Hello, Winter Knitting!…Or, Why I Won’t Be Blogging

For about 300 days of the year, I’m usually complaining about the heat and humidity out here in Hong Kong.  So when a cold front moved in earlier this week, for the most part it was a welcome change.  Well, welcome except for one thing — we are seriously lacking in the cold weather clothing area.  I took Julian out for our regular morning stroll on Monday and popped on the only cap he hasn’t outgrown.  It was cute, but made him look like a pudgy little longshoreman:

So for the last couple of days, I’ve been working on bulking up our winter gear. This includes an alligator scarf for Noah:

A little brimmed cap for Julian:

As well as an aviator style helmet complete with strap to ensure that it actually stays on his head:

For me, I need to complete the right hand for this pair of gloves:

And for Mark, a scarf. I haven’t gotten around to starting it yet — Mark wanted to design it himself so I’ve got to come up with and test out the pattern on my own so this might take a while, but hopefully it will be done in time to be worn during this winter. And on top of that, there are Christmas gifts and baby things to be knitted so if I’m not around much, well, now you know why.

Enablers

As much as I would like to continue on, I’ve decided that I can’t do NaBloPoMo this year for no better reason than I’d really rather just be knitting. It was getting to a point where I was really starting to resent my blog.  Each post takes on average two hours for me to write (I get distracted very easily) and over a one month period that’s 60 hours I could’ve spent knitting instead.  Two and a half days!  Just writing!  No thanks.  Hong Kong has about a three-month window where wearing a sweater isn’t a completely insane thing to do so I’ve got some sweaters and other cold weather stuff to knit before it warms up again.  But really, I couldn’t do all this alone.  I have help — a group of enablers if you will.  Like…

Enabler #1: My mom.  Who, when she came to visit last month, brought me about 60 balls of yarns, a knitting magazine, blocking wires, and a mini sewing machine (for steeking).

I know it doesn’t look like much now, but you’re really looking at two sweaters, a blanket and a pair of gloves. (If you squint really hard you might be able to see it)

Enabler #2: My knitting group. Yes, I go to a weekly knitting group (don’t laugh) where I sit for two to three hours and knit and talk and eat yummy pastas and cakes with a small group of awesome and diverse women. Besides the dedicated knitting time, these women also provide me with some much needed grown up time that I never really had before and it’s a part of the week that I’ve come to really look forward to.

Enabler #3: Traveller’s Yarn. Who is one of the women in my knitting circle (at least until the end of this month when she moves back to Australia) but who also runs an online yarn store and is pretty much responsible for getting me interested in dyeing my own yarn:

And on top of the gazillion balls of yarn my mom brought over (which is in addition to the mini-yarn shop that currently masquerades as my stash) I keep ordering more balls from her store for me to dye.

Finally, the biggest enabler of all: Mark.  He is incredibly supportive of my knitting problem habit hobby — he always has a kind word for anything I’ve knit (and turns a blind eye to whatever mistakes are in it); he never tells me to stop buying more yarn, needles or patterns despite the fact that my knitting space at home has metastasized from one bulging basket to an entire closet; he doesn’t nag me about the zillions of knitting projects I have going on and instead pretends not to see half-finished projects, yarn and needles lying around everywhere in the house.  One day I might even actually knit something for him.

So there you go.  That’s why I’ve decided not to blog daily anymore.  But you really aren’t missing much anyway.

Crunch Time. Or…More Waiting

Less than two weeks to go and all is well in Babyland. The baby is fine so far and according to the ultrasound weighs in at about 6.9 pounds. He’s definitely not going to be the 8 lb, 10 oz newborn that Noah was and I’m happy about that. He also doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of wanting out — no effacement or anything and he still seems to be lodged pretty high — and, with Dr. Doo leaving the country tomorrow for 10 days for a conference, I’m also ok with that. Although carrying a baby around in your stomach can get pretty old…or at least the constant tiredness, occasional and sudden assaults on my bladder and little feet jammed into my ribs is getting old. On the other hand, I was going through some of our old pictures and saw some that Mark took while I was in labor and man, I looked so miserable, so I’m not really looking forward to going through all that again. See? Misery:

I’m glad my sister at least was enjoying herself:

So, as I inch closer and closer to my due date, my anxiety level is start to climb as well. For sure I’m still excited but there’s also that nagging feeling that I’m completely unprepared and have no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure everything will be fine once the baby is actually physically here but being anxious doesn’t make the waiting any easier. Also, I tend to deal with anxiety by getting nostalgic which means my embarrassing 80′s hairband music has been in heavy rotation on my iPod. Which means I hear Starship’s We Built This City pretty much every day which makes me homesick for a karaoke duet with my sister:

At the same time, there is a weird calm-before-the-storm feeling — of wanting to do as much as we possibly can now before a new baby turns our lives upside down again. So far this has translated into catching up on past seasons of Ultimate Fighter and Top Chef and watching a lot of movies. Nevermind that I have a hospital bag to pack or baby clothes to put away. Who wants to do that when Star Trek has finally come to Hong Kong (which, by the way, is probably one of the best movies that we’ve seen all year…which either means we watch a lot of bad movies — *cough* Night at the Museum 2 *cough* — or that Star Trek was just a really awesome movie)? For me, this has also meant knitting like crazy. I finally got around to going to a weekly knitting group on Fridays — something I’ve been meaning to do for close to two years but naturally I waited until a month before popping out a baby to actually do — and I’ve managed to knock out a few projects in the last few weeks:

A bag made out of hemp yarn (which is still waiting for me to sew on the handles but I’m all sewed out right now from having to hand-sew the lining):

A mohair wrap which I’m not sure why I knit since 1) I don’t wear wraps and 2) apparently I’m currently impervious to cold air in my overheated pregnant state:

And now I’m working on this tank top which, again, I’m not sure why I’m knitting since I won’t be in any shape (literally) to even try it on for a few months. Oh well.

Anyway, if you made it this far through my post, congratulations and thanks for bearing through all my mindless rambling. And as a bonus, here’s the baby’s latest ultrasound picture:

When Mark and I saw this, we both thought he looks just like Noah when he’s sleeping. Of course when we showed Noah the picture, he disagreed, saying, “I think he looks too orange.” You gotta love literal-minded 3-year-olds.

Things That Made Me Happy

I’ve been pretty miserable lately.  I have a lingering cough from a cold last week and on Saturday I coughed so much that my ribs were sore.  Well, on Sunday I tried to stretch out my sore back/rib muscles and an ill-timed cough pulled my back out of whack and I’ve been in Pain City ever since.  It hurts when I cough, sneeze, laugh, yawn, walk, breathe, lay down…pretty much any time I’m awake and moving.  Today was just a smidge better than the weekend and as miserable and mopey as I was for a good part of the day, by late afternoon I realized that — pain and whining aside — some pretty nice things happened to me today regardless.  So in the spirit of not dwelling on the negative, here are the highlights of my day:

Photography Happiness
My Travel Photography class started today at the YWCA.  It’s a short course — just two hours today and next Monday — but the class itself is a nice break from my usual routine.  We were supposed to bring in five of our travel photos to the first class so we could critique each other’s work at the end of the class and having the class and the instructor tell me that three of my photos were perfect as is was a pretty sweet feeling.  Yay!

Grocery Store Happiness
I’m insane in that I love to go grocery shopping. I hate having to go to more than one grocery store a day though so after spending an hour at one grocery store only to realize that I needed to go to another one to finish picking things up for that night’s dinner, I was pretty grumpy by the time I got to city’super at IFC. I instantly perked up when I saw that they were having a Tastes of Thailand promotion which meant lots of samples of Thai food. And not just Thai food, but Thai candy — specifically coconut candy, which I love. So despite my doctor’s ban on sweet things, I picked up a small bag. I’m giddy just thinking about all the coconutty goodness ahead of me. Mwuhahaha….

Finally…Knitting Happiness
Not much to say here — I just love to knit. Lately I’ve been feeling weirdly incomplete when I don’t have a project on my needles so casting on a new project today made me pretty happy:

So yeah…in the words of Ice Cube: today was a good day.

Arts and Crafts Sunday

Mark stopped in Tokyo for a wedding on his way back from Texas so it was just me and Noah over the weekend.  I initially planned on taking Noah to the beach on Sunday but the weather had been iffy all weekend and we both caught a little bit of a cold so our Sunday beach outing turned into an arts and crafts day.

Noah is majorly into beads right now.  Thankfully he skipped that phase where he sticks them up his nose and I have to take him to the emergency room and he went straight for stringing them up into necklaces (whew!).  On Saturday I let Noah pick up a small jewelry kit so we would have something to do the next day (besides watching movies all day.  Which, believe me, I was definitely tempted to do) and on Sunday we spent a good part of the day stringing up beads, cutting out foam shapes and gluing stuff together.  Who knew jewelry making could be so exhausting?  Noah insisted on taking two breaks (including a nap) during our little craft session but after four hours I am now the proud owner of a sparkly hair clip, two bracelets and a necklace.

Noah has also been enamored of the stuffed bunny I knit up for baby #2 so to ward off any potential baby jealousy I decided to knit up this turtle for Noah on Sunday.

Naked turtle:

Turtle with his shell on:

This was surprisingly quick to knit up — taking only a day — but man, was it a pain in the butt to put together. It basically comes in eight separate parts that all needed to be sewn together and at 8″ long he isn’t a small thing to knit. Nevertheless, the effort and the carpal tunnel on Monday was worth it. Noah loves his turtle and gave it the ultimate honor by sleeping with it last night. He even gave it a name: Super Fast Turtle. We may need to work on his names a bit but at this point I’m just glad he actually plays with it.

Baby Stuff

At this point in my pregnancy (32 weeks) I’m going in to see the doctor every two weeks instead of every four so I’ll probably not update as much because it’ll just get redundant. Everything so far is progressing normally, although Dr. Doo has decided to subject me to random blood tests to check on my sugar levels. It’s a little funny and makes me feel like some kind of weird sugar/crack addict, but so far I’ve had two random tests and my glucose levels have been normal both times. Gestational diabetes, shmiabetes…and that’s with me cheating and sneaking in a smoothie, a cookie or some ice cream almost every day. I feel like I’m cheating the system and winning. Ha HA!

On the other hand, Dr. Doo has also warned me that because of my predisposition to GD, he’s unlikely to let me go past my due date (July 8th) because there are increased risks to the baby’s health otherwise. So for anyone making bets on when I’m going to pop this little guy out, at least you have a firm end date. Anyway, here is another picture of baby #2 (and yes, we do finally have a name for him but I’m not telling quite yet). Mark is usually the one who scans the pictures but since he’s not around I did it the old-fashioned way and snapped a picture of the picture. Lame, I know, but it’s the best I can do until I have access to Mark’s work scanner:

On another note, realizing that I’m 32 weeks along made me additionally realize that we’ve only got two more months before this little guy comes out and joins us. We put off doing/buying a bunch of things because we felt we had so much time left but with 8 weeks to go we’re kicking things into high gear. Last week we finally got around to ordering a new stroller, car seat and an awesome high chair for the baby and next week Mark and I are taking a tour of the hospital where I’ll be delivering (you must check out Matilda International’s maternity video in that link. If only for that one scene of the guy in the chef’s uniform cooking something in the kitchen. I’m slightly embarrassed to say this, but I’ve heard the food at Matilda is excellent…not that I would base something as important as where I have the baby on how the food is…but it sure helps).

With Mark out of town and me being super tired and extra lazy with limited mobility, I’ve kept the baby prep down to a minimum this week.  However I did manage to arrange to have all of Noah’s old baby furniture repainted from white to black:

On top of that, I also finished the blanket I was working on for the baby:

And as an added bonus (read: boredom killer) I also knit up a stuffed rabbit for him as well:

This is Sophie with Elijah, the elephant that I knit up for Noah that he refuses to play with:

Of course I still feel horribly unprepared and there’s a ton of stuff that we still need to get before the baby comes, but at least starting to get the nursery together is a start.

$@%&#!!!!!

$@%&#!!!!!

Disaster!!

I mentioned in this post that I had recently cast on on another knitting project. I had been knitting a Falling Leaves Wrap for my mother-in-law’s birthday last week. After ten days of knitting, I only had about three inches of the wrap left to knit plus some fringe to add. Here is what it looked like earlier:

If you knit and you know that this is a work in progress, you might look at that picture and ask, “Hmmm. But where are the needles?”

EXACTLY.

The boy has a horrible obsession with playing with my knitting. After many close calls in the past, I’ve warned him repeatedly that under no circumstances is he allowed to even breathe on my knitting, yarn or needles. Of course he never listens but I’m decently good at keeping my stuff out of his reach. Except that after a six hour knitting stretch that ended at 2:30 am this morning, in my sleep-deprived knitting haze I didn’t bother to hide my work before going to bed. Cue the boy and his grabby hands this morning. He pulled the needle out and left all of my live stitches hanging onto nothing. Nothing! I tried slipping the stitches onto a needle to try to salvage some of the wrap, but no go. It’s lacework:

so it’s really difficult to pick up all those yarnovers, decreases and slipped stitches once you’ve let them go — which is why smart people use a lifeline — so it’s back to the drawing board for me.

I can’t even begin to describe how angry I was when I realized that I had to frog the thing and start over. Furious doesn’t even come close. Irrational, enraged, unintelligible and foaming at the mouth is a bit more like it. I actually threw a full-on tantrum complete with AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!’s, flying needles and yarn and a torrent of f-bombs. Perhaps I may have overreacted, but it was 10 days of work! And so close to finishing too! That’s 573 yards, or 1/3 of a mile, of fingering weight merino wool knit for absolutely nothing.

Luckily for Noah, Clarita had taken him to the play area but poor Mark had just gotten home from a trip to Singapore when I discovered what Noah had done and he basically cowered in a corner while I screamed and threw stuff. After about 10 minutes of raging, he was nice enough to come along with me on my walk to Starbucks so I could calm down a bit (because everyone knows that what an enraged lunatic needs most is more caffeine). We ended up catching a movie instead, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (which if you want a quick review was mindless entertainment but loads better than the second Underworld movie and better even than The Watchmen. Because yeah, I thought The Watchmen was that bad). Afterward I was in a much better mood and less determined to put Noah in timeout until I finished another wrap.  Hopefully I can finish another wrap before we see my in-laws in DC in two weeks.  Besides, when you come home and the boy flashes you this look:

It’s a little hard to stay mad.

This Is How We Roll

Originally this post was supposed to be called “Boring and Mundane Day to Day Things” (because I’m starting to run out of clever little ways to rephrase “Weekly Update”) but I thought this title was a little catchier.  Basically though, this is still a boring and mundane weekly update.  Sorry for the misrepresentation, but since you’re already here and reading this…

Ruby’s Party
Two birthday parties down and only one more to go. And I have to say, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this whole ‘talking to other parents without coming off like a total freak’ thing. Ruby’s birthday party was at a huge indoor children’s playground at the Aberdeen Marina Club and while the kiddos ran around for a good two hours, I got a chance to sit down with the other moms that I’d seen just a couple days earlier at Sports Day and talk and feel more normal. And by ‘normal’ I mean ‘at least I’m not as weird as that German mom — whew!’. And yes, apparently it is possible to be totally insecure yet completely judgmental at the same time (hooray for multitasking!). Noah, as usual, had a blast. Especially since the Club housed an insane playground. Noah hung out on some spinning disks for a while, practicing his pole dancer moves:

Finally deciding to spend the next hour and a half racing down one of the slides with his best friend, Charlie:

After two hours of running around and screaming, the kids were beat. But then Ruby’s mom brought out hot dogs and cake and afterward they were ready for Round Two. After 20 minutes of repeatedly warning Noah, “Five more minutes and then we have to go home, ok?” I finally wised up and coordinated our leaving time with Charlie’s mom. I think Noah loves going to these parties as much for the party favor bags as for getting to hang out with his friends. Here he is showing off one of his favorite favors:

Next Monday is Charlie’s birthday and after that, hopefully we’ll be set for a few months. Although I must admit, these parties are starting to grow on me.

Better Than Muzak
Every now and then I get bored enough that I do things like time just how long it takes the elevator to go from the 49th floor to the lobby — 28 seconds. And what’s a person to do on so many rides up and down per day? Luckily, Noah keeps things interesting for me. When he’s not climbing on the hand rails or taking his pants off in the elevator, he treats me (and other riders) to little tidbits like this:
Me: Noah, please stop banging your toy on the wall.
Noah: Why?
Me: Because you might break it.
Noah: Oh. Because I might break it? And then I’ll cry and you’ll buy me another one.
(Cue laughter from other elevator passengers)
And at moments like this, those 28 seconds can’t seem to go by fast enough.

My Spare Time
I’ve been on a bit of a reading binge since I found out I was pregnant. At first it was because I was getting so sick I couldn’t do much besides lay in bed and read a book and then it was just out of habit. I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself if I didn’t have something to read. See? Here are just some of the books I’ve managed to get through in the last five months alone:

I recently ran out of books to read and had been hunting for a new one when, lo and behold! I got a package in the mail from my friend, Alicia, with Three Cups of Tea inside it. I’d been wanting to read this for almost a year now — ever since talking to some guy on a flight from AZ to CA last spring who was reading this and highly recommended it. Basically, it’s the true story of a mountain climber who decided to start building schools for impoverished villages in the Northern Pakistan region. I just made it sound a lot more boring than it really is but it’s ridiculously inspirational and I can’t wait to finish it and then start sending copies of the book around to my family. Thanks Alicia!

Baby Blankets and A New Project
I haven’t been knitting anything lately — not since I finished the sweater coat for my friend’s daughter over a month ago. I figured I would save my yarn money for my upcoming trip to the US where I could pick up some yarn for baby #2′s blanket. It’s also taken a while to find a baby blanket that I want to knit. For Noah, I had knit a blue hooded seed stitch blanket which he still sleeps with to this day. But since I’ve had a few years to hone my knitting skills, I wanted to knit something a little more challenging for baby #2. My problem is I find that most baby blanket patterns out there are either too frilly/lacy/old-fashioned or else just kind of boring. I considered this one for a while but I finally settled on this one instead:

Simple and classic and the contrasting running stitch makes it visually interesting enough without being over-the-top. Of course the blanket I’ll make will be blue and brown but now I can’t wait to get back to CA to start hunting for yarn.

In the meantime, I cast on on another project:
I’m hesitant to say anything more about it because it’s a present for someone who may be reading this but I have to say that I hadn’t realized how much I missed having something to knit. If I’ve been feeling a little low recently, this week — having both a new book to read and something to do with my fingers in my downtime — has made a world of difference. I’m nowhere near being the greatest knitter out there but it amazes me just how much this little hobby has become part of my identity.

An Update in Pictures

I’ve been lazy and haven’t been posting very regularly but this is what’s been going on in the last week or two…

A Visit — Hooray!
Lianne, who I’ve known since the seventh grade (back when she was still Lian without the ‘ne’), is on an Asian tour at the moment and spent about a week in Hong Kong before continuing on to Taiwan and Tokyo. As luck would have it, I was super sick that week but with the help of lots and lots of Panadol, I managed to drag myself out of bed and meet her in Central for dim sum and street market shopping. Despite the fact that she is a gorgeous model/actress and I am a frumpy pregnant lady, I still braved a picture with her before we parted ways at an internet/videoke cafe:

Dress Up
The boy is in a big dress up phase right now. I’m pretty sure it started last October when he was Buzz Lightyear for Halloween. Then Clarita bought him a Spiderman costume for Christmas. He’s been clamoring for a Batman suit ever since so when I spotted one on Li Yuen Street while shopping with Lianne, I just had to pick it up. He loves his costumes and changes into either Batman or Spiderman almost every day after coming home from school:

A Small Pepsi Mystery
I have no idea who this guy is on my Pepsi can but he freaks me out and makes me wish I would remember to tell Clarita that we prefer Coke:

Valentine’s Day Cookies
I wanted to make cookies for Valentine’s Day and saw this recipe for Coconut Shortbread Cookies on smitten kitchen. Considering it combines two of my favorite ingredients — coconut and butter — in one cookie, I had to try it out. Noah wanted to help me out when it came time to roll out and cut the cookies so that became our small Valentine’s Day project:

He also found my airplane cookie cutter and insisted that we make “Valentine airplane cookies”, so we did:

Finished Object
I finally finished a swing-coat that I’ve been knitting for one of my friends. It had been sitting on our ottoman — 99% complete — for over a week while I procrastinated on going out and buying buttons, but I finally decided to just suck it up and finish it already. I mailed it off today so now I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping that it’ll arrive at her house before she moves:

Etc…
By the way, I happened to pick up a box of MarieBelle caramels at city’super the other day which I polished off in one sitting because they were that good. Anyway, after a couple of caramels I realized that they tasted very familiar and halfway through the box I realized it was because it tasted pretty much exactly like the cajeta I’d made for breakfast the other week. So now I’m totally making this stuff on my own rather than blowing US$10 on 18 little pieces of candy. Total score. You can find the recipe I used for cajeta here in case you’re interested (and have as big a sweet tooth as I do).

Weekend Update

Most everyone I know is having a really kick-ass weekend right now.  A bunch of my friends flew to Richmond, VA from all around the country to have a big girls’ weekend (see Jess’ recap here and Cristina’s version here).  I was supposed to go too since Mark and I had been planning on being in that part of the country for the inauguration but we ended up cancelling the trip because of our upcoming move and now I’m so bitter I can barely stand to read updates on the girls’ weekend.  Except that I do because I’m insanely curious about what went on.  Mark, in the meantime, is still on his business trip although since it’s the weekend and he’s in SF I think he’s mostly just hanging out, relaxing and eating good food.  I’m also insanely jealous of him.  Especially since Sunday he’s got a day of football, BBQ and boardgames planned with my family.

So, not to be outdone, I also planned a fun-filled (read: distracting enough that I don’t think about how much fun everyone else is having without me) weekend with the boy.  It got off to a rocky start on Saturday since I woke up sick.  Clarita took Noah off my hands pretty much all day so I could rest up and get better and by Sunday, I was feeling well enough to take the boy out for the day.

We started off the day by catching a movie at the theater.  Yes, 10 am may seem rather early to be watching a movie for normal people, but when you’ve been awake since 6 am, it’s practically mid-day already and perfect time to catch a movie break.  We watched Madagascar 2 (for the third time), grabbed lunch afterwards, then I took Noah on one of my favorite things to do in Hong Kong — ride the Star Ferry:

When we landed on the Kowloon side, I took Noah to one of his favorite things to do in…well, anywhere really — go to Toys R’ Us and buy toys. I think I mentioned that his potty training has taken a bit of a backward step, so I needed to go and buy motivational toys for the boy. We spent an hour browsing and he picked out five toys that he really wanted. I let him have one toy right away and then covered my head and neck while he threw a fit when he realized that he wasn’t getting them all rightthatveryinstant. Ok, that part of the plan was probably not very well thought out on my part, but it was quickly forgotten once we sat down for a snack. Then we took the ferry back to HK side:

Yes, I am that mother who lets her son hang his head off the side of the boat.

Noah insisted on sitting on every one of the chains to test out their swingability:

At the ferry terminal, they were holding the weekly organic farmer’s market. All of the fruits and vegetables sold there are locally grown in Hong Kong using no pesticides. That doesn’t mean I trust the produce enough to eat it though (you never quite know what exactly is in the water) and there were a ton of vegetables that I had never seen or eaten before. For some reason, Noah was intent on groping all of the carrots he saw and when I asked him to stop, he told me, “But I love carrots so much. They’re my favorite!” (This is a complete lie. The boy refuses to eat carrots.) One of the vendors overheard and took pity on him (for having such a mean, cheap mom I’m guessing) and gave him one:

After a little bit of grocery shopping, we went back home where we had dinner and then had a crazy 80′s dance party* before turning in for the night. Post-Noah, my nights have been consumed with lots and lots of crocheting. I don’t have enough supplies to finish these little guys so they’re still incomplete, but this is what I was doing while my friends were out eating, drinking and basically having a ton of fun:

(The Corporate Zombie on the left is missing a tie, a mouth, and blood running down his chin. He also needs a haircut, but I spent so much time making the fringe for his hair I couldn’t stand the thought of cutting it. The Grim Reaper needs a real scythe — as in, one that isn’t made out of a pink Post-it note. And they’re both missing eyes — the pins are just placeholders — but I don’t really know where to go to buy felt to finish them both off. Another example of my short-sighted thinking.)

So yeah, eat your hearts out Richmond girls and family. Who says I don’t know how to have fun by myself.

* Fun fact: Noah really digs Run DMC’s version of Walk This Way. It’s hilarious to watch him immediately start bouncing once he hears the beat. He is also exceedingly fond of Starship’s We Built This City (although he tries to sing to this rather than dance to it) and Europe’s The Final Countdown — I taught him how to just jump straight up and down during this song…yeah, just like in the video.