"Daddy, beads! Necklace!"

"Yes, that's a very nice necklace, Jason."

I wake up to the sound of Jason crying. It's still dark. I look over and the clock says it's a quarter past three in the morning--a bit more than an hour since I came to bed. Jason wakes up in the middle of the night somewhat frequently but usually goes back to sleep after a few seconds of rolling around. I'm just about to roll over and close my eyes again when his cries become more insistent, and he starts shouting "Poo poo! Poo poo!"

I stumble out of bed, down the hall to his room, finding him standing with his eyes closed. "Do you have a poo poo?" I ask.

"Yeah!" he moans, holding his arms out to me. "Up! Up!"

I change his diaper, noting that while it is wet, it is otherwise empty. "There was no poo poo," I inform him. "Are you ready to go back to bed?"

"No! Sit the chair!"

"You want to sit in the chair with me?"

"Yeah."

I'm exhausted, but he doesn't ask for me often, so I humor him. I rock the chair gently and my legs complain of the effort. Jason's head rests on my shoulder and I can feel him breathing and snuggling into me as I pat his back. After a few minutes I stand up and put him back in his crib,

"Pat the back," he whines.

"OK, but just until I count to ten, and then we're all done and you have to go back to sleep." I count out the seconds as I pat his back, gently easing up so that I'm barely grazing him with my fingertips by the time I reach ten. "All done," I say. "I love you, good night." Jason whimpers a bit, but doesn't cry. I go back to bed, mumbling a thank you when Juliette tells me I'm a good dad.

It's just starting to get light when I wake up again, again to the sound of Jason crying. I glance at the clock and it's now five after six. My skin is cold from having left the window open all night; it was too hot even at 2 in the morning to close it. I gently, slowly slide the window shut, hoping that if I'm quiet enough, Jason might go back to sleep for a little while. It works. I go back to sleep.

I wake up again. It's quarter to seven now, and from down the hall I hear Jason's plaintive voice. "Jason get out the bed," he says, over and over. Juliette, groggy, wonders aloud (in a whisper) at how his language is progressing. Sentences are a new thing, maybe only a couple of weeks old now.

I heave myself out of bed and stumble to his room. He's standing again, and as soon as he sees me he cries "No, Daddy! See Mommy!"

I pick him up. "You can't see Mommy right now, sweetie, she's in the bathroom. Do you want to go in the living room?"

"No! See Mommy!"

"You can see her when she's done in the bathroom. Do you want some milk? Eat breakfast?"

"No! See Mommy again!"

I shush and bounce him a bit. After a few moments, we hear the toilet flush. Jason abruptly stops crying and leans back to look at me. "Mommy all done bathroom?" he asks.

"Yeah, all done." I carry him to our bedroom and set him down outside the bathroom door to wait for her to finish washing her hands.

A few minutes later, Juliette is getting some milk for Jason and it's my turn in the bathroom. I blearily study the wall in front of me. My eyelids feel like sandpaper and my tongue feels like a carpet. I feel like Danny Glover. I'm too old for this shit. I silently curse my mom for sending me the book that kept me up all night. Grow up, I chide myself, you were the one who decided you needed to unwind after spending two hours processing photos. I contemplate telling Juliette that I will go to spin class but actually take a nap in the parking lot, instead. No, no; be a man. I flush, wash my hands.

Rounding the corner, I'm about to tell Juliette that I will go to the gym but I'm going to skip spin class; I'll just do a short stint on the elliptical trainer or something. I mean it, too. Before I can open my mouth, she says "Look what your son did." I can hear the smile in her voice.

I look over, and Jason has taken a bunch of pieces of cantaloupe out of his bowl and arranged them in a line on the table. I pause, trying to figure it out, and Jason declares, "Choo choo!" Realization dawns.

"Did you make a train?" I ask.

"Yeah! Melon choo choo!"

My mind boggles a moment at this example of abstract thinking, then a smile spreads across my face. Jason giggles. It's a pretty good way to start the day.

Me: Come on, Jay! Time to put your shoes on.

Jason: No! (laughs, runs into the kitchen and starts spinning in circles)

Me: Come on, it's better to have shoes on if you're going to spin. (Jason's sock-clad foot slips on the tile.) See? Shoes on.

Cooper: (sees the shoes in my hand and runs into the kitchen, jumping in circles)

Juliette: (laughing) It's like the orcas from yesterday. I bet if Jason worked at SeaWorld he could get the orcas to spin after he did that.

Jason: Orcas, orcas! (stops spinning) See Shamu?

Me: Oh, brother...

Jason: See Shamu? That way! (points)

Me: Not right now, buddy. But you can see your friends at school. After you put your shoes on.

Jason: Yeah! (runs to the garage door)

Shortly thereafter Jason had his shoes on and we were in the car. The garbage truck drove by and picked up our can just as we were leaving.

Jason: What that?

Me: That was the garbage truck.

Jason: See garbage truck again?

Me: OK, let's follow it.

Jason: Garbage truck! Garbage truck, garbage truck, garbage truck! (We pass the truck as it stops at a neighbor's house.) All done, garbage truck!

Me: Yeah, all done. Bye bye, garbage truck.

Jason: Bye bye! (pause) See Shamu? That way!

Yesterday was a rare day without any plans or chores to do, so to make the most of it we decided to head over to SeaWorld. Juliette has been trying to get me to go there or Legoland for months but I've been dragging my feet.

"Jason will love it!" she'd say.

"Yeah, but he loves the park, too, and that's free," I'd reply.

"They're still running 'buy one day, get the whole year free' deal!" she'd say.

"That's only a deal if we actually go back," I'd counter. "Why not wait until he's likely to remember it?"

That argument continued, off and on, for about a year, and I finally caved yesterday. I'm still not convinced that my points weren't good ones, but we did have a lot of fun.

To begin with, there's a gigantic, Sesame Street-themed playground there, complete with bouncy floors, fountains, and a huge net climb. Jason, of course, loved that. He also loved getting a chance to meet Elmo, Ernie, Bert, Zoe, and Cookie Monster, who have a dance show about every hour, followed by a photo op. At $13, the photos are kind of a rip, but Jason could hardly contain himself and we constantly had to remind him how to wait in line.

And then, of course, there are the animal shows. We saw the dolphin show first, and although Jason was a little intimidated by the loud music at first, he warmed up after a few minutes. And since no trip to SeaWorld would be complete without seeing the orcas, we went to the Shamu show in the afternoon.

"Jason," we asked, "do you want to see Shamu?"

"Yeah!" he shouted. "Yeah yeah! Shamu!" I have no idea where he would have heard of Shamu before, since this was our first trip to the park and he doesn't watch commercials. He did know, though, because he was shouting "Shamu!" and pointing as soon as the whales came out.

After the show, Jason passed out in his stroller while we walked around. Juliette and I used the opportunity to sit down and eat some funnel cake. He didn't sleep long--only about twenty or thirty minutes--and the first thing he did upon waking was look around and shout "Shamu? Shamu?" So I guess the experience left an impression.

It'll be a lot of fun once Jason gets older. The roller coaster caught his eye on the way in, and he was quite upset that he didn't get a chance to ride it. A lot of the things he wanted to do had height requirements of at least three feet, though since we sprang for the two-year passes (on sale for the price of a one-year pass), he may actually be tall enough before they expire. I'm looking forward to it.

I recently got myself a new flash with my birthday money; a Nikon SB-400. It's not a very big or powerful flash unit, and it doesn't have a lot of the nice features and manual controls that the more expensive units have, but it does have the advantage of being very lightweight. The main reason I got it was to learn more about on-camera lighting, especially fill flash and bounce flash.

This image is an example of the latter. You tilt the camera head up, and instead of the light directly illuminating the subject, it bounces off a nearby surface, creating a more diffuse light. Here I've bounced it off a wall that's just out of frame, which also provides a nice directional light.

From a composition standpoint, this isn't a fantastic picture. There are a number of distracting elements in the background, especially the reflection in the window, though I bet most people wouldn't notice any of that. The reason I'm showing it, though, is that it makes a great example of how much difference lighting makes in photography. (And, of course, I'll take any excuse to show you how cute my kid is.)

I'm really excited about getting to learn this stuff. Hopefully, my photos will continue to get better.

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.

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:

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.