This is the conversation Jason and I had Monday evening on the drive home from day care:

Me: Did you have a good day, buddy?

Jason: No.

Me: Yes you did.

Jason: (pause) Dada.

Me: What's up?

Jason: Dada.

Me: I'm right here, buddy.

Jason: Dada.

Me: That's right, I'm Dada.

Jason: Mommy.

Me: Mommy's at home.

Jason: Dada.

Me: Do you know where we're going, Jason?

Jason: (pause) Um.

Me: That's right, we're going home.

Jason: Mommy.

Me: Yeah, Mommy's at home. Where's Mommy?

Jason: (pause) Wuck.

Me: No, she's not at work, Mommy's at home.

Jason: Um.

Me: Right, home.

Jason: Wuck.

Me: No, home.

Jason: Dada. Mommy mommy mommy. Dada. Dock.

Me: The dog's right here.

Jason: Ga.

Me: Right, we're in the car.

Jason: Wawa?

Me: I don't have any water. Maybe when we get home.

Jason: Dada! Dada Dada Dada. Mommy. Um. Wawa. Dock.

Me: OK, buddy.

Jason: Yay! (claps as the song on the radio ends)

Me: Yay!

Jason has never been much of a morning person. He comes by it honestly, of course--I can be a bit of a bear for the first few minutes after getting up, as well. Anyway, it was no big surprise this morning that he threw a little fit when I put him in his booster seat. Based on past experience, I might have expected a tantrum due to having served him the wrong food, or his mother leaving the room, or just being too tired. Were any of those the reason this morning? Nope. This morning he was angry because I wouldn't let him bring a book to the table.

(Here I'd just like to pause a moment and reflect on how difficult it is to write efficiently when the Olympics are on. The last paragraph took me half an hour to compose.)

Now, parenting has brought me a number of unexpected experiences. I find myself saying and doing things all the time that I never thought I would. But I honestly never thought I'd have a problem with my son reading too much. I mean, you want your kid to be a good reader, right? But lately it seems like all Jason wants to do is read constantly.

Of course, by "read" I don't really mean that he can understand the words. But he loves to sit and turn the pages and examine the pictures, shouting out the names of everything on the page. He's even started to memorize some of the ones that we've read to him. In any case, that's what he wants to be doing all the time. Well, that and watch Sesame Street.

And that's fine. I mean, it's great. I love that he loves books. The problem is that it's getting in the way of other, necessary activities. Like eating. Jason has never been the best eater, and now when he's distracted by a book it can be quite an ordeal to get him to pay attention to his meal. Not to mention that Jason's hands get absolutely filthy when he eats, and he has no aversion to smearing food on anything he can get his fingers on. The table, for example, or his hair, or, of course, books.

We've been consistent about not letting him bring his books to the table, so it's just a matter of time until he gets used to it. In the mean time, I expect this will get on my nerves. All things considered, though, this is a pretty good problem to have.

Before Jason was born, when Juliette was pregnant, I would try to imagine him at different stages of his life--as a newborn, a toddler, a teen. Actually, I still do that a lot. Anyway, when I'd think of him at the age he is now, I'd usually include some kind of security item in the picture. Maybe he'd be clutching a blanket as he followed me down the hall after a nap, or dragging a stuffed animal all around the house as we played in the afternoon. Now, I knew that different kids form attachments with different items, but in all my imagining I never stumbled upon what he actually loves to carry with him everywhere: his water cup.

Oddly, it's not a particular cup that he's attached to. We probably have eight or ten sippy cups and any of them will do. And he doesn't have to actually have it in his hands at all times--often while he's playing he'll leave it on the floor in one room while he runs around in circles in another room. But he always has to have access to one of those cups. If I pick up a half-full cup from the living room floor and put it up on the kitchen counter, as soon as he notices, Jason will stand under it, pointing at it and asking for it until he gets it. And if I don't get it to him fast enough, he'll start whining or sometimes even full-out crying. For at least a month now he's even been taking a cup to bed with him.

Actually, these days his crib is getting a little crowded. We always left a couple of small stuffed animals in there with him, even though he never showed much interest in them. And, of course, he's had blankets since he learned to flip himself over, even though he still hasn't really learned how to sleep underneath them. And there's the cup. In the past few weeks he's started taking books to bed with him as well. It started out as just one book, whichever one we read to him before bed. Now there are a few books that just stay in bed all the time. As I'm writing this (he's been asleep now for a couple of hours) he has with him 3 blankets, 4 stuffed animals, 5 books, and his water cup, the latter of which is clutched in his arms.

It's funny, I remember taking books to bed when I was younger and reading until I fell asleep, and I figured that Jason might do the same. I just thought it would start a little later. But tonight after we put him down, as we were making dinner, Juliette and I could hear him happily squealing and shouting "quack quack!" (actually more like "cuck cuck") as he flipped through the book with ducks in it.

Come to think of it, ducks are his favorite animal now. I bet if we got him a duck toy he might switch over to that. Still, it's pretty adorable to see him asleep cradling his cup or snuggling up to a book.

I keep a little list in my phone's notepad of things I'm going to write about. Every time Jason does something I find interesting or amusing, or on the rare occasions that I have a thought of my own, I jot it down in that list. Over the past six weeks, the list has been steadily growing. So, in an effort to get a little caught up, I thought I'd condense things a bit and just give you the short versions of a bunch of those list items all at once. Thus, some facts about Jason:

• Jason answers just about every question with "no." "Do you want a snack, buddy?" "No" (as he reaches for the crackers on the counter). "Did you have a good day today?" "No." "Do you like the dog?" "No." "Am I asking you a question?" "No."
  
• Jason seldom walks. If he needs to get somewhere, he runs. In that respect, he's a bit like a young Forrest Gump. In pretty much only that respect. In any case, it's very cute.
• Jason is a mammal.
• Jason cheats when he plays with his jack-in-the-box. Rather than waiting for it to pop on its own, he just pulls the clasp open with his finger. He used to give the crank a token turn or two, but these days he doesn't even bother with that.
• Jason always has a runny nose.
• On the other hand, Jason hasn't had an ear infection in a couple of months. (Here Juliette will want me to knock on wood. I did.)
• In the past month or so Jason has started "reading" on his own. Rather than sitting on our laps while we read to him, he likes to flip through a book on his own and shout out what's on each page. He even has a favorite place to read: in the living room on top of the wicker toy box we bought him last month. He does skip pages here and there, but on the other hand he's also figured out how to hold books the right way up.
• Jason still needs more practice eating with utensils, but he's getting better.
• Lately Jason has started crying when I drop him off at daycare. As soon as it looks like I'm going to leave, he starts jumping up and down and grabbing my legs. It's difficult for me. Still, his teachers report him having a good day most of the time, and besides that he also gets upset when it's time to go home.
• Jason will offer you hugs, but will sometimes use the opportunity to bite you on the shoulder.
• Jason loves to blow bubbles in his bath water, but he still hasn't quite figured out how to time his breathing so bath time inevitably involves some coughing and spluttering.

It's funny how quickly things change with kids, and how fast these little moments pile up. I keep wondering what he's going to do next. Fortunately, I get to find out.

I'm finding that one of the coolest parts of being a parent is getting to watch my son figure things out for the first time. Everybody always talks about "the wonder of a child" and seeing that "aha" moment, but it's easy to lose the significance when you repeat phrases like that over and over again. The thing is, everything really is new to a young child, and when you stop and thing about it, it's kind of a marvel that anyone ever figures out anything.

Earlier this evening I was watching Jason play with a piece of string. He had the string doubled over and was holding it in one hand so that it formed a little loop. Now, Jason has seen loops of string before and what he usually likes to do is stick a finger or arm through it. But what confounded him this time was that as soon as he got his arm through the loop and let go with the other hand, the loop was gone and he was just left with a piece of string draped over his wrist. He did this probably three or four times, each time surprised that the loop changed and a little confused and frustrated about what happened to it.

Now, I imagine that this little scene may seem a little banal--after all, it doesn't seem such a big feat to grown-up eyes to figure out that if you let go of the ends of an untied loop of string, you don't have a loop anymore. But if you stop and think about it, it's kind of amazing that that sort of thing is such second nature to us. And seeing someone come to that realization for the first time is just fascinating.

Actually, tonight turned out to be a bumper night in terms of figuring things out, because Jason also figured out how to get out of his crib tonight. Juliette and I were just starting to eat our dinner, having put Jason down about 15 minutes earlier, when we heard him start to fuss. These days that's a little unusual, so Juliette went to check on him, expecting to find that he'd thrown his blankets and stuffed animals over the side of his crib. In fact, she did find that, but she also found him standing on the little pile next to the crib. Fortunately, the crib can still be lowered one more notch, which I'll do tomorrow. For tonight, we set up the portable playpen in his room and put him in there--so far, he hasn't been able to get out of that.

It definitely keeps you on your toes, this parenting thing.

Jason started figuring out how to dance a while ago. Until recently he really only had one move: bouncing up and down. That's probably because that's mainly what Juliette and I do when we're showing him how to do it--bounce at the knees in time to the rhythm, sometimes adding in shoulders or arms. It's very cute when he bops along, especially since he invents his own highly syncopated beat.

In the last couple of weeks he's shown us that his repertoire is expanding:

(Just in case anyone is curious, that thing on his belly is a band-aid that he had been playing with.)

Yesterday after picking up Jason, Juliette decided to stop in at Babies 'R Us to pick up a few things. When she got there, she realized that we still had some money left on a gift card that we'd gotten for Jason's birthday. "Jason picked out a couple of things he wanted," she told me, recounting the story to me when I got home.

Now, I wasn't sure quite what to make of that statement at first, since, after all, Jason can hardly talk and while he certainly does have desires and ways of making them known, he's never actually picked anything out for himself. But it turns out it really was true, as Juliette explained to me. When they were walking through the aisles looking at the toys and books, Jason actually looked things over and saw some things that caught his fancy: a two-pack of spiky rubber balls (one large, about 7 or 8 inches in diameter, the other small, about 3 inches), and a book that had Elmo on the cover.

The rest of the way through the store, he clutched his new prizes to his chest, both at the same time. When they got out to the car and Juliette opened the package of balls, he took both of them and the book and tried to hold onto all three all the way home. He could hardly get his arms around all of it, but he was clearly delighted. Then when he got home, he marched all over the living room and kitchen with his arms full, proclaiming "Ball, ball. Ball, ball." Occasionally he'd drop one and have to stop to pick it up, no mean feat for someone whose wingspan is only about two feet. It was apparently very cute, and I'm sorry to have missed it. Fortunately, Juliette did turn the camera on while she and Jason read the new book, so I got to see that. And so do you:

Since I last wrote about music a few weeks ago, Juliette and I have been exploring the world of children's music and what we've found--or, at least, what I've found--is that there is a whole lot of really bad kid's music out there. For example, about three-quarters of what Time Warner plays on their kid's music cable channel is awful. I feel like there is this horde of would-be musicians out there who couldn't hack it with adult audiences and figured that kids can't tell the difference between good music and half-assed music. Like some guy is out there thinking, "Well, I'm not a very good singer and I can't play any instruments and I don't really know how to write a song, but if I just throw together some dumb lyrics and put some synthesized harp and bells behind it, kids should like that, right?"

As is probably unsurprising, I have, at times, become somewhat enraged by this sort of sloppiness.

Really, I don't know what people are thinking when they make crappy music, and maybe it's overly cynical for me to be seeing dollar signs in their eyes. Maybe they really are producing this stuff out of a genuine love of music and children. It's still not something I want to listen to, though.

But! I am delighted to report that the genre of children's music is not a wasteland. There is actually a fair amount that's tolerable, and here and there you will find some real gems. Music that's obviously been made with love and passion, by people who understand that "simple" is not the same as "stupid." Here are a few that we've come to know.

First off, I should probably eat a little bit of crow regarding Raffi. I'm not really sure what informed my previous opinion, but Juliette's purchase of two of his albums has led me to discover that there's more to his music than just silliness. Songs like "Like Me and You" have a nice message of tolerance, and I love the imagery in "Morningtown Ride." Of course, that one is a cover, but the simplicity of his arrangement and vocal style complements the lyrics really well. He even managed to make me smile at a pun--no mean feat--in "Joshua Giraffe."

Another singer I've come to really enjoy is Elizabeth Mitchell. (Same name as the actress on Lost, but not the same person.) One of Juliette's cousins sent us her album You Are My Little Bird when Jason was born, which for some reason I didn't really listen to at the time. But Juliette and I turned out to like it so much that we went out and got another of her albums, You Are My Sunshine. Mitchell tends to favor simple, sparse arrangements with one or two singers and a single guitar, which works great with the purity of her voice. Her music is very folk-influenced and a number of the songs on both albums are traditional, but she has a very distinctive style that makes the music very much her own.

Finally, there's Dan Zanes and Friends, whose album Catch That Train has been in high rotation for us in the past few weeks.. I think that this album may have come to us from the same cousin that sent us the Elizabeth Mitchell album, in which case I have to compliment her taste. I remember the first time we put the CD in Juliette's car stereo, I turned to her in the middle of the title track and said, "You know, I would listen to this song for myself. This is a good song." If I hadn't already known that it was a children's album, I very well might not have been able to tell, and I love that. It's music for children rather than children's music--real, organic music that hasn't had the soul squeezed out of it by making it too squeaky clean. Zanes, like a lot of children's singers, leans strongly toward folk, but he also brings roots rock and blues into the mix, and even a little reggae here and there.

So that's where we are with kid's music right now. If you happen to have any recommendations, feel free to let me know. In the mean time, I'll keep digging for those hidden gems.

Today at about a quarter after four I found myself driving to the pediatrician's office to meet Juliette and Jason, he having injured himself falling face-first off of the toddlers' outdoor play structure at his daycare a bit under an hour beforehand. Juliette had already called me a couple of times by this point--the first time she hadn't seen him yet and the description of the accident she'd gotten over the phone had made it sound like he might have bitten through his lip and would need stitches. The second, it sounded like he had completely knocked out one of his front teeth. As I got onto the freeway, feeling disconcerted and vaguely panicked, it actually started raining. We've been in a heat wave for weeks and a drought for months--if I were the superstitious type it would be hard not to take this as some sort of sign.

By the time I got to the doctor's office, the receptionist there was already on the phone with the pediatric dentist next door, getting us an appointment. Jason was sitting pretty quietly on Juliette's lap. His lips were intact, and his tooth hadn't been knocked out, but only barely--it had folded almost all the way back against the roof of his mouth as well as jamming back into his gum a bit. All things considered, he seemed in a pretty good mood, though he did seem a little dazed. He didn't cry at all while we waited to see the dentist, and only fussed when we kept him away from the waiting room toys. (He has a tendency to put things in his mouth, and we wanted neither to get blood on the toys, nor for him to bite down on one and hurt his tooth even more.)

We didn't have to wait too long to see the doctor. We actually ended up seeing the orthodontist, the pediatric dental specialist being out of town. He took an x-ray--which Jason actually sat still for--then consulted with the dentist over the phone. When he came back in to talk to us, the news was relatively good: the root didn't look damaged, so they were going to try just pushing the tooth back in place. It would still be a little iffy after that--he said there was about a 50-50 chance that the tooth would survive, but that was actually much better that either Juliette or I had expected. By the time we got into the dentist's waiting room we were pretty much convinced that Jason would be looking like a jack-o-lantern just in time for Halloween. Which is funny, I guess, but we made the joke more than half to keep ourselves from crying.

I had to hold Jason while the doctor pushed the tooth back into place. The technician instructed me to face him toward me on my lap and then lean him back with his head resting on my knees. He was pretty calm at first, but when I leaned him back he became unsettled and started to squirm a bit. I smoothed his hair and then held his hands and told him everything was OK, and when he calmed down I felt like a liar. And, sure enough, Jason did finally start to panic a bit when the doctor put his fingers in his mouth, and when he started pushing, Jason screamed. I have heard Jason scream in anger just as loudly any number of mornings, but knowing that he was screaming from pain and fear this time just about broke my heart. People talk about time seeming to slow down in intense moments. Well, I wouldn't say that time slowed down for me--I was completely aware that only a few seconds were passing. But still, the amount of things that happened in those seconds seems like more than should have been able to happen, the amount of detail was more than I should have been able to notice. Like the exact moment when the tears rolled out of Jason's eyes, or the color of the blood that welled out of his tooth socket when the doctor pushed. When it was over, I picked Jason back up and held him to my chest. He clung to me, and his breath smelled like blood. I only just stopped myself from crying. Remembering it now is almost as hard.

Afterwards, he struggled a lot when I put him into his seat in Juliette's car. Juliette said he screamed all the way home, though he was quiet when I got him out of the car. As I was driving home there was a really bright rainbow directly in front of me. It almost seemed like the universe was trying to apologize. For some reason, the idea of a rainbow as some sort of consolation prize made me angry. And then I realized I was angry at a rainbow and couldn't help but see how ridiculous it was.

The rest of Jason's evening went pretty smoothly--he sat very nicely with us and let us feed him without making a mess, and he laughed when we played with him after and enjoyed his bath even though we took out all of his bath toys. Right now he's sleeping peacefully. Except for the bit of swelling under his lip it could be any other night. We have a follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks, when we should be able to find out whether or not the tooth will survive. Until then, I'm just going to have to keep reminding myself that everything is OK. I expect Jason will be getting a fair amount of treats in the coming days.

My weekday mornings have developed a pattern over the last month or so. Juliette has to get to work early, which means that I get to wake up with Jason, give him his breakfast, get him changed and ready for day care. It's not always the best time, since neither Jason nor I are morning people, but it's interesting to say the least. To give you an example, here's how this morning went:

5:04 AM: I wake up to the sound of Jason starting to cry, but, mercifully, he manages to fall back asleep on his own.  I notice that I had forgotten to set the alarm clock for Juliette, which I tell her, also telling her the time. She tells me to turn the 6:00 alarm on, which I do, then I close my eyes again.

5:20 AM: Jason wakes up again and starts yelling. I can tell that he's not fully awake yet because although he's loud, he's not fully screaming. I stumble into the kitchen to fill a sippy cup with water, then go collect him from his room. He hasn't dumped his blanket over the side of his crib this morning and is just standing there at the rail, half-awake and crying. He quiets down as soon as I pick him up, which is a little unusual since he's usually thirsty. We head into the living room and I sit on the couch, offering him the cup. He's more tired than usual, I can tell, because he only sips for a few seconds before flopping over onto my chest--often he will drink the entire cup in one go. I lay back and close my eyes, patting him on the back to try to get him to go back to sleep. We doze for a while, but he stirs a lot, sometimes whimpering, sometimes even standing up. He kicks me in the crotch several times. Once, he starts to climb off of me, moving to flop head-first off the couch, but I catch him and put him back on my chest. I don't know why he does this in the mornings--I can tell that he's bone tired, but he refuses to let himself fall completely asleep. I let him climb down a couple of times and he tries to stand up, but he can't hold his head up--he leans down and rests his head on the ottoman. I think his eyes are closed, but I can't tell since the lights are off and it's still pretty dark out. When I pick him up, he cries.

6:20 AM: I finally give up on trying to coax Jason back to sleep. He's a bit more alert at this point, and anyway he's upset about something, though I don't know what and I doubt he does, either. I stand up with him in my arms and head back to his room to change his diaper. It's heavy with pee, but nothing else, so it goes pretty quickly, then we go over to the back door where the dog is waiting to be let out. We follow the dog into the yard and watch to make sure he pees in the right part of the yard, then go back inside, where I start making breakfast.

6:27 AM: Jason is tugging on my legs and flopping around, whining and pointing at the whole wheat toast, which burns my fingers as I take it out of the toaster oven so I can butter it. I've made two slices, one for him and one for me.  I cut his slice into small pieces, then pick him up, put him in his high chair, put a bib on him, and start giving him bits of toast, two small pieces at a time. He takes the bits and starts eating pretty quickly this morning--some mornings he just looks at the toast for a while before putting any in his mouth. I get him some milk and then pull up a chair next to his high chair and eat my slice of toast while passing him more little squares of his slice as he finishes the ones he has. I do this because if I give him the entire pile at once, he will probably get distracted and start throwing them around or shoving them on the floor instead of eating them. The dog likes when this happens--I, less so.

6:56 AM: Jason is now playing with his food, reaching up and dropping it into the "big boy" cup that he now has in addition to his sippy cup. Juliette had come in to grab a bite before she left and had some milk in a plastic cup, which made Jason frantic to have a cup of his own. She gave him one with a tiny bit of water in the bottom--he tried to drink it but ended up spilling most of it on his bib. He is now pushing bits of plum and banana around his high chair tray, what he hasn't smeared on his face and in his hair, so I remove the tray and clean his face, hands, and hair with a washcloth. Once he's clean, I take him out of the chair and let him run around. I've given him the cup--which I've washed because it had fruit smeared all over the outside--and he is making noises into it, laughing at the way the cup makes his voice echo. I smile, then turn to empty out the dishwasher and clean up his high chair.

7:10 AM: I'm in the middle of changing a poopy diaper when my phone rings. I ignore it for the time being, since I don't want to touch the phone before I wash my hands and, besides, if it's important they'll call back. Jason has, as usual, tried to grab his butt while I was changing him. "Hands out!" I say firmly, but he's already done it by that point. I can't tell if he got his hands dirty or not, but after I'm done cleaning and changing him, I carry him into the kitchen and wash his hands, then mine.

7:13 AM: There's a message from Juliette on my phone, so I call her back. She needs me to look something up in our filing cabinet, so I have to put Jason into his crib a little earlier than I might have otherwise. I make her wait while I pull out some books and a couple of toys and put them and him in his crib. I open the books for him and show them to him for a couple of seconds, then I quickly exit the room, closing the door behind me. He stays distracted long enough for me to get the paper Juliette needs and read it to her, but it's just a matter of time before he starts screaming.

7:18 AM: I start shaving and Jason starts crying. This is my least favorite part of the morning, but it's kind of necessary, too. I can't just let Jason run around unsupervised--even with all the babyproofing, there are still lots of things he can break and lots of ways for him to hurt himself. I've considered getting up at 4:30 to shower before he wakes up but I can't bring myself to do that yet, and I sweat too much in my sleep for showering at night to be an option. So, I have to listen to him cry while I get ready every morning. Sometimes he falls asleep. I don't think he will today, though.

7:49 AM: I'm now shaved, showered, and dressed. My hair is done and I've even decided to put some cologne on, though I'm not really sure why. The bed is unmade, but by now Jason is fully screaming. I get my shoes out and put them in the living room, put my bag in the kitchen, and throw a load of laundry in, then go back and pick up Jason. He has thrown both blankets, both books, both toys, and all of the stuffed animals he sleeps with over the side of the bed and is very angry that he can't reach them. But he calms down quickly after I pick him up, and I hold him and rock him for a few minutes before picking out his clothes. I tickle him and make faces at him while taking off his pajamas, and he laughs.

7:58 AM: Jason's dressed now. We head into the living room where I put his socks and shoes on, then my own. He likes watching me put my socks on, and likes playing with my feet after I have them on. We let the dog out again and watch to make sure he poops in the right part of the yard. For what seems like the millionth time, I reflect on how I never thought that watching a dog defecate would become such an integral part of my mornings.

8:04 AM: The dog is now in the car and Jason is strapped into his car seat. He's actually pretty patient while I change the CDs--I'm not in the mood to make up songs or point out stuff on the side of the road this morning, so I try to pick some stuff I know he likes.

8:09 AM: I'm in the middle of singing along with the Magnetic Fields' "I Don't Believe in the Sun" when I notice that Jason has fallen asleep. I continue singing anyway.

8:16 AM: We arrive in the parking lot at Jason's day care. He's still sound asleep, so I settle in to wait for him to wake up on his own--I don't like waking him when I know he's tired. I finished my book yesterday, but fortunately I can still browse the web on my phone. The sun comes out from behind a cloud and it starts to get a little warm in the car--I wish I had thought to open the windows before I turned off the engine, but now I'm afraid the noise will wake Jason up, so I just deal with it and sweat a little.

8:47 AM: Jason wakes up just as I finish my notes for this post, reconstructing the events of the morning.  I take him inside, check him in, and take him to the toddler room. There are three other boys in there already, one of whom is the one that has the same birthday as Jason--I'll call him J. I like all the kids there and have made a point to smile and talk to them when they come over to me, but I've always had an extra warmth toward J. J is walking now, which I hadn't seen before, and I comment on it aloud, also marveling at how much smaller J is than Jason--which is something, because Jason has always been small. The teacher smiles and says that Jason looks like he's getting much taller lately, which I realize is true with some surprise. We talk a bit about toddler shoes, she asks if I've ever been to Japan. She tells me that her son is stationed in Japan and she's thinking about visiting him soon. Our conversation gets interrupted when J takes a book that Jason wanted and, of course, Jason starts crying. The teacher gives him a different book and he calms down pretty quickly. I kiss him goodbye and tell him to be good and have a good day.

8:56 AM: I get back in my car, noting happily that the dog has not drooled on my seats this morning. I scratch him behind the ears and then head to work.

Not every morning goes exactly like this. Sometimes he wakes up earlier, sometimes later--though that's rare these days. Sometimes he's in a better mood, sometimes worse. Sometimes he eats more, sometimes he only wants to play with his food. He doesn't always fall asleep in the car. On the other hand, there's nothing unusual about this morning, either. All in all, it's been a pretty good morning. I do wish he would sleep a little later, but I don't get much time with him in the evenings these days because of work, so this is the time I have with him and I try to make the most of it. And even though he doesn't always cooperate and sometimes makes things really difficult, I make a point of telling him every day how much I love him. "It's a big beautiful world out there, Jason," I tell him when he's cranky. "It's a big beautiful world and it's a great day for you and I to be in it. I love you, buddy."