Daily Danica v2.0... and Colin, Too!

Mark It Down

2012-01-27T16:20:00.001-08:00

On Thursday, January 26, 2012 Danica actually took my suggestion to close her eyes in the car as we drove to Hazel's birthday party. School really tuckers her out sometimes.

Suprise

2012-01-26T08:12:00.001-08:00

The Girl's friend, Lauryn, surprised her with a gift upon Danica's return to school from a couple of days out for being sick.

Danica at Kindergarten, Day 1

2011-09-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Started to write this Thursday night, but clearly I didn't finish...

Day 1 of Danica's kindergarten year went well. Kindra and I were a little apprehensive about how smoothly the day might go given the fact that over the past couple of days (and occasionally over the past couple of weeks) Danica had expressed some ambivalance toward going to school. Fortunately, she's gotten better about dealing with new situations, so long as we prepare her and tell her what to expect. Of course, that process is about three weeks long, but whatever...

I was going to be the one taking Danica to school because of two things: 1) Kindra had just started school the day before and 2) Danica always seems much more clingy when Kindra has to drop her off anywhere. Used to happen at preschool when Kindra would drop her off and had happened just the week before when Danica was getting dropped off at her new before- and after-school care - lots of clinging and crying and fit-throwing. Probably not the best on the first day. For some reason, these things rarely happen when I have to leave her somewhere...

Anyway, Wednesday night, to get her to go to sleep without panicking, I promised her we'd go get a smoothie in the morning and go to Yogurtland after school if she was really good during the day (no, I am not above bribery to foster courage in these situations). Fortunately, this idea worked - The Girl does have a steel trap for a mind and never forgets anything. So after getting squared away in the morning, we trucked over to Jamba Juice to grab a smoothie, then had to get home so Danica could change into her 1st-day-of-school outfit. Was pretty easy getting that done, since she helped pick out the outfit. The only difficulty was getting Colin to cooperate and get moving.

We arrived at school about 10 minutes before her class started so we could park across the street and walk in (the school closes the parking lot because it's so small). Danica asked to be carried, which I steadfastly denied. I wasn't going to embarrass her by carrying her to school on her very first day (there will be plenty of time later to embarrass her). Went around back to her classroom to wait with a group of paparazzi parents who must've all known each other - there were a group of six or seven kids lined up next to each other against the wall, with the parents snapping away like a firing squad.

Danica stood silently and stared at the full playground as I explained what was happening. Seems on the first day of school, grades 1-6 are on a minimum-day schedule, so everybody was out at recess as the late kindergarten was getting ready to start. Danica told me she recognized some girls from her daycare, and she saw her friend Madison from preschool, which helped. She also recognized the teacher that did her kinder assessment the week before, whom she connected with.

When it was time for the kids to go in, Danica gave Colin two big hugs, picking him up off the ground each time (she kinda fell over with him the second time, dropping him - gently - on his back. Um, no I wasn't snapping a photo while this occured...). She readily took her backpack from me and carried it inside with the other kids to be put on a hook in the hallway. Yeah, I joined the pack of papparazzi snapping photos & video in the narrow hallway as the kids filed into the classroom. I think Danica was cool with things because not only was it the teacher she had her assessment with, but also the same classroom.

Aaaaaaand this is where things got tricky. See, she was assigned neither the teacher nor the classroom. She'd sat down on the colored rug right in the purple square she told the teacher she would sit in during her assessment, but she came out willingly... until I opened the door across the hall and said that this was her classroom.

She stood against the wall outside the other classroom & shook her head, but after a little bit of prodding, she came in with me. Her teacher was reading a book about the first day of kindergarten that we have at home, giving Danica another link to something familiar. We sat in the back until the teacher was done reading, at which point the parents were given their waves good-bye.

I walked Danica up to the front, and introduced her to the teacher, who was dealing with a little boy that was bawling (side note: so happy my kid wasn't the one bawling). We kissed good-bye & Colin gave her a hug and that was that.

Of Course She's Happy

2011-09-10T17:54:00.001-07:00

A little post-ballet treat at Yogurtland.

Too Early for Empty-Nest Syndrome?

2011-09-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

Dropped Danica off at kindergarten with a mimimum of fuss this morning, and now it seems strange that this is the first time in 5 years that a majority of my days will be spent without Danica around. Even though she starts school later in the morning, I think I will still be taking her to school on Tuesdsays and Thursdays around 9:00 am to drop her off with the before- and after-school care people so she can stay in a rhythm, leaving Colin and I on our own for the first time in his life. I'm not really sure what to make of it yet, other than watching one kid at a time is waaaaaaay easier than two.

It is a great opportunity for me and Bud to spend some better time together - we got a chance to hit the grocery store by ourselves right after we dropped Danica off, which was quick and painless, since I wasn't in the business of herding the both of them. Bud sat in the shopping cart playing with his V-Reader, while I cruised the aisles without too much worry. Reminded me of the days before we had Colin - though I recall that Danica was a bit fussy even back then.

Not having Smoosh around has been fairly weird during some parts of the day so far, but at least she seemed as comfortable as could be expected staying at kindergarten the first day. We'll see how it goes when we go to pick her up after Colin's nap and she's also had to transition to after-school care.

'Twas the Night Before Kindergarten

2011-09-07T23:09:00.000-07:00

One more hour is what I've got before my first toddler becomes an elementary-school student. Five years ago, we were trying to figure out how to keep our little girl on a sleep/eat/poop schedule, and now we're trying to figure out how to drop her off and pick her up at kindergarten.

The Girl isn't too psyched about it - she freaked out a bit last night about the whole thing. We've been talking to her about it for quite some time, but she asked as she was going to bed last night when she was going to kindergarten:

"Tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow, the next day."

(Pauses, starts the crying face) "Nooooooooooo! I don't want to."

* * *

At least we have some time in the morning, since she doesn't start until 10:20 am. I am disappointed in half-day kindergarten, especially since we have to have the later class. It's good that we have some extra time for me to get her into going, but it may backfire to where she'll just want to stay home more.

The other problem with the later class is she gets out at 1:40 pm, too early for me to get her on Tuesdays & Thursdays when I'm home with Colin, so we'll be paying for 5 days of before- & after-school care. With the early kinder, I could've picked her up at 11:20 am when she got out of school. We're still deciding whether or not to take her early on Tuesdays & Thursdays.

* * *

To be honest, I'm still not sure exactly how to drop her off at school, since things have changed since I was in kindergarten. Both kids were over at Jessie's this morning while I was at work, but when I went to get them at noon, we walked with Jessie to go get Ela & Layla at their school, so it gave me and Danica an opportunity to see the chaos that is pick-up time. Bonus is that Danica's friends Sophia & Allison also go to the school.

When we arrived about 5 minutes before school let out (minimum day first day?), the crowd was standing outside the fence, huddled around the opening like they were waiting for the Beatles. Anyway, what surprised me is that Jessie told me you don't take the kids to their classrooms anymore, but instead line them up by class outside on the blacktop in the morning. Same goes for pick-up, which is a far cry from the days when you used to hang out on the curb waiting for your Mom to pull up in the car.

Regardless, at least I got an idea of what the process was like and Danica got to see her friend Allison excited after school, thought I doubt Danica even noticed. Guess we'll find out in a few hours how it goes...

Golden Moment of the Day (From Last Week)

2011-08-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

As typical of a nuclear family, mornings are usually pretty hectic on days that the kids have to go to daycare. We're always on the move getting dressed, getting the kids dressed, getting them to eat, prepping lunches, eating breakfast ourselves and making sure we have everything for the day, so it's always nice to get a little help.

Colin will occasionally be sensitive in the morning, wanting to be held all the time and being very picky about what he eats. This particular morning, he was being Whiny Boy, and ended up dropping his V-Reader on his toe while following me around to try and get me to pick him up. As I headed over to the freezer to get an ice pack, Danica got down from her seat at the kitchen table and started patting him on the back saying, "It's okay. You'll be okay. Do you want an ice pack?"

Golden.

* * *

Runner-up Golden Moment of (That) Day: Danica sleeping in until 8:00 am because she woke up pretty much on the hour from 1:00 am to 4:00 am that morning. It was like a small miracle. Why couldn't it have been on the weekend?

Lunch! (Or How Mom Gets to Shop)

2011-07-18T15:01:00.001-07:00

A little downtime at the Renegade Craft Fair at Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Tuckered.

2011-06-16T15:28:00.001-07:00

Stayed awake *just* long enough to finish chewing his second French Fry.

Proving Dad Wrong

2011-05-25T11:30:00.001-07:00

Nope, they didn't need to go home (it's boring), nor did they need to rest (they weren't tired).

It Has Begun...

2011-04-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

A little ironic given that she still sleeps in her brother's room. She asked to make the sign, copied the words after Kindra had written them down & then read it to her brother when she was finished.

And, yes, it applies to Dad, too.

A Little Backyard Sunshine

2011-04-09T13:13:00.001-07:00

Wow

2011-04-04T12:32:00.003-07:00

I can't believe I sat out the entirety of 2010... The amount I've updated this is just a reflection of how much time I'm spending at a computer for work. I'm not as bright as I seem.

Adios, 2009, and Sayonara to the First Ten Years of the 2000's.

2009-12-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

How about 2009? The kids turned three and one, and we all moved into a new home. Here's looking forward to a better 2010. Cheers.

The Princess & "The Princess and the Frog"

2009-12-19T22:44:00.000-08:00

I took Danica to see her third movie in a movie theater last Saturday. Naturally, it was The Princess and the Frog. We'd taken her to Cars when she was about six months old and to Wall-E shortly after Colin was born, but this is the first time she'd had the patience to sit through an entire movie (or most of the movie). She wasn't totally hyped to see the movie because I hadn't shown her much of it and we hadn't talked about it a lot, which is not to say she did not want to see the movie. I think I was more excited to take her, but it was still a good time.

We went to an 11:30 am show, which was probably a little late, since she hadn't slept well the night before. In retrospect, the 10:30 show we missed might've been better. It was a pretty good day to go to the movies since it was in the 50's temperature-wise and raining cats & dogs. When we went to get in the car, I was a little concerned because it was coming down hard, but after a quick run back inside to pick up some snacks, the rain had stopped. Guess that was a sign to go through with it.

I wanted her to get a little bit of a movie experience, so I bought her some M&M's and a Sprite, thinking she might have some. M&M's yes, Sprite no (but I think she just wasn't thirsty). We got into the moderately-packed theater and found some seats in the middle near the top. She just kinda sat and took it all in, which was pretty cute. She didn't want to take off her jacket for a couple of minutes, sitting straight up on the edge of her seat, clutching her bag of M&M's.

We got there just a little bit early since I have a thing about getting to movies on time and not wanting to struggle to find a seat. You never realize how much crap is shown before you even see a preview until you wait with your child. She didn't take her eyes off the screen and she wasn't restless, I just wanted to get to the movie. She sat perfectly still, even through all the previews, with occasional smiles and comments regarding some of the previews she saw (favs were Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Toy Story 3). Once the movie began, she cuddled up next to me, holding my arm.

She sat through a good portion of it, either in her seat or in my lap. The M&M's and the bag of Cheerios and fruit bar I brought along helped out. I'll play critic for a second and say that it was an average Disney movie – not bad, but not groundbreaking. It took a while to get to the frog part, some parts in the middle were a bit slow, and there weren't a lot of “wow” moments. Consequently, she started to get happy legs about two-thirds of the way in, but she was good the rest of the way, staying quite and watching the movie despite standing up or bouncing her legs on her seat. She liked the movie, except the parts with the “bad man. He makes monster shadows.” Kind of her standard answer, liking most movies, but pointing out the antagonist as the part she could do without.

After the movie ended, she did ask if we were going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, so I guess she did like the movie experience. I took her to see the giant Alvin and the Chipmunks statues they had out in the lobby, but she didn't want to take a picture with them, given that (her words), “They're not real.” She did end up snapping a photo of them, despite my offer for her to take a picture of me with them if she would let me take one of her.

We had lunch at Panera afterward, even though I knew she was getting tired. She did eat most of her grilled cheese and of course had all of her yogurt and milk. Hoping we'll have a chance to do it again, but my year of free movie tickets is up at the end of January and there are few kids' movies out after Christmas. Glad she's getting to the age when we can start doing things but still small enough for her to enjoy doing them with us.

So We're Back... Hopefully

2009-12-17T23:09:00.000-08:00

I figure six months off is long enough... It's been hectic, given the move over the summer, travel, getting through fall sports seasons, and now getting the winter sports underway. To put is bluntly, it's been hell.

The kids have grown so much over the past six months, I'm not even sure where to begin. Colin is beginning to grow into his attitude - starting to exhibit some of his sister's traits, so you know they're brother and sister. His big things right now are that he's extremely whiny when he wakes up, wanting to be held (only if you're standing up, of course), and he's only good for (maybe) one meal a day. Guess his growth spurt is over.

We are starting to see evidence that the second child picks up certain things faster than the first, as Colin's vocabulary is much more advanced that his sister's was at one-and-a-half. Of course, he doesn't pronounce things so well, but he's constantly adding new words. Prominent ones are “wah-why” (water), “bah-bye” (bar, as in fruit bar – though he does say “bye”), “siz-zee” (sissy, as in Danica), “wha et guh?” (where'd it go), “dey iz!” (there it is), and he has picked up “Santa.” He, of course, can say thank you and please as well. There are more, but I can't think of them right now.

He does do a funny “Woody” and “Buzz” from Toy Story - “Whou-y” and “Buh.” I just picked up a hat with the two of them on it that he loves. He'll point at it and say, “Whou-y. Buh. Whou-y. Buh... Buh. Whou-y.” Gotta love marketing.

Danica's growing up into a little girl, so much so I forget that she's only three. She does come up with something hilarious to say every day. She's really noticing the world around her and formulating her own thoughts. My favorite recent one about a commercial for Zales Jewelers. The story was relayed to me by Kindra:

The commercial features a couple with a sleeping baby in front of a Christmas tree. When Danica saw it, she commented, “Mommy, that's Baby Jesus.” Kindra burst out laughing, and Danica quickly backpedaled, “Maybe it's not.” Kindra assures me that she only laughed because it caught her off guard.

The Girl's also got a pretty decent imagination, but still has trouble articulating. She loves for you to play “games” with her, which usually involve you taking control of a My Little Pony or Disney princess figurine and her telling you what to do. “You want to play _____ with me?” is the invitation to twenty minutes of the same thing over and over. It's a lot more draining after a while than you think it might be, but it's still cute.

One thing that Kindra and I are very happy with is that Danica's starting to listen to our commands better. She can be a real sweetheart most of the time. It's nice to be able to ask her to do something or tell her that she needs to finish her food and have her actually listen. Of course, she's been a good girl her whole life, but it's nice to be able to reason with her a little bit now.

I know there's more, but I'm gonna kill myself trying to write it all down now. Regardless, both kids are happy and healthy, which is all we can hope for.

Too Funny

2009-10-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Kindra was just putting Danica down for a nap, and The Girl was stalling and saying she was hungry:

K: "You just ate. You can have something when you wake up."

D: "But, Mom, when we were at the old house and I said I was hungry, you gave me a piece of cheese."

***

A couple of days ago, Kindra had to drop the kids off at her friend Christy's so that she could go back to work for some parent-teacher conferences. Cheyenne & Brett, who are the children of our first daycare provider, Danielle, were going to watch all four kids. Kindra asked Danica if she remembered who Cheyenne & Brett were. She replied:

"Yeah, remember when Cheyenne's mommy watched me, and I sweeped [slept] on her couch?"

That was a YEAR ago. Crazy.

Earthquakes and Popsicles

2009-05-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

So the kids had their first earthquake experience last night, a 4.7 quake centered near Inglewood around 8:30 p.m. last night. Colin, of course, slept right through it. Danica, however, had this question after we told her it was just the earth shaking:

"Mommy, is the earth shaking because it's cold? Like popsicles?"

Kindra ended up telling her that the earth was warm now, so it stopped shaking.

T-Minus Holy Cow!

2009-04-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe we’re less than two weeks away from Colin’s first birthday and a little over two weeks away from Danica’s third birthday. It’s so weird…

Goings On

2009-04-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe it’s April already. I just realized at the end of the day last Saturday that Colin turned 11 months old. Today, Danica added another month to her count, and now both our kids are less than one month shy of another birthday. Crazy!

So many things have happened over the last month, it’s hard to keep track of the goings on. I’ve been out of commission for about five weeks because of work. Both Kindra and I were stretched pretty thin from the middle of February when winter championships start through March and the end of basketball season (we still are as we actively recover from that stretch of time). I was working crazy hours, and she, of course, was taking care of the kiddies.

Anyway, I know that a lot’s gone on, so I’m trying to catch up in my own mind. I guess I’ll start with the most recent first:

The House

It’s coming along nicely. We just had a meeting with the job supervisor last Wednesday so he could give us the rundown on the framing, wiring, and plumbing. The short of it all: it’s all there. Insulation went in last Thursday/Friday, and I snapped a few photos on Sunday, which was kind of surreal.

Our closing date is June 17, which happens to also be Kindra’s last day of school for the year. It works out nicely, because I wanted to have some time to be able to pack up and move out of the apartment, get sorta settled at the house, and still have some time to clean the apartment.

Danica

The Girl’s doing well. She’s getting better at being potty trained. There have been a couple of times that we’ve been out of the house and she’s said she had to go: the other day, we were at the doctor’s office and she said she had to go. I was there by myself with her and Colin, so I was a little apprehensive about hauling our little family into the bathroom because I thought we were close to going in to see the doctor, so I told her to wait for a minute.

Eventually, she told me she had to go, got up from the table we were sitting at and wandered into the bathroom. By the time I got in there, she’d pulled down her pants and was trying to figure out how to get up on the toilet they had in there. (FYI, Danica’s forgone going on the little training potty we have and is now just using the regular toilet. It’s a little disgusting in that she has to hold onto the toilet seat as she goes, but she refuses to pee anywhere else). Anyway, that went well, and because we were at the doctor’s office and waited an hour for a five-minute consult, she had time to do it again.

She’s also started to talk to herself as she plays, by which I mean I think she’s making up play scenarios. This morning, she brought a book over for me to read to her, but then ended up reading it herself (a.k.a. she’d memorized the words and was saying them aloud) after I had to hold her off for a minute. She’s always doing something that astounds me as she becomes more and more of a little girl.

Oh, and she’s also into puzzles now. We have three, 24-piece puzzles we picked up for her that she can do on her own and really gets a kick out of. The first puzzle we bought for her, a Disney princess puzzle, she needed some help figuring the entire process out. By the time we’d bought her a third puzzle (a “Cars” puzzle), she was able to do it from start to finish with very little help. Actually, I think if the puzzle picture were a little more defined (a line drawing as opposed to a dark movie still-frame), she probably could’ve done it without any help at all.

Colin

The Boy had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday as a follow-up to the ear infection he’d developed about three weeks ago. Both Danica and Colin had been on antibiotics for their infections (Danica’s developed first, of course), but they really weren’t working for Colin. In fact, the doctor had prescribed a light antibiotic, then a stronger one prior to Kindra taking him in a third time. He had to have three shots over three days to clear the infection up. He’s currently fine, though both he and his sister had been nursing a persistent cough for the past couple of weeks.

Colin dropped his “worm” crawling about a month-and-a-half ago, and now only crawls normally. There was a transition period where he would do both, but he’s dropped his old habits. He constantly reminds me how fast he can be by darting down the hallway and into the bathroom or our bedroom.

If you’ll recall, Colin used to do tricks like wave and clap on command, but he seems to have lost those. About the only thing he will do now is give high-fives. I’m not completely sure why he finds them so amusing.

I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t think right now. We’ve all got a little more free time on our hands, so updates should appear more regularly. Kindra’s on Spring Break next week, which I’m sure will lead to some interesting stories.

News Flash

2009-04-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

Last night, Kindra was out on the couch watching some TV when she heard somebody walk into the bathroom, pee, flush the toilet, and then walk out of the bathroom – all without turning the light on. A little while later, she heard the same thing, walked into the bathroom, flipped on the light, and found Danica on the toilet:

“I going potty, Mommy.”

Did I mention that Danica did all this while Dad was lying down with her, trying to get her to go to sleep? Sorry, I have a tough time staying awake when I put The Girl to bed.

Watch What You Say

2009-03-30T20:47:00.000-07:00

I was going out yesterday to go do some shopping at Costco while Kindra stayed home with the kids (The Girl had just woken up, Colin was sleeping) when Danica asked me where I was headed. Thinking I was being cute while attempting to keep her from coming with me, I told her I was going to get a bear.

The Girl (eyes wide): “A big bear?”

Dad: “Maybe.”

TG (a little worried): “I don’t like big bears. I want a little bear.”

D: “I’ll see what I can do.”

TG: “I just like little bears.” (Holds up thumb and forefinger showing just how small a bear).

I thought it was pretty funny, especially since she reminded me to get her a little bear as I was leaving the apartment. It got funnier when I received this text message from Kindra as I was driving:

You’d better come home with a little bear! Daddy going to bring me a wittle bear! I going to show my bear my apron. Is it a talking bear? I going to feed my bear my applesauce.

Heh.

And no, I did not show up with a little bear. I almost went to Target to get her one, but had too many other errands to run. When I got home, Danica asked where her bear was, but I told her I couldn’t get one, and she dropped the whole subject. *Whew.*

I know… I dodged at HUGE bullet. It’s kinda strange, because she’s been super sensitive recently and will cry at the drop of a hat. Double *whew.*

It's Just a Flesh Wound

2009-03-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, let’s get this out there because I knew a lot of you would be asking about this photo:

I really just wanted to get a shot of Colin because he’s turned into a TV zombie, just like his sister and father (totally our fault, and I feel like a crappy parent for letting it happen, but that’s another story). Anyway, it wasn’t until after I posted the photo that I even remembered he had a bandage on his arm, so here’s the story to put an end to most of the questions...

We’re not quite sure how it happened, but Colin ended up scraping/bruising the crook of his elbow. We think it’s from him trying to reach between the bars of his crib to touch the clock radio we have on the end of the couch in his room, but aren’t quite sure. Regardless, it got relatively bad so we slapped some Neosporin on it and covered it up. He’s fine now.

The bandage is a little out of proportion for him, but we needed something that would stay on. It’s the same size as one of the ones you would use to cover up a large scrape on your knee. Personally, the first time Kindra put it on him, I thought he looked tough - like he was wearing an elbow pad. Heh.

Oh, and to point out the one you guys didn’t catch, he has a band-aid on his left ankle because he’s had an usual case of eczema that gets irritated and cracked for a long time. We’ve asked our pediatrician about it, but she insists it’s just eczema, but we’ve been treating it with Neosporin. We’ll be consulting another doctor soon about it.

* * *

In other more amusing Colin news, he hasn’t picked up that much sign language as of yet, but he has developed his own sign over the last couple of weeks. If he’s going to do something that he shouldn’t be doing, and you call to him to tell him “no,” he’ll look at you, hold out his hand palm up and wave it back-and-forth. It’s his acknowledgement that he knows you’re telling him to stop doing what he’s doing, but most of the time he just does his little judo-chop/pseudo-wave, and then returns to what he was doing.

In Sickness and In Health

2009-03-06T17:06:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, we’re in the sickness… Danica’s been fighting what seems to be a sinus infection for about three weeks, and Colin seems to have picked it up over the past few days. We took Danica to the doctor a couple of weeks ago to get her checked out and were given a prescription for an antibiotic. It was a mild drug, so it didn’t quite do the job (obviously).

Fortunately, we had an appointment scheduled for Colin yesterday, so we took them both in to get them looked at. We have a new prescription for a stronger antibiotic, so hopefully that will knock the darn thing out.

* * *

Colin had his regular check-up yesterday as well, measuring in at 29¼ inches and 20 pounds, 6 ounces (rough estimate, since he wouldn’t sit still on the scale). He’s on the big side for his age (barely), which is a bit surprising, though Danica was the same way. As for his weight, he’s leaned out a little and so is on the low side.

His weight drop is most likely due to the fact that he doesn’t eat baby food anymore. Ever since he got a taste of “real” food, he won’t eat the baby stuff anymore. Danica was exactly the same way. *sigh*

The Boy’s picked up some tricks over the past couple of weeks. He waves at pretty much everybody, will clap when you tell him, “Good job!”, and has learned to throw his hands up over his head when you tell him he’s “soooo big!” His mobility’s increased as well – though he still tends to do the worm to get around, he’s picked up actual crawling in the past week or so, and will pull himself up on the couch and scoot around.

He’s really into exploring new things, which is a nice way of saying that he doesn’t like to play with his toys for very long by himself. He’ll usually end up crawling out of the living room area and down our hallway or into our kitchen to see what’s going on. However, it is fun to see him try to put Lego blocks together or see how things fit inside other things. It’s also a nuisance to have him poking around with the DVD player all the time. At least he isn’t into the DVD boxes like Danica was.

* * *

The house is coming up on Week 8 since we started talking about it, about Week 6 since they said they were going to lay the foundation. It’s got a frame up, which took about a week-and-a-half, and is pretty crazy to see in person. And though it is exciting, please stop being so excited for us, because we have to wait it out for a few months before we can move in.

If You're Happy and You Know It

2009-02-12T15:48:00.000-08:00

I know there hasn’t been much update on Colin, but I think it’s because things come fast and furious with the growing boy. It’s also a little that we’ve seen the changes before, and our reactions are more, “Oh, wow. You can do that, too?” as opposed to “OH, WOW. YOU CAN DO THAT!?!” This is not to say that we aren’t happy to see Colin doing some of the things that he does now, because we are.

So what’s new? The Boy’s nine months old now, which is amazing to us. Kindra and I were looking at some old photos and video, when we started watching this:

The video was shot just a couple of days before we had Colin; it was unbelievable that she could barely get out “Wa-wa” for “Wall-E” back then. How is that so much time could have passed, and so much could change with the kiddies without us even realizing the leaps we’ve made as a family?

Colin’s got his two bottom front teeth in and has taken a couple of playful (and not so playful) bites out of our fingers. Of course, those teeth have been around since roughly December 29th, so that’s not big news. However, he has started to get his top front teeth, which may or may not have been bothering him over the past few weeks.

I’m pretty sure they were bothering him two weeks ago when we first noticed them, but the past couple of nights, he’s not been sleeping well. Usually, we’d put him to bed around 6:30 p.m., and he’d be out for the night. Recently, though, he’s been getting up crying and/or screaming at least a couple of times a night and not because Danica’s woken him up. (Oh yeah, did I mention that we moved them back in together (sorta)? More on that later…) We’re hoping he’s not taking after his sister’s sleeping habits.

One habit Colin does have from his sister is that it’s next to impossible to get him to eat baby food anymore. Danica was the same way – introduce “real” food and the ability to self-feed, and that baby food crap is out the window. Problem is, there’s only a limited number of items he can gum down, so Kindra has to force him by giving him some food to eat himself, and then shoveling some baby food into his mouth between bites. He also used to love Cheerios, but now, if there’s something else available, he’ll ignore those.

As far as mobility is concerned, Colin’s started to want to stand more and can pull himself up onto things of a certain height. Heck, it was weird to us that one day he just decided to be able to go from being on his stomach to sitting up. He still does the worm to get around, and I don’t think he’ll ever pick up actually crawling. I guess it’s mostly because I haven’t shown him what it is like I did with Danica.

He’s still happy and smiley, but has begun to develop a bit of stranger anxiety. We just had my two cousins come by, and while he stared at them when they came in, he decided to burst into tears when it appeared that they were going to be staying for a while. One of my cousins, Tsu-Heng, swears that he cries whenever he looks at her (possibly true: he cried when he was having a bottle, and I handed him to her so he was facing me, and he started to bawl).

In just the last couple of days, he’s picked up waving and clapping; I think he learned to wave consistently on Sunday or Monday. This morning, in fact, we were having breakfast when I asked him to wave, and he promptly shook his hand at me. It took him a while, but after I asked him to clap, he did that, too. He gets a kick out of it because he knows he can manipulate us into waving back at him. He also gets a kick out of seeing his hand wave, as he’ll be waving, notice his hand is doing it, and then stare at it as he continues to wave. I’ll get some video of it soon.

Our little newborn boy has been replaced by a little baby boy. I know, I know… time to work on another one. Um… don’t count on it (unless they change child labor laws, or we win the lottery).

Urine-Nation!

2009-02-09T00:49:00.000-08:00

By now most of you have heard that Danica’s been peeing on the potty fairly regularly for about a week and a half. It really got started the last week of January, but has been building for a while. It was a year ago that this picture was taken:

That was way back when she started to figure out when she needed to pee. Unfortunately, we didn’t take advantage since we felt she was 1) too young to pull down her pants by herself and 2) we were worried she might regress when Colin was born. We tried potty training her a couple of months later, but that didn’t work so well (obviously). Regardless, Danica’s always been the type to do things on her own time, so I think that we really just figured it would happen when it happened.

Our daycare provider had been working on potty training Danica a little bit, which mostly involved sitting her on the potty without much to show for it. She ended up just slapping some underwear on The Girl, sans pants, to see what would happen. Turns out, Danica was worried enough about peeing in them that she ended up actually going to the bathroom on the toilet a week ago Wednesday.

Kindra and I were pretty excited about it, so when I was home with Danica on Thursday, I tried the same thing. It’s worked out pretty well ever since. We only put her in panties when we’re home and when she’s not napping, since we’re a little too chicken to try otherwise. She’s started to come around and ask to pee even if she is wearing a diaper sometimes (though it hasn’t happened outside of the home), so we’re able to put pants on her over her underwear.

The only drawback of the whole thing is that we were giving treats to Danica (fruit snacks or M&M’s) whenever she peed in the toilet, including small amounts when. Sooooo… as you can imagine, this has turned into a bit of a fiasco now, as Danica pees about a teaspoon at a time now in order to maximize on the amount of pure sugar she can weasel out of us. Typical.

Hopefully, we’ll get her out of diapers altogether by the summer, but we’re pretty happy about where we’re at now. It’s been good living the in the urine-nation (though we still pretty much reside in the state of confusion).

When It Rains, It Doesn’t Pour

If you’ve been following along on the Flickr site, you know that we’re waiting on the house that we purchased to be built. We took our first family photo in front of the lot four weeks ago:

Four weeks later, it pretty much looks the same, but with a fence around it. You can keep up by going here. I had a meeting with the construction supervisor last Wednesday, and they had the lot trenched, framed, and ready to go to pour the foundation, which was supposed to be done last Friday once they got all the requisite inspections done.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a characteristically bipolar winter, where the weather oscillates between summer temps in the 80’s and wet, rainy weather. Guess where we’re at now. So no, when it rained on Friday, they did not pour. The worse news is that it’s supposed to rain this week as well, on-and-off. Still, they might be able to sneak it in.

The supervisor actually called me on Friday to keep me in the loop, so I’ll say that at least the communication has been good, and hopefully, he’ll let me know what their plans are. He said that framing should take three-to-four weeks, including getting most of the electrical in (the houses next to ours were framed in about that time, so I know he’s not full of it), at which time we’ll have a framing walk-through. Just thought you’d like to hear what the next target date is after the foundation gets done.

Happy Birthday Halfway Around the World

2009-01-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday to Danica’s friend Hazel, who is currently living in Indonesia with her parents, Martha and Greg, and her three brothers, Gavin, Paul, and gestating baby (due later this year). We’ll see them all when they return Stateside at the end of February, which will be the first time we’ve seen them since October 2007.

You can read more about them in my blog from back then.

Ego Trip

2009-01-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

So, as most of you know, my shot of the kids watching Obama’s inauguration got a decent amount of fun pub via the Flickrblog. It was the second photo featured in their “We watched” entry about the inauguration. Quite frankly, I really liked a few of the other photos in there:

Obama Inauguration by calculat0r.

Inauguration Party - Obama takes the Oath of Office by bluheron.

Day 20 / 365 by odeamon.

Regardless, our photo was so popular that day that it made the front page of Flickr’s Explore, a page dedicated to what Flickr calls the “most interesting” photos of the day. Here’s a shot, if you haven’t seen it:

It’s the first time any of my photos has hit the front page, since your photo has to be pretty popular that day to be shown there. The formula for a winning photo is a mystery of photo quality, subject, views, comments, favorites, and dumb luck. I was just happy because I got the shot I wanted for the kids, and people who saw the picture understood what I wanted them to get out of the shot.

Anyway, the photo also made the front page of Yahoo! Italia as part of their Barack Obama coverage:

Some of you have been wondering how it got there. Well, turns out that one of the people who saw my photo was Flickr member Angela:-), who happens to work for Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo! in case you didn’t know). She e-mailed me and asked if she could use the photo of the kids on Yahoo! Italia, so of course I said yes.

Now before you all tell me that we need some kind of compensation, my photos are posted under a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial use as long as I’m given credit for the photo. All in all, the photo was up there for about a day. I’ve gotta say, it’s fun seeing our photos out there in the public.

For Them

2009-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

So they'll have a memory of one of the biggest days in American history.

***UPDATE: 11:55 am, January 20, 2009***

The kids made the Flickr blog! This is the second time Danica's been on it. The first was way back with this photo (which, by the way, has been unseated as my most interesting photo by the second photo above).

Contingency Plan (via xkcd.com)

2009-01-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

Why didn't I think of this before?

A Little Dizzy

2009-01-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

Girl: "Mommy go in my room and see if it's moving."

Mom: "Why is it moving?"

Girl: "Because I was twirling."

Inevitability

2009-01-09T07:19:00.001-08:00

Okay, so you all were right - I spoke too soon regarding Danica's illness. Mom developed it last night around 11:00. I'm dreading Colin developing the symptoms while I await the inevitable.

Curse you all for not agreeing with me that it was food poisoning. I've mailed a letter from all of us to your homes. Open it. Smell it. Join us.

Resistance is futile.

Danica Update

2009-01-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

The Girl heaved a total of five times last night, in case you were keeping count. She slept pretty fitfully, which would mean that Kindra slept pretty fitfully. I stayed home with Danica today – even though we were fairly sure she was fine, Kindra wanted to play it safe. Besides, we wouldn’t want someone to take their kid to daycare if there was a remote possibility he or she was sick.

Danica was pretty grumpy this morning. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I wouldn’t give her much beyond some homemade Pedialyte (water, a little salt, some sugar, and Jell-O powder for flavoring). I’d gone out last night to purchase a few supplies – ginger ale, 7Up, saltines, and actual Pedialyte (oddly enough, I couldn’t find children’s Pepto Bismol chewables). It didn’t really matter, since she didn’t want any of it. She eventually held enough liquid down that I gave her a small amount of Chex cereal. You know she wasn’t feeling well when she wouldn’t eat the second small bowl I gave her.

She spent the morning on the couch, but she couldn’t decide on any of her DVDs to watch. Just exhausted, I suppose. She just wanted to curl up and sit with me. Her mild fever persisted, but we think it’s okay.

She ended up passing out at 11:30 on the couch which was amazing in and of itself, since she never falls asleep anywhere but in the car seat or in her bed. She woke up when Kindra came home around noon, but fell back asleep as I held her on the couch. All in all, I think she took about a three hour nap today.

She seems fine now, and she’ll be at home with me tomorrow so we’ll be able to see how she’s doing.

* * *
On a side note, Kindra planned on taking Colin to our daycare provider today just in case Danica was actually sick and not dealing with some kind of food poisoning. I heard her phone’s extensive ring indicating a text message on her way out, but really thought nothing of it. She gets halfway there, reads the text, and calls me (on her speakerphone, so as not to break the California law restricting phone calls while driving).

It turns out that our daycare provider and her family all have the stomach flu, so they were closed for the day. It was too late to turn back and come home, and I couldn’t drive out to pick up Colin because she had Danica’s car seat (Parenting Lesson #1,357: Don’t let your wife drive off with the car seat – you might need it). Everything worked out because Kindra was able to call our old daycare provider, and she watched Colin until Kindra could leave work.

*Sigh* Rain… pours… hurricane… whatever. And since you’re wondering if Danica has the stomach flu… I doubt it. That would mean that Colin and Kindra would probably be sick right now, too, and they’re not (*knock wood*).

* * *
One last funny vomiting story (that doesn’t begin with, “This one time, when I was hammered…”):

Kindra had just changed into some more comfortable clothes and sat down with Colin to feed him lunch. We’d given him some Cheerios as a dessert when he starts to choke on one. Kindra tilts his head forward to try and scoop the thing out when… Yup, you guessed it. Lunch redux. All over the tray, a little on the chair, some on the floor, and of course, some on Kindra. Heh.

Honestly, I think we both found it a bit amusing. Colin was fine, and we sent him off to his nap with a bottle. It was just the second time he’d done that, but his timing couldn’t have been better.

Quickies

2009-01-07T19:33:00.001-08:00

I pretty much never get the good stories, so here are a couple relayed by Kindra:

Kindra lowered Colin’s crib earlier today since we plan on putting him back in it and reclaiming our room. Long story short, he’s been sleeping in the pack-and-play in our room while Danica sleeps (or doesn’t sleep, as it were) in her room. Mom usually has to sleep in Danica’s room while Dad sleeps out on the couch (which is almost a preference sometimes – but that’s another story).

Anyway, Danica’s had a habit of climbing into the crib since it’s right next to the couch in her room. She just hops up on the couch arm and scampers into the crib. She hadn’t had trouble getting in and out because the mattress was set for a newborn and she’s become fairly adept at it. In fact, she’s put her own dolls to sleep in it:

So after Kindra lowered the mattress, Danica climbed into it to play. A couple of minutes later, Kindra heard: “Mommy! This crib too big! I stuck!”

Typical. The reason we’re in this whole sleeping nightmare is because she figured out how to climb out a year ago…

* * *

Danica was helping Mom out this afternoon while Dad went to work for a bit and was actually being helpful, so Mom told her she was Mommy’s favorite girl. Danica stared at Kindra hard, went into her room and slammed the door shut.

“No I not! I Daddy’s favorite girl!”

Firsts

2009-01-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

As you all know, there are good firsts and there are bad firsts. Today is one of those days where we’ve had one of each, so I guess we’ll go with the bad first first and the good first second.

Bad First

Here’s my tweet on the subject:

The Girl just hurled. Fortunately, she was in Mom’s lap and most of it went in her blankie.

Kindra was holding Danica on her lap getting ready for bed when I came over to the couch to kiss Danica goodnight. The Girl had been saying that her tummy felt bad, which we really didn’t think too much of since she’s said the same thing before. Kindra figured she’d just picked it up from one of the girls at daycare, and even though I knew she hadn’t had any sugar or candy, I just thought that she’d maybe eaten too much of her dinner.

Unfortunately, neither of those were the case. As we were in the process of explaining to Danica that going to bed would help her feel better, she decided that regurgitating everything she’d had since lunch would probably expedite the process. It was quite a bit of blueberries, mango, noodles, and meatballs which Kindra and I both had the good fortune to watch come up. Several times.

She’s done it thrice more since then. The first time, I’d gone to put her clothes and blankie in the wash, and when I came back, I found Mom and Girl on the floor in the bathroom. Apparently, she said that her tummy didn’t feel good, and Mom had the good sense to take her to the toilet. Mom lifted the lid, held her hair, and she just leaned over and cleaned whatever was left out.

The second time, they were lying in Danica’s bed to go to sleep while I was out getting set to write this blog. I hear Kindra calling for me, so I go into Danica’s room and find the two of them hovering over the trash can. I grabbed the can and got what hair Kindra didn’t get out of Danica’s face and got the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen The Girl give me as she heaved up a couple of more ounces of liquid. She just curled up with Mom on the couch in her room and tried to keep her eyes open (sheesh, even exhausted, she doesn’t want to sleep).

About half-an-hour later, I went to go swap the laundry, and when I got back… Mom caught most of it this time, since it was just the small amount of liquid she’d tried to drink. You know The Girl’s sick when she actually asks to lie down in her bed. Poor girl.

We’re hoping it’s just some bad food and not something that the rest of us can catch. One of the mango slices she’d eaten at lunch wasn’t the best, so we’re looking to that as the culprit. In the interest of full disclosure, she seems to have developed a very mild fever, but don’t panic because it’s really low. She’s been sleeping on-and-off, so it’s gonna be a long night.

Good First

On the bright side (or not so bright side, depending on how you look at it), Colin did this today for the first time:

Sorry I don’t have a better picture of it. He just happened to do it while Kindra was out of the room, and he looked a little wobbly, so I didn’t want to run, have him turn his head and fall down.

I’d seen him playing with the DVD tray cover on the DVD player there earlier in the day (which, btw, Danica did incessantly when she was his age), but I never in my wildest thoughts he’d pull himself up. He’d also been pushing himself up onto all fours, but it seemed like this would be a little further off because I’d actually tried getting him to pull himself up on me.

Guess this means his days of doing the worm (or butterfly stroke, if you prefer) to get around are nearly over. Danica walked just after her first birthday, but it looks like we’ll be hearing the pitter-patter of this guy’s little feet in a month or so. Dang it.

Funny Danica Quote of the Day

2008-12-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

"I don't like dose anymore. Dey make me sick."

In reference to the mini marshmallows that Mom let her eat. Kindra figured The Girl would get sick of them and let her have a few. Mom was right.

Moms always know best, eh?

Standard Car Conversation

2008-12-14T10:37:00.001-08:00

This sort of conversation happens to Kindra on a pretty regular basis in the car. Just out of the blue, Danica will say something as if the wheels have been turning for a while…

Girl: “Mommy, I scared of tigers.”

Mom: “What? Why?”

G: “Because dey might bite me.”

M: “They aren’t going to bite you.”

G: “Dey might!”

M: “They aren’t going to bite you because we don’t live near any tigers.”

G: “…”

Six seconds later…

G: “Mommy, I scared of dinosaurs, too.”

M: “!?!?!??”

G: “Dey might bite me, too.”

M: “Dinosaurs are not going to bite you.”

G: “Dey might!”

M: “Dinosuars are not going to bite you because they’re all dead.”

G: “…”

Six more seconds later…

G: “Because people DIED dem?”

M: “!”

Not really sure where the dinosaur thing came from, but I’m guessing that the tiger reference is because we’ve been watching Kung-Fu Panda, whose main villan is a tiger (well, it’s a snow leopard, but… eh).

That's My Girl

2008-12-11T23:20:00.000-08:00

Danica was wearing her Star Wars t-shirt today (which can be seen here) when we went to the mall to walk around a bit. We stopped by Borders so she could take a look at the books there when she spotted a DK reader (this one, actually – and no, we don’t need it, so don’t buy it).

Girl: “Daddy, dis Wall-E book?”

Dad: “No sweetie, that’s actually a Star Wars book. Good taste, though.”

G: [Clutching the book to her chest] “It match my shirt!”

D: ***Warm, fuzzy feeling***

* * *

I actually wanted to go down to the mall so that I could see if Danica would ride the kiddie train they have set up for the holidays. I got the idea after I saw my buddy Don’s kids in a picture he put up on his site. I knew going in that the downside would be that she would have to ride the train by herself, since the maximum height on the train is fifty inches.

I’d told her earlier in the day that we were going to see trains, so she was excited about it. When we got to the area where the train was, I had her watch for a while to get her comfortable with it. She was excited about seeing it, so I asked if she wanted to ride it. She responded with a yes, but I told her that she’d have to ride all by herself and that Daddy couldn’t go on with her. She responded that she was scared, which is something that she’s picked up over the last couple of months. I’ll have to write more about it some other time.

Anyway, I told her that there was nothing to be scared of and asked her if she wanted to ride the train. She said she wanted to, so I explained again that I couldn’t go on with her and that she would have to ride by herself. I had her watch a group of kids get on, explained to her what was happening, and talked her through the whole thing as the train went around for a while.

Things seemed good, so I we went to the entrance to wait. When it was her group’s turn (there were only three of us in line), I handed her a dollar to give to the kid who was handing out tickets. She handed it to him no problem, went through the gate onto the little platform they have, and then I took Colin around to opposite side of the platform where the exit was (FYI, the “platform” was a little 4x8 foot gazebo-like structure with the entrance gate on one side of the rectangle, and the exit on the other side of the rectangle – not very big).

So the three kids in the group were standing at the platform, waiting for the girl who strapped the kids into their seats to let them on the train. They were ready to get on but Danica just stood there, so the girl leaned over and asked her if everything was okay. Of course, at that point, things went downhill and were clearly not okay. The Girl burst into tears, and that was that. *Sigh*

In hindsight, it might have helped if I’d taken her on the train, but I think she would’ve freaked when I left. I think the only way she would’ve done it is if she’d had a friend to go on it with her. I tried talking her into trying again, but she wasn’t feeling it. We walked around for a bit and came back before we left. In fact, she said she wanted to ride the train, but when I mentioned that I couldn’t go on it with her, she became reluctant again.

Truth be told, I’m just disappointed that she has the same personality I do – headstrong but insecure. Here’s hoping we can overcome that.

10:11 a.m. Verbatim

2008-12-09T10:32:00.001-08:00

Dad gets the diaper bag ready for the late-morning errand run.

Girl: “Daddy, where we going?”

Dad: “We’re going to see Mommy later.”

G: “We going to see horseys?”

Dad’s not really paying attention as he finishes off making a grilled cheese.

D: “Do you want some of this grilled cheese?”

G: “Dey don’t haf grill cheese! Dey haf reindeers!”

Funny Danica Story of the Day - Christmas Show

2008-12-08T13:15:00.001-08:00

I get a little overwhelmed when I have a lot of stuff that I want to write about but don’t have time to put in words. I then avoid doing it because I know I’ve got a ton of other stuff I should be working on. Anyway, to alleviate this problem, I’m going to try to blog a little bit each day, so you should see increased blog volume with decreased depth.

Now I don’t know how this happens, but Kindra always gets the good stories from Danica. A couple of days ago, they were driving home when the radio station played the Linus monologue from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The ensuing conversation:

D: “It Daddy’s punkin show!” (The Girl loves It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.)

K: “No, sweetie… it’s Daddy’s Christmas show.”

Monologue ends, song begins to play.

D: “It over, Mommy! Why it over?”

K: “They’re just playing the song, not the whole show.”

D: “Why it over? WHY IT OVER!?”

K: *Sigh*

I’m Sorry I Didn’t Take Care of It First

2008-12-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

Crap. It’s been a month since I posted anything, which really speaks to the volume of work and lack of rest that we’ve had as a family these past few weeks.

Anyway, you might be wondering what the picture of the John “Hot Plate” Williams 1989-90 NBA Hoops card is for. It’s actually Colin’s first basketball card. Kindra had brought the kids by the 76 Classic (http://www.76classic.com/) at the Anaheim Convention Center where I was working last week so that the family could have some dinner together. While we were talking, an older gentleman came up, pulled out the card, and offered it to us as Colin’s first basketball card. He said he usually kept a couple of cards on him to give to kids, but didn’t have one for Danica because he’d given them to his grandkids earlier.

My only regret is that I wasn’t he person to give Colin his first card… I don’t even care if it’s of a player whose NBA career was cut short because weight issues who was playing for a team that has since changed its name (the Washington Bullets are now the Washington Wizards for those of you not in the know). John Williams entry at Wikipedia here.

Hmm… now that I tell the story, it sounds a little creepy.

Election Day

2008-11-04T23:32:00.001-08:00

We had a doctor’s appointment for The Boy today. He weighed in at 17 pounds, 11.5 ounces, which is up from the 15 pounds, 6 ounces he weighed a month ago. He’s also 27 ¼ inches, up from 25 ½ inches.

Both kids are doing well and are over their cold issues for the most part, but the on-again, off-again cold weather here is messing with their noses. They both got their flu shots today, which we told Danica was like when she gives us “Strawberry Shortcake shots.” I have a feeling she’s not going to be too excited about being at the doctor’s office in the future, since it was the first time she’d had a shot in a long time and because I think she’s likely to remember the experience. Eh, I also told her tonight that the shot was a “little owie” to keep away the germ monsters and the big owies they could cause… I think I’m starting to get the hang of this fatherhood thing.

By the way, both of them were also great when we went to vote this morning. I took the kids around 10 a.m. after Mom said there was a fairly long line when she went at 7. Danica was content munching on some fruit snacks, and a bottle satiated the boy long enough for me to cast my ballot. Thank goodness there wasn’t a long wait when we went, though it was a little funny being the only male there with children, and the only parent there with more than one.

On another election note, I have to say I’m happy that my children were born during this time. At least they can say they were alive during such a historical election. President-Elect Obama hit my thoughts right on the nose: what changes will our children see should they live to see a century of history pass? I’m pretty sure my parents would never have thought that their child would see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the U.S.S.R., the rise of the internet, and an African-American President of the United States.

* * *

Oh, did I forget to mention that Colin is sleeping through the night? It’s been amazing. We get him to sleep around 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., and he’s slept through until 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. for the past ten days or so. Unfortunately, his sister refuses to follow his lead. We’re so over it, we just drag her into our bed now. The down side of that is if all three of us are in bed, Mom and Dad get the crap kicked out of them by The Girl. One of us (Mom or Dad) usually ends up spending at least a portion of the night on the couch. Gee, guess that people are right when they say the “family bed” thing really isn’t worth it.

(As I write this, The Boy is having trouble tonight… must be something with one of the shots he got today. Bummer).

Moving Along

2008-10-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Family illness update: The Girl is good, Mom’s fine, Dad’s got something in his chest still, and Colin is getting better… Took The Boy to the doctor on Thursday and found out he has a sinus infection (taking after his mother). He has some antibiotics he’s on now and is doing well with no cough.

Colin’s also gotten much more “mobile” over the past couple of weeks. He now rolls over with ease and regularity, meaning no leaving him on the couch or bed anymore. He’s also started to try to scoot around, turning on his stomach and using the “inchworm” technique to try and get things that are just out of his reach. *Sigh* A month or two more, and we’ll have to mobile kids on our hands. Yay.

On the sleep front, Colin’s slept pretty much through the night the last couple of nights. He’s still sleeping in Danica’s room with her, and the situation seems to be working out okay. Danica still needs somebody to be lying with her when she goes to bed, and she still gets up in the middle of the night. We’ll take what we can get… for now.

* * *

Cute Danica story of the day: Mom was in bed this morning when Danica went into our bedroom, climbed up on our bed, got under the covers, patted Mom’s face and said, “It’s okay, Mommy. I’m here."

The Long Weekend...

2008-10-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

…but not the good kind.

Though it was the standard two-day weekend, it felt like a long one, but only because our little fam spent the weekend with our first four-person family illness. Short story longer:

Mom fell ill on Wendesday of last week and took half the day off. Dealt with vomiting, fever, headache and other various symptoms that afternoon and early evening, but was over most of the serious symptoms that night. Dad spent the evening trying to handle things on his own to some measure of success. Everybody was home Thursday, with Mom still feeling ill and Dad trying to keep a lid on everything.

Things returned to “normal” on Friday, with Mom taking the kids to daycare while heading to a half-day at work (full day, but school assembly in the afternoon). Dad went to work as well, but with some kind of nerve issue in his right trap and deltoid that still lingers, most likely from sleeping in The Girl’s bed the night before. Later that evening, Dad starts to get a runny nose and headache, which evolves into full-blown “not feeling well” on Saturday, thus leaving Mom to try and hold everything together.

The parents spend Saturday completely lethargic while the kiddies begin to nurse congestion and coughing. However, said congestion and coughing fails to slow them down one bit (much to the chagrin of their father). Saturday melts into Sunday and both Mom AND Dad feel either the same or worse, while said kids’ congestion and coughing continues to fail to slow them down one bit.

Sunday passes with both parents feeling moderately better, Dad having slept while Mom took care of business somehow (amazing, isn’t she?). The children have to sleep apart, what with the coughing and waking each other up and what not. The Girl sleeps in her bed, while The Boy spends the night in his swing because lying on his back causes mucus to build up, thus causing him to wake up.

Monday was rough on The Boy, not eating very much and sleeping fitfully, while The Girl is still undaunted. Unfortunately, both coughs persist. We shall see what Tuesday brings…

And before you all go nuts with worry, we’ve added a warm Vicks humidifier to their room, bought nasal drops and cough medicine, and are giving juice to The Girl. We’ll be fine. Eventually. However, lost in all of this is the lack of sleep for Mom, who is valiantly struggling through handling her three children. Poor girl. Somebody send her a spa day.

The Most Amazing Thing I've Seen So Far...

2008-10-17T19:17:00.001-07:00

There was a Part 2, but my wife wanted it deleted.

Weekend Update

2008-10-06T15:10:00.001-07:00

We did finally sleep in our bed last night. Colin woke Danica up around midnight, and she woke him up around 4:00 a.m. Fun for Mom.

Being that we’re not really apple eaters in our family (with the exception of pre-sliced apples we get a Costco because they’re convenient), we didn’t pick or buy any apples when we went to the farm. Lame, I know. Maybe next time. We did pick up some apple butter and an apple pie, though.

Family Outing

2008-10-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

Kindra told me a couple weeks ago that she had a surprise for me for my birthday. She wanted us to go somewhere fun, which I thought would mean we would be without the kiddies (um… just kidding?), but it turned out it was a family outing.

I’ll take this opportunity to mention that going places with the kids has become easier lately. We’re a little better a preparing to head out, and the kids have become a lot better about being in the car. Danica’s pretty content most of the time to sit in her car seat (we often let her choose a book or doll to bring that she plays with), and Colin’s outgrowing his newborn aversion to being in his car seat.

Anyway, it turns out that Kindra had decided that we were going to the apple orchards in Yucaipa, which is about seventy-five miles away from us. She’d taken her classes there when she taught second grade, and we’ve always wanted to go to orchards, so it seemed like a decent early-fall activity (yes, it’s been autumn-like weather the past few days – that would be low-70’s in California). The drive ended up taking about an hour and twenty minutes, most of which The Boy slept, and The Girl almost ended up sleeping until I had to call my parents.

We had a good time walking around. I took Danica to a little petting zoo area they had there, where she just stared at the goats, chickens, pig, and llama… The little wuss wouldn’t pet any of them, and she didn’t want to play on the haystacks they had set up, either. I suppose to be fair, she was still quite a bit younger than a lot of the kids there, but that didn’t seem to stop her when we were in Iowa and she tore around a playground they had set up at the mall…

It was a fun time for our little family, but I think it’ll be more fun if we convince another family to head up there with us so that Danica has somebody to run around with. It did open my eyes to the possibilities for family outings ahead of us. We’re getting closer and closer to the whole “family vacation” thing, which is kinda scary...

* * *

I know I mentioned that Danica loves to dance, but she was really having fun today when we stopped to have lunch. We were at a little shopping village waiting in line at a food stand which had a patio and a guy singing along to music. She really wanted to hold hands and “dance” (i.e., jump) around. You have to keep in mind that The Girl hadn’t had her nap, so she was a little wired. She ended up dancing solo for a bit off to the side. I have some footage, so I’ll have to get around to posting it.

Oh, in addition to twirling, jumping, and lifting her leg up, Danica’s recently added straddle splits to her routine. Her mom was egging her on a couple of days ago after (I think) she accidentally did the splits at home. I haven’t seen it since, but I’m sure if I ask at the right time…

* * *

FYI, we’re trying something new tonight – Colin will be sleeping in his crib in Danica’s room. See, we’ve been weak and let our kids take over. Neither of us has slept in our bed in a couple of weeks, because Colin used to wake up within thirty minutes of his mom getting into bed and I got tired of trying to lay absolutely still during the night. So… we’re putting the two together. I suppose it might work, but I have a feeling they’re going to wake each other up, which should be fun.

At Least We Know Where We Stand

2008-10-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

Um… I just prayed (said grace) with my daughter, which if you know me, is very unusual. It went something like this:

The Girl: “Daddy, les pway.”

Daddy: “Huh? You’re going to pray?”

TG: “Yah. I pway and Daddy, too.” **clasps hands**

D: “Okay, who should we pray for?”

TG: “Ah-Mah.”

D: “Who else?”

TG: “Ah-Gong.”

D: “Okay, who else?”

TG: “And Mommy and Daddy.”

D: “Awww…”

TG: “And my kay-sah-dee-ya (quesadilla).”

D: “…”

Did I mention that Aunt Steph used to be at the top of the list? But only when she was in medical school.

Explanation Needed, I Guess

2008-10-01T10:52:00.001-07:00

09-27-08_1801
Originally uploaded by shc32

There's been some question about this picture of Danica with this random neighborhood cat, so I thought I'd explain...

This was taken in my uncle's backyard where I used to live a few years ago (they let me in the house, not just in the backyard). We were playing around out there when this cat wanders into the yard, which, now that I think about it, I saw back when I lived there.

It didn't seem too afraid of anybody, least of all Danica, so I didn't think it was that big a deal when she started to go near it. I figured if it wasn't comfortable, it would take off running. It just wandered around and let Danica wander around after it for a while.

I'll throw in the fact that Danica's been around dogs and cats in a domestic setting for a while - our daycare provider just got a kitten not too long ago (named "Chicken," but I'll explain that some other day), our old daycare provider had a dog, and she played around with her great-grandma's dog when we were back in Iowa. Consequently, The Girl's been taught how to be gentle around animals, so naturally, she wanted to pet this cat.

He actually laid down and let her approach him, so she started by petting his back a little bit and touching his front paws. Of course, as soon as she did that with success, she decided to get down on all fours and get in his face. I was a little worried about that (I had my own incident when I was younger with a cat - again, I'll explain some other time), but he sat there and took it while I talked to her about not being up in his business.

Regardless, things were fine for both... This picture is probably the third or fourth time he laid down and let her pet him.

Yay for cat lovers. Boo to the rest of you all.

My Bad

2008-09-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

I think if you take a look at the archive of posts, the number and frequency of posts is directly related to the time of year and the expected workload: I have less to do in the late spring and summer, so can sit and organize my thoughts. During the rest of the year, things get a little crazy… Regardless, here’s what’s been going on:

Colin can roll over now. He’s rolled both left and right, whereas Danica only rolled right. There’s not a lot of opportunity for him to do it because we try to keep him off the floor so that Danica doesn’t accidentally step on him (like she did Dad’s dinner last night). However, both Kindra and I have found him awake in his pack-and-play on his tummy. He kinda gets pissed once he’s on his stomach, but has been better about rolling back over. Oh, and so far, I’ve seen him to one-and-a-half full rolls.

Also, if I haven’t mentioned it, Colin’s much more social and smiley than Danica ever was (or currently is). Danica didn’t have an issue being held by other people at the same age, but she never smiled and giggled as much as he does. Whereas she had her pensive stare while she sorted out who’s who and what’s what, Colin is much more laid back. He’s started to get more interested in looking around at things, but mostly he just follows people. He loves to watch his sister anytime she’s in his line of vision.

Unfortunately, over the past four or five days, Colin’s been a little momma’s boy. He’s had a difficult time falling asleep without being held by his mother. Most of my tricks to get him to sleep haven’t worked recently, so it’s kinda frustrating. It’s really sad when his mom takes Danica to bed, he cranes his neck to watch her go, and then whines about it. =(

In Danica news, her new obsession is ballet. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s been pretty steady, since we find it pretty amusing. The daughters of our daycare provider have some kind of kid ballet DVD they started watching a couple of months ago, and Danica’s picked up on it. She’s constantly twirling around and wants pretty much everybody else to “do ballet,” too. FYI, “ballet” consists of spinning around with the occasional leg lift… There’s also some kind of side shuffle that debuted over the weekend. Mom has now taken the obsession to another level by purchasing a leotard and tutu yesterday.

Speaking of ballet, our daycare provider recently took all the kids to a fabric store to do some shopping so that she could make little pillows for them to use at her house. Danica, naturally, picked out a material with ballet slippers on it and now refers to the pillow as her “ballet pillow.” It’s really cute when she talks about the other kids’ pillows, which include Elmo and “choo-choo chrains.”

The Girl’s language skills get better and better every day, and she surprised us yesterday by telling her Ah-Mah that she was reading “Raggedy Ann.” She loves the book, but we’ve never heard her say the words as clearly as she did. The kind of sad thing right now is when she tries to express her thoughts and just doesn’t have the vocabulary. She’ll start a thought, make a face as she concentrates and stutter a bit – you can really see the wheels turning. It’s kinda heartbreaking.

Couple of funny Danica’s stories:

We were looking at houses recently and after going through all the rooms, asked Danica something to the effect of which room she liked or which one she wanted. She looked up with big puppy-dog eyes and said, “I… my… like… I like my room! At home!” Heh.

Colin sleeps in a pack-and-play against the wall about a foot-and-a-half from our bed. Danica figured out that she could climb into it a couple of weeks ago (it’s actually very stable) and was in it yesterday when I asked her, “How are you going to get out?” She looked at me, grabbed hold of the top, and swung her leg up onto the top of the rail. Pulling herself up, she then reached across to grab hold of the comforter on our bed, lunged forward to get two hands on it while dragging her legs onto the rail of the pack-and-play, then proceeded to steady herself between the rail and the bed, finally stepping down. Her reply: “Like that!”

*Sigh* Reason #257 for me to have a cam strapped to my head at all times.

Oh, and by the way… Colin’s 5 months old yesterday. Wow.

This Just In...

2008-09-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Good news! Chances of post-mortem ethereal survival have now doubled with the news that hell hath, in fact, frozen over.

In other news, Danica actually slept from 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. last night, and Colin has slept from midnight to 6:45 a.m. the past couple of nights. I’m fairly doubtful this will continue…

Danica Stories of the Week

2008-09-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

As typical, Danica woke up and came out of her room last night/this morning around 12:30 a.m. I happened to be out in the living room, so I quickly scooped her up and went back into her room with her. I laid down in the bed with her and she fiddled around like she normally does – adjusting and readjusting her blankie and position (kinda like a dog making its bed).

She asked for some more water, so I told her to wait while I filled up her cup and then left the room. Of course, she started crying, and when I came back, she wanted to cuddle up (a.k.a. “Mommy/Daddy bao-bao”*). She was still sobbing a little when she said the saddest little thing:

“Daddy… don’t leave me.”

*URK*

*Tear in eye*

Of course, that’s now become her new bedtime trick, to keep us in her room with her longer. This does not bode well for the future.

* * *

More select Danica lines, relayed by Mom:

While watching Mom trim her bangs: “Mommy’s hair broken?”

Bedtime conversation:

Mom: “Mommy loves you.”

Danica: “Mommy love me?”

M: “Yes.”

D: “Daddy love me?”

M: “Yes.”

D: “Blankie love me?”

M: “Yes.”

D: “I love blankie.”

After hearing our daycare provider, Jessie, say something about her husband, Dave: “No! Coley’s Daddy!” (For those of you not in the know, Coley = Nicole, Kindra’s cousin who came out to help us when Colin was born. David is Nicole’s father and Kindra’s uncle, who Danica only referred to as “Coley’s Daddy” while we were in Iowa this summer).

I would’ve put this one in its own separate blog entry, but I’m hoping it’ll be buried here… Danica strapped herself into her old “magic chair” (vibrating baby chair) and then tried to stand up a little while later, forgetting she was strapped in. She ended up on the floor, face down, with her chair strapped to her butt. Kindra asked her, “Need help, genius?”, unstrapped The Girl, and righted the chair. Danica promptly sat back down in the chair, shook her head, and proclaimed, “I no genius.” Um… yeah.

* – In case you’re wondering, “bao-bao” in Mandarin means “to hold.”

Funny Danica Story of the Day

2008-08-31T21:17:00.001-07:00

Lately, Danica’s been interested in her night-light turtle that her Aunt Steph gave her a long time ago. The Girl started using it recently because she’s figured out that her room is really dark at night, and we like it because it shuts itself off after forty-five minutes. The turtle’s shell is perforated with star-shaped holes and is lit by three internal LED lights in different colors (amber, blue, and green) which can be changed by buttons on the turtle’s back.

Kindra usually lets Danica play around with it for a bit when she first gets into bed, and this was the ensuing conversation:

K: “Okay, that’s enough playing. Let’s choose a color now.”

D: “How about dis one? Orange [amber].”

K: “That’s nice, but Mommy likes blue or green.”

D: *Click* “Okay, blue.”

K: “Aw, thank you, sweetie.”

D: *Pause* *Click* *Click* “How about dis one? Orange!”

Heh.

Ketchup

2008-08-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry about not updating more, but things have been really busy. In fact, Wednesday was the first time I set foot in my office in over four weeks. Even though I was working and traveling for business during the time away, there is a ton of work that I still need to catch up on (whee). Anyway, onto the kiddies…

Colin spent his first full day at daycare on Wednesday, and it didn’t go all that well. It didn’t go horribly, but it didn’t go well. He apparently cried and whined all day, but stopped immediately and let out a relieved sign when Kindra arrived and held him.

Today, Kindra left a burp cloth that she’d used last night with Jessie (per Jessie’s suggestion). Colin snuggled up with it all day, grabbing it and pulling it up to his face, and would only take a bottle when Jessie had the burp cloth on her shoulder. I’m leaving my shirt with him next week to see what happens…

The funny Danica story about Colin’s first day was that at some point during the day, Colin was crying and Jessie was trying to calm him down. Danica grabbed Colin’s blanket, walked over to Jessie and said, “Wrap him up!” Nice to know she’s paying attention to what we’ve been doing…

It’s amazing how much Danica’s language skills have developed over the last month. I was remembering how she used to communicate a year ago, and it was all signs. My favorite sign that we don’t get to see anymore is “baby.” She used to sign it so vigorously we thought she might hurt herself. *Sigh*

Signing is pretty much gone, but we will see remnants sometimes when she really wants to make a point. Occasionally she’ll say “mommy” or “daddy” and sign as well to make sure you understand, but that’s about it. Still, she enjoys watching the Baby Einstein signing DVD that we got from Kindra’s parents, and I think we’ll see a resurgence when Colin’s old enough to sign. Hopefully she’ll help him out.

I actually have more to say, but I’m tired of writing and forcing my brain to think, so that will have to wait until next time…

Home at Last

2008-08-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

392 miles with two kids and one twenty-five minute stop in just less than six hours got us home from our (almost) three-week trip away. And we’re happy to be back. In case you were wondering, we spent fifteen days in Des Moines visiting Kindra's family, flew to the Bay Area last Tuesday to see my family, and then rented a car and drove home Saturday night in hopes the kids would sleep most of the way.

It was nice to be away and around family, but difficult on all of our schedules. We're trying to get back in the groove quickly, since I'm traveling this week and the first part of next week, and Kindra goes back to work next week on Thursday. Next Wednesday will also be the first time Colin will go to the daycare provider, which is a little crazy in its own right.

Well, back to work. More on our expedition to come...

Miracle of Miracles

2008-07-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

Must be something in the corn, but both kids basically slept through the night last night.

Danica went to bed around 8:30 p.m. without much fuss, woke up once around midnight and went right back to sleep when Kindra returned her to her room.

Colin went to sleep for the night around 9:30 p.m. after a small bottle and did not wake up at all during the night.

Both kids slept through to 8:00 a.m. this morning, when Danica woke up and played in her room while Colin had his breakfast.

I love Iowa! (Of course, this is after Danica had a HUGE fit on Monday night going to bed).

Too FAST!

2008-07-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

My girl had her first phone conversation with me today. Mom dialed me up on my way home to let The Girl tell me they were cooking together. Danica actually responded to the questions I asked her (a lot of "yeah"), and told me good-bye when we were done speaking. It was really cute and unexpected. Usually, she doesn’t say a thing on the phone.

And as cute as that was, it was WAY cuter when Kindra had Danica “read” tonight when they were getting ready for bed. The Girl loves the book I’ll Teach My Dog a Lot of Words, which she has us read constantly. I’d read the book to her before and had her tell me what was going on in all the pictures, but it was so much sweeter when Kindra read lines and Danica finished them.

*Sigh* She’s becoming a little girl so fast. Where's my baby?

The Young and the Restless

2008-07-11T03:01:00.000-07:00

Latest set of stats for The Boy, who had his two-month check-up on Tuesday (well, more like two months and ten days). He weighs in at 12 pounds, 15 ounces and is 23 ¼ inches in height. A little different from his sister, who was 12 pounds, 1 ounce and 23 inches at at five days shy of three months.

We think he’s still a little uncomfortable from the four shots and one oral vaccination he got. He was fussy last night and tonight until we gave him a little Tylenol, at which point he literally passed out. From swallowing the medicine to falling asleep was probably fifteen seconds. Weird.

He’s been a better sleeper over the past three weeks or so, going to bed for the night around 8:00 p.m., waking at 11 or so to just suck down some food, then sleeping until around 5:00 a.m. He’s been a pretty good napper since he was born, and sleeps much better in general than his sister did. He’ll sleep anywhere and anytime, which is different than Danica, who was constantly awake trying to see what’s happening. There have been a couple of times when he’s woken up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., but it’s been a nice change of pace regardless.

Unfortunately, Danica hasn’t been so obliging. Kindra usually begins to put her to bed around 7:00, but it usually takes at least an hour to get her to fall asleep (nope… she’s not anywhere near going to bed on her own). After that, The Girl generally gets up two or three times a night. The first time is between 9:30 and 11:00, at which point we’ll scoop her up and put her back to bed. She’ll then wander into our room between 12:30 and 2:00, crying until we take her back to bed. Sometimes she’ll sleep on the blanket we keep by her bed, but that seems to be increasingly rare.

Needless to say, sleep has been a rare commodity around our household. We try to take it easy when the kids sleep, but that’s also our time to get things done, so it’s been a difficult balance. Don’t know what we’re going to do in the fall when Kindra has to get up early to get to work and I have to put in time at night…

Poop.

2008-07-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

Our latest endeavour is to have Danica housebroken, err… potty trained. ASAP. We actually might have been able to begin the process five or six months ago, because she was fairly in tune with when she had to go, and she used to make faces when she was pooping. We put off potty training her because 1) we thought she was too young, 2) she couldn’t pull her pants down herself, and 3) we thought she might regress when Colin was born.

Unfortunately, that might have been a mistake. Potty Training: Day 1 took place on Thursday, June 26. We were prepped and ready for The Girl to take the next step and dump her diapers. We picked up a potty chair (Safety 1st Potty ‘n’ Step Stool – wait for the forthcoming blog about potty chairs), some Pampers pull-ups, and panties of several different varieties.

Now that I think about it, we went a little overboard with the panties. We’ve probably got about fifteen pairs total in every style, which is probably more underwear than I own. We bought Curious George panties, Elmo panties, pink panties, purple panties, panties with butterflies on them, panties without butterflies on them, and I think we even bought that kind that tennis players wear with the pocket for a tennis ball (just in case).

Did I mention the Training Pants Saga? I’m not super sure it deserves to be capitalized, but it was a pain in the ass. See, as a guy, I know nothing about anything baby or toddler until my wife explains it to me (duh). Of course, I’ve heard of training pants, but just figured they’d stepped aside for pull-up diapers, which, for the most part, they have. Long story short is that I went to Target, Mervyn’s, and Wal-Mart looking for them until I stumbled upon a post on some parenting website about them being available at K-Mart. So I find that there’s still a K-Mart about ten minutes from us and had to go there.

Beyond the supplies, Kindra picked up the book Toilet Training in Less Than a Day, which her friend Martha had said worked for her kids. Newsflash: potty training CAN take just one day… you just have to pick the right one. We’re pretty sure that day was not the right one (I might add that I was a bit skeptical of this book due to the fact that it was original published in the mid-1970’s and had a section about “retarded” children).

Anyway, the idea is that you sit the child on the potty chair, feed her drinks, and keep her there until some pee-pee appears in the potty. From the point of success, you praise them for being dry, not for going to the bathroom. Problem #1 of this method was that we gave her so much to drink, she was constantly urinating. Problem #2 was that while we kept her on the potty for 15-20 minutes at a time, she wouldn’t actually pee while on the chair. Of course, 30 seconds after she got up, she’d pee in her pull-up. Problem #3 is that Kindra tried putting panties on Danica to see if she’d keep those dry. We ended up going through pretty much the entire stack of panties that we’d bought. In less than four hours.

So… we kept trying throughout the weekend, without much success. Danica will tell us she needs to go to the bathroom, but only after actually wetting her diaper. We’re pretty sure Danica understands what she’s supposed to do. After all, she keeps asking us for the chocolate we were rewarding her with, but we figure the real problem is that she just doesn’t mind sitting around in a wet diaper. *Sigh* I guess like pretty much every other milestone so far, she’ll just get around to it when she feels like it.

Hmm… Who knew I would ever wax on about potty training?

Stats Update

2008-06-11T19:38:00.001-07:00

The kids (yikes! We have kids! As in multiple children!) had doctor’s appointments yesterday. Well, they had one doctor appointment that they shared. It was Colin’s one-month (plus a week) check-up and Danica’s two-year (plus a month).

Colin weighed in at 11 pounds, 5 ounces and 21 ¾ inches. That’s a gain of almost three pounds (!) since the last time he was weighed (7 pounds, 7 ounces a week out of the hospital). His 21 ¾ inches in height is a gain of two inches, which puts him in the 75th percentile for height (what the…!?). I can’t remember what Danica weighed at the same time (I tried looking it up) but I would have to say it couldn’t have been more than 9-and-a-half pounds.

I know it shouldn’t be unusual to find out, but it is crazy how boys are that much bigger than girls. Colin’s really filling out a number of his onesies now, and his face has really rounded out. It’s pretty funny to see him without clothes on, because his body really is getting big(ish).

Funny story… when we first had him, it was amusing to change his diaper and then change Danica’s diaper afterwards, because it really made Danica seem HUGE. It’s not as apparent to us now, but I’m pretty sure most of that is probably from us getting used to him. Even though he’s grown a lot, he’s still tiny (sorry, buddy… genetics).

He’s also been much more vocal over the past couple of weeks, and there is no holding this kid down when he’s hungry. As with most babies, we’re trying to feed him every three hours during the day and four at night. Unfortunately for Kindra, he won’t go that long, and it’s just about every two-and-a-half hours during the day. Binkys and such don’t hold him off, either.

The trade-off of Colin becoming more vocal is that he’s also become a little more responsive. He tracks objects pretty well and will turn his head towards you if you talk to him or get close to his face. He’s also smiling more, which is fun (I know, I know… he smiles because he’s thinking about Grandma). He seems to be ticklish on his tummy (occasionally). The best place to get him is probably on the changing table, which he enjoys because of the soft, green changing pad cover we have on it.

I should take this time to mention that Kindra didn’t appreciate the fact that I wrote that Colin’s fussy between 3:00 a.m. and noon. He’s not really that difficult, but he does get fussy in the early morning and sometimes between 6:30 and 8:00 p.m. (right when his sister is trying to go to sleep, natch). Recently though, he has been sleeping longer between his night feedings, sometimes going four hours between bouts. I got him to sleep for a while last night after Kindra told me to swaddle him tightly and cradle him chest-to-chest. He slept right through Game 3 of the NBA Finals (hmm… will have to talk to him about that).

As for Danica, she measured out at 27-and-a-half pounds. We were also told that she measured in at 35 ¼ inches, which we realized was nuts when Kindra doubled it to arrive at her being 70 inches tall fully grown (that whole thing about doubling the height at age 2 to see how tall a child will be…). So, we measured her last night and she came in between 32 and 33 inches, which makes sense since it would measure her out to about 5’3” when she’s grown (again, sorry about the genetics, kid).

The Girl surprised us by behaving really well yesterday. The last time we took her to the doctor, she freaked out. We were prepared for the worst, but she didn’t shed a tear. She actually stood on a regular scale (of course, it helps that the pad was covered in stickers – smart doctors and nurses!), let the doctor examine her, and actually cried for less than ten seconds after receiving her shot.

Oh yeah… they both got shots yesterday, Colin getting his first Hep B immunization, while Danica got a Hep A shot. I think I explained the downside of having our current doctor, but just to refresh, the problem with going with this doctor is that the nurse that works with her is a horrible shot-giver. When she gives shots, she holds the syringe like a dart, sticks the kids, then holds the syringe in their arm or leg while she scoots her hand up to inject the serum. It’s kinda slow. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Colin did alright with the shot. Kindra held off completely feeding him before the appointment so she could feed him after he got his shot (brilliant!), so he calmed down relatively quickly.

The thing that caught both of us off guard about our doctor’s appointment is that while we’ll take Colin back next month, Danica doesn’t have to go back for a year (!). I find it insane that we’ve gotten to the point where we have a child who can go a year between appointments. I also find it insane that I write as much about raising my kids as I do, but I do appreciate how many of you find it insane as well. Thanks.

Catsup (or I Have Nothing Better to Title This)

2008-06-07T23:56:00.001-07:00

Danica marked her 25th-month birthday on Monday… makes me wonder when I’m going to stop counting months.

Kindra’s cousin Nicole left for home on Thursday morning, after spending a week here. We’re pretty sure she was ready to leave, since when you stay with us, you get the kids experience 24/7. She was a lot of help, especially when I traveled to Philly last weekend for my sister’s graduation from Jefferson Medical School (congrats to Steph!). Nicole was the last of our six weeks of help, so we’re finally getting a chance to adjust to “normal” life with just the four of us.

We spent today watching Danica figure out how to put on her shoes, while repeatedly encouraging her to get them on and then telling her to take them off because we don’t wear shoes in the house. For some reason, 90% of the time, they’re on the wrong feet. It’s kinda like when she first started opening up books, and they’d be upside down most of the time. Go figure. But, she can get shoes on herself now, if not actually get the Velcro straps through the loops properly. Unfortunately, she throws fits when she can’t get them on quickly. (FYI, she actually put on her shoes by herself yesterday for the first time that either Kindra or I have seen.)

Colin’s been on an eating rampage today. He’s definitely what you’d call a “snacker.” He eats some, falls asleep, and then wakes up an hour-and-a-half later starving. Kindra’s not too thrilled about it. And he always likes to do a little taste-test before he really starts eating – I gotta tell ya buddy, it’s the same thing you’ve always gotten. Believe me, I tried to get your mom to produce chocolate or strawberry milk, but she refuses.

The Boy never seems totally comfortable between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. for reasons beyond our understanding. He just never seems to sleep well and can get pretty fussy. It’s hard to tell whether to wrap him up in a blanket, take him out of the blanket, hold him over your shoulder or cradle him, put him down or pick him up, sit down with him or stand up… well, you get the idea. It’s a little crazier than it was with Danica (I think… but I don’t really remember), but I will say that he definitely sleeps more than she did.

Funny story that some of you haven’t heard… We tend to call Colin “buddy,” as in “little buddy.” I don’t know why I started it, but it’s stuck for now. So sometimes when he fusses, we say, “Oh, buddy…” Danica picked up on this, so from time to time she’ll call him “Baby Oh, Buddy” when she hears him cry.

Speaking of that, Danica’s really been picking up on words and phrases over the past few weeks. It’s crazy when she throws out a sentence or phrase that you haven’t heard her use before; she’ll even throw things togther from words she hears you say. For instance, if she doesn’t know where you are, she’s recently gone to asking¸ “Where are you?” She also heard me tell Kindra that I forgot my ring in the apartment, then spit out, “Daddy forgot ring,” which is just insane. Her expanding vocabulary is making it harder for me to understand her because her pronounciation isn’t catching up quite as fast.

And while we’re talking about Danica’s vocabulary, I’m proud to say that she said the word “basketball” for the first time when we put her Laker shirt on her. I can’t get her to say it during a game or even when we’re playing with a basketball, but she took one look at the Laker logo on the front of the shirt, pointed at it, and said “basketball” clearly. It was pretty shocking, because she usually just says, “Ball.”

The kids’ doctor’s appointment is on Tuesday, so we’ll get a chance to see where they are growth-wise. Kindra thinks Colin’s at least ten pounds, and I’m anxious to see where Danica’s at since she hasn’t had a doctor’s appointment in at least six months.

Oh yeah, after a call to our doctor, it turns out Colin’s skin rash on his cheeks was eczema, which cleared up with some hydrocortisone. His cheeks are still a bit rough, but they look a ton better. Danica had the same thing when she was his age, too.

One Month! Again! (Was Supposed to Be One Week, Then Two Weeks, Then Three Weeks…)

2008-05-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing that Colin just turned one month old. I haven’t totally forgotten how fast time flies with newborns, but it’s really been underscored by the fact that it’s been this long since we went to the hospital to have him. I don’t remember what it was like with Danica, but that’s probably because it was just like this – fast and furious. I’ll write more later (possibly), but I wanted to catch everybody (including myself) up on the happenings with our two little ones.

Colin had his first doctor’s appointment on Thursday, May 8. He weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces, which is about a pound more than he left the hospital at the week before. No other stats, presumably since he was little more than a week old. We’ll have another doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, June 3 where he’ll get his first shot, a hep B vaccination.

He’s not really a newborn anymore, as he’s really filled out. His newborn onesies are getting a bit small and his cheeks are puffing up. I’m guessing he’ll be about 9 pounds, 10-12 ounces when he gets weighed again, and he was born at 19 ¾ inches, so he’ll probably add about an inch-and-a-half.

His weight gain isn’t surprising, since he downs milk like a vaccum. When Danica was a month old, she was taking probably 1-2 ounces of milk (granted, she was born two weeks early – but still just a week earlier than Colin). Colin can wolf down four ounces and still be hungry. We’re breastfeeding him, but we have an idea about the amount since we’ve given him enough bottles to see what he’s taking. Oh, and when he wants to eat, he wants to eat now. Pacifiers don’t do the trick with him when he’s hungry, though he seems to have some aversion to eating on Kindra’s right side. He doesn’t eat on that side nearly as well as the left, and he acts as though he’s uncomfortable when she does try to feed him on the right.

He also has a little issue with falling asleep when he eats. I know all newborns do this, but we have the darnedest time waking him up. We used to strip Danica to get her to eat so we could stuff her, but not much seems to faze this kid when he’s asleep (which is great, since Danica is such a light sleeper). Colin usually eats on one side, then falls asleep, then wakes up half-an-hour later annoyed that he’s still hungry.

Despite the eating issue, he burps like a champ. Danica was always a tough burp when she was young. Sometimes it took ten or fifteen minutes to make sure we got a good burp out of her. Colin takes about ten or fifteen seconds. Of course, we may just be hitting him harder since he’s our second and all…

Speaking of second children, Kindra and I both agree that having the second kid is, in some respects, easier than having the first. Now, there are challenges to juggling playing, eating, changing, and sleeping with two, but there is definitely a great deal LESS anxiety, which I’m sure most of you would probably agree with. It was all we could do to take care of Danica and make sure she got fed every three hours when we first had her. Now, Kindra can pretty much handle the insane feeding schedule on her own, while I try to juggle the rest and figure out how to get things done (not that Kindra doesn’t help – a lot).

I would say that our biggest challenge has been finding our own rhythm again. Don’t get me wrong – it’s been great with all the help that we’ve had around – but every family’s life falls into a cadence that works for them, and we haven’t found ours yet. It’s nice that we’ve got some time over the summer to develop it, and my work schedule has been flexible enough to allow us to make things work, but we’re still going minute-by-minute, day-by-day. Since Colin’s arrival, we’ve had a family member in our home pretty much every day, so we really don’t know what it’s like with just the four of us.

Kindra’s cousin Nicole arrived on Wednesday and will be that last of our visitors for a little while. Going backwards, we’ve had Kindra’s sister, Krista, who just left on Tuesday, my sister Steph left a day before Krista arrived, my mom was here for a while before my sister came to town, and Kindra’s mom was here prior to that. Even before we had Colin, my parents came to town the Saturday before we had Colin to make sure we had everything ready. So, to say the least, we’ve had a high traffic flow.

Nicole will be here through next Thursday, and she’ll help out as I head to Philly for the weekend for Steph’s graduation from medical school. Hopefully, Danica and Colin will be alright and Kindra can juggle between the two adequately. I’ll only be gone from Thursday morning to Sunday at noon, but that’s a lot of juggling.

Getting back to the kids, everybody says that Colin looks like Danica when she was his age, and judging by some old pictures of Danica that I’ve looked through, it might be necessary to label some of them. He doesn’t squeak as much as Danica did, but he does do his fair share of grunting. He seems to be uncomfortable a lot of the time, and I can’t seem to remember what Danica was like. It probably comes from getting used to all of his bodily functions.

As far as his bodily functions go, the boy just can’t get his pee and his poop together. He pees, we change his diaper, then he poops, then he pees, then he poops. We had a “five-minute rule” with Danica where we would wait for five minutes after we thought she needed to be changed, since she had a habit of peeing right after she had a new diaper. With Colin, it’s almost a twenty-five-minute rule. Our former daycare provider, Danielle, said that you go through twice as many diapers with a boy as with a girl, and I believe her.

Oh, and there’s another slight change. Danielle has been taking care of Danica since Danica was six months old on a three-times-a-week basis. Unfortunately, Danielle had to take a job with her dad to help him out, so she had been having a friend, Jessie, help her out with the daycare duties since early this spring. Danielle then decided that she had to quit the daycare business to help her father full-time, which then led to Jessie wanting to take a few of the kids that Danielle had been watching. So, long story short, Jessie is our new daycare provider. We’re still taking Danica MWF so that she can play with other kids (Jessie has two girls, Ella and Leila, who are 3 and 4) and also so Kindra can have some relief while I’m at work. Jessie will also take Colin in the fall when Kindra has to go back to work.

The downsides are that Jessie’s house is just far enough that Kindra probably won’t be able to go visit on her lunch break and that I won’t get to spend the extra three months with Colin like I did with Danica. I’ll have both of them on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the fall. I’ll require your prayers, please. Thanks.

Okay, that’s a lot more than I wanted to write originally, but that’s what I can remember regarding Colin. Briefly, about Danica:

She’s sleeping a little better. We do our same routine with books and such, but we start a little later (around 6:30 – 7:00 p.m.) and we still have to go in and lie down with her, which Kindra does now. She’s graciously accepted the chore, since I usually fall asleep and get pissed when I wake up at 11:00 p.m. and still have work to do. I know I’m probably jinxing us, but the past couple of nights, Danica’s gone to bed and not come out until 11:00 or 11:30 and then gone straight into our room. We’ve got a comforter laid out on the floor next to the bed which she happily flops down on to sleep. She hasn’t woken up early (before 6:00 a.m.) in the past few days. Now all we have to do is get her to go to sleep by herself.

We’ve also been taking the easy way out with her afternoon nap, driving her around to get her to go to sleep, since she’ll fall asleep in the car seat if it’s the right time. It stinks, because at Jessie’s, Danica is fairly willing to go to sleep on her own. It has to do with some combination of being at somebody else’s house, sleeping in Ella and Leila’s room (which was a princess room until recently), and Jessie keeping Danica’s blankie and Lulu from her until nap time. *sigh* They say your kids are always better for everybody else. We’re working on it, but like I said before, it’s been tough finding a rhythm.

Duh… I almost forgot to talk about Danica’s reaction to “Baby Coul-lin,” which is an approximation of what she calls him. When we were in the hospital, she was happy to see him and replied, “Yes!,” when you asked her if she liked him. If you asked her if she wanted to take him home, you usually got a “no.” The first couple of weeks, she was really sweet to him, giving him kisses and wanting to hold him. Then, about Week 3, her attitude took a decidedly negative turn, and she started to push, grab, and hit him. In the past week, she’s returned to being pretty nice to him, giving him kisses and wanting to lay with him, but she can be rough when she gets tired.

Also, we didn’t initially see any issues Danica had with having Colin around, but it’s since become apparent that she’s become more attached to me. For the first couple of weeks, she didn’t want to do anything with Kindra, which we perceived as Danica being mad that Kindra was spending all her time with Colin. It’s lessened some, since we’ve been able to spread our time out. That’s been nice for me, too, since for the first three weeks or so, I hardly spent any time with Colin.

Okay. I need to sleep since it’s 2:00 a.m., and I have a flight at 10:06 a.m. and haven’t packed yet. I want to write more about Colin’s birth and whatever else I missed (disciplining Danica comes to mind), so hopefully when I get back…

Happy Birthday, Danica!

2008-05-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

Happy 2nd birthday to my girl… I can’t believe it’s been that long already. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital (an eerie coincidence that we brought home The Boy from the hospital today). More on all of that later…

* * *

Had my first brush with real parenting tonight… I was holding The Boy and messing around with Flickr while Kindra was in bed at 11:30 p.m. I was just thinking about ten minutes prior that it was amazing that The Girl hadn’t woken up and walked out of her room, so naturally, I jinxed myself. Sure enough, I hadn’t been holding him more than five minutes when I look up and see her toddling out, clutching her blanket.

After the initial, “Oh, crap!,” I thought that I might get her to walk back to her room, which was clearly a ludicrous thought. So I held Colin in my left arm, picked Danica up in the right, and figured that I had to put Colin down in his bassinet before I could put Danica back to bed.

Walk into our room (where we’re keeping Colin for the time being), realize that I have to put Danica down before putting Colin safely in his bed (BIG mistake), put The Girl down, she screams bloody murder as I put Colin in bed (giving Kindra a serious heart attack), scoop up The Girl, and spend the next twenty minutes in her room making sure she falls back asleep.

This parenting stuff is fun!

Bullet Time

2008-05-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Colin was born Monday, April 28 at 12:52 p.m. PDT. He weighed in at 6 pounds, 10 ounces and was 19 ¾ inches. Healthy with a good set of lungs.

His sister seems to like him okay, but she says, “No,” if you ask her if she wants to take him home.

T-Minus 12… Hours!?

2008-04-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

Twelve more hours until Kindra and I are parents for the second time. Crazy. We haven’t even really spoken that much about how we feel about it all. Kindra just told me that she was nervous about tomorrow, and I have to admit, it’s a little nerve-wracking if I start to think about it. I mean, Kindra’s going to have surgery. And I’m going to wear the stupid little cap and gown again. At least we’ll have showered and be clean this time.

Tell you the funny thing, though… I just realized in the last couple of days how much we’re going to have to teach U.B. I mean, we’re starting all over again… Feeding, sleeping, burping, getting dressed, right hand/left hand, signs, words… Wow. I marvel at how much Danica knows right now, and I know it’s going to shock me how much U.B. doesn’t know. Formula, bottles, spit up, burp cloths… Wow. *shake head*

I’m planning on taking a video camera and still camera into the delivery room, but we’ll see how many hands I actually have. Besides, who knows if we’ll ever watch the delivery on tape? I didn’t chance it last time, and I didn’t even really see Danica until they brought her over after cleaning her off and checking her out initially. I’m kinda curious to see what I’ll do this time.

I’m also curious to see how Danica reacts and how long it takes her to figure out that the whole thing is a permanent situation. My mom is supposed to bring Danica to the hospital in the afternoon after Danica’s nap to see U.B., so it’s gonna be interesting. I think she’ll enjoy it at first, but we’ll see how it is when she figures out that U.B.’s going to be getting a lot of attention. We’re a little worried that Danica’s going to regress a bit and act more like a baby.

It was pretty amusing when my parents brought our old car seat and vibrating baby chair to the apartment today – Danica used both for her dolls, but ended up climbing in both of them and sitting in them. It really showed how much she’s grown already. Hopefully, she’ll let U.B. sit in both in peace… and hopefully she doesn’t sit down on top of U.B.

You know… I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet… Kinda like with the first child where it takes a while to really figure out that you’re parents and not just babysitting. I guess it’s pretty much like gettin’ in the pool – just take the plunge, eh?

* * *

By the way… I haven’t come up with a new name for the blog (and I’m not writing one for each child), so… Submit your ideas now!

Countdown #2: T-Minus Six

2008-04-26T07:47:00.001-07:00

How about in six days, Danica will be two? Where has the time gone? It was just yesterday that we were celebrating her first birthday. *sigh* I can’t imagine how you parents out there see things when your children turn ten, twenty, thirty… *shake head* I feel bad that we’re not having a party for Danica, but I don’t think it’ll affect her. I am, however, planning on getting a cake for her. An Iron Man cake. Heh. Just kidding. I’m hoping to be able to get Elmo, Curious George and another character on it.

See, I’ll just admit we’re bad parents – we use the TV to distract Danica in the morning. She’s a big fan of Sesame Street (mostly Elmo, though she does know other character), Curious George, Super Why!, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and pretty much anything that looks like it has a baby in it. Definitely do not tell her you might turn on one of those programs, because if you can’t find it (or it’s not there like the TiVo says it is), she’ll be pissed. I also hate it when shows show two seconds of a baby and then the baby goes away, because that’s all she wants to see. Oh, and as a warning, as cute as some of that stuff is, DO NOT BUY HER ANY ITEMS ASSOCIATED WITH ANY OF THOSE SHOWS. Unfortunately, she’s not into the superhero cartoons (yet), though she has said, “Batman,” with some prodding.

Beyond cartoons, she’s also a big fan of animated feature films. Her absolute favorite is Bambi, because I think she equates it to “baby,” plus there’s all the animals. She’s also seen Snow White (she surprised me this morning by actually saying, “Snow White!”) and The Lion King II, but those don’t hold her interest much. It’ll be interesting when we go to Disneyland someday.

Other tidbits: she’s recently been into throwing things into water. She’s thrown a couple of things into the streams and ponds we have around our complex for pretty much no reason. It is funny when she tells you she threw something in the “duckie water.” Unfortuantely, she’s also gotten into throwing things into the toilet as well. *sigh*

On the cute end, she loves the mini-magnadoodle we have and over the last couple of days has been drawing non-stop. She draws a mean turtle, potties, and a Thumper (of Bambi fame). Fortunately, she can tell you what she drew, though her pronounciation could use some work.

Anyway, here’s a clip that some of you have seen, but it’s from last Christmas (sorry). Danica particularly loves this clip because the first time I showed it to her was on our point-and-shoot camera, so now she’ll grab the camera and want to see the “motorcycle.” It’s amusing and annoying at the same time.

T-Minus Six

2008-04-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

(Originally written on Monday, April 21)

Here’s a crazy story… In six days, Kindra and I will be parents. Again. I have to tell you, it’s a little disconcerting (and don’t the rest of you tell me it shouldn’t be). Of course, if it were up to Kindra, the baby would be out of her already. A couple of funny things about the fact that Kindra’s still pregnant: 1) if we weren’t having a scheduled c-section next Monday at noon, we’d still have two weeks to go, since the actual due date is May 4, and 2) Kindra pointed out that she’s never actually been this pregnant. You have to remember that Danica’s actual due date was May 17, but that she was born 15 days early.

Other things: Danica (and by extension, Kindra and I) is still not sleeping all that well. We think we have a bedtime strategy that works for us, but she’s still not really all that interested in sleeping at bedtime, and she has trouble putting herself back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night. It’s usually two or three times a night that she’ll walk out of her room bleary-eyed like she’d just woken up from a nap she really needs. Just last night, she woke up pretty much every hour.

We’re working on getting a bed for her, but I’m not totally convinced that’s going to solve things. Phase one is being completed, as I’ve moved a couple of desks out of her room to allow us to shift some things around, so we’ll try to get one ASAP (obviously). We’ve even taken to laying a folded comforter on the floor next to our bed so that she has something to lie down on if she comes in our room.

We’ve also recently determined that The Girl doesn’t like to wake me up as much as Kindra, so we’ve switched sides of the bed. I sleep on the side closest to the door, which is the side we keep the folded comforter on, and Kindra now sleeps away from where Danica can see her immediately. It’s worked a couple of times, and The Girl has just come in and slept on the comforter.

All in all, that’s pretty much our life right now. Danica’s pretty happy everyday… she loves going to visit her friends at daycare every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday… Mom and Dad remain sleepy… Mom remains very pregnant while trying to finish up her work for her certification… Dad remains alternately extremely busy and moderately so… The Girl eagerly anticipates the upcoming Iron Man (May 2) and Speed Racer (May 9) movies as well as her younger sibling (though that probably will change)… speaking of which, Danica loves her new book, I’m a Big Sister!... U.B.’s names we are considering are Colin and Chloe, though any suggestions might be of use… And I just realized that Danica doesn’t say the phrase, “Got it!” that much anymore. It’s kinda sad.

Bed Problem: Solved!

2008-04-14T13:42:00.001-07:00

Bed Problem: Solved!, originally uploaded by shc32.

Not really. But wouldn't it be great if she did want to sleep in the basket? I think we'll be purchasing a twin- or full-size bed in the next week or so. I'm still not positive that she'll stay in it, but we might as well try...

Fast Break

2008-04-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, while I wait for some video files to render, here’s the quick rundown:

Aunt Steph just left on Wednesday morning after visiting since last Friday… Ah-Mah and Ah-Gong were also here over the weekend, so it was fun for the family to hang out together… Of course, they all got a big kick out of Danica, who was also eager to see them (see video).

Only eighteen (18!) more days until Kindra’s scheduled c-section on Monday, April 28, but the realization that she could go into labor at any time has put a little bit of a panic in me. Technically, her due date’s not until May 4, but she’s pretty sure she’s not going to make it to April 28. The doctor says that everything is fine (*knock wood*), but Kindra’s definitely ready to be done. Not really sure how we’re going to handle two, but we take solace in the fact that we’re not Jon and Kate from Jon & Kate Plus Eight (as I think many a couple do).

Our biggest issue right now is that, per my last post, Danica has decided that cribs are for babies. Unfortunately, mattresses on the floor do not seem for Danicas, either. She’s been crazy difficult to get to sleep (and keep asleep – more on that later). We do the whole bedtime routine thing – bath, books, kisses – but she knows that she has to go to sleep and is consequently pretty fussy when it comes time to turn out the lights and for us to leave the room.

We’ve gotten to taking turns putting her to sleep, following the “Weissbluth method,” which basically involves telling her what’s going on, putting her down and letting her cry. When she gets out of bed and opens her door, we just pick her up without a word, put her in her bed and walk out again. Repeat about a bajillion times on a bad night (record is in the 70’s – inside of thirty minutes), and on a good night, repeat less than ten times (record is six… but she woke up later). It’s hell on the nerves and on our backs.

If you think getting her to sleep sounds rough, you should see her actually sleeping: she rolls around like crazy. We expected this since toddlers aren’t really supposed to be in beds until after age three because they just don’t have the body awareness to stay in a bed. We might have given in a bit too easily with taking her out of the crib, but because she used to bang her head against the wall, we had to. Anyway, she tends to roll off the mattress and ends up sleeping on the floor, which she apparently doesn’t mind. She’s taken to opening her door and flopping down on the ground when we go to move her and then just falling asleep in her doorway. We’ve also found her out in the middle of the hallway, where she sleeps just fine (mostly), and she even came into our room one day and slept by the side of our bed. I’m not too thrilled with it, but she sleeps on top of her blanket and we keep the apartment pretty warm, so I have to live with it for now. Even if she stays on the bed, she mostly sleeps half-on, half-off the bed, which isn’t much better.

And if you think watching her sleep is rough, you should be there when she wakes up in the middle of the night. We hold our breath when she wakes up, hoping that she’ll turn around and flop down on top of her blanket. If she doesn’t, the next best hope is that when she comes out, she’ll go back to sleep quickly if we hold her for a little while and then gently lay her down. The worst-case scenario (which has happened quite a bit over the past couple of days) is that we have to go in there, calm her down, and then lay with her to get her to go to sleep. Of course, getting out of there once she’s asleep (without falling asleep yourself – a challenge for both of us) is a bit like the scene at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones tries to take the golden idol… you’ve got to move gently, but quickly, lest you wake her up and she comes after you like that huge boulder in the movie. I would’ve put in a movie clip here, but I couldn’t find just that part on YouTube. Go figure.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on.

Upcoming headlines: This Episode Brought to You By the Number “2”… “Puh”-“Lease” = “Peesh”… A Tomboy She is Not… Hell’s Angel... Intervention... Pretty in Pink.

Vlog!

2008-03-19T01:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday Morning

2008-02-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

I’ve been crazy busy and couldn’t blog (no energy or time), but that doesn’t mean Danica hasn’t been busy, too. There’s a lot of stuff to tell you, but I’ll just start with this video from Sunday morning:

79

2008-02-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

I know this is the Daily Danica, but I thought I’d drop a little note about the current U.B. (you’ll recall that we called Danica “U.B.,” too – or maybe you don’t, but we did). Kindra’s most recent doctor’s appointment was last Wednesday and things are going well. I had a little shiver run through me when Dr. Lee told us that Kindra’s next appointment was going to be in three weeks, and then every two weeks after that. Obviously, I know the baby’s coming, but it’s kinda nervous time when the doctor mentions that you’ll be seeing her every two weeks.

It’s February 11 today, and with a delivery date of April 30, that gives me… (looking at calendar)… SEVENTY-NINE DAYS. Hmm…

"I Opted for the Picture Rather Than Saving Them."

2008-02-02T09:43:00.000-08:00

I would've taken the picture, too.

Those're Martha's kids Paul, Gavin, and Hazel (l-r). Read more about them and the Copeland's experience living in Indonesia at their blog. A link to their site is also in my "Links" box to the right.

Howdy!

2008-01-31T19:13:00.001-08:00

We would like to welcome Elena Josephine Mack to the world. She’s our friend Christy’s new little baby, and Danica’s friend Sophia’s new little sister. Little Laney was born last Wednesday, January 23. Yay.

You can tell she was thrilled to have Kindra take her picture.

Daily Danica: Bite Sized

2008-01-30T09:08:00.000-08:00

I was informed by Kindra last night that Danica no longer likes it when Kindra’s shirt doesn’t fully cover her belly. Last night while trying to get The Girl to go to bed, Kindra was lying with Danica on the couch, but had her belly exposed. Danica grabbed Kindra’s shirt and tried to pull it down while saying, “C-c-cold.” Apparently, she thinks the baby is feeling a draft.

* * *

It’s always interesting to find out every once in a while how children think. We have a video baby monitor so we can watch Danica, and the camera is placed on top of the hutch in Danica’s room. She figured out a long time ago that it was up there, and she’s seen the monitor in action, so I think she’s kinda put two and two together.

What I find amusing is that this morning, Kindra tells me that Danica thinks I’m in the camera. She pointed at it last night when she was going to sleep and said, “Dad.” Silly Danica…

* * *

I’m sad that my daughter’s not British anymore. She used to prounounce “mom” with an accent, so it would come out “moh-m.” Now she just says “mom” or “momma.” Boo.

You Can’t Make an Omlette…

2008-01-26T08:04:00.000-08:00

I forsee some serious cleaning if we keep trying this.

Why It Takes 20 Minutes to Get Home

2008-01-24T21:45:00.001-08:00

What We Did Over Winter Break

2008-01-11T16:31:00.001-08:00

Wow. It’s been almost a month since my last post. Geez.

Here’s the brief synopsis of our winter holiday time, since I’m swamped with work:

The Fam traveled to Iowa to spend time with Kindra’s family from December 21 to December 29… We learned not to take a full, tightened, spill-proof straw cup onto a plane with the straw closed – turns out, the air pressure in the plane drops to less than the air pressure in the cup and causes water to shoot out the straw... We were reminded that Denver is one of the most boring “modern” airports to get stuck in during a layover – we were delayed going from Denver to Des Moines because of weather in Chicago, and there was nothing interesting to do… I also learned to check the weather in Denver, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Kansas City and Minneapolis before I travel to or from the Midwest.

Danica saw her second snow (the first was New Year’s Day 2007) when we arrived in Iowa… and saw her first semi-blizzard the day after (it snowed four inches)… She also wore her first snowsuit and boots, went sledding, had her first snowman made for her by Grandpa Larry and Mom, and decided that snow was 1) too wet for her, and 2) too weird to walk in by herself.

For Christmas, The Girl received 1) a Cookie Monster TMX (similar to the Tickle-Me-Elmo TMX), 2) a stuffed dog that needs to be petted to feel better, and 3) a stroller/high chair/swing/playpen set for her dolls… Danica also decided that it would be better for everybody else to push the stroller while she either walked in front (so you could chase her) or held on to the side (as she does when she’s at our daycare provider).

While she was in Iowa, Danica learned to climb up and down stairs by herself using the railings (scary), to ride on a push-car, and to generally get everything she wanted… She also started to become more vocal, learning to say “grandma,” “grandpa,” and “Krista” after a few days, along with a few other words. Oh crap! I almost forgot that she learned to say her name (though it comes out like “Dah-dah” now – it started off like “Dah-ca,” but we think she’s just lazy).

From Iowa, we flew into SFO to spend time with my family... Danica melted down at the beginning of the second flight, and we were turned into those people for the first thirty minutes on board while our girl screamed and cried and generally made a ruckuss… Things in the Bay Area were good, and Danica, again, pretty much ran the place. We returned home a couple of days after New Year’s (no, we did not do anything but watch the movie Juno and fall asleep before the ball dropped at midnight)… The drive down went very well.

Over the two weeks, Danica’s gotten remarkably more vocal, picking up and using words like crazy. She’s moved beyond the standard “baby” into trying to name more things, and she pretty much points to everything inside and out for us to name. It’s kind of scary. She now says a ton of things, including rock (as in a mineral, but also as in the action of moving a chair back-and-forth), leaf, “love you,” hi, bye, more, bottle (which sounds like a lot of other things), bubble (which sounds like “bottle”), berries, dog, fish, raisin, park, and pool… I’m sure there are a lot more, but I can’t remember them right now.

Even beyond her language skills increasing is her overall ability to communicate. She’s signing things more accurately now – the best example I have is the sign for “pig,” which is putting your hand under your chin palm down and wiggling your fingers. She used to just stick her hand out and wave it up-and-down, but all of a sudden, she started to do it properly. Not really sure why, except that we have a pig bubble-blower she rediscovered thanks to Aunt Steph.

Danica’s also still detoxing from having all the attention and has been very needy and clingy since my parents returned to the Bay last weekend. Actually, we’re still detoxing, too, and it’s been tough with The Girl wanting us to go with her everywhere in the house – she drags us around by the finger constantly. We’ve been making her say “please” when she wants us to do things, but she’s slow to do it without prompting.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Oh yeah, her latest obsession is leaves. She loves to walk around our apartment complex and pick up the ones that have fallen on the ground. I have no idea why. I’m sure it’ll get stranger.

Walk Around the Block

2007-12-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's a walk around The District, a new shopping center in Tustin. Danica's not the best follower when we go for walks right now.

Contain Her Not

2007-12-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Here’s what it’s like when you take Danica to the store. At least she entertains herself.

This is Why

2007-12-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of posts ago, I told you that the video I posted was not of a “typical” walk with Danica. Here’s why:

As you can see, she kinda wanders all over the place and isn’t really great at coming to you when you call to her. We don’t take Danica for a walk; she takes us.

19 Months

2007-12-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

Can you believe it? Just five more months until Danica’s TWO! Crazy.

There’s still a lot I haven’t covered with her, since she’s going through another growth spurt, mentally. She’s picking up words really quickly now. She doesn’t pronounce them well, but she’s trying. In the past week, she’s added “birdies,” “car,” and “cold.” She’s also a big fan of the word “ball.”

Just yesterday we noticed that she’s really started to pay attention to her surroundings, especially when we’re outside. I took her on a walk around the complex yesterday, and she pointed to all the bushes, grass, and rocks. We were on the sidewalk and walked by a rock, which she pointed to, then knelt down and pointed at the sidewalk as if to say, “That’s a rock, just like this is a rock?” It was pretty cool.

She’s also very enthusiastic about things she knows the names of, so every time we head to our garage and when we are driving around, she likes to point out all the cars. Oh, and she’s recently also picked up the sign for “motorcycle,” which is just holding your hands like you’d hold bike bars and twisting your fists (see below):

Anyway, that’s just another quick update. More later.

Quick Update

2007-11-24T16:08:00.000-08:00

As evident from the lack of updates, I have been pretty busy with work. Way too busy. Anyway, here’s a bullet update of things that are new and/or cute with Danica:

Her favorite word is “baby.” Shocker. She’s started talking more, and it’s a lot of fun hearing her copy words and sounds. So far, she’s got “hi” and “bye” down, and she says “bvoo” for balloon and blueberries. She also says “uh-oh” a lot, which is very cute.

Danica’s also picked up and created a lot of signs recently. She rubs her leg for “lotion,” rubs her lips for “lip gloss,” and has created “phone” by holding her hand to her ear. Definitely her mother’s daughter.

She still loves babies and baby dolls, which she asks for a lot in the morning.

The Girl’s preference for either Kindra or me is generally based upon which one of us gets her up from her crib in the morning. It’s seemed however, that she does oscillate between which of us she prefers every couple of weeks.

She loves leading people around by the finger. I spend a lot of mornings with her being led around to her room, to the bathroom, and to the bedroom. She’ll just walk over to wherever I’m sitting and grab my hand and try to pull me up. If’ I’m laying down, she’ll grab my hair or ear to get me up. Really her mother’s daughter.

Doors are her favorite play toy. Ever since she’s figured out she can reach the handles, she loves opening and closing them. She’ll even say “hi” and “bye” when does it, occasionally.

We’ve moved beyond the baby tub and let her sit in the regular bathtub now. She loves to lie on her back in the bathtub like she’s doing the backstroke. I have no idea why, but it makes it pretty difficult to give her a bath. Still, she giggles like crazy when she does it.

Taking a Walk with Danica

2007-10-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

This actually isn't a typical walk with Danica, but I'll explain later. Enjoy.

I'll Take a 30, Not a Full

2007-10-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Here’s how attached Danica is to dolls these days: At Danielle’s, our daycare provider, there is a Cabbage Patch Kid that Danica likes to play with, carry around, and feed. Yesterday, Kindra called me and told me that when she got to Danielle’s to pick The Girl up, Danica was crying and Danielle was holding her.

Apparently, Danica was playing with the CPK when Sophia, who’s about five months younger than Danica, took it away. Danica got annoyed, went over, and shoved Sophia over by her face, and took the doll back (yay!). *Ahem.* I mean, that was not something that we condone, and so Danica earned her first “timeout.” I suppose Danielle sat her in a corner and made her stay put, because I can’t imagine how else you would put The Girl in a timeout. When Kindra got there, Danica had just finished being punished.

[Off the record, how cool is it that my girl’s not gonna stand for having things taken away from her? =)]

All of this brings me to a question that, ironically, was asked of me yesterday by a co-worker, and that is whether or not Kindra and I have a discipline system in place for Danica. I suppose we don’t right now, beyond telling her “no” for the big dangers, “inappropriate” for things that are, well… inappropriate, and taking things away from her when she doesn’t listen. Fortunately, she’s young enough that she’ll throw a fit for about thirty seconds and then forget what she was throwing a fit about.

Other than that, we don’t really have a system. Guess we’d better start reading up. Sure, we’ve talked about a lot of things including what’s okay, what’s not, and punishments in general, but a lot of scenarios we discuss come up from situations we hear about or went through. Consequently, those situations tend to be with older kids. Fortunately, up until recently, Danica’s been pretty mellow, and even at her most difficult, she’s still a good girl. *Cross fingers.*

Oh, and since we’re on the subject, here’s another funny story that Kindra relayed to me (how come, as much as I’m around, I never get the really good stories? *sigh*): Danica was being naughty for Kindra the other day, so Kindra slapped her on the butt a little… Danica just smiled and then started slapping her butt herself. She did it again last night when Kindra was getting her ready for her bath. Kindra had stripped Danica down, at which point Danica looked at Kindra, slapped her own behind, and giggled… Sheesh.

Kids are nuts.

Pullin' Out All the Tricks

2007-10-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

I was lying down next to our couch today with Danica standing near me drinking out of her sippy cup when I caught whiff of a diaper in distinct need of changing. I asked Danica if she’d pooped, to which she shook her head “no,” in reply. I’ll take this opportunity to mention that over the past couple of months, she’s developed a real aversion to having her diaper changed. We’re not really sure why, but we have to distract her by giving her an object to inspect while we change her.

Now, I’d told Danica that I was lying down to take a nap, and when I started to get up, she dropped her sippy cup, grabbed my shirt sleeve, and pulled me back down to the pillow I’d been lying on. She then proceeded to put the blanket back on me that I’d been using, and laid her head down on the couch next to me, then ended up moving closer to me and snuggled up next to me.

Anything to get out of having a diaper change, I guess. I should also mention that she tends not to lay her head down for very long in any circumstance, so it’s not like she was going to end up taking a nap next to me. I was surprised she managed to lay her head down for more than five seconds. Still… I’ve got a super cute (albeit manipulative) daughter.

For Twenty Years She Survived Without a Scratch...

2007-10-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

And twenty years later...

I Guess You Don't Mind Playing with Dolls If It's Your Kid...

2007-10-16T09:29:00.001-07:00

I guess there really is such thing as the “maternal instinct,” because Danica’s exhibiting it big-time. A little while ago, I mentioned that Danica had a thing for babies, signing “baby” at every opportunity and generally having a good time with the three-month old at her daycare, as well as “playing” with her friend, Sophia. I say “playing” because Danica’s still a little too young to understand how to play with another child, but she does like to hand items to other children. Regardless, she goes nuts when she sees a baby, either in real life, on TV, or on the boxes of diapers we have around.

It was about two weeks ago that Danica really started taking an interest in Kindra’s old Cabbage Patch Kid that we found when we visited Iowa back in July. Since then, she’s been pretty attached to it, carrying it around the house, giving it hugs and kisses, and dressing and undressing it. After a couple of days, she started wanting to feed the CPK with her sippy cup, putting the spout to its lips, and asking for a napkin to wipe its mouth off because it was wet.

It’s getting a bit out of hand now, because Danica also has a small baby doll given to her by Kindra’s friend, Gina, and she just received a doll that’s in between the CPK and her small doll in size. So now we’ve got three “babies” that need different amounts of care at different times. For some reason, one of them needs to be drinking out of a sippy cup at any given time. In fact, Danica will grab a doll and a cup and bring them to us to have us given them a drink. I think it stems from the fact that none of the dolls has a bottle that fits inside its mouth, and so Danica gets a little frustrated when she’s just placing the cup to their lips and they don’t do anything. I’m wondering why she thinks that we can feed them… Still, it’s pretty cute, so I don’t really mind having to take care of her dolls every once in a while.

Oh, FYI, the title comes from something Kindra said to me a long time ago... We were walking along one day when she just suddenly blurted out, “I guess you don’t mind playing Ninja Turtles if it’s your kid.” She was thinking about her friend Tracy, who Kindra had seen playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with her four year-old son the day before. I thought she was crazy at the time (who wouldn’t want to play TMNT?), but I guess she was right.

FYI

2007-10-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

For those of you who tried the link to the Flickr photostream above the photos to the right and got nowhere...
Thanks for not telling me.

In any case, I've fixed it, so if you want to see all of the photos in Flickr and not just the newest one, you can click on that link to get to the full photostream.

You're welcome. Enjoy.

A Reason Not to Buy Food at the Target Snack Bar

2007-10-14T21:14:00.001-07:00

The fam took a little walk to our neighborhood Target this afternoon to pick up a couple of things that we needed and as a way to get in a little exercise (though it’s more exercise for Mom and Dad than Danica, since we push her in her stroller to the store, then have to chase her around the aisles when we let her out). I’ll mention that one of the things we needed was Kleenex™, or more accurately, Puffs™, since the Little One’s got a bit of a cold. Don’t worry, it’s just a runny nose, not anything crazy (*cross fingers*), and she probably picked it up from one of the kids at daycare (inevitable).

When we got to Target, Kindra wanted a little snack and I wanted a drink, so we ended up getting some popcorn and a drink (for a buck!). I’ll preface the rest of this story by saying that yes, we know that you shouldn’t give popcorn to kids under the age of two. Okay, so that pretty much tips off the fact that we let Danica have some popcorn as we wheeled her around the store. Everything went well until we stopped off at the returns and exchanges counter to return some stuff we’d bought last week.

Danica was standing by her stroller as Kindra and I got our returns out from the basket when I was called up to the counter. Just at that moment (naturally), she started coughing because she was choking on some popcorn. Kindra knelt down beside her and started patting her back, and I saw a little popcorn and some spit-up come out of Danica’s mouth, so I figured things were probably okay. I tossed some napkins to Kindra and went to quickly finish our return, since I’d held up the small line a bit anyway.

Of course, as I’m handing the receipts over to the clerk, I hear Kindra say, “Oh, boy.” Danica had spit up a bit more than we’d anticipated and got some of it on her shirt and stroller. It wasn’t a full-blown vomiting episode, but it was a bit more than a couple of napkins’ worth. Kindra ended up having to change Danica’s shirt and got a little bit of it on herself, but all in all it was okay. It’s just the first time the Girl’s pulled anything like that in a store. I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Obviously, the moral of the story is to not buy any snacks for Danica at Target. That, and to never tell this story again because I look like an ass for returning merchandise while my daughter is coughing up her lunch. From now on, the story is that Kindra was at Target with Danica feeding her popcorn and Danica threw up.

Kindra finds this story amusing because her friend Martha’s son, Gavin, threw up at a Target once after ingesting his first French fries from In-N-Out a few years back. It’s either a coincidence that it was at a Target, or we go to Target way too much.

Dim Sum Danica

2007-10-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

Here’s proof that dining with Danica is not always the pleasurable experience it seems to be. A couple of weeks ago we went out for dim sum, and I filmed a couple of things as we were finishing up as a reminder that The Girl is definitely a little sugar AND a little spice. Here are a few new tricks she’s picked up in the last couple of months:

Here’s how it all starts:

This is what happens when you try to get your kid to quiet down and it ends up being fun for them. Kindra heard a long time ago that one of the best techniques for getting your child to quiet down is to pat their mouth with your hand when they are being loud. Seems that Danica finds it amusing and now does it herself when she realizes she’s making a ruckus:

As you all know, Danica knows what she likes and dislikes and what she wants and doesn’t want. What she doesn’t like is having a dirty mouth, and she’s become more demonstrative when she says, “No.”

New Big Sister Skills

2007-10-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

Here’s Danica practicing so she can help us out in a few months.

Guess we still need to work on that “gentle” thing.

Whatever. Kids are resilient. Oh, and sorry, I forgot my phone only takes video in the horizontal position.

At Least She Thought About It

2007-10-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was sitting in the living room playing with Danica around her bath time, and I asked, “Do you want to take a bath?” Normally she says yes, rubs her chest (the sign for bath), and gets excited about it, but this time, she shook her head, “No.” I tried explaining to her that if she took a bath, she could go to sleep and when she woke up, we’d take her to our daycare provider, Danielle, so she could play with little baby Teegan and her other friends Sophia and Ben. The Girl looked up toward the ceiling, chewed on her lip a bit, looked at me and shook her head, “No,” and then went back to playing with her doll. Oh, well. She knows what she wants.

Fond Farewells

2007-10-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we bid farewell to our friends Martha and Greg and their kids, Gavin (5), Paul (3), and Hazel (1) as they finally began their journey across the Pacific to their new home in Indonesia. The Copeland family departed LAX on Tuesday morning, October 2 at 1:40 a.m. PDT on a Malaysia Airlines flight bound for Taipei, Taiwan and then Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia. From there, they’ll fly to Bali where they will spend a couple of days before arriving at their final destination of Salatiga, Indonesia.

Greg will be teaching art at the Mountainview International Christian School in Salatiga, while Martha helps Gavin, Paul, and Hazel adjust. Fortunately for both Martha and Greg, they are accompanied by a recent college graduate named Mari Yamamoto from Washington who will act as the kids’ nanny. The first time they met in person was Monday night at LAX, as Mari flew in from Washington a few hours before the whole gang was to leave on their trans-Pacific journey.

Gavin will be starting kindergarten when they get there, though his biggest worries seem to be that there won’t be any trick-or-treating to be done at the end of the month and that Christmas isn’t widely celebrated in Indonesia, since the roughly 87% of the population is Muslim (in fact, Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country, though it is a secular state). Paul seemed excited for the trip, especially about getting to ride on three planes and being able to order drinks on the flights.

This is Martha and Greg’s second stint in Indonesia and at Mountainview. They went as a couple shortly after they were married, but had to return following the events of September 11 back in 2001. It will almost be six years to the day when they finally arrive at their new home in Indonesia, this time with a family in tow. They go as a part of OC International, so if you’re interested in helping them out, check out the website or let us know and Kindra can give you some more information.

Kindra, Danica, U.B. and I want to wish the Copeland family all the best in the newest chapter in their lives. They are incredibly brave and faithful. We are fortunate that they have also been great friends to all of us.

You can read about their adventures on their blog at:

http://copelandfive.blogspot.com/

It's also listed to the right in my "Links" section.

Daily Danica v2.0

2007-09-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new Daily Danica. Let me know what you think. Most of the functionality of the old site is still here, so you can still see daily pictures of the girl and see what she's up to. It will also allow anybody to comment on the blogs, so feel free to say hi or whatever. Just click on the "comments" link at the bottom of a post.

The older posts are still available at the old site and should be for some time. The old site's address is:

http://360.yahoo.com/shc32

Don't forget to bookmark this new one. ;)

Daily Danica - Morning Edition

2007-09-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

6:35 a.m. – Wake up, don’t feel like getting out of bed, play with books and have a drink in bed. Shriek occasionally.

7:05 a.m. – Dad decides to get up (finally! Mom’s been awake for an hour). First diaper change of the day.

7:10 a.m. – Give Mom kisses as she goes to work. Fuss at Dad to make him hold you for the next 10 minutes.

7:20 a.m. – Play with magnadoodle for 10 seconds alone while Dad heads to the kitchen to make breakfast.

7:20:10 a.m. – Follow Dad to kitchen with magnadoodle. Make him draw animals for you. Think that every one is a bunny.

7:25 a.m. – Beg Dad for something to drink while complaining that you don’t get to watch him cook eggs.

7:30 a.m. – Sit down to eat breakfast, starting with eggs. Complain that eggs are too hot. Dad blows on them. Seems funny to you.

7:32 a.m. – Whine and ask for a fork.

7:35 a.m. – Pancakes! At last!

7:37 a.m. – See a car in an advertisement on Yahoo! Let Dad know. Loudly.

7:38 a.m. – Ask for more. Don’t really know what you want more of. Dad gives you pancakes, eggs, and a cup of milk. You’re pleased.

7:42 a.m. – Continue eating while Dad checks his e-mail. Whine and complain about something – anything just to get Dad to show you funny YouTube babies. Sign “baby” vigorously.

7:45 a.m. – Watch more YouTube babies.

7:47 a.m. – Throw cup and fork overboard. Dad gasps as if you’ve done something wrong, you think it’s funny. Smile. Throw fork overboard again after Dad picks it up. You’re pleased.

7:47:30 a.m. – Dad asks if you’re done, you stare back as if to say, “Duh.” Smile, shriek, and clap.

7:48 a.m. – Complain that Dad is wiping your hands and mouth off.

7:49 a.m. – Run off to play with… something. Find out “something” is your piggy bank.

7:51 a.m. – Dad wants you to put the coins the top slot of the piggy bank. You don’t understand why, since putting them in gaping hole on the side of the piggy bank is easier. If only Dad would open it.

7:53 a.m. – Finally finish putting coins in piggy bank. Dad asks you to “put it away.” You think, “Isn’t that your job?”

7:55 a.m. – Ask Dad to read you a book.

7:55:25 a.m. – Ask Dad to read you another book.

7:56 a.m. – Ask Dad to read you another another book. Dad asks you to put your other books back in the book basket. You look at him like he’s got to be kidding. Turns out, he’s not. Reluctantly drop books into basket. Dad is ecstatic. It’s weird. Repeat entire process three more times.

8:05 a.m. – Want a drink while Dad is in the middle of seventh book. Get up and get your drink.

8:06 a.m. – Want up on the couch. Dad puts you up there.

8:06:15 a.m. – Discover that you left blankie by the dining table. Whine for Dad to get it.

8:06:20 a.m. – Dad tells you to climb down and get it yourself. Whine some more, find out Dad’s not kidding (again), climb down and go get blankie.

8:08 a.m. – Want up on the couch. Dad puts you up there.

8:08:15 a.m. – Climb down from the couch.

8:10 a.m. – Poop, but don’t let anybody know it.

8:15 a.m. – Dad catches a whiff, but decides to ask you if you pooped. Shake head, “No.” Distract Dad by wandering off, picking up your cup again and leaning against the couch while drinking from it. He is amused. Heh.

8:16 a.m. – Hand your cup to Dad. He asks you to put it on the table. Wanting to please him while still being a little rebellious, look at the table, take the cup from him, and set it down… on the TV stand. Dad thinks, “Close enough,” and is amused. Heh.

8:18 a.m. – Dad tells you that it’s time to change your diaper. Shake your head, grab your bag, and wander off towards your room.

8:20 a.m. – Try to distract Dad from changing your diaper by pounding on the cabinet that holds your toys. He distracts you by handing you a ring that rattles. You are amused.

8:21 a.m. – Smile and shake the ring. Have butt wiped clean. Get scooped up when Dad realizes that the only diapers in the house are in your diaper bag.

8:23 a.m. – Complain that there is a breeze. Smile and shake ring. Make Dad think you are being a good girl as he numbers off the buttons as he snaps your outfit back up. Right when he gets to the last one, start squirming.

8:24 a.m. – Discover you know how to open the door to your room by using the door handle. Dad is proud, but dismayed.

8:26 a.m. – Wonder why Dad left you in your room, wander out with blankie, and discover that Dad wants to return to the room to get video of you opening the door. Follow him back in.

8:30 a.m. – Wonder why Dad left you in your room, wander out with blankie, and discover that Dad is putting the video camera away. Yelp at him to follow you back to your room. He does. Good Daddy. You’ve trained him well.

8:31 a.m. – Ask Dad to pull out Elmo TMX box you haven’t played with in months. He does. You play with it for thirty seconds, then move on to actual Elmo TMX and spend the next 10 minutes putting a bag over his nonexistent shoulders.

8:41 a.m. – Tickle Elmo (accidentally). Give him a cross look as he contorts his body. Give him a hug anyway.

8:42 a.m. – Tire of dumb, shoulderless Elmo TMX.

8:43 a.m. – Wander out of your room, head for the front door and pick up a pair of shoes.

8:44 a.m. – Dad tells you that those are Mom’s shoes. Drop them, pick up a pair of his.

8:45 a.m. – Dad tells you that those are Dad’s shoes. Drop them, pick up one of yours.

8:46 a.m. – Dad nods, tells you that it’s one of your shoes, takes it from you, and picks you up and moves you into the family room.

8:55 a.m. – Get bored of Dad’s “entertainment” ideas. Play on your own.

9:01 a.m. – Dad asks if you’d like to take a nap. Shake head “no.” Really mean “no.”

9:05 a.m. – Look thirsty. Dad gives you water. Smile.

9:08 a.m. – Look cute by lying on couch pillows and appear to try to get comfortable. Shake head “no” when Dad asks if you’d like to take a nap. Really mean “yes.”

9:09 a.m. – Grab blankie while Dad picks you up. Ask for Lulu when you get to your room. Rest your head on Dad’s shoulder like nothing could be more comfortable.

9:15 a.m. – Dad tries to lay you down in bed, but you stop him with a preemptive whine. Ha-ha! Another silent victory.

9:17 a.m. – Dad finally lays you down in bed against your wishes. Cry and whimper, but don’t really mean it. Fall asleep.