I think the two sentences I've said the most in the past six months have been "Don't drink it" and "It's not a hat." I don't know why Jason wants everything to be a hat, but he really, really does. Cups, baskets, boxes, blankets, my hands, clothes, shoes, bowls, plates (with or without food on them), toys--he ends up putting them all on his head, proudly declaring "Hat! Hat!"

He does like real hats, too. Though, getting him to wear just one at a time is sometimes tricky.

I got this snap the other night when we were babysitting our friends' daughter. What you can't tell from the picture is that the reason he's "sharing" this ball is because he's trying to distract her from the other ball that you can't see, which both of them wanted at the same time. Still, it's been neat to watch them develop from only a dim awareness of each others' existence to actually playing together.

Seven years ago, today, I got all dressed up and then proceeded to have the best day of my life. Tonight, Juliette and I are going to celebrate the occasion by getting dressed up (though to a lesser degree than we did that day seven years ago), dropping off our son at our friends' house, and going to a fancy restaurant for a nice meal and some time alone with each other, like real couples do.

The seventh anniversary isn't one that people usually make a big deal over. Traditional folk give each other gifts of wool or copper; modern types give each other desk sets. I don't know about you all, but I had to look those up. All those anniversary gift themes tend to run together for me--I have a vague recollection of paper for the first, silver for the twenty-fifth, and gold for the fiftieth, but in between it's all fuzzy.

I'll tell you what, though: the seventh anniversary does have a bit of a special note in our case. This will be our first time celebrating an anniversary when we've been married longer than we were dating.

Actually, the day we passed our dating time happened a few months ago--March 16th, to be exact. Neither of us noticed at the time, but then we'd just had Juliette's birthday and anyway, these days our attention tends to be taken up a bit too much by everyday life to notice obscure milestones passing.

It's kind of an odd feeling, realizing that we've now been married longer than we dated. I've always thought of us as having been together forever, but only recently married. Now, though, and forever after, the bulk of our relationship will have been post-wedding. Even having done the math, I can hardly believe it; it still feels like just the other day that I saw her walking down the aisle toward me.

There are still some big moments to come, of course. In 2012, we'll have been together for half of Juliette's life. In 2013, half of mine. In 2020, we'll have been parents longer than we were together without kids. And, of course, there are all the normal birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, and so on.

The past seven years have been filled with work and play, laughter, tears, time together and apart. I've come to understand that the most important part of life is the people in it, and so spending your days and nights with good people who you love and who love you is crucial. Me, I couldn't ask for a better person to spend my time with.

Happy anniversary, Juliette.

Yesterday, Juliette and I took a tour of the two-year-old class with the director of Jason's day care facility. His current teachers in the toddler room have been telling me for weeks now that he's ready for the two's room, that he's getting bored and that he'll do well with the more structured curriculum in the two's class. We got to see the schedule and talk a bit with his new teacher, learning about the big milestones and watching her interact with the kids.

It was midmorning when we came in, and there were already four kids in there, all of whom we recognized from when they were in the toddler class with Jason. Transitioning to a new class was a little difficult when Jason went from the infant room to the toddler room, so it's nice to know that he'll be among familiar faces.

The crazy thing to me was how much those kids have changed since they left the toddler room. It's been several months since I last saw them, and most of them are now potty-trained (or nearly there) and talking up a storm. They even know how to wash their own hands; it blew my mind to think that Jason will be able to do that soon.

They're still kids in there, of course. At one point one of the little boys went off to the bathroom and came back with his pants around his ankles. "Did you forget how to pull up your underwear since yesterday?" the teacher asked him. He responded with a nod, yanking up futilely at the underpants that were caught on his knees.

It's hard to believe that we're already moving to another classroom. It feels like he's only just come to the toddler room, even though cerebrally I know that he's been there longer than he was in the infant room. Juliette and I were both feeling bittersweet after the meeting, happy for him to be growing up but sad that he's going to be leaving behind the teachers that he's grown to love.

And, of course, we'll be leaving them as well and having to adjust to new people, which adds another layer to it since I feel like I'm finally getting to the point where I really know the toddler teachers and can have conversations with them beyond just how Jason's day went. When I was a kid I moved from teacher to teacher--like we all did--and at times it was hard for me, but I never considered the fact that my parents were going through the same changes.

At every turn, this parenting thing has managed to surprise me. There is always some unexpected behavior or event, or some mental angle that never occurred to me. Over the weekend I was completely caught off guard by how happy it made me to get the Father's Day card Jason made me at school. Sometimes I wonder when I'm finally going to get used to it all, but I think the answer is never.

Jason really made out like a bandit on my birthday/Father's Day weekend.

He got a new tee ball set from our friends, Emily and Ari, which he loved.

He got to meet some new people.

He got his first baseball-park hot dog.

He even got his first baseball glove.

About the only thing he didn't get was a piece of my birthday cake, which, thankfully, we served after he went to bed.

The rest of this week's set:

"Raising Respectful Sons: A Father's Reaction to the 'Slampigs' Scandal":

Back in the early stages of my wife’s pregnancy, before we knew we would be having a son, people often asked me whether I wanted a boy or a girl. My response usually went something like this: “Well, I’d be happy either way, I think, and I don’t have a preference, really. I don’t want one more than the other. Honestly, though, the idea of having a daughter kind of terrifies me.” That’s the thought that occurred to me again Monday morning when I ran across this article in fellow Life As A Human author Schmutzie’s Twitter feed.

Friday morning when I dropped off Jason at day care, one of his teachers took me aside and said she wanted to talk to me. I got a sinking feeling, because I was pretty sure I knew what this was about. As I mentioned before, Jason has been whining and crying a lot lately, and although we've been working on it and he is showing some improvement, it's often two steps forward, one step back. This wouldn't be the first time a teacher had mentioned this behavior, but every time before it had been a more offhand comment, often delivered with a conspiratorial grin. This time, though, the teacher was making sure to catch me before I left the room so she could have a discussion with me--not a good sign.

Just as I feared, the teacher wanted to talk about Jason's crying. It actually wasn't so bad. Mostly she told me about some strategies they use to manage him when he's being difficult (my word, not hers), and asked me to try them out at home. She felt that he was responding well to these changes, and wanted to make sure that we kept them up so he didn't backslide over the weekend.

For the most part, we were actually already doing a lot of what she said, with just some minor tweaks to how we would need to phrase our corrections. And she was really quite pleasant about the whole thing, not complaining or making it sound like he was a huge pain--which is to her credit, since I know he can be a pain. Even so, Juliette and I both felt horrible about the whole thing. The last thing either of us want is for Jason to be that kid.

The weekend ended up being a mix of high and low points. Sunday was a lot of fun, what with the trip to the splash park in the morning and a very good nap in the afternoon. Saturday was a little rougher, with a couple of screaming breakdowns, though I think those may have been exacerbated by tiredness. We tried to be consistent with what his daycare teachers recommended, though it's hard to know for sure if it worked.

Talking it over with Juliette last night, she said that if there's one bright side to this, it's that we know that the day care staff is seeing the real Jason, which means that he's very comfortable being around them and the other children. I actually think the reverse is also true: it means that we are seeing the real Jason.

I keep coming back to the surprise that one of our good friends expressed after hearing us talk about our struggles with his behavior. "It's so weird to hear you say all this," he said, "because I just see him as this wonderful kid." We do too, as we hastened to explain. We love how curious and intelligent he is, how articulate he can be and how funny, and even how generous and empathetic. It's just that he can also be stubborn and willful and just plain difficult, and those aren't behaviors that he usually displays around other people.

Hearing our friend's surprise, both Juliette and I felt a little guilty, and I started to wonder whether the stress of parenting wasn't coloring our perception a little too negatively. So, in that respect, knowing that Jason's teachers see this side of him too is a bit of a comfort, a little validation that, as great as Jason is in many ways, yes, he can also be a pill sometimes. As I think more about it, I think I'm finding that having that confirmation is making it a little easier to focus on Jason's good qualities, and hopefully these behavior strategies will have an effect, because the more time I can spend with a happy Jason, the more time I can be a happy Daddy.

This weekend turned out to be a lot of fun. Saturday morning I went out on my first group shoot with the San Diego DSLR Photography Group. SDDSLR is, as they put it, "an informal camera club of digital photographers." I first heard about them through a coworker, whose husband is our office's IT consultant, as well as the photographer for all of our company events. I happened to be poking around his photo site and noticed some galleries from previous shoots with the group. I asked him about it, and he invited me along.

I was a little nervous at first, since I am still quite an amateur and my gear is pretty limited. But the group was, as advertised, very welcoming and helpful, and I had a great time walking around Encinitas with a bunch of people doing what we love to do. Sure, I did have a little lens envy from time to time, but all in all it was a lot of fun.

Here are my favorites:

Texture and Color

End of Spring

Sunday morning after some nice Skype calls with family, Juliette, Jason, and I headed out to Santee Lakes to check out the splash park that Juliette had heard about. We had a nice picnic lunch by the lake, and then headed into the "sprayground."

Unlike the last time we visited a splash park, Jason was pretty timid about approaching the jets. I hadn't initially planned on getting all the way in, but I found that just hanging around the edge taking pictures wasn't going to cut it, so I handed the camera to Juliette and waded in.

He never quite got comfortable enough to completely jump in, even after other kids showed up and started playing. But, as you can see, he did eventually come in and have a good time:

The rest of this week's set:

If you had asked me five years ago whether I would some day watch The Little Mermaid five times in a weekend, I'd probably have looked at you like you were an idiot. (I was a jerk, five years ago, I guess.) Of course, since Jason seems to have inherited our passion for movies, this has now come to pass. I'm not sure, exactly, but it's possible that I am now the world's expert on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Sword in the Stone. I'm at least on my way.

Anyway, the other day we were watching the end of Beauty and the Beast again, though this particular time was somewhat less tedious since we had skipped the first two-thirds of the movie. (Jason doesn't care much about continuity; he just likes particular scenes and doesn't care what order they come in.) We came to the scene after the climactic battle between the Beast and Gaston (OH NO! SPOILERS!) where the Beast has been mortally wounded and is dying in Belle's arms. In case you don't recall the exact scene, Belle begs the Beast not to die, the Beast tells her it's better this way, he slumps back and closes his eyes, and Belle collapses on top of him, weeping.

Just as the sad music came up, I heard Jason say, "Oh no! Booty night night." I looked over and he was pointing at the screen, saying "Night night!"

"She's not sleeping, buddy, she's sad," I replied.

"Sat," he repeated, nodding. "She sat."

Then it occurred to me: Jason sometimes gets Beauty ("Booty") and the Beast ("Beess") mixed up. Moreover, both characters were in a lying position with their eyes closed, so I couldn't be quite sure which one he was talking about. And it got me to wondering how much of the scene he understood. It seemed like he understood that something important was happening, and that it was bad--at least, the "Oh no" suggested that. But there was really no way that he could already understand a concept like death--he still struggles with the idea that Big Sur is too far from San Diego for us to see his grandparents every day. But if he was actually talking about the Beast's apparent death, how could I begin to explain that to him?

Before I could figure out a course of action, the movie ended and Jason wandered off to find something to pull off of a shelf.

I've since been able to determine that he probably did mean Belle, because now any time a character cries in a movie, whether it's Belle or Ariel or whoever, Jason will announce "Sat! Sat!" And, actually, that in itself is kind of remarkable to me, that he can extrapolate the concept to other people and other circumstances. But he's doing things like that all the time lately, which is why Juliette and I have been asking each other "Can you believe that?" a lot.

Last week, Juliette's brother came and visited us.

We had a good time going out to lunch on Friday at my favorite Mexican restaurant.

He's a good looking boy, don't you think?

As you can see, it runs in the family.