Joshua Zamrycki's Weblog

After the overwhelming response from yesterday’s video of Emily singing the Sesame Street theme song, Emily was inspired to record some new ditties to share with her online fans. So this morning before school, she handed me the camera and told me to just press record and that she’d handle the rest. What followed was GOLD!

I don’t want to ruin it by posting all of what we recorded at once so I’ll just post a couple of songs per day over the next few days. Keep coming back. They keep getting better!

Emily pays homage to the weekly adventures of the Cartwright family.

And this is Emily reciting all of your favorite letters, including “emmalennapee”.

Sometime over the course of the past couple of months, Emily has yet again reached a new level of communication skills. Gone are the days of caveman sentence structures (“That Daddy bike”) and third-person demands (“Emily want some!”). There is a bit more fluidity to her prose and her conversations are now peppered with colorful and fun little additions. True, she still says “What’s this one?” instead of “Who’s this?” and an elephant is still an ephelant, but definite strides are being made. If you don’t speak with her everyday, you might not appreciate these huge leaps, but I must stress that each of the following examples absolutely blew my mind when I heard them.

• We arrived at school the other day and I picked Emily up out of the basket on the front of the bike and placed her on the sidewalk. She took two steps, turned around and said, “Thank you for the ride, daddy”. I had never heard her say anything like that before.
• I asked Emily what that noise was that we had just heard outside and she replied, “Maybe it’s a parrot.”
• Emily’s consistent and correct use of gerunds and indefinite articles never ceases to amaze me. “Daddy, what’s the dog doing?”
• We were riding the elevator this morning when the topic of the weather came up. Emily asked where the umbrella was. I told her it was at home. This prompted the following informational tidbit: “I have an umbrella. Mommy has an umbrella, too. Not two umbrellas. Just one.”
• I went into the kitchen to get myself a drink. When I came back, Emily inquired, “You have some juice, daddy?”. I said yes. She then astutely pointed out, “I have some juice, too. We both have juice!”.
• We walked through the Old Man Square today and Emily climbed up on the bench next to the statue (of the old man sitting down). She gave him a big hug from behind and then proceeded to point out all of his best features. “Here’s his nose. Here’s his ear. He has one, two eyes. He has a beard (pronounced “BEE-word”). And lips.” Then she looked down and affirmed, “I can’t see his bottom”.
• Emily has firmly grasped the concept of the past tense, though she still comes out with corkers like, “There’s a cat outside. I sawed it!”.
• I asked Emily if she was ready to go to bed this evening and she looked around the living and said, “I think we need to tidy up first”.

Emily will gladly sing along with almost any song but it’s rare that she’ll sing on command all on her own. That’s why I’m particularly glad I had my camera at hand the other day to capture this:

Facebook can be a colossal waste of time. Between the bottomless pit of useless groups, trivial Scrabble games, life-affirming vampire bites, and celebrity favorite-color movie compatibility personality tests, it’s a wonder how anyone who uses that site remains a productive member of society. I am addicted.

I made a genius attempt to curb my social network addiction. I resolved to only allow myself to check Facebook if I first did 10 push ups. This worked flawlessly for almost a week. I was ripped.

The thing I like best about the site is when people post photos. Especially old ones. Especially of me. So in an attempt to brighten the days of a few friends, I think I’ll start uploading some old photos. I rooted through my photo albums and decided to start with this one:

These are my cousins (all six are on Facebook) and this photo was taken back in 1996. Kate and Raina were knee-high to a munchkin and they’re both in college now while Jennie is getting married in September (mazel tov!). I was in the middle of college at that point and now I’m a balding middle-aged father of two with a bad back. Good times. I’ll try and post a new way-back photo about once a week. Let’s see if that resolution lasts any longer than the push-ups.

Emily told me that she feels that this blog has changed recently in that the focus no longer appears to to be centered on here. I apologized profusely and promised to write this entry as a peace offering. She tentatively accepted my apology.

I can’t believe it’s only been three months since Emily moved into a big-girl bed. It seems like three years. In the beginning, Emily would wake up in the middle of the night and eventually sneak into our bed. This wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t insist on sleeping horizontally. Jan’s having a hard enough time sleeping as it is so something had to be done. So I pitched tent in Emily’s room. For the past month, I have been sleeping on a mattress on the floor of Emily’s room. Now, when she wakes up and goes for a walkabout in the middle of the night, I’m there to intercept her and settle her back into bed, leaving Jan undisturbed and capable of getting the much-needed rest she and her little bun need. I must admit that I enjoy the connection with Emily that our new sleeping arrangements have induced, but I wonder how long these sleeping arrangements will last.

I’ve also fully taken on morning duties. I wake up with Emily and get her ready for school – we have breakfast, play some games, and get dressed together – and then I drop her off on my way to work, whereas I used to let Jan handle all that and I’d get some extra sleep in the mornings to help me get through my long work day. Now I have coffee

Emily likes to draw. She draws airplanes and pussy cats and dinosaurs and snowmen, but you’d have a hard time telling which was which. Well look at this. Emily drew this yesterday and it blew our minds. She has been drawing happy faces for a long time now but this was the first one that actually looked like a happy face:

I try and take Emily to school on a bicing whenever possible. She loves it! There’s no place for a child seat so I just plop her into the bag rack attached to the front of the handlebars (probably a little bit illegal). She sits there facing out with her legs dangling singing songs, pointing to let me know which way to turn, encouraging me to chase cars and motorbikes, and shouting, “Faster! Faster!” Sometimes she reaches around and rings the bell next to the handle. Pedestrians get a real kick out of seeing her glide past them. Instead of the 20 minute walk to school (at her pace), we’re there in under five minutes. Then I cycle the rest of the way to the train station and head to work. I love the fact that she’s a little adrenaline freak and has no fear. How old do you have to be to start snowboarding?