Ups

• It’s been very sunny the past week. Today was downright spring-like with temperatures in the 60s. Calvin and I have been spending a lot of time in the park. Truthfully, dutifully wandering after Calvin in the park bores me. However, even though it can be boring, it is very relaxing and I think the sun is good for both of us.
• I cleaned inside and out of our front windows this afternoon. Yeah, it’s kind of funny to list window washing as an “up” but I feel such a sense of accomplishment when I get around to cleaning something really dirty.
• I started another J.D. Robb audio book, Portrait in Death. I really love listening to the progression in her characters and how their back stories evolve. I’m also listening to At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. This books makes me very glad to live in this time period. It’s really amazing the recent advancements that we take for granted.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin is obsessed with buses and trucks. Anytime he’s in the car now he’s giving me a running commentary on the vehicles he sees. He often demands that I make the “yel oo us” (yellow school bus) come back to entertain him more. He also tends to say the phrase “yellow school bus” with long pauses between the words and then speeds it up at strange times so it sounds very much like an automated voice talking.

Simplification

• More shredding. I also triaged my food storage shelf downstairs.

Down

• I’m gaining weight again. I think this is mainly due to me accidentally skipping lunches. I get too busy to eat and by the time I realize it, I’m starving. I need to work better at eating on time.

Ups

• We’ve gotten a fair amount of sun for the past couple of days. I’ve been sitting in the rocker up in Calvin’s room while I work which allows me to work in copious amounts of sunlight.
• I worked up a proposed 2011 budget for our household and submitted it to Jaeger for review. I think I’ve finally figured out how to get the reports I care about out of GnuCash so I can make intelligent decisions based on past trends.

Calvin Moment

• I had an amusing conversation with Calvin’s primary teacher at daycare today. She was talking about how Calvin was very smart but because he was so smart, he was harder to handle than the average toddler. For instance, she says that if you give most toddlers a choice between two options, they will chose one of them. This is billed as an easy way to get the toddler to do what you want them to do. However, if Calvin is faced with two options that he doesn’t like, he’ll just say, “no” instead of choosing either one. Also, he has figured out that once lunch is over it’s nap time. So, when asked if he’s done with lunch, he’ll always say “no” even if he’s no longer interested in eating. Obviously, I have mixed feelings about this. It makes life a little more . . . interesting . . . in the short term but it’s also fascinating to watch his potential grow.

Simplification

• I’ve continued to shred massive amounts of paper. I don’t know where it all comes from. Last night I finally broke down and went through our “medical” folder and subdivided it into 3 different folders in addition to shredding a lot of very old receipts we no longer need. Today, I cleaned up my food shelf in the basement and dumped food that I’m either never going to use or looked kind of sketchy.

My arm hasn’t completely healed yet so I went and got an MRI for it on Monday. I didn’t realize how long of a process it would be. It didn’t seem complicated. They injected the dye in my arm and then I went straight over to the MRI machine. However, the whole process took about 2 hrs (only around 20 min in the actual machine). I’ve never had an MRI before and discovered that the space is a little more confined than I would prefer. Also, next time I’d know to bring my own CDs to pipe into the machine as the imaging is done.

Tuesday I went back to the orthopedic doctor and he took a look at the images. It turns out that my shoulder had a compression fracture and I also sustained a minor cuff injury (I don’t guarantee all those words are right but that’s what I remember him saying). The shoulder did look pretty impressive on film. The good news is that it should eventually heal on its own without any surgery needed. The bad news is he said my shoulder is likely to ache the rest of the winter. I guess ibuprofen will continue to be my friend.

Ups

• Calvin was fairly quiet last night so I slept very well. As a result, I woke up early enough to exercise this morning.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin seems to be much more into reading books recently. It’s not uncommon for him to bring books for us to read at random times. A couple of days ago, he curled up on my lap flipping through the pages of his book while I read my book. In my view, that’s the idea way to pass the evening with a toddler but it doesn’t happen much He also has been demanding more bedtime stories from Jaeger recently. I think he’s figured out that between potty training and bedtime stories he can delay bedtime by a significant amount.

Simplification

• I’ve spent the last several evenings shredding massive amounts of paper. I even found a bank statements from my very first checking account (though not the first statements from that account).

Ups

• Jaeger is back from his trip!
• Calvin and I both survived Jaeger being gone for 5 days.
• The house has been cleaned and has mostly recovered from our benign neglect in December.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin’s obsession with planes continues. Last night he was talking about planes in his sleep. It was cute but not entirely restful to hear variations of “hanes! hanes!” being muttered. He also is enjoying other large mechanical items such as buses and trucks. Now that he’s forward facing in the car seat, he is continually pointing these out to me.
• Calvin has taken to ordering the cats around. In fact, I think his first real sentence is officially, “Fi ease moosh” (Five, please move).

Simplification

• Got 3 boxes of donations packed.

Downs

• I don’t think I sleep as well without Jaeger. I had the worse time falling asleep last night.
• My arm is still bothering me. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and couldn’t get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. At least I had no trouble getting up in time to exercise.

Ups

• I really love being back in my normal routine. Traveling was interesting but it’s really good to be home.
• Got up and exercised before Calvin woke up this morning.
• This was my first normal “day off” in about a month. I spent it by wondering to various thrift stores and used furniture stores looking desperately for a table I could stand that would last a couple of years. Our dining room chairs are dying by pieces and all of a sudden its condition seems to be deteriorating rapidly. It’s a dining room set I picked up for a couple hundred of dollars in the thrift store the first year we got married. However, it’s really not Jaeger’s style. In fact, it’s not really my style anymore either. I couldn’t find anything used that I liked but I did find a new version for “too much” money that I think would work good for many years (Note: I think it’s priced appropriately for it’s quality, it’s just hard for me to spend multiple thousands of dollars on anything).
• I started reading a new book called House of Havoc by Marni Jameson. It’s one of the more practical home decorating/organizing books I’ve read recently and it’s given me a couple of ideas of stuff to do with our house.

Calvin Moment

I picked Calvin up from daycare and took him to the park. However, by the time we got to the park, the sky was cloudy. We had dressed warmly so Calvin and I resolutely started down the path to the playground equipment. When we got there, I realized that the equipment was still covered in snow. Last week, Calvin got to watch 3 dogs play in the enclosed dog park area. Remembering how fun this was, he walked over to that area of the park and sat down patiently waiting for dogs to appear and entertain him. I tried to explain that was unlikely to happen as the park was completely deserted. Instead, we decided to go to Petco and gawk at the animals they had. Calvin seemed have almost as much fun looking at the pictures of cats on kitty litter as he was with the real animals.

Simplification

• I cleared off my desk and worked on packing more items into boxes.
• I got a bunch of empty spice jars that match my current jars for Christmas. I had fun filling the jars up and alphabetizing my herbs and spices (yes, I can be obsessive but only in completely useless areas)

  I shredded lots of stuff but have boxes left of things that should be shredded. I wonder if I’m ever going to get through it all.

Ups

• I got the top floor of the house cleaned today. Because of my long vacation and hectic schedule right before leaving, the house hasn’t had a really good cleaning for quite a while. It was good to clean and get things organized. I also finally carried some boxes of Calvin’s old clothes down into the basement for storage. (We’re not planning to have another child but I figure since we have the room we might as well keep stuff in case someone around us could use it.)
• I finally got around to weighing myself yesterday and discovered I didn’t gain a significant amount of weight the entire time I was gone. Given the amount of Christmas candy I ate at my mother’s house, this is somewhat miraculous. My next challenge is to find time to consistently exercise again. Assuming I get to bed at a reasonable time, I’ll probably try getting up early tomorrow.

Calvin Moment

• We have started eating our dinner meal together as a family. Up till now, I’ve been feeding Calvin earlier in the kitchen. This was due to him wanting to eat earlier and the mess he caused. We have now put a sheet under his high chair at the dining room table so he can start being part of the meal with us as we eat. Unfortunately, this means he eats later which makes him grouchy. However, other than that, the experience has been going well. Tonight he serenaded us with his version of the ABC song. He can’t really sing it but he approximates the tune and random sings various letters like d e a d d d d.
• Calvin dislikes eating food that isn’t at room temperature. Knowing that, I pulled out his serving of broccoli soup a good 45 min prior to when we ate. However, the first time he tried it he complained that it was hot. I tested it to make sure it was a reasonable temp and told him, “no, it’s lukewarm” at which point Calvin gravely responded with “uk arm.”

Downs

• My arm is still bothering me. I have an appointment to see an orthopedic doctor on Thursday to see what he thinks.

Ups

• Christmas vacation went pretty well. The Megafest was fun and I was relieved by how well behaved Calvin was. He and Yanthor seemed to hit it off which was really cute to watch. We played several games while we were there and I had a chance to watch the new Robin Hood. The movie was particularly fun. The last time I had a chance to watch a full-length movie was back in summer.
• We’re home! Vacation was fun but I love sleeping in my own bed and getting back into our normal routine.
• I finally managed to pay all our bills and balance the credit cards and our checking accounts. I don’t understand how people can go a full month between balancing transactions. I balanced right before we left for vacation but it still took me almost every spare minute for the last two days to catch up. Granted, due to Christmas we did have a lot more transactions than usual. Also, I temporarily lost my credit card right before we left and had to cancel it which did add to the mess.

Calvin Moment

• For Christmas Calvin got quite a few vehicle toys. One of these was a Duplo tractor that had a trailer that hooked to it. Calvin has spent a lot of time driving it around and saying “choo! choo!” He’s not quite clear on the distinction between trains and other motorized contraptions.

Simplification

• We just got home Sunday and I’ve been spending most of my time since trying to catch up. However, I’m hoping to start up my simplification campaign again in the next couple of days.