Observations From My Field Guide

For fun, I thought I'd write down my observations of what Jack did during one half hour of play. Here it is:

Jack is jumping up and falling face down the carpet. He says "Funny! That fun! Whoa!" and laughs. "Oh, Funny, Fun. That fun! I'm jumping." Activity continues for some time.

Jack stops his jumping and walks over to the couch. He picks up Jim's Nintendo DS and closes it. "Bye," he says, and then walks to the middle of the room. He bends over and puts his head on the ground. He looks at me from between his legs. Then he comes back over to the couch, picks up the game, says "Bye" and throws it onto the couch. He turns around and goes back to the middle of the room where he does his jumping and falling game for a while, shouting "Whoa!" each time.

After a bit, he grabs my keys and tries to insert them into an unidentified plastic item that is sitting on the coffee table. Then he turns back to the middle of the room and jumps and falls. He crawls back over to the coffee table to get the plastic item and the keys. He's singing "Doo doo doo doo doo doo" as he does it. Suddenly, he throws everything and makes a loud noise like "BBBBBRRIIIIIIINNG!" He laughs.

He turns back to the middle of the room and starts his jumping and falling while yelling "Whoa!" Then he rolls around on the ground for a bit. Eventually, he rolls onto his back abd pauses to watch TV. He taps the bottoms of this feet on the ground in a little rhythm. While doing so, he accidentally kicks his talking garbage truck and it makes a noise. He sits up and rolls the truck back and forth for a while. He pauses to lie down and look at TV. He taps his feet on the floor and kicks the truck some more.

After a few minutes, he sits up and spots Oskar. He crawls over to the cat, stands up and says "Meow! meow!" Oskar backs away behind the TV cabinet. Jack closes the doors to the TV cabinet and then goes back over to Oskar, who peers out from behind the cabinet. "Meow! Meow!" He tries to grab tail as Oskar runs towards the dining room. He chases him and successfully grabs Oskar's tail and pulls. He says "Meow! Meow!" Oskar hides under the dining room table, so Jack lays down and looks under the chair. He gets up and goes after cat under the table. "Meow! Meow!" Oskar bats at him and then runs out from under the table, so Jack stands up and chases him for a bit. Jack does a little dance and sings "Hoo hoo." The cat comes back and Jack runs around the table. He crawls under the table and tries to grab the cat, banging his head. Then he says "Ow ow ow." He crawls out and comes over to me, pointing at his hand. "Poke a cat. A poke cat. A poke cat." I'm guessing Oskar caught him with his claws.

Jack goes back to his jumping and falling game and then lies on his back and looks up at me.
He sits up and looks around. He crawls in a circle and makes nonsense noises. He goes over to the hot wheels track, which is in two pieces and picks it up. He says "What happened?" He tries to put the track together, without success. He knocks the top part of the track on its side and says "A gate! A gate! A gate! GAAATTTE! A Gate! A Gate Jackie." He steps over it and puts his head on the ground and looks at me between his legs. He says "Funny, A funny." He gets up and steps back over the track, tripping a bit. "Oww. A Gate!" He steps over again and this time purposely kicks it "OWWW. "Breaking GATE!" Then he stands on the other portion of track and says "A Gate! A Gate!

He runs over to me and butts the laptop cover. He tries to close it with his head several times. Then he runs to the chair and flings himself onto it, yelling "Down!" He gets down and tries to fix the tracks with no luck. After a few second, he stops and looks briefly at TV. He turns back to the tracks. "Gate Stepping!" He steps over and throws himself back into the chair. He takes the throw from the chair and drags it onto the floor, saying "No, No, Don't. Ha Ha!" He covers the track with the blankets and yells "Gate! A Gate! Gate stepping!" He throws himself back into the chair and says "Jack jumping!" He stands up and jumps on chair, saying "I jump!" He slides off and then gets back on the chair, lies down and looks at me. He gets off and then back on. This time he rests on his tummy. He gets down and says "Breaking. I breaking. Break! Break gate" and then gets back into the chair, saying "No no no." He gets off again, saying "No no! No no no break my gate. No gate."

He finds that plastic thing again and goes into the dining room "A house!" He comes back and gets my keys, yelling "AHHH" "Ahhh!" all the way back to the dining room. He sticks the keys into the fake outlet on wall, and then into the plastic thing. You can see him concentrate really hard to get the keys into the plastic thing. He comes back into the living room saying "Jumping!" He puts the key and plastic thing down on the heater cover and works on getting the keys in. Then he moves it around like car, picks it up and brings it over to the pie safe. He drives it around on the middle shelf like a car, concentrating very hard. Then he starts scratching it back and forth quickly. He moves the plastic to the bottom shelf andscratches there, then to the top, and then to the inside of the door. When that palls, he drops the plastic and brings my keys over. As he returns, he sees his binky. "B!" he yells, dropping my keys to pick it up.

He puts the binky in his mouth and goes to the coffee table. He goes over to the chair and leans on it for a second. He straightens up and says "Mmm-hmmm! (his way of saying yes)" He walks over to the hassock and plays with some small, empty boxes that he took out of the pie safe earlier. He says "Mmmm-hmmm" He starts throwing boxes down to the floor, saying "No no no no no noooooo!" He repeats the word "no" as he throws all of the boxes onto the floor. He turns and kicks the boxes into the bottom of the pie safe. He picks one box up and puts it into the pie safe, and then pulls several boxes out onto the floor. He is talking to himself, but I can't understand him because of the Binky. He brings some boxes over to the hassock, and talks to himself some more. The only part I understood was "Jack jack." He opens a box, and takes out a square piece of styrofoam with a hole in the center.

At this point, my recorded TV show ends and Sesame street comes on. He pauses and notices Sesame Street. Then he takes out a second foam square with a hole in center and puts on floor "Potty!" He grabs the first piece and says "Another one potty!" He tries to sit on one piece like a potty. "Nooooo." He tries to break the styrofoam. "A potty." He sits on second piece and scoots across the floor on it. He puts both pieces together and sits on them. He looks around room. He pauses to watch Sesame for a bit. He goes over to the window and pulls himself off ground up on table. He gets down and knocks a few of the videos on the table onto the floor, saying "MM-hmmm." He kicks the videos and then pushes them away from portable heater which is under the table. He spends quite a bit of time trying to turn the heater on and off (it's not plugged in). He does it while sitting, standing on one leg, and then crouching. "Where light?" Where light? Hot, hot." Eventually, he puts heater back under the table, stands up and looks at the children's books on the table. He picks one up and then drops it back on the table. His attention is caught by Sesame Street and he sits down to watch. He's pretty tired now, and frankly, so am I for typing this up!