Day 225

Horray! No more fire alarm testing today!

Double horray! Soren slept all night Tuesday night, straight through, in his bed. He was a little restless, made some whimpering noises a few times, but the couple of times I got up to check on him, he was fast asleep by the time I got to his room.

Since we've converted his crib to a day bed, he can get out of bed and come padding into our room in the morning (or, a couple of times, in the middle of the night if he's particularly agitated). It is the cutest freaking thing when he wakes up all happy and quietly and trots through the apartment to our room with a big ol' "Good morning!" grin on his face. Seriously, I might collapse from the cuteness if I were not already lying down in bed.

So, this morning I got up and checked online to see what time our playgroup stroller walk was scheduled to start. The one I specifically wrote down as our Wednesday activity. Turns out, it was at 11:30...yesterday morning. Grr. Accursed mommy-brain. So we played some games at home instead, caught an early(ish) nap, tried not to drive each other too crazy. When Tom got home from work, there was much rejoicing; Soren had been quite sad to see him leave this morning. The three of us practiced playing catch, which made Soren giggle and giggle. Dinner was teriyaki chicken and broccoli, which the boy happily ate. All in all, not too bad of a day.

Day 224

Tuesday, for the second day in a row, the maintenance folks at our apartment complex were working on the building fire alarm system. They began this work right after their lunch, which, coincidentally, is right before Soren's naptime. The fire alarms in the hallways of our building are old-school alarm bells, big metal things with a little hammer that makes them go brrrrrrriiinnnnnnnnng! So at least they're not buzzers or sirens or something like that. But they were ringing intermittently for a good hour and a half (or rather, a bad hour and a half). Fortunately, if the ringing starts before the lad's actually fallen asleep, he seems to be able to sort of tune it out and go on about his nap. So they're incredibly annoying, but at least mister's sleep didn't suffer.

For dinner I made spaghetti squash...spaghetti. Sort of. It was kind of a battle, but I managed to hack my way through the refrigerated squash to cut it in half for roasting. Once it was roasted, I scraped out the squash strings and mixed them in a pan with some garlic, stewed plum tomatoes, a little lemon juice, and a bunch of crumbled goat cheese. I was afraid it wasn't going to be enough food, but it was remarkably filling. Probably not worth the effort (I'd rather just boil up some pasta instead) but it was tasty enough. Soren didn't deign to try any, but that's okay. He's been a fairly good eater again so far this week.

Two cute moments from the day: when the cashier at Trader Joe's handed the lad a balloon, he responded with a very enthusiastic "Thank you!" Also, he's just starting to get the idea of counting. While pointing to four things, he said, "One, one, two, two!" Hehe, close, but not quite. ;) Honorable mention for cuteness: his word for yogurt is "ah-guuuuuung," with a very deliberately drawn out "gung." He's a funny one.

Day 223

It's awfully cute when these two sit in the morning sun together.

Monday was mostly a laundry day. Laaaame. I don't have any fun stories about Monday. Sorry.

Day 222

The guys went to the park this morning while I got Soren's closet organized. I went through all the bins of tiny clothes, getting them organized and labeled in preparation for the arrival of the wee lass. I pulled out all the newborn stuff, which looks SO tiny now. Holy criminy. It's hard to believe Soren ever fit in any of that.

Did some cleaning and tidying, lots of laundry, and Tom got our printer working again (yay!). Then this evening I remembered I needed to take a picture of the lad for the day. The above photo is the result of me holding the camera off to the side, just out of his reach, while he sat in my lap chanting, "Baby! Baby! Baby!"

Day 221

Well now I've done it. I've got myself some nice blackmail ammunition for Soren's teenage years. "Aw, look how cute you were, learning to use the toilet..." We're still not really potty training in earnest, but he gets to use the toilet several times a day now, usually right before we put a new diaper on him. He seems to think it's fun.

Yay, weekend! We didn't do much. Ate soup leftovers, lazed around, tried to keep the boy entertained, entertained ourselves by getting him to repeat new words. I may have mentioned this already, but he's become quite the mimic. We still can't get him to say "please" though. He's got "thank you," but we're trying to gently turn his demands ("Milk!" "Cheese!" "Kya!") into requests ("Milk please." etc.). So far he's not been so amenable to these attempts to civilize him. We'll keep working at it.

Day 220

Extreme close-up!

It's been a little difficult lately to get decent pictures of the boy. As soon as he sees me get the camera out, he's instantly harassing me to let him look at pictures of himself on the LCD screen. Little narcissist. So I end up with blurry pictures like the one above, as he's flinging himself at me too quickly for the camera to refocus. ;)

Friday we mostly stuck around at home. It was another chilly, rainy day. I made a halfway decent potato soup in the crock pot. The recipe was kind of unusual in that it called for me to mix flour and water (though I used vegetable broth) together in the pot before adding any of the vegetables. I expected it to be a huge pain to get the mixture fully homogenized, but it was only a little bit of a pain. More painful is the fact that I can't seem to peel potatoes without also peeling one or more of my fingers. (Yeah, I'm that good.) In the soup: potatoes, yams, carrots, celery, mushrooms, garlic, milk & cream cheese. 'Twas tasty.

Soren's been a better eater this week, finally! He's fully on "real people" food now - hasn't had jarred baby food in weeks - eating what we eat, plus the random assortment of string cheeses, crackers, nuts and fruits for his snacks throughout the day. The grazing method seems to be working pretty well, which is one of the recommended approaches I keep seeing on parenting advice websites. It's just like you're supposed to feed a horse - little & often. But in the past week he's chowed down on pesto pizza, spinach ravioli, and a couple other things that are currently escaping my recollection. Oh, and yogurt. He's discovered an appreciation for yogurt. So that's good. We'll fatten up the little string bean yet.

Day 219

Thursday morning we went to playgroup at the library as usual. It was quite a chilly and wet day! Soren seemed to have a good time playing; he only tried to escape a few times. I'm starting to make friends with several of the moms, which is nice.

There was a strange episode near the end of the playdate. Soren came over to sit sedately in my lap and eat some snacks (very rare behavior...he's more of the eat-and-run sort, these days). He got to playing with his sippy cup and was very involved in methodically removing and replacing the lid, once he'd drunk all the water. One of the little girls there kind of sidled up and swiped the cup away from him at one point. Now, normally the lad will kind of roll with the punches if someone steals a toy from him, but this time he freaked out. He stayed in my lap but was very upset, to the point of shaking all over and starting to cry. The little girl's mom led her back over, and we tried to give the kids a chance to work it out themselves, for the girl to see she was upsetting Soren and just give the cup back on her own. There was a little bit of a stand-off, as she seemed to ascertain that this must be a very important cup, and perhaps she should hold onto it instead of giving it back. Eventually, the cup was returned to Soren, who slowly calmed down and stopped shaking. It was an interesting learning moment. It's hard sometimes, as a parent, not to just step in and deal with things directly, but they've got to learn the concept of give and take somehow.

Anyway. Yet again, I neglected to get any pictures taken on Thursday, so the one above is from Friday morning. Now that Soren's figured out how to Houdini his way out of his pjs, sometimes I'll turn around from checking email in the morning to see him sitting (or strutting) around in just a diaper. It's pretty silly.

Just a little Thursday morning amusement

Day 218

Why are we so smiley, you ask? Because Wednesday was Veterans' Day, and Tom had the day off work! Which was great because I felt crummy with a capital C for most of the day and was super thankful to be able to veg on the couch while Tom took over Soren tending duties.

So yeah, I don't really have much to say about Wednesday, except thank you to veterans for your service and to the federal government for the much appreciated mid-week day off.

Day 217

Most of Tuesday morning was spent in pursuit of swine flu vaccinations. First we went to the nearest Health Department clinic location, arriving right before they opened at 8am, to discover a line of people wrapping all the way around the building and no empty parking spots in the lot. So much for that! We drove over to another location, about which I'd heard good things from other moms. When we got there, around 9:00, there was a bit of a long line, but it was all indoors. A volunteer was coming by handing out numbered cards, which gave us the option of coming back later and being allowed to go to the front of the line at that time. Since the expected wait time was a good 2-3 hours, we opted to go on home. Turns out, we probably would have gotten through faster - there was absolutely no line when we returned at 11:30, and we were able to walk right in - but I'm glad I didn't try to wait with Mr. Wiggly even for an hour. It was a lot easier to just walk in, get our shots, and be on our way again. Sir was a trooper, too. He cried a little but was over it in about 20 seconds.

And then we went home and he slept for 3 hours. I napped for a good chunk of time as well. Neither of us had a fever or any noticeable ill effects from the vaccine, but I suspect being able to get a good bunch of sleep right afterward was helpful.

Later, I grilled some pork chops (to round out our pig-themed day), and the boys read some books. All's well that ends well.