Scientific Experimentation with Jacob

Jacob had a fun day on his birthday at the park riding on his favorite slide. He also discovered the new property of static electricity and began to experiment with it. You will notice the effect of the slide on Jacob in the next picture:


Getting charged up as he slid down the slide definitely had a shocking result on his hair. Luckily, he knew how to expend his excess charge, as documented in the next picture. It is difficult to see, but he is touching a small metal bolt with his right hand.


He also tested the bolts on the other side of the slide to see if he could achieve the same effect:


Lest you think that we have merely doctored the photos in order to give Jacob an undeserved reputation for scientific genius, here is a video clip of one of his many experiments that day:

Jacob's latest development

Jacob and I were playing with his puzzles today. He loves the wooden puzzles with pieces that fit in just the right spot. Like this.

Sometimes he works on them and doesn't want anything from me. I will come up to him to check out how he is doing and maybe help out. He responds, without even looking up from his puzzle, with, "Bye-bye, daddy. Bye-bye." I take comfort in the fact that he does this to his mom too.

But today something different happened. He let me help out (which is not the something different). Sometimes we work together to get a piece in and I say, "Good teamwork!" He even repeats "good teamwork" back occasionally. I might also throw in a request for a high-five and he'll slap me five in celebration. Today, we put the last piece in one of the puzzles and Jacob asked for the high five. I was more excited than him for once.

Tomorrow we're having a birthday party for Jacob with some friends. Hopefully it will generate some interesting stories. The still camera and the video camera are plugged in. With any luck, we won't forget to use them.