Downs

• Last night I decided not to give Calvin ibuprofen. This was a mistake. For the last couple of nights he’s been sleeping silently until it’s time to wake up. This means I get to sleep more. However, last night he started making noises around 3am. Around 4:30am I got up and gave him ibuprofen and he went back to sleep for a bit only to wake up bright and early at 6am.

Ups

• I received season one of Castle from the library the end of last week. Our library use to check out each disc of a tv series separately for one week. The main disadvantage of this is our catalog system is not capable of realizing that people would want to watch disc 1 before disc 2 so they have to be really careful or the holds get mixed up. As a result, the librarians recently decided to check out the entire season together for a two week period. I received Castle at the end of last week so I have one more week to watch the episodes before having to return it. I think I preferred the earlier scheme as I don’t think I’m going to make it through the series in time. However, I’m still enjoying the series quite a bit.

Cute Calvin Moment

• As I mentioned yesterday, Calvin doesn’t usually cuddle. However, he does have this cute habit of padding up to me and trying to rest his forehead against mine. He starts moving again the instant I try to hold him but it’s still kind of charming.

Simplification

• The next folder in line for trimming is “Weld.” However, that’s such a huge folder I didn’t feel like tackling it tonight so I took the easy way out and shredded everything in the “Boulder Music” folder.

Food Diary

• Breakfast – Oatmeal with raisins and soy milk
• Lunch – Leftover Samosa Pie, Kiwi, and 1 piece of Dark Dove Chocolate
• Snack – Cheddar cheese and a banana
• Supper – Red Lentil Dal over brown rice, spinach, and cherry tomatoes
• End of day treat – 2 piece Dark Dove Chocolate

Downs

• N/A

Ups

• The house is clean!
• I had a really good conversation with another sys admin from Douglas County. Sounds like there are several projects we’re both going to be working on this year so maybe we can join forces.

Cute Calvin Moment

• We’ve decided Calvin is a High Needs Uncuddly baby. Thus, when he woke up from his morning nap today and seemed content to snuggle a bit, I was shocked. I picked him up and when he laid his head on my shoulder I decided to sit in the rocking chair and rock him a little bit. He stayed snuggled up to me for almost 10 minutes before converting back to the very active baby I’m use to.

Simplification

• Today I completely emptied my “Weld Medical” folder. I haven’t been on the HPLD health insurance plan for over a year now. However, for some reason, I had kept all the handouts from previous benefits meetings. Not sure why. In any case, they’re gone now.

Food Diary

• Breakfast – Oatmeal with raisins and soy milk
• Lunch – Cliff Mojo Bar, a banana, and 1 piece of dark Dove chocolate (I was running late)
• Supper – Leftover Fettuccine with Harvest Vegetables
• End of day treat – 2 Chocolate Chip Cookies

Downs

• N/A

Ups

• I was pretty productive at work today and got several things done that I had been avoiding.
• Calvin went down for his morning nap fairly easy. To avoid a repeat of yesterday, I pushed his nap later by 15 minutes and that seemed to do the trick. During his nap, I had time to exercise, shower, and get a little extra work done before he woke up.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Calvin has almost figured out how to crawl out of the bathtub. Calvin isn’t a huge fan of baths. This is probably because he doesn’t take an afternoon nap so is exhausted by the time we give him a bath at night. He wants us to hold him instead of spending the time splashing around in the water. Usually, he stands up at the edge of the bath tub and holds up his arms trying to convince me to pick him up. However, today, he decided to take matters into his own hands and put his knee on the edge of the bathtub and tried to heave himself over. He isn’t quite strong enough to make this work yet but he’s very close.

Simplification

• I spent 45 minutes filing financial papers today, many of them tax related, and only got through 2/3 of the pile. While filing, I realized that our file cabinets were running out of space. When it comes to financial documents, I’m an obsessive pack rat. However, I decided the file cabinet was getting out of control so I looked up the official recommendations on how to long to keep various documents. I’m planning to deal with one category at a time. Today, I shredded our old Xcel energy statements. It turns out that I had statements dating back to our first apartment in Colorado.

Food Diary
In an attempt to keep my eating under control, I’m adding another section to my daily entry. Like the simplification section, it’s at the end so it can be easily skipped by everyone but me Before I had Calvin, I used software from Nutribase to keep track of the calories I consumed. I love the program and tracking every calorie definitely appealed to my obsessive detail-oriented personality. However, now I just don’t have the time for that level of precision. Instead, I’m just going to do a basic list of what I ate during the day. At the very least, it hopefully will keep me accountable when I considering sneaking into the freezer for my 3rd cookie of the day

• Breakfast – Granola with Blueberries
• Lunch – Toasted Peanut Butter & Jam Sandwhich, Kiwi, 1 piece of dark Dove chocolate
• Supper – Including the snacking before supper, 2 servings of Fettuccine with Harvest Vegetables
• End of day treat – 2 pieces of dark Dove chocolate

Downs

• I’ve gained a couple of pounds which isn’t good since I haven’t made it back to my pre-pregnancy weight yet. It’s because my sugar craving got out of control the last couple of weeks and when Calvin was sick I didn’t exercise as much. Fortunately, the sugar craving has subsided somewhat so I’m hoping to get back on track.

Ups

• I started reading Mine till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas yesterday and am gobbling it up. I stayed up more than an hour past my bedtime last night reading it.
• I had trouble putting Calvin down for a nap this morning but I still had time to finish most of my money tasks.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Calvin has started pointing at pictures as I read to him. He’s been interacting with the books for quite a while. He loves turning book pages and often will pat the pictures with his hand. However, I hadn’t seen him point before.

Simplification

• I finally got around to removing the cat poetry magnates from our fridge. They were well within Calvin’s reach and he has reached the point where he has started to put random things in his mouth.

Downs

• Calvin got up before 5:30 again but luckily I felt fairly rested.
• Daycare reports that Calvin has two teeth coming in on the bottom. Most likely, this means that Calvin will be very restless at night for the next couple of weeks and neither Calvin nor I will get much sleep.

Ups

• Calvin took a longer nap than usual this morning so I got a lot of stuff done.
• We had book club tonight. Turned out that only Jaeger and I were able to make it but we had a good discussion with each other. We’ve decided to read The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick for next month.

Cute Calvin Moment

• I always assumed that Calvin would be a back sleeper since he was religiously put on his back to sleep as a newborn. In fact, at one point he could roll onto his stomach but not his back and he would wake me up screaming furiously at the indignity of being on his stomach. However, ever since he was capable of rolling both directions, he has chosen to sleep on his stomach. He looks really funny sleeping on his stomach. Calvin doesn’t turn his head or anything. He sleeps ramrod straight with his nose pressed into the mattress. I suppose that might be one reason parents are recommended to buy very firm mattresses for babies.

Simplification

• I cleaned underneath the bathroom sink on our main level. I was startled to discover I still had breast milk storage bags under there.

Downs

• Jaeger tried to take Calvin on a hike and it didn’t go well. I suspect that the hiking backpack carrier is still a little large for Calvin to comfortably fit in it. You might wonder why I list this as a down for me since Jaeger is the one that had to deal with the bawling. However, it’d be nice if Calvin learned to like the hiking backpack since we would then have more recreational options on the weekend.

Ups

• Today was Jaeger’s day to get up with Calvin. Unfortunately for Jaeger, Calvin woke up at 5:30 and refused to go back to sleep. I burrowed into the covers and was grateful I wasn’t the one that had to get up.
• Left Calvin with Jaeger and went to a baby shower by myself. It felt a little weird to be someplace without Calvin.

Cute Calvin Moment

• When I got back from the shower, I decided to try taking Calvin grocery store shopping by myself in order to give Jaeger a chance to recover from the failed hike. I used the Beco carrier to carry him around while I shopped and it worked out well. Calvin curled up against my back and flirted with everyone passing by. I was particularly bemused when random men commented on how cute Calvin was. I was also stopped by an older couple who have a 6 month grandson. They thought Calvin looked a lot like him so they chatted with me for a couple of minutes comparing developmental milestones.

Simplification

• I sorted through my shoe collection. I didn’t get rid of as many shoes as I was hoping but I did managed to throw one pair away and designate several others as thrift store contributions.

Downs

• Calvin seems to have finally reached the separation anxiety phase. Ok, I know I was worried he hadn’t gotten there sooner. However, now it is more difficult to pass him off to random strangers when I do things at church.

Ups

• Went to the library after church and picked up Mine Till Midnight and Seduce me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas. Previously, I had read Tempt Me at Twilight not realizing at first that it was the third in the series. I enjoyed it so I’m hoping I’ll like the first two also. It’s always nice to have a good stockpile of historical romances in my “to be read” pile since they do the best job of relaxing me enough to sleep at night.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Today was my first day back doing slides at church since I went into the hospital a year ago. I’ve been putting off getting back on the schedule because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to juggle it and Calvin at the same time. However, by now I have a reasonable number of people I know who will watch Calvin while I do other stuff. While I had arranged for someone to take care of Calvin during church, I hadn’t thought to get someone for Sabbath School time which is when the praise songs are practiced. I decided to take my Beco carrier to church and see how long I could keep Calvin happy while carrying him on my back. It worked beautifully. Calvin clung to my back the entire time like a little monkey just as happy as could be. Having him on my back meant that I didn’t have to worry about him tumbling down the stairs or getting in my way while I worked on the computer. Plus, it was kind of nice to have him cuddled so close. The only problem I ran into was I couldn’t feed him his bottle while he was on my back. Maybe they need a camelbak apparatus for babies.

Simplification

• I didn’t have the energy to put up much Christmas stuff this year. All I put up was a couple of Christmas stockings and our Christmas wreath. The Christmas wreath is decorated with ornaments and is my Christmas tree substitute as we don’t have the room for even a small tree. In spite of the sparseness of the decorations, I didn’t get around to packing them up until tonight. You think I would have learned my lesson since I procrastinated last year and ended up in the hospital the day before I was planning to take down the decorations. In any case, our house has finally moved out of the Christmas season.

Downs

• I had trouble getting Calvin to take his morning nap. Normally, he’s ready for a nap about 2 1/2 hrs after he gets up. However, today I couldn’t convince him to take a nap till an hour after that. This put me behind schedule for starting work on time. However, we have a new project I’ve been working on that’s been requiring night work so I think I’m still okay regarding hours for the week.

Ups

• I made pretty good pie crust today. I can bake most things ok but pie crust is still a challenge for me. Today I made a savory Samosa pie and used the “Flakey Butter Crust in a Mixer” from BakeWise (though I needed to add an additional 2 tbs of water, probably because of Colorado). It turned out better than most pie crusts I’ve made, very flakey. I think I need to tweak the technique a bit but other than that it worked well.
• I decided to pick up some ice cream for a supper treat on the way home from picking up Calvin at daycare. At King Soopers, I carefully examined my ice cream choices. I’m pretty picky when it comes to desserts; I want them to be worth the calories. I thought that a coconut flavored ice cream might pair well with our supper. While scanning for coconut ice cream, I saw Coconut Crunch by Boulder Ice Cream. I casually scanned the ingredients and then did a double take and started carefully reading the ingredients. When I finished, I started over again because I couldn’t figure out what I was missing. As far as I can tell, the “Coconut Crunch” ice cream doesn’t actually contain coconut. Please, go to their website, take a look at the ingredients and tell me I’m wrong. It doesn’t make sense. Anyway, I ended up picking a pint of Haagen Daazs Pineapple Coconut which was very good. Haagen Daazs is one of my favorite grocery store ice cream brands. They are high calorie compared to other brands but the ingredients are great and the taste is usually fantastic. If one is going to eat empty calories, you should make sure they are good empty calories

Cute Calvin Moment

• This morning Calvin decided he wanted to hold the bottle himself. Normally, I hold the bottle but he seemed pretty insistent so I let him. He sucked on it enthusiastically for a bit listening while I talked to him. At one point, I opened my mouth to say something and he looked at me and then shoved the bottle nipple into my mouth. I was startled so I laughed as I moved it out of my mouth. I guess laughing reinforced the idea to him because the rest of the morning feeding he kept trying to share with me.

Simplification

• I cleaned out our snack shelf today. I threw some away, moved less commonly used stuff to the basement and organized the remaining snacks into three sections: nuts, processed snacks, and dried fruit.

Downs

• I woke up with a sore throat and now I have a headache. I have a bad feeling I’m getting sick.
• I’ve been stuck in a sugar craving cycle for the last week or so. It seems like I’m thinking of sugar all the time. We’re now out of candy so tonight for supper I had corn flakes with honey on top :S I know I should resist, especially since I’m working on getting sick, but I don’t. Fortunately, Calvin is too young to be affected by my horrible supper.

Ups

• I got all my assigned housecleaning done today before heading to work.
• I closed 10 of my 22 work orders at work today. I feel very productive but also very tired.
• Calvin managed to feed himself little chunks of sweet potato today. We’re slowly making progress on the solid food front.

Cute Calvin Moment

• For those of you that watched Ever After, do you remember the scene at the end where the Spanish princess is blubbering in Spanish trying to explain why she doesn’t want to marry the prince? Sometimes that’s what Calvin’s crying reminds me of. Often when I put him down to get a bottle or something else, he’ll start crawling towards me blubbering and speaking very emphatically in baby talk. I haven’t a clue what he’s saying but he’s very earnest as he says it. While I don’t like seeing him upset, his earnestness is very endearing.

Simplification

• I packed away some more maternity clothes that were lingering in my closet.

Downs

• Calvin woke up at 1:30am last night and cried for a while but he did eventually go back to sleep so it could have been much worse.

Ups

• Calvin went to daycare today! It was so nice to be able to concentrate on my work instead of juggling Calvin on one hip while I tried to talk on the phone and answer email.
• I got my Beco baby carrier today. I’m flabbergasted by how much more comfortable it is than the Bjorn. Originally, I bought the Bjorn because it was the best carrier that Babies ‘R Us carried. I specifically went to Babies ‘R Us because I wanted to be able to try baby carriers on in-person but they had a fairly inferior selection available.
• Since I was trying to work yesterday while taking care of Calvin, I sacrificed my weekly money time to work during Calvin’s nap. Today, I tried to play catch-up and successfully got all my receipts entered and a modest bit of exercise (not at the same time).

Cute Calvin Moment

• Calvin refused to take a nap in his crib today. He didn’t cry but muttered for about 40 minutes while I worked on receipts. Finally, I gave up and took him out for a walk during which he fell asleep. In a way this was good as I got more exercise than I would have otherwise. Anyway, as I was bundling him up in the stroller, he had this really cute expression of happiness on his face, presumably because I was finally paying attention to him.

Simplification

• I cleaned out one of my kitchen shelves and relegated a lot of stuff, such as my yogurt maker, to basement storage. I’m not entirely convinced I should keep my yogurt maker but I have a suspicion that once Calvin is school-age I might start doing more kitchen stuff again.