Saturday, February 26, 2011

Enjoying the flowers, the warmth and the light

Last week we went to the conservatory at Belle Isle. It's a beautiful place any time of year, but it's an especially nice place to be when it's cold outside. The lighting also makes it a great place to take pictures. I'm glad I grabbed my camera on the way out the door!






Daniel reaching for the camera, which is what most of my pictures are lately! (I do let him have a turn too.)

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Snow Day!

We had the unthinkable happen yesterday. Dave had a snow day. Let me repeat - Dave had a snow day. This does NOT happen. Ever. Residents (and any health professionals, really) do NOT get snow days. But the other senior resident who's on the same service with Dave was on call yesterday so he had to be there and had to stay all night. After looking at the number of patients they had Sunday night he called Dave and told him not to worry about trying to get in to the hospital on Monday. What an amazing blessing for our family.

Dave worked a 30 hr shift Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. We works another one today and another on Thursday. Plus he needed to prepare two lectures to give on Thursday. This was going to be a really challenging week, for all three of us. I was praying that the Lord would strengthen us and see us through. But he was so gracious and gave Dave a snow day. He was able to sleep until almost 8:00!! He got to spend some time with Daniel and with me. He shoveled almost all of the driveway and sidewalk (though Daniel and I did help). Despite all that he was able to work quite a few hours on his presentations. And I spent the day overwhelmed with gratitude for this blessing.





(You probably noticed that Daniel is not wearing his mittens. If he has on mittens, he cannot hold shovels and snow brushes and do what mom and dad are doing, so he takes them off. Any ideas for how to let him use his hands while still keeping them warm?)

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

18 months

Daniel is a year and a half old. I often think he's older than that, maybe because he's so tall. At his 18mo well visit, he was 34in and 26 lbs. Or so. Neither measurement was all that exact because Daniel was not so interested in being measured :)

Daniel's phrase of the month is: "Oh no!" Dave read him a story that said "Oh no!" several times and Daniel picked right up on it, even imitating Dave's inflection. It was so cute to hear him emphatically saying, "Oh no!" in his sweet little baby voice. We could tell at first that he didn't quite understand what it meant. We laughed when he said it randomly and so it became the-words-that-make-mom-and-dad-laugh. He knew uh-oh, so I started saying oh no in place of uh-oh and he got the meaning pretty quickly. Other new words include: broom, bubble, beh-bah (belly button), choo-choo, boom, eye and pop. He's been saying a lot of new words but I don't always remember long enough to write them down. He also makes a lot of sound effects, making me realize how many silly sounds and sound effects I make throughout the day. Since I started writing this (almost 2 weeks ago!) he's added sharp, hop, green, blue and shoe. He's also started signing light, again and more and shakes his head "no."

Daniel loves to run and to be chased around the house. He also loves climbing on the couch and then jumping off into or arms or jumping from one couch to the other. He's turning into quite the climber and I'm trying to give him enough places where he can climb.

Daniel has a pretty good memory and knows where things are. One day I went to change his diaper and the wipe solution bottle wasn't on the shelf. I asked Daniel where it was (he had been playing with one of them earlier) and he pointed behind the changing table. Sure enough, both the bottle I knew he was playing with and the one I was looking for were under the changing table. I can usually ask him where he put something and he'll run off to get it and bring it back.

Daniel has figured out how to pull the trigger on the spray bottle. At first he could only push it when he was pointing the bottle towards him. He alternately shot water over his shoulder and into his face, squealing and laughing as he did.

Daniel pulled the vacuum out of the closet the other night, unwound the cord and brought it over to me to plug in for him. I plugged it in, finished a couple things and then we vacuumed. I went to unplug the vacuum when we were done and it was plugged in to a totally different outlet than I had plugged it into! I don't think the cat switched it, so it must have been Daniel!

One of our favorite games this month has been the "run to mama" game. I sit on the floor with my arms out and say, "Run to mama!" Daniel comes running to me and gives me a big bear hug. Then he'll run giggling to the other room or to dad, stop a a minute, then run back to me again for another hug.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

This and That

- We've had the sickies visiting us the last 2 weeks, with a stomach bug and then a nasty cold. Fortunately, the stomach bug is long gone, the cold is on it's way out and we're able to get out of the house again - woo hoo! We were also very fortunate that Dave's mom was able to come for several days to help with all the fallout. Did I mention that we started moving furniture a few hours before Daniel and I got sick? We spent several days with the couch in the middle of the room blocking the bookshelf and random books and tables strewn about until we could get it all back under control.

- Daniel was pulling baking pans out of the drawer under the oven when I noticed that it was pretty dirty. I figured I might as well wipe it out while it was already half-empty. I pulled out the drawer and I was so shocked to see everything that had accumulated under the stove that I had to write it down: 5 letter magnets, spatula, pen, battery, lid from an olive oil jar, cat medicine syringe, crayon, cheerios, popcorn, twist ties, goldfish, leaf, raisins, dust bunnies, spaghetti noodles, cat food and a peanut.

- Aside from under the oven, my house stays so much cleaner now that Daniel loves to vacuum. Seriously, when I was making a list Tuesday night of fun things we could do to keep Daniel busy while we were snowbound, I wrote down "vacuum."