The last couple of weeks have been very busy. I’m two weeks away from a major upgrade involving our ILS. We’ve spent the last six months making sure that the upgrade won’t break anything and now the end is almost in sight. During the upgrade and, at a minimum, the week afterward, I will change from working part-time to full-time. There’s just no way I can manage an upgrade unless I’m completely available.

At the same time, I’ve been very busy at home. As I mentioned last time, we’ve been thinking about selling our house in a couple of years. From an interest perspective, I’d like to do it now. I’m still flabbergasted by how low mortgage rates are at the moment. It almost makes me want to buy/sell now. However, I don’t think this is the right time for us. First of all, we haven’t figured out our long-term location plans yet. I’d like to move back to the northwest at some point but I’ve really liked the stability Jaeger has at his current job. Second, we don’t have a big enough down payment for the area we’d want to move to. Third, I don’t want to move Calvin from his daycare yet. I’ve been very happy with his daycare and would prefer to wait till he’s preschool age before moving him.

Even though we don’t plan to move for a couple of years, there is a lot of work we have to do before the house would be ready to sell. We need some major de-cluttering/organizational work, fix up some minor things such as repair paint scratches, and probably double check there isn’t any major repairs. In addition, we both like the idea of hiring someone to come stage our house. I’m particularly baffled by what to do with our living room. I know when we start showing the house the TV will have to go but other than that I’m clueless. My piano takes up about half of the living room which makes room configuration tricky. Most people with grand pianos have larger houses than we do

Perhaps because of all the activity at work and home, I’ve been happier than I remember being since Calvin was born. I think it’s because I have a personal goal now: get the house in a state that it can be easily sold. Before Calvin was born I had a goal of losing weight in order to be ready to pregnant and then learning as much as I could about how to have a healthy pregnancy. Since Calvin has been born, I’ve been at a loss for my personal goal. I read parenting books but they’re all so nebulous and depend so much on specific children and situations that I’ve almost given up on them. Anyway, I hope my optimism continues and this isn’t just some anomaly.

Calvin Moment
Calvin and I often go to the Carbon Valley Library. I may be biased since I work there but I think it’s one of the nicest libraries for children. They have a lovely play area that provides the kids lots of different ways to play. Calvin is particularly fond of their little trucks but is also starting to show interest in the puppets. Of course, there are lots of books also. However, it’s nice for Calvin to be occupied while I pick out the next batch of books we’re going to take home.

Anyway, on Monday we had gone to get out of the house and also stay out of the wind storm. At first, Calvin didn’t want to go in the library because he liked the wind. However, it was too chilly for me. Calvin had a coat but I had forgotten one for myself. Eventually, he decided to stop pouting and enjoy the library like he normally does. He was playing with his favorite trucks when a boy around 3 and a girl around 5 approached him and started “playing” with him. Basically, they pretended they were dogs and they chased him all around the children’s section. It was very interesting to watch. I was a little nervous because the girl was so much bigger than him but it all turned out well. The kids would get on their hands and knees and scramble towards Calvin while he would turn and run as fast as his little legs could carry him squealing in glee the entire time. Calvin obviously was having the time of his life.

Simplification

• I’ve been working on simplifying my spice cabinet. There’s a couple of reasons for this. First, it’s extra clutter that I’m pretty sure won’t be allowed when we try to sell the house. Second, it’s pain to keep it dusted (or, more precisely, I’m getting tired of feeling guilty when I don’t take the time to clean it properly). Third, Calvin is fascinated by all the multi-colored spices in the jar. At one point he managed to unscrew and dump out my turmeric which is not a spice you want floating around randomly. For the most part, I’ve convinced Calvin to leave it alone but every so often I get careless and he starts playing with the jars. Anyway, I went through my other cabinets and mapped out a plan for how I can fit the spices in the other cabinets without making everything look cluttered. During this process, I also cleaned off most of the top of our refrigerator.
• I cleaned our bathroom today. I do clean our bathrooms on a regular basis. However, I don’t pay as much attention to the details as I always should. Today I spent a lot of time on the details.
• Cleaned out the mirror medicine cabinet in Calvin’s bathroom and threw a lot of little bottles away.

Downs

• After Thursday, I was feeling iffy and Jaeger became downright sick. It’s not fun to look after a toddler when you just want to curl up in a little ball and sleep.
• I’m trying to dramatically trim down my grocery expenditures this month because I’m drastically over budget for the year. I bought conventional products instead of organic for most of my purchases this week and tried to cut down the number of splurges I purchased. In spite of this, I still spent $70 this week.

Ups

• Fortunately, by Saturday I was feeling a little better. I had to play the piano for church which was a little nerve wracking since due to the sickness I hadn’t practiced much (though it seems like there’s always a reason I didn’t practice as much as I should these days). “Grandma” Judi took care of Calvin during church and he seemed pretty happy with this arrangement though he was still ecstatic when I came to pick him up.
• Both Jaeger and I are mostly back to normal today. I went to bed early so even though Calvin woke up multiple times in the night I was fairly rested in the morning.

Calvin Moment

• This evening Calvin was in his high chair eating while I looked for my This Can’t be Tofu! recipe book. It was hiding from me so I started chanting, “Here Tofu! Here Tofu!” like I was trying to convince a cat to come out of hiding. Calvin immediately echoed the chant with his own version, “ere toto! ere toto!” At Calvin’s last appointment the doctor warned me that I needed to start being careful of what came out of my mouth because Calvin would soon be repeating everything. I guess we’ve entered that stage in life.

Simplification

• I’ve been weeding out a lot of our physical stuff recently. In the next couple of years we’d either like to move closer to Boulder or out to The Promised Land (i.e. Western Washington State). This implies that we have to a) sell our current house and b) pack everything we own. We’ve lived in our house approximately six years now and it’s horrifying the amount of extra stuff we’ve accumulated. It’s time to purge.

The day started off auspiciously enough. The alarm went off at 6:00am and I grumbled as I got up that it was too early. I trotted downstairs and managed most of my morning exercise routine before Calvin woke up. When I went to get Calvin, he seemed a little sleepy still so I brought him down stairs and he laid down and watched me as I finished my exercises. Calvin ate a good breakfast so I decided he must be recovered from whatever he had yesterday.

Calvin had a dental appointment today so I told daycare I would be picking him up in about an hour for it. I always feel silly working for only an hour but since I only work 4 hrs a day, that’s a fourth of my day. I got home and got on a call with my manager to talk about our big upgrade in November. Just as I was getting ready to sign off to go grab Calvin, my manager remembered we were suppose to go talk to all the district managers up in Greeley in the afternoon. I looked at my calendar and realized she was right but I had mistakenly added only a 15 min reminder to this meeting. Normally I pick Calvin up in the early afternoon. Since we pay for full-time daycare, I can technically leave Calvin at daycare whenever I want. However , I usually prefer to give them a couple days warning just to take make sure they have enough staff.

I rushed over to daycare to pick Calvin up and confirmed that I could leave him there late upon our return. We arrived at the dentist’s office and Calvin was fine until he saw the uniformed dental assistant and then he started wailing. I think she might have looked too much like the nurse at the pediatrician’s office. He wailed throughout most of the visit but I thought they made some really good attempts to interest him in the proceedings so he’d stop. Anyway, they couldn’t get a cleaning done, which they say is often the case for children his age, but the dentist was able to do an exam. He said Calvin’s teeth looked good and there weren’t any cavities though the spacing was closer together than optimal. He also gave me some tips on how to brush his teeth at night.

I took Calvin back to daycare and just as I was about to put him down he vomited on me. Multiple times within seconds of each deluge. Both Calvin and I were sopping wet. Not surprisingly, daycare thought I should take him home. We got home and we immediately jumped in the shower. I called Jaeger and fortunately he was able to come home and take care of Calvin so I could go up to Greeley.

It has been a very unexpected day.

Downs

• Calvin threw up sometime last night. I’m not entirely sure when but I think it might have been while I was exercising because I heard him coughing. The sheet, bumper, mattress pad and assorted burp clothes were all covered but Dog was miraculously spared. At first, I thought the vomiting was just triggered by the coughing but when he refused to eat breakfast, I decided he might be sick so I didn’t take him in to daycare. Instead, we spent the day at home. To my surprise, it turned out to be a pretty good day.

Ups

• I got a lot done today. In spite of possibly being sick and refusing to eat most of the day, Calvin was in a really good mood. We wandered the various levels of the house and when he found something to play with I would find the nearest project that needed to be worked on.

Calvin Moment

• The last time we went hiking with Calvin it was cold and windy. I was afraid that his hands were too cold so I tried to put on his mittens but he threw a fit. However, apparently this aversion to mittens only applies to his own mittens. We’ve started getting our winter stuff out and every time he sees Jaeger or my mittens he grabs them and insists we put them on his hands. They’re so big on him the mittens go past his elbows.

Simplification

• I spent quite a bit of time today cleaning out our finance desk. It has a tendency to collect weird things like old fuses, screws, and the odd ten yen coin. It looks much better now. I also called up and fixed some of the errors in our home insurance policy, finished working on the monthly bills, shredded more receipts from 2008, and rearranged Calvin’s room. In addition, I cleaned out my wallet and discovered I have a phone card purchased back during college days with 500+ minutes still left. Not sure what I’m going to do with that.

Downs

• Calvin has been pretty restless at night the last week or so which makes it hard for me to get enough sleep.

Ups

• I think my cold is almost over. I still have some coughing but other than that feel pretty normal.
• I cleaned out our refrigerator today. It had obviously been way too long since it was last scrubbed.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin has started stacking his duplos and other blocks. He’s played with them for a long time but never had the coordination and strength to stack them together. Now he’s finally starting to build things with them!

Simplification

• I’ve actually done a lot of work the last couple of days. I’ve cleaned out my closet and dresser again. My large thrift store box is almost full. I guess I should schedule another pickup.

Downs

• Calvin woke up early this morning. I was planning to get up at that time anyway to exercise so I just strapped him onto my back while I did my step aerobics. He only stayed happy for 15 minutes that way but I think I got double my normal workout in that time. Doing multiple squats with a 26 lb toddler on one’s back is not particularly easy.

Ups

• Our new Roomba has arrived. I’m really hoping this thing works out ok. I can get away with vacuuming upstairs every other week. However, the downstairs demands almost constant vacuuming.

Calvin Moment

• At Calvin’s baby shower one of the church members gave us a little kid backpack that has wheels so it can either be carried or rolled around. Calvin found it in his closet a couple of weeks ago when I was cleaning it out. He immediately became very attached to it. It’s now our official daycare bag. It’s just big enough to fit 1 change of clothes, two sippy cups, and his lunch. Calvin proudly trots in and out of daycare rolling it behind him.

Simplification

• Found some ice trays and a glass container that I have no use for and gave them to the thrift store bin. Or, I tried to. Calvin has temporarily rescued the ice trays to play with but once he tires of them they go back in the bin.

Downs

• Calvin is resisting winter. Specifically, he screams bloody murder anytime I try to dress him for bed in pants and long sleeve pajamas. I’ve been sneaking in and putting a blanket on him after he’s asleep but then he wakes up and starts crying trying to get the blanket off his legs. This resulted in him waking up an hour earlier than normal this morning so for tonight I’ve just turned the space heater in his bedroom up.
• I went to bed early last night in hopes of being able to wake up early and exercise before Calvin got up. However, I laid awake in bed for more than an hour before falling asleep. I did manage to drag myself out of bed around 6 but just as I was starting to exercise Calvin woke up upset about the blanket issue.

Ups

• Saw Matthew and Heather over the weekend. They were driving through Boulder on the way to Estes Park.
• I don’t think I’m going to have trouble falling asleep tonight.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin has started building with his duplos. At the moment, he can build very tall towers.

Simplification
One of the reasons I started trying to simplify was to reduce the amount of junk we’d have to wade through when we move. However, I don’t think I’m making particularly good progress on this.

• Shredded a pile of receipts I found from 2008.

Downs

• I’m sick. I think I have my first cold of the season. As a result of this, I haven’t had the energy to exercise most of this week.

Ups

• Went to a David Weber book signing last night. It’s the first book signing I’ve been to since Calvin was born. We managed to get a babysitter for the evening and Jaeger and I drove down to south Denver. It was very interesting and I’m glad we went. I’m fascinated by how every author seems to have a different style and format for their book signings. David Weber’s talk seemed more like a fireside chat than anything else. He spent quite a bit of time detailing his projects for the next couple of years. It’s sounds very hectic to me. Weber says that he tends to write about one chapter a day and most of his chapters are 4800-6000 words long. One of the projects he mentioned that I’m particularly interested in is he’s going to start a YA series in the Honor universe featuring Stephanie Harrington.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin has recently become obsessed with flying things in the sky. Anytime he hears what sounds like an airplane he’ll rush out to our porch and point to the sky hoping to see something. He also likes watching birds and kites but I think he likes planes the best because of the noise they make. We went to the library Monday for our SF book club and I picked up several books for him on airplanes. He particularly likes one titled My First Airplane Ride. As an aside, this book has a weird illustration glitch. On the airplane it consistently shows there being two airplane seats on each side with the child and his mother sitting next to each other. However, toward the end all of a sudden a third seat appears with the father on the end.

Downs

• Well, Calvin has a biting problem. Daycare called me Friday morning and told me that Calvin had bitten a child. They didn’t think he was doing it to be mean, he just “plays rough” and was having fun. Then, when I go to pick him up, I saw him being watched by himself in the office. I had a bad feeling which was confirmed when I heard he had bitten the same child in the afternoon. So . . . I’m not entirely sure what to do. He does have a tendency to gnaw on anything in his reach such as a burp cloth, dog, his hand, or, occasionally, my toes. I’ve been watching him carefully this weekend and anytime I think he’s getting ready to gnaw on a person, I tell him no and give him a quick 1 min timeout. However, I’m not sure he’s getting the message. I’m not sure he understands that it doesn’t feel good because he regularly bites his own arm when I move whatever he is gnawing on out of reach.

Ups

• Made dosas with a potato stuffing for supper. The first time was a pretty involved process because I was trying to make a dish I’d never eaten before from an ethnicity I don’t have a huge amount of cooking experience with. However, Jaeger says that my end results were at least moderately successful.

Calvin Moment

• Last night Calvin found my (empty) work laptop bag. He grabbed it with two of his hands and then walked over to me and gave me a kiss. Then he walked toward the garage door, stopped and turned, and then waved bye bye to me. I’m pretty sure he was pretending he was going off to work. It was very cute.

Downs

• N/A

Ups

• At the moment, it looks like I’m starting to lose weight again. I scrapped detailing my meals in each entry because I post too infrequently. The purpose of posting what I ate was to have a log I could go back and look at. However, these days I’m not posting frequently enough for this to be useful.Instead, I’ve set up a dedicated twitter feed to log my weight, exercise, and eating habits. This seems to be working better for me because I almost always have an internet connection handy and can quickly log whatever I just did or ate.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin went to the potty today all by himself! Recently, I’ve been letting him run around the house naked from the waist down. Obviously, this approach is fraught with peril. However, I have become convinced it’s the only way I’m going to get him potty trained anytime soon. He still can’t pull down his own pants. Anyway, this afternoon I had left him in the living room with his potty for just a couple of minutes. As I was coming back to the room, I heard him say, “Ma! ma!” and saw him running toward me with the bowl of his potty chair. To my surprise and extreme delight I discovered he had obviously gone on the potty chair and hadn’t gotten any surrounding area wet. I praised him and gave him a small piece of brownie to celebrate. Calvin is by no means potty trained yet. He had accidents both before and after this success. However, I’m still very impressed he sat on his potty without me prompting.

Simplification

• Got rid of some weird doodads I had accumulated over the years.