite liking to birthdays.

There are a lot of new pictures up in the 12-month gallery, both of his two parties and the last month in general (which was also marked by the visit of his American grandma!). He's grown a lot in a short time!

Note that there are two pages of pictures in the 12 months' section; it's been awhile since we've had a month with this many pictures in it so it can be easy to overlook.

As always, the point of the password protection is just to keep these personal photos separate from the internet at large; if you would like a password (and I or Emilie know who you are!), all you need to do to get one is ask me :-)

The last one dating all the way back to Christmas Eve, it was high time that we made a new film with James, which is now uploaded onto his site (password required).

In this film James shows off some of the many new tricks he's learned in the past month—clapping his hands, crawling, and standing up—and you also get to hear some of his new baby talk, which always makes us laugh because he's experimenting a lot with intonations these days. He isn't really keyed into the idea of using words to designate things yet (besides 'mama' and 'dada'), but he has definitely picked up on how language can be used to communicate emotion.

Emilie and I took a break from training James to compete as a gymnast in the Games of the XXXIVth Olympiad to put up some more photos on his site (password required).

He's made a lot of progress this month, most notably being able to stand up if we hold him (balancing is still far beyond him). And, just recently, he has begun learning to crawl, which up to now he hasn't done. (Unlike some other babies his age, but since this marks the beginning of the need for a whole new level of vigilant supervision and childproofing, I wasn't complaining!) A couple weeks ago he could move at a snail's pace, since he could crawl with his hands but only dragged his legs. He's since moved on to getting his knees into the proper position and rocking back and forth, and just in the past couple days has had some success with real crawling, although he hasn't mastered it yet. (And the process has not been painless—there have been a few unintentional face plants along the way!)

So, although he's still a baby, as his first birthday approaches we're seeing more and more signs that he's beginning the process of transitioning to toddlerhood in the year ahead.

Lots of new pictures up on James' website (password required), as well as a new movie (which has actually been up a while, but I was waiting until I got the photos up to advertise the fact). This was one spoiled baby this Christmas, as is blatantly apparent if you watch the movie (which was filmed on Christmas Eve, which is why he's in his Chicago Bears outfit instead of his Christmas outfit, which he wore the next day). I'm glad we have the movie and so many pictures, though, because he's not going to remember any of these toys when he's older! All the same, he is getting a lot of enjoyment out of them, which is the point after all.

As always, the point of the password protection is just to keep these personal photos separate from the internet at large; if you would like a password (and I or Emilie know who you are!), all you need to do to get one is ask me :-)

Click to enlarge (cliquer pour aggrandir) this candid shot of James surprised in the middle of his reading.

There's also a new movie up on James' website, for those of you with passwords, in which you can watch his reaction to his parents' comedic stylings.

Also, note that I've added a table of contents page to this blog, which you can access by clicking on the View list of all entries link on the column to the right (just above the Java icon).

The month of November kicks off with a big update to James' website (password required): two new galleries of photos with his sixth and seventh months, and a new movie of us in the pool at water babies.

In the photo above (which you can click on to enlarge even if you don't have a password), I am explaining that while Götterdämmerung was the last opera of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen to be composed, its libretto was actually written first.

He seems interested.

Emilie and I have been suffering from a nasty flu this week, but luckily so far James hasn't caught it. (We did give him a flu vaccine, so if that's why he seems immune then it certainly paid for itself!) However, after 48 hours of barely leaving my bed, I have crawled out long enough today to get James' website caught up a bit.

New photo galleries include James at five months, two pages' worth of pictures of his baptism, and a new movie: James' first taste of baby food!

(Password required)

Last Friday was Assumption, a big holiday in France and an even bigger holiday for us, as James was baptized at the church of the Immaculate Conception in Don, France! We are extremely proud parents: not only did he not cry during the ceremony, not only was he not fussy or fidgety during the ceremony, but he actually seemed to hang on the priest's every word: he was wide-eyed and adorable throughout the whole thing! You have to see it to believe it: the movie is posted on James' website (password required).

After the baptism we adjourned to our house to celebrate as only the French can: with a 12-hour meal! We had over 20 people over and set up a couple of tents in the back yard to fit everybody; it was quite a party.

There is another movie, of the party, that I'll be putting up soon, as well as lots and lots of pictures. Stay tuned!

The weather this week was no fun, hot and muggy. Like nearly all French families, we don't have air conditionning (an honestly, we would hardly ever need it since it rarely gets this hot), but to make matters worse Lille is being overrun by thrips so we had to close the windows a lot of the time! And it wasn't just me and Emilie who weren't enjoying it:

Luckily his momma was there to pull out all the stops: cool washcloth, vaporizer spray, and a fan picked up at his uncle Tom's wedding:

Emilie said that the spray was the funniest thing to use: every time, James would get a panicked look on his face when she sprayed him, and get ready to cry. Then when he felt the coolness in the seconds that followed, a smile would come to his face.

Luckily we had a good rainshower yesterday and the temperature has finally descended, so it looks like we survived!

For those who were not willing or able to wade through the techno-babble of my last post, I thought it would be a good idea to explicitly call attention to the fact that we have updated James' website with two key improvements:

• Emilie has gone through and sorted the photos, so that they are now chronologically grouped by month (as opposed to the haphazard randomness that I had originally thrown up there).
• I have finally found a cheap way to host video myself, so the home movies now boast high-quality widescreen video, as opposed to the choppy stuff that had been up there before.

We still need to get around to posting new photos and video, but these improvements were still an important thing to get done.

In planning our trip to my brother's wedding this summer (woohoo!), we were faced with the challenge of figuring out how to transport an infant across the ocean. And in so doing we discovered that the whole business has become a lot more complicated "in a post 9-11 world"—whether out of a fear of baby terrorists, or babies smuggling drugs in their diapers, I don't know.

So whereas before it was sufficient to add James to his mother's passport, it is now necessary for him to have his own passport, even at three months old. That might not sound so bad, but the kicker is that he has to follow all the same new super-strict passport restrictions that adults now have to as well: no smiling, no hats or glasses, both eyes clearly open and both ears visible.

Getting such a picture of James was no easy matter.

On the positive side, since Emilie's mother and step-father both work at the prefecture, they at least had an inside track to getting to the passport service to present their documents. On the other hand, despite a whole day of trips back and forth to the photo booth, they could not get an acceptable picture. Here is the first attempt:

The problem here is the hand is visible holding him (he has to be held up because he can't sit up on his own yet). So a second attempt was made, holding him from behind:

This one is no good because the head has to fill up the frame of the picture, and he is too zoomed out! By this time a couple hours had gone by and so the baby fell asleep. He had to be woken up for the third picture, which he did not appreciate:

This one is no good, not because he's crying, but because his ear is cropped off on the edge of the picture! At that point they gave up, and went another day to the one professional photographer in town who was willing to do passport photos for infants. After all that we were finally able to get an acceptable photo, and James now has his very own passport:

Phew!

Of course everybody says that every parent thinks his baby is the cutest, and true to form I do find James to be a very handsome baby. So does his mother—in fact she was so sure of it that she sent his pictures in to her favourite parenting magazine, Parents, for their "Baby of the Month" competition. And wouldn't you know it, he won!

So, in the July issue of Parents you can see our son's smiling picture. Along with that honour he also got a personalized gold and diamond bracelet worth 175€, and one beamingly proud mother. We sure are glad she sent in his picture!

I think that because I am a new father I am perhaps more attuned as to what an incredibly stupid idea this is, but it was amazing enough that I thought I would do my part to publicise it a bit more. Gabe describes it better than I could so I recommend visiting the link to know what I'm talking about. Who on earth came up with that bright idea?!

(And just in case you question the source I've cited, you can see them for yourself on Kellogg's website.)

New photos online here!

Well with one month of fatherhood under my belt, I can confirm what I had been told to expect: having a baby at home is exhausting. I can nuance that, however, by saying that the first ten days or so are by far the most exhausting part (after which we did more or less get a handle on things), and that it is primarily exhausting for the mother (who, unavoidably, has the heavier load to bear).

In our case, the difference was particularly stark because Emilie had never, until the birth of James, actually spent any time around babies or changed a diaper. Whereas I (having gone through life with a constant supply of infant cousins), had a much greater notion of what babies were like, and had even changed a diaper or two as a babysitter while a teenager. So the adjustment for her was even more unknown and uncertain than it was for me.

That said, Emilie has proven herself to be an extremely competent baby caretaker and at this point, a month into James' life, has already surpassed my diaper-changing experience by at least a hundred diapers! To call her a quick study would be an understatement.

On James himself there is not that much to report in only a month: he's gained about 1 kg, right on schedule, and we have had no health problems so far, for which we are very grateful. At any rate, I've put up a third picture gallery (password required), which can be viewed by clicking here or on the photo above, along with the older galleries and movies that I've posted so far.