Long Weekend

After Calvin was born I started dreading long weekends. Calvin is very attached to schedules and having three days at home always seemed to disrupt life too much. However, I think this long weekend was fairly successful.

Sabbath, I left the house around 9 and Calvin and I went to church. I had to go practice for music next week at someone else’s house at 4 that afternoon so instead of going home or to the Carbon Valley Library, I drove to the Westminster library. Per our normal routine, Calvin fell asleep on the way there (driving is one of the few ways to force him to nap) and I sat in the car a couple of hours reading waiting for him to wake up. Once he woke up, we went and played in the children’s section for a while before heading to our appointment. We didn’t get home till around 6:30. Fortunately, Jaeger was able to pick up pizza so we were able to eat as soon as we got home.

Sunday I had the day off from work but we had the babysitter come over anyway. I think she’s working out very well. Calvin seems to like her a lot. I went down to the basement and spent most of the time scanning mementos from past years. I plan to scan most of the papers and then get rid of them. I never look at them anyway so they might as well just be in a digital form. Afterwards, I took Calvin for a walk in the stroller so he’d take a nap and when he woke up, we went grocery store shopping.

Today we went on a short hike at Chautauqua. Calvin seemed in good spirits the whole time. Unfortunately, the last 5 minutes of the hike he tried to fall asleep. He had his eyes closed for a moment before I caught it and kept him awake. The only reason I did this is because we would have needed to transfer him to the car and it’s much better if we can get him to sleep in the car where we can just sit and wait for him to wake up. We went and had lunch at Tokyo Joes and Calvin impressed Jaeger by being able to eat with chopsticks better than me (which isn’t saying much but still seems pretty amazing for a toddler). We then made a brief stop by an Indian grocery store before heading home. Unfortunately, this is the point where we planned Calvin should nap and he didn’t oblige. While I think he would have been happier without a nap, he did seem to survive fairly well without one.

Down

  • Calvin slept very well until around 5:30 this morning. Unfortunately, I chose to go to bed late last night at 11 and so really could have used an extra hour of sleep.

Ups

  • I’ve been finding all sorts of interesting books to read, mostly about home selling. I tend to get obsessive in my quest for information (a characteristic shared by my husband as evidenced by his “India Shelf.”). I started researching pregnancy 2 years before I planned (and did) get pregnant. Likewise, I’m now researching house selling as we’re thinking of moving in a little over a year.

  • Several weeks ago I created a spreadsheet of house cleaning chores I needed to do and how often. I’ve been doing the routine stuff all along but I decided I needed to get more systematic to make sure I remembered to do the rarer types of things like dust off the fan blades, etc. At first, it felt like I kept adding more things to the schedule without being able to cross anything off but I’m slowly making it through my checklist.

Calvin Moment

  • “Parent-Teacher conferences” for Calvin’s daycare were today. Since Jaeger had the day off he got to go to it also. The teacher went through the checklist of things that toddlers might be able to do and offered comments on Calvin’s daily routine. Basically she said he’s doing well and we don’t need to be worried about anything. The teacher said that it was obvious Calvin had an engineering mind. During one day, there were a couple of children clustered by the toy shelf. They wanted to get a xylophone that was behind two other toys. Calvin was the only one to think of pushing the other toys aside so he could reach back and get the toy (this is a complicated skill? It’s often hard for me to know what I should or shouldn’t expect a toddler to think of by himself). Also, when a seat he wanted to sit on was already taken, he built his own using some gymnastic mats they have. He also likes to do things his own way (<sarcasm>isn’t that a surprise?</sarcasm>). The last time he was given playdough to play with, he decided to play with the playdough containers but stacking them up instead of the actual playdough.

  • Calvin has started indicating when he needs to use the potty even when he has a diaper on. This is a fairly new skill. I think we’re going to try having him potty train at daycare again.

Simplification

  • As mentioned above, I went through about 1/2 a box of old cards, pictures, and other memories and scanned them in and then threw away the physical item.

Updates

Down

  • Calvin has been very restless this last week. This means I sleep in later and don’t get a chance to exercise as much as usual. I’ve decided that getting adequate sleep is more important than exercising. However, the mornings that I do manage to exercise I feel much more in control of life.

Ups

  • We have a new babysitter who started today. So far, it looks like she’s going to work out well.

  • Last Friday was staff day for the library. I drove up to Greeley for the day and had a chance to see many of my co-workers that I usually only communicate via email. I met one library assistant who told me that for the longest time she thought my name was an acronym that stood for something. Finally, she asked her supervisor what the acronym stood for and he told her that I was a real live person :-)

  • I’ve started practicing the piano between when I drop Calvin off at daycare around 8:30 and when I start work at 9. It’s not a lot of practicing but it’s better than nothing.

  • It’s very warm and sunny today. During the cold spell Calvin and I spent a lot of time visiting the libraries in order to get out of the house. I really like our house but it can be a little confining day after day, especially since I usually work from home. Visiting the libraries gives us a chance to get out and play in a new environment. Plus, when I go to Carbon Valley, I know the staff and can spend a couple of minutes chatting with them. However, I’m a firm believer that children need lots of outside play so I always feel a little guilty when I’m not willing to freeze so Calvin can play. Calvin rarely notices if it’s cold. I imagine it’s because he runs around so much and is in constant motion. Yesterday we walked around the neighborhood for a little bit which Calvin really enjoyed. He always hates coming in from outside.

Calvin Moment

  • I started noticing that Calvin will turn a book right side up if I give it to him upside down. He might have been doing this for a while but I just recently noticed it.

  • Calvin is learning his colors. I’m starting to try to swap video clips with M&Ms as potty training rewards. M&Ms are a lot more convenient when we are away from home. An interesting side benefit is that I’m teaching Calvin colors using the M&Ms. He has a definite preference for blue M&Ms. Another thing I’ve noticed is that he often calls orange items yellow. I think this is because we call school buses yellow but they can look closer to orange in some cases.

Simplification

  • Because I worked a full day on Friday, I didn’t work today. Instead, I took the opportunity for our babysitter to amuse Calvin while I went down into the basement and tackled our filing cabinets. I weeded two of the drawers and ended up with a foot (literally) of paperwork that needs to be shredded. I’m hoping to get through the final drawer tonight. However, I don’t think it will be as bad since I’ve already done some weeding in that drawer previously. I also was able to straighten up the shelves above the laundry area and throw out some cleaning products that we no longer use.

Toddler Bed

Monday night Calvin learned how to climb out of his crib. Calvin has never liked going to sleep. Once he’s asleep, he sleeps very soundly but getting him to sleep is much more of an art than a science. For some reason, Jaeger tends to have a better magic touch than I do. I don’t remember why, but it seems like Jaeger tried to put Calvin to bed later than usual. It didn’t work well. I was working on changing the batteries in our smoke detectors when I noticed that Jaeger tweeted, “Calvin can climb out of his crib.” This surprised me a little since every time I saw him try he wasn’t close. However, I figured Calvin probably wouldn’t be able to consistently climb out of the crib for a bit and so we had time to transition him to a toddler bed. We were not so lucky. Shortly after the tweet Jaeger came downstairs and informed me that Calvin had climbed out of his crib twice in a row. The second time he put Calvin back in the crib and then came down to consult with me. I went upstairs and opened the bedroom door to discover Calvin right behind it grinning widely at me.

For the next half-hour we scrambled around trying to get Calvin’s room into a semi-safe state for him to sleep in when not contained in a crib. We put his crib mattress on the floor and tried to quickly child-proof the room. We hadn’t done a thorough job of child proofing previously because we were either always in the room with him or he was stuck in the crib without access to anything interesting.

Unfortunately, the upstairs rooms do not heat well in the winter (or cool in the summer). Up to this point, we’ve had a space heater in Calvin’s room but this did not seem safe any longer with him being able to roam at will. We moved the space heater out and then dressed Calvin in a wonderful “snowsuit” that we use as an extremely warm pair of pajamas. This worked fairly well the first night.

I checked on Calvin throughout the night and, not surprisingly, he didn’t stay on his mattress. He did start out on his mattress but when I checked around 2 he had wiggled over to underneath the window. When I checked immediately after getting up in the morning, he had wiggled over to the opposite side of the room by the closet.

Circumstances became even more complicated last evening when our heater stopped working consistently. It would work for a couple of minutes and then stop and require some fiddling with the thermostat before it could be turned back on. We dressed Calvin in two layers of clothes, one of which being the snowsuit. In addition, we opened his door after he went to sleep and put the space heater in the hallway between our two bedrooms. I blocked off Calvin’s bedroom with a box. If he was awake, he would have easily climbed over it but I was counting on most of his wandering throughout the night being while half-asleep. This worked fairly well. The upstairs stayed a cozy 65 degrees due to the space heater even though the main level got down to around 55.

I was very fortunate to be able to get someone to come and look at our furnace first thing today. He said our flame sensor was dirty which was preventing the furnace from staying on. He cleaned it up and then asked if I wanted him to do a full maintenance of the furnace system. I knew that we were overdue for one so I told him yes. Since he worked on the furnace, it appears to be behaving.

This afternoon I worked on Calvin’s room to get it into a more toddler friendly format. I got most of the crib converted to a toddler bed (though I needed Jaeger’s assistance for one part since I was lacking appropriate screws). This will be Calvin’s third night outside his crib. I hope it goes well . . .

Down

  • Our Sunday babysitter has quit. This is not surprising since she moved down to Denver. However, it’s always inconvenient to go through the process of finding another babysitter. Fortunately, she was able to suggest someone else that we’re currently in the process of evaluating.

Ups

  • I cleaned the inside of the refrigerator Monday and the outside on Tuesday. It now sparkles.

  • My new aerobic step has arrived. I got my old aerobic step while I was still in college. It is a ghastly teal and purple color that looks like this one. Every time I see it I cringe but it has worked well for many years. However, the top mat started pealing off a couple of years ago and now has gotten to the point that it’s becoming dangerous. I decided if I was going to replace it, I needed to get one with a color scheme I could stand. It turns out my only other good option was a black/grey version. However, I think black and grey is a reasonable color combination. I ordered it last week and it arrived yesterday. I was momentarily panicked when I saw it was packaged in the default teal/purple box. However, I opened the box up and was relived to discover the more boring grey/black step. The only other downside is it smells very plasticy. However, my old one did too when it was new so hopefully the smell goes away soon.

  • Like everywhere else, we’ve been having cold weather this week. Our school district has canceled school for the last two days. I had a meeting Tuesday morning and was trying to figure out what to do if daycare closed. However, I was very happy to learn that daycare stayed open.

Calvin Moment

  • Calvin can now take off and put on his sweatpants by himself. This is a very good sign for potty training. However, I think his execution could use some refinement. When he decides he needs to use the potty he pulls down his pants immediately, no matter how far away from the potty he is. Then he waddles over to the potty with his pants down by his ankles. It’s really funny to watch. He looks kind of penguin-like when he does it.

Simplification

  • I entered into another book weeding project on Monday. This time I focused on our religious section. I discovered we have 9 NIV Bibles along with duplicates for quite a few other versions also. I pared down our selection to one of each version unless there was a sentimental reason to keep a specific Bible. I also managed to weed out quite a few other books. Some books, such as All the Women of the Bible I had been keeping in case we had a girl and she also enjoyed learning about interesting women in the Bible. However, I suspect this will appeal much less to Calvin so I got rid of that collection also. I also organized the guest bedroom closet and managed to donate another 3 boxes of clothing and books.

Sun

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.

Smart Children

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.

MRI

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).

Another Weekend

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.

Furniture

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.

Getting Back into a Routine

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.”

We’re Home!

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.