Monday, December 13, 2010

What a difference a week makes

A week ago, I was going crazy. Daniel was not feeling well and was having a very cranky day. We were all tired and exhausted, coming off of two 90-100 hr work weeks for Dave (and for me!). But this past week, Dave only worked 55 hours! In case you don't know, that is unbelievable for a resident. He was home before 6:00 FOUR nights out of five. Plus he had the whole weekend off. I can't believe what a difference it made to have a husband and dad for the weekend. A friend took Daniel for a couple hours and we had a date Saturday morning. We got a Christmas tree. We went to church. Daniel got to play with his Daddy. Dave and I got to interact like normal people and talk and laugh together. I started the week more refreshed and not so far behind. Is this what life is really like for normal people with normal jobs?

Today I had three goals: do laundry, play outside in the snow, and go to the produce market. And if we were really doing well, maybe clean the bathroom too. Three loads of laundry are washed, dried and put away. We spent 10 minutes getting all dressed to go play in the snow, 10 minutes playing in the snow (it was really cold!) and another 5 minutes getting out of our snow clothes. We cleaned the bathroom. We went to the produce market (had I known how bad the roads were, I probably would have skipped it!). Plus I kept all the dishes washed as we used them. Daniel helped me with most of those things, so I didn't feel like I did them at the expense of focusing on him. Then after dinner, I could just relax and play with Daniel without worrying about anything else I needed to get done. It feels so good and empowering to have had such a good day, and it's a wonderful blessing after the last few weeks of craziness.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

15 months

Daniel is 15 months old and he won't be for much longer, so I'd better go ahead and write about it. I'm writing instead of doing dishes, cleaning up, returning phone calls and doing several other things I should probably be doing, but if I don't, I won't have anything to remember these precious days!

He's 33 inches tall and weighs about 25 pounds. Yes, that is very tall. He is as tall as or taller than most of his friends who are several (or many!) months older than him. Sometimes I wonder why he isn't doing some of the things they're doing and then I remember that he isn't as old as they are and he's doing just fine.

Daniel jabbers a lot, with animated expressions and lots of pointing. It all sounds very interesting, but we can't understand a word of it. He has said a few words, though he doesn't use many of them consistently: mama, dada, uh-oh, bye-bye, kit (kitty) and chs (cheese). He signs "all done" regularly, "milk" sometimes (the kind from mama, not from a cow), and his new favorite is "please." He finally got that a few weeks ago and a whole new world has opened up to him now that he can tell us that he wants something. The other day, he was pointing to something on the table and signed please. I didn't have a clue what he wanted (usually I know), so I asked him what he wanted and he very emphatically signed please. Hmm. Two days ago, he signed banana (more or less) and cheese.

Daniel loves turning the lights on and off, so I've been holding him up and letting him do it as we go in and out of rooms. He also loves standing on the stool at the bathroom sink playing in the water. He likes to wet his toothbrush and suck the water off. I give him a toothbrush to chew on and I hold a second one to brush his teeth. Often he brushes my teeth while I do his. Whatever works, right? Speaking of teeth, he has 16 of them. We should have a break for at least a couple months before his 2yr molars come in.

Daniel loves to be outside. He enjoyed playing in the leaves during the fall and watching the snowflakes coming down yesterday. Hopefully mama can stay motivated to get him outside to play even when it's cold out.


Daniel is a climber. The other day I turned around and he was standing on the coffee table. He can easily go up and down the stairs and get up and down on the chairs and couch. He's getting pretty good at sliding down from our bed too. It's been really fun to watch him playing at the playground lately, now that he's getting so much better at doing things himself. He runs now too and gets such a thrill out of being chased. We can chase him around and around the loop in our house. It's pretty good exercise for me too, especially if I pick up things off the floor and put them away as we go between all the rooms. He likes music and dances decently to it, though his favorite is to dance around the room with me while I hold him.


Daniel is still a good eater. He likes his food well seasoned (no bland food around here!) and he feeds himself pretty well with a fork and spoon. He wants to hold the bowl himself, thank you very much, and wants to drink out of a real cup, although he might be content with mama's water bottle.

Speaking of water bottles, one of his favorite things to do lately is screw and unscrew caps on and off of bottles, jars or anything similar. He likes to fill them up with toys and stir with a spoon. He opens up all the drawers and pulls things out. He likes to knock down block towers. He can stack the blocks too, but knowing them down is so much more fun. I try to see how many I can get on top of each other before he knocks them down. He likes to color/write, but only with a pen. With crayons, he's more interested in putting them in the box or eating them than he is in coloring with them. He also enjoys typing at the computer and can even climb up in the chair himself.


Daniel is very busy, but very fun. It's wonderful to watch him explore the world and I'm so glad I get to be his mom and spend all my days with him.