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.

Old Tweets

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.

Downs

• N/A

Ups

• I like to have an extravagant breakfast on Sunday mornings. However, Sunday mornings is also the day I can sleep in since Jaeger gets up with Calvin. As a result, I’ve been looking for good breakfast recipes that I can make the night before. My Rhubarb Coffee Cake was a success last week so this week I tried smashing 2 French Toast recipes together. I ended up with Overnight Apple French Toast which I think turned out pretty good.
• A couple of weeks ago our Sunday morning babysitter gave notice. She was great with Calvin so we were sad to see her go. Also, we didn’t fancy having to go through the whole babysitter selection process again. Then it occurred to me to check up with the other woman we had interviewed to see if she would still be interested. It had been a very hard choice between the two of them and both Jaeger and I had thought she seemed good too. To my surprise and delight she said she was available. She has to start about an hour later than I had been working but the upside is I get a more leisurely breakfast. Today was her first day and so far it looks like she’ll work out great. I’m very relieved.

Calvin Moment

• Within the last month or so Calvin has become very good at pointing to body parts. An adult will say something like, “Where is Calvin’s ear?” and he’ll point to his ears. Or, “Where is mommy’s ear?” and he’ll point to my ear. One body part he find particular joy in finding is belly buttons. If asked, “Where is Calvin’s belly button?” he’ll quickly whip up his shirt and start poking around in search of it. He does this for adults too, pretty much any adult. Ask him where someone’s belly button is and he’ll barrel toward the indicated person, grab the bottom of their shirt and yank it up in search of the belly button. The enthusiastic yanking sometimes reveals more than is optimal.

Simplification

• Through away some old magazines.

Downs

• N/A

Ups

• I’ve now walked to daycare 5 days in a row. This includes the day I discovered I had a flat stroller tire and had to change it before I could leave.
• Even though I had to put Calvin to sleep tonight, since Jaeger was gone, he stopped crying within 10 min. I don’t remember the last time that happened.
• I have a couple books from the library that look like they’ll be interesting to read.

Calvin Moment

• Calvin is starting to request specific books by attempting to say either their title or the most memorable element. For instance, tonight he first requested Sheep in a Jeep by pointing and saying, “baaa!” which he followed with “boom! boom!” for Chicka Chicka ABC. He also is enthusiastically saying “Moo,” “baa,” and “neigh” at the correct times for Moo, Baa, La La La!. It makes a librarian’s heart proud

Simplification

• Yesterday I spent a significant amount of time in Calvin’s room packing away his 12 month clothing and cleaning up all the small blankets and things we no longer use.

Downs

• Calvin has been cranky the last couple of days. Yesterday, he bit a kid at daycare. I think it’s because he’s teething, not because he was malicious, and daycare agrees. Hopefully we’re correct.

Ups

• The church sponsored a zoo trip on Saturday. Calvin eats at 11 so we fed him his lunch and then let him take his nap on the way to the zoo. Once there, Jaeger and I ate our picnic lunch and then we gathered at the entrance to meet up with everyone else. Once the tickets were handed out most people dispersed. Calvin enjoyed the zoo more this time than the last time we were there in May. He was especially excited when we were able to get a very close view of a mother tiger roughhousing with her cubs. He also liked watching the spider monkeys swinging around their cage.

Calvin Moment

• Recently Calvin become enamored with playing “catch.” He’ll toss the ball a short ways and then is delighted when someone throws it back to him. He does a relatively good job catching the small soft balls we have.

Simplification

• Found about 6 gallons worth of frozen vegetables, mostly cabbage, in the freezer. This is from back when we were part of a CSA. I like the idea of a CSA but we really don’t like cabbage and we got a lot of it. I froze the cabbage in hopes of finding something to do with it later. However, it’s been a couple of years and is getting freezer burn so I decided it was time to throw it away.