Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Halloween

Halloween night would be past his bedtime, so we took him out to Great Grandparents Larsen and Arntson and Grandpa and Grandpa Arntson last weekend. We dressed him up as the Pillsbury Dough boy and he had so much fun! Amy's Aunt Nancy made the costume.


Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Holding down the fort

My mom is currently in town while Amy is away with her class on an overnight environmental field trip. They left early Monday morning. Amy called a few times. She is doing fine. E and my mom are picking her up around 4. Her cell only works outside and it was raining on Monday. I spoke to her only a handful of times. It was hard for her to leave, but she's called my mom and me a few times for updates. Our house is fine, my mom has made huge progress on laundry. We got behind on laundry since before Labor day and never really caught up. I think all hampers are empty now. It's been great to have her up here. My mom has been a blessing while Amy is away.

I've been able to do many things that I normally can't do when it is just Amy and me. I replanted the Iris bulbs on Sunday and had two long days at work. Normally I don't get to work before 9:30am because I am responsible to get E ready and off to day care in the morning. I also slept in a little today didn't have to worry about E at night if he didn't want to go back to sleep as my mom took care of him.

Last night's sleep was important because starting yesterday morning I began fighting off the onset of a cold. I got 8 hours of sleep last night, am taking Sudafed and drinking juice with Vitamin C. I'm doing great. I probably got the cold because I replanted the Iris bulbs in the freezing drizzle Sunday. On Monday I went straight to UST after dropping Amy off at 6:30am and I had class after work until 9pm. That was a 14 hour day. I then started Tuesday with only 5 hours of sleep. I needed to get up early on Tuesday to head over to Mpls for a Sun Java conference all day yesterday and got home at 5pm. E went to bed at 9pm last night so I spent a good 4 hours with him.

This morning I slept in until 6:40 and then got my tire fixed before arriving at work at 9:30. I found a screw in the tire the other day while dropping E off at daycare and changed the tire in the parking lot.

We are currently trying to schedule E's 9 month pictures. He has a doctor's appointment on Thursday. I told him not to worry last night because he won't be receiving any shots. He smiled. I then clarified and said "well, you're not scheduled for any" meaning we didn't know if they would give him a flu shot. His smile quickly went away and he gave me a blank stare. Do you really think he understood?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Almost 9 months

Well, our boy is almost 9 months old. He now crawls almost effortlessly (and very quick!) and says Mama, sometimes to Amy, sometimes to Me, sometimes to a toy, but when he is upset he cries the word Mama out quite a bit. There must be something to it.

E can also stand up and lean against the couch and other objects. He loves playing with his plastic hangers, and, of course, animal train.

He attended a train show with us a few weekends ago and enjoyed watching the layouts they had set up. Many of the exhibitors tried selling us some large scale trains saying that our boy "needed them." I let them know I was already conditioning him and hope he can help me work on my layout once I get started again.

We've, well, I, have been buying Thomas stuff as it goes on sale or clearance, and I, I mean, he, has quite the collection. I kind of went overboard on the engines, and need more train cars and buildings for him to play with, so I'll work on that over the next 2 years. The Thomas set is meant for 3 year olds (and dads of any age!) We are purchasing the Thomas Take Along sets. They are sold at Target, Wal-Mart, and other retail outlets and so far have not had any lead recalls.

Today E left a cryptic message for his grandma. He found the phone and was playing with it intently, as he always does. I dialed up my mom for him and put E on the phone to either talk to her or leave a message, in his own little way of course. Well, when he got the recording he played a few notes on his musical toy and then let out a cough. Thinking his message was over I hung up the phone wondering when I would be receiving a call back from her. It took only 20 minutes until she called back, and was disappointed that the connection was bad so she missed his musical talent and only heard a faint, crackling, cough of a child. She figured it was him though.