Downs

• More teething fun. The ibuprofen wears off around 2:30am and Calvin usually starts crying intermittently after that.

Ups

• I had a pretty organized day. I got everything done that I planned to get done today. I’m amazed at how awake I felt given how little I slept last night.
• We had our Science Fiction book club tonight. After work, I made supper and then packed it up for Jaeger and I to eat in the Erie staff room. After eating, we wandered to the “living room” section of the library for the book club. We had two other people show up which was a pretty good night. They had even mostly read the book, The Lies of Locke Lamora. I only got half-way through and Jaeger didn’t even start but it was still an amusing discussion. Next month we’re reading The Windup Girl.
• Before leaving the library, I got Calvin into his thicker night diaper and jammies. To my surprise, once we got home, I managed to transfer him from car seat to crib without him waking significantly. I’m really going to miss that car seat. He has mostly outgrown it and his new car seat, which is not easily removable, is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. This also means we have to give up his frame stroller which was also wonderful.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Yesterday, I made Holiday Bean Soup for dinner. Even though it has a bit of sodium in it, I figured it would still be a fairly healthy meal for Calvin so I set some aside and pureed it for him. This morning, I gave him his first taste and he seemed to enjoy it. I packed some up for daycare and dropped him off. When I went to pick him up, Ms. K said, “What did you give Calvin for lunch today!? He loved it!” She was feeding him and another kid at the same time and apparently Calvin would get very upset when she didn’t give him his next bite fast enough. Ms. K also said when she feeds him cheerios, Calvin looks like a baby bird with his mouth open and tongue sticking out waiting for a cheerio to land. I hadn’t thought of it that way before but it is a very apt description.

Simplification

• Consigned some decorative soaps I’ll never use to the thrift store bin and old toothbrushes to the cleaning supply box.

Downs

• Calvin was teething again last night. He woke up at 2:30 and cried for a bit before going back to sleep. (I don’t necessarily believe in the “cry-it-out” method but if I go in to his bedroom in the middle of the night, it always takes much longer for him to get back to sleep.) He woke up at 5 crying again and this time he didn’t go back to sleep. Jaeger takes care of Calvin on Sunday mornings so I can sleep in so he got up. I made a bottle for them and gave Calvin some ibuprofen and then went back to bed. Jaeger got him back to sleep eventually and crawled into bed again around 6. Calvin slept pretty well until 7:30.
• Somehow my grocery list got corrupted and some of the items I needed to buy disappeared. I remembered a couple of the items that went missing but I didn’t remember to pick up the pears for the Pear-Almond Upside-Down Cake that I was planning to make tomorrow. Maybe I’ll make Cardamom Mexican Wedding Cakes instead.

Ups

• Jaeger got up with Calvin so I was able to sleep in. I always look forward to Sunday mornings
• We have new blinds for the living room! Cat5 mangled our old blinds so badly that I could no longer completely close them or pull them up. Last winter, I was hoping to replace all the mini-blinds on the bottom level with higher quality wooden blinds. However, I ended up in the hospital before managing to buy anything and life has been too hectic to deal with it ever since. Today Jaeger and I stopped by Lowe’s to look at blinds. After looking at all the options, we decided to buy a replacement set for $20. They definitely aren’t high quality. However, none of the more expensive options spoke to us so instead of upgrading all the window blinds, we decided to just get a replacement for the one window that needed it. Our old blinds were metal but we went with vinyl this times in hopes that it won’t bend quite as easily when 5 tries to nose her way to the window. Also, there’s a good chance we won’t be in this house in a couple more years so I was having trouble convincing myself it was worth spending too much money on the blinds.
• Jaeger gave Calvin his bath again this night so once again I got to eat supper before 7.

Cute Calvin Moment

• We took our weekly pilgrimage to Vitamin Cottage today. The clerks at Vitamin Cottage always coo over Calvin and he usually rewards them with a big grin. Today he was silently grinning at our clerk the entire time she was checking us out. As Jaeger was paying, she asked us, “is he always this quiet?” Jaeger and I responded with an emphatic “no” at the same time. Later, when we were at King Soopers, Calvin was happily babbling and Jaeger mentioned it was a shame the Vitamin Cottage lady wasn’t around. Without a doubt, Calvin is a people person. The more people that are around him, the happier he is. It’s almost like he puts on a “perfect baby” performance anytime he has an audience. I’m curious if this is his life-long disposition or if he will grow out of it. Apparently when I was in first grade, I would bounce up anytime a new person arrived in the classroom and happily introduce myself to them. I’m not exactly sure when this disappeared but it was definitely gone by high school.

Simplification

• Delegated some odds and ends I had lying around the house to the thrift store bin.

Downs

• Nothing springs to mind today.

Ups

• Calvin was manageable at church today. I’ve taken to sitting up in the balcony and there are a group of women who fawn over Calvin and often can keep him occupied during church. By sitting up in the balcony, it’s fairly easy to sneak out if Calvin becomes too loud (he doesn’t usually cry but may ecstatically shriek which can be just as disrupting). The mother’s room isn’t really an option for Calvin when he’s loud as we have a couple of breastfeeding mothers who need pretty much complete silence for their babies to feed properly. I had enough grief with breastfeeding that I’m not willing to contribute to any complications for them.
• Jaeger gave Calvin a bath and then fed him before putting him in the crib for the night. It was amazing to be able to eat while Calvin was still up This also gave me time to plan meals for next week and create my grocery list instead of working on it Sunday morning.

Cute Calvin Moment

• After church I needed to talk to someone so I set Calvin down and he immediately crawled up on the platform (I was within arms reach). There was a little 3-year old girl who was enchanted with Calvin. She and Calvin spent at least 15 minutes chasing each other around. She’d run to one side of the platform and Calvin would eagerly paddle after her. Then when he came close, she’d run to the other side and Calvin would turn around and rapidly crawl the other direction. It was obvious they were both very taken with each other.

Simplification

• Finally threw away an air mattress the cats had punctured in multiple places.

Downs

• Don’t really have any to list today.

Ups

• Calvin definitely has figured out how to eat cheerios and loves them. He still can’t feed himself but he sticks out his tongue hopefully whenever he wants another. However, he did boycott his normal pureed food.
• I had a chance to exercise this morning. I didn’t get a huge amount of sleep last night so I originally thought I might take a nap instead. However, I was feeling perky enough by Calvin’s nap time so I decided to go ahead and exercise.
• We had baked potato and tofu for supper which is a relative easy meal to put together so I didn’t have to rush around too much before picking Calvin up from daycare.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Today Calvin learned he can play the piano. Calvin was crawling around on the floor and came to the piano bench. He pulled himself up and then tentatively touched one of the white keys. It made a noise. He looked at it carefully and then tried again and seemed surprised when it made more noise. Then he got a big grin on his face and started enthusiastically banging with one hand while holding onto the bench with his other. I got a couple of photos and perhaps managed to get several seconds of video. However, Calvin loves cameras so whenever he sees one, he stops whatever he is doing and crawls over to investigate the contraption.

Simplification

• I got rid of a box of toiletries under the bathroom sink that were starting to look a little scary.

Downs

• Thursday is the day that I attempt to clean the house. I use to put Calvin in daycare early so I had enough time to get everything done. However, he takes his best morning nap when he is home in his crib so I’ve been avoiding this recently. As a result, I’m now trying to get everything done while he naps. I’ve split the house into two cleaning cycles. I clean the upstairs one week and the downstairs the next week. Every week I clean our tub (it has a non-slide finish which catches dirt horribly) and quickly vacuum the heaviest traffic path downstairs. Since we were gone on vacation, I decided to skip the normal rotation this week and clean all three bathrooms and clean the downstairs floors since these are the areas that get disgusting the quickest (you’d think that since we were gone the house wouldn’t be dirty but somehow it doesn’t work that way). Today I got through cleaning the bathrooms but didn’t get a chance to do the floors before Calvin woke up. After taking him to daycare, I rushed back home and frantically did a quick vacuum of the dirtiest areas of the floor before heading to Carbon Valley to work. I know it seems silly to put a failure to finish cleaning the house as a down. However, enough of my mother rubbed of me to make it difficult for me to relax in a dirty house.

Ups

• Today I went to the Carbon Valley library to work. I’ve been contemplating working at a library for a while now. Sometimes I feel a little claustrophobic staying inside my house all the time. My manager sent out a schedule of where IT staff would float to during the week and I noticed the southern libraries which are nearest me weren’t getting as much staff as some of the other areas (most of IT lives up north). So, I volunteered to visit either Carbon Valley or Erie one day a week. I chose Thursdays because that’s Jaeger’s BLUG night so I am particularly low on human interaction that day. Plus, since he’s not home I don’t have to rush to make dinner. Anyway, it was really nice to be working in the library again. I love being able to work at home due to the flexibility it gives me but it’s nice to be in the library and soak in the book atmosphere sometimes.

Cute Calvin Moment

• This morning I was making Calvin’s breakfast while Jaeger was sitting at the table and Calvin was crawling around on the floor. Calvin loves pulling books off the bookshelf so we have tried to move all the books on the lower shelves into other areas. However, we keep our library books on a shelf that is a little below half-way down the bookshelf. Up to this point, Calvin hadn’t shown any interest in trying to grab these books. Jaeger was watching Calvin stand up next to the bookshelf and mentioned casually that Calvin might show an interest in grabbing the library books soon. At that point, Calvin carefully sat down, crawled over to the shelf that had the library books, stood up and started pulling the library books onto the floor. Jaeger and I were flabbergasted. Obviously Calvin is way too young to know what we were saying but the timing was truly impeccable.

Simplification

• I had a broken light that, for some reason, was taking up space in the cabinet under our bathroom sink. I decided it was finally time to get rid of it so now the cabinet is a little less cluttered. I’m feeling guilty about getting rid of it because I think it was probably fixable. However, I’ve been meaning to fix it for several years now. If I didn’t have time for the last couple of years to deal with it, I certainly don’t now.

Downs

• I’m afraid my downs might become repetitive as most of them will probably be related to lack of a good night’s sleep. Calvin had a pretty rough night which means I didn’t sleep well. I chose not to give him ibuprofen before putting him to bed because his teeth didn’t seem to be bothering him. However, he started waking up every hour or so to cry before falling back asleep again. Finally, at 1am, I gave him some ibuprofen and he slept pretty well until 6. I don’t like giving him medicine after he’s gone to sleep because he then wakes up more and it’s harder to get him to settle down again.

Ups

• I had a chance to exercise while Calvin took his morning nap.
• I had a pretty productive day at work and closed a lot of work orders.
• Got my hair cut and eyebrows waxed after work. Both were long overdue.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Dr S told me that I needed to start feeding Calvin more textured food. Up to this point I haven’t because he gags anytime he has even a little bit of texture in his mouth. However, the doctor said if I stuck to things like cheerios, he wouldn’t choke even if he ended up gagging and throwing up a little bit. So, I gave Calvin cheerios after breakfast. He enjoyed playing around with them on his high chair. I put one on his tongue and he gagged and threw up a bit but it wasn’t the excessive amount it is sometimes. He must have decided that he liked them because he then looked at me hopefully and rapidly flicked his tongue in and out of his mouth. He did manage to eat one cheerio without throwing up which is a major accomplishment.

Simplification

• I found a divided rubbermaid container to put in the thrift store box and threw away my old electronic kitchen scale which no longer was functioning.
• I made cookies. Okay, this probably doesn’t sound relevant at first. However, I had a bag of toffee bits that had been sitting in my drawer for years. I finally decided it was time to get rid of them so I made Jaeger a batch of Oatmeal Toffee cookies based on a recipe on the back of the bag. (Jaeger’s more a cookie person than I am and he likes to take them in his lunch.) Jaeger wasn’t particularly impressed with the recipe but concedes they will make an adequate lunch cookie.

Part of the problem with this daily format is I don’t have a consistent topic I’m talking about. This makes titling the entries challenging. To avoid spending too much time thinking about this, I’m going to pick a title from one of the bullet points I list.

Downs

• Calvin started muttering at 5am. He wasn’t really awake, just making a lot of noise and keeping me awake. This isn’t uncommon but it’s still not very restful. He actually woke up a little after 6am.
• Work was stressful as my manager and I are currently having to make some big purchase decisions with only bad options on the table.

Ups

• Tuesday is my day to pay bills and balance the credit card statement (yes, I balance the credit card every week, I’m obsessive). I start while Calvin naps and then usually try to finish it up after work before picking him up from daycare. Today the timing worked out and I got everything done in time.
• Calvin had his 9 month checkup today. He seems right on track developmentally. However, I threw the poor doctor off his routine. Dr. S came in and started by asking what new developments I had seen in Calvin. Normally after this, he’ll ask me if I have any questions but today he went straight to the physical check. Being me, I had a laundry list of questions so I started asking them as soon as he was finished. As I suspected, many of my questions didn’t really have right/wrong answers (such as when to introduce peanuts). Dr. S probably spent a good 15 minutes talking to me about the questions. After I finished, he said, “well, let’s get him checked out” and then showed me the growth chart (which he normally shows me at the beginning but hadn’t that time). Then he had me hold Calvin while he checked him out again. I think he was halfway through the physical check the second time before I realized he was doing exactly the same checks he had already done. By then, I figured there wasn’t any reason in pointing this out to him so I just let him continue. All in all, he probably spent a good half hour with us which is probably twice what they had budgeted time-wise. I guess next time I need to make sure to interject my questions before he starts checking Calvin out
• I actually managed to do my ab exercises tonight. Now that I have Calvin, I’ve cut down my exercise routine to aerobic 3 times a week and abs every other day. At least, that’s my goal. However, the last month has been hard due to sleep deprivation from Calvin teething and the holidays.

Cute Calvin Moment

• Yesterday, Calvin discovered that all it took to see mommy while she showers is to pull back the shower curtain. I was hoping that this would prove to be a one-time incident. However, today he did the same thing. It’s pretty cute but means that both Calvin and the floor are sopping by the time I finish. My mom suggests buying a clear shower curtain but I’m not sure if this would help or not.

Simplification

• Transferred two non-Nalgene water bottles I never use to the thrift store box. The box is filling up nicely but I suppose this means it will need to be taken to the thrift store at some point.
• Threw away my original iPod earbuds as they were falling apart and Jaeger bought me replacement earbuds for Christmas.

I keep meaning to post entries more often but that rarely seems to happen. So, I’m going to try an experiment. A bulleted list of down, ups, cute Calvin moments, and simplification. I’m listing downs before ups because I believe everything should have a happy ending. Regarding the simplification, I’ve become increasingly annoyed at the amount of stuff I have. One of my new goals — not a New Year’s resolution, the timing is just coincidental — is to consign one thing to give away/discard everyday. Or, alternatively, implement some sort of time-saving scheme.

Downs

• Didn’t get a chance to exercise today
• House is still disorganized from vacation
• The cats, probably mostly 5, vomited over huge swaths of the carpet while we were away

Ups

• Calvin slept in till 7. That’s about perfect because he didn’t go to bed till after 12 so I needed to sleep later but it also wasn’t so late that it threw off his nap schedule.
• I was able to take a short nap while Calvin napped. Normally I’d be exercising during this time but I felt sleep was more important given the previous night.
• We’re back to a normal schedule. I really like routines so even though I greatly enjoyed vacation and took the opportunity to catch up on my sleep, it feels good to be back home.
• Calvin was in a relatively good mood today.

Cute Calvin Moment

• After I brought him home from daycare, we were playing with some of his new toys. I was rolling a truck around and made a “VROOM VROOM” noise. Calvin looked startled for a moment and then started laughing. For several minutes, every time I VROOMED, Calvin giggled. Naturally, this wore off before Jaeger came home. Calvin doesn’t laugh very much which is why this is noteworthy. He smiles a lot but seems to only laugh the first time he encounters something new and amusing.

Simplification

• For Christmas, I received a set of measuring cups. I just needed 1/4 cup but they don’t sell 1/4 cups by themselves. This meant I had 2 full sets of measuring cups and 2 partial sets of measuring cups. Since I cook a lot, it is useful to have more than one set but the partial sets didn’t seem very useful. So, I consigned all except the 2 full sets of measuring cups to the thrift store bin.
• My favorite large silicone spoon died recently and Jaeger finally convinced me to get rid of it. Also, my pancake flipper had a bubble in the plastic which made flipping pancakes a bit of an art. I requested replacements on my Christmas list. Mom gave me a very nice set of silicone kitchen utensils but it duplicated some that I had bought in college. Her utensils are a higher quality so I weeded the others out and put them in the thrift store bin also.

Calvin use to sleep through the night until waking up sometime between 6-7am. However, ever since daylight savings time changed, Calvin has been waking up multiple times a night, usually between 3-4am, without being able to put himself back to sleep. I have multiple theories about why this could be happening.

My first thought was that the switch from daylight savings messed up his internal schedule and that he would eventually readjust. However, it’s been multiple weeks now and I think he might be getting worst. He was also teething at the time so I thought he might be waking up because his mouth hurt. However, Tylenol didn’t seem to be particularly effective. My next theory was that he was hungry. Calvin still has trouble eating solid food so I thought maybe he wasn’t getting enough calories via formula and needed a “midnight” snack. Thus, I gave in and fed him when he woke up if he didn’t go back to sleep within 10-30 minutes.

Feeding Calvin after he wakes up usually does make him go back to sleep. However, he has started decreasing the amount of food he’ll eat during the day. I’m worried that he’s swapping his schedule to lean towards eating at night instead of the day. So, for the next couple of days I going to try not feeding him at night (though I might start with reducing the amount I’ll give him). I’m really worried this will result in hours of crying. However, the advantage of trying this now is Jaeger won’t be working so can take him in the morning while I catch up on sleep.

I’m really worried about this plan. I believe the “cry-it-out” approach is appropriate for some children but I don’t feel it is for Calvin. That is, I will let him cry for up to 1/2 hr but after that I’m uncomfortable leaving him to scream. Instead of winding down, he seems to get shriller and shriller with his screaming. So, I’m not sure what I’m going to do instead of feeding him. One of the reasons the “he’s hungry” thought was so appealing was the ease with which he usually goes back to sleep after eating.

Stay tuned to see how it turns out. I have a feeling I will be tweeting in the middle of the night. After all, what use is a sleepless night if I can’t complain about it to the world?

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In other news, this Thanksgiving will be the first Thanksgiving away from family (either mine or Jaeger’s). Jaeger and I decided we didn’t want the expense or the inconvenience of trying to drag Calvin to Washington two months in a row. So, we’ll be having our own mini-Thanksgiving celebration at home tomorrow. Our menu consists of Apricot-Orange Gel (a Logan tradition), lightly steamed Asparagus, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Garlic and Herbs, Baked Brie with Cranberries in Puff Pastry (an experiment), and Pumpkin Pie with real whipped cream.

Due to the complexity of both Jaeger and I eating while Calvin is awake, we’re going to schedule Thanksgiving dinner after he goes to bed. We’re probably also going to video conference with the Stone relatives either before or after the Thanksgiving meal at my parents’ house.

Today I attended my first ever parent/caregiver conference. Last week I noticed a sign up sheet on the infant room door for parents to sign up for a slot to discuss their child. Wanting to be an involved parent, I dutifully added my name to the roster. Once I got home, I queried Jaeger to see if he would also be interested in attending. Like me, Jaeger wasn’t sure what would be covered in such a conference and suggest I go and give him an executive summary.

My appointment was scheduled for 9:00am today. Calvin woke up around 6:00 this morning so it was time for his first morning nap around 8:00. The only way I can get Calvin to sleep is by putting him in his car seat and taking a walk. Even though he usually only takes 1/2 hr naps, I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough time on the walk before needing to go to daycare. It turns out I was right. I guiltily woke him up at 8:50 and rushed around to get to daycare by 9:00. (There are very few things I will wake Calvin up for. For example, I won’t wake him up to sign into work on time. However, I knew there was another parent signed up after me so I thought I better be on time.)

We entered the infant classroom and were cheerily greeted by the staff members. I put his bottles into his cubby and then Miss B led me off to the conference room to talk. Calvin seemed in a pretty good mood so we brought him with us. Miss B had a notebook that apparently is Calvin’s daycare “portfolio.” She showed me pictures they had taken of him at various times in the last couple months (including 2 of him sleeping!). Apparently the daycare also writes dated notes on stickers of various “firsts” they observe in Calvin. For instance, they noticed he started trying to sit up in August.

Next up was a review of Calvin’s “art projects.” She told me they needed to keep one for his daycare portfolio but I was welcome to take all the others that I wanted. I felt like a less-than-appreciative parent when I only chose one that consisted of his footprints in various colors of paint. (At what point is an art project truly Calvin’s work? I’m not sure putting paint on paper and letting him ecstatically smear it counts. At least the footprints give a pretty good representation of his foot size.)

The daycare also has what they call a “Curriculum Checklist” to see how the child is doing developmentally. It’s a pretty extensive checklist with multiple subcategories under language arts, sensory stimulation, cognitive development, creative art, motor skills, music/movement, and self-Help/life skills. Each subcategory is given one of three letters: A, S, and N. A means the child demonstrates the skill whenever it is appropriate, S means sometimes, and N means not observed. Calvin falls under the “infant II” checklist. However, Miss B informed me that Calvin just moved into the Infant II category so it wasn’t surprising that a lot of the categories were marked with Ns. At the end of the checklist is room for additional comments where they talk about specific skills he has developed (“Calvin really enjoys arts & sensory activities!”) as well as skills they are still working on (“We are working with him on crawling”). Miss B went on to assure me that Calvin appeared to be progressing perfectly normally and she expected that he would be ready to enter the next room when he turns one. (Based on this it seems like “graduating” to the next room is a combination of both age and skills.)

Overall, I found the conference to be fascinating. On one hand, it made me feel like they really are paying close attention to Calvin. On the other hand, I wonder if grading his development at this early age might be a bad habit. I know that if I’m not careful, I’ll fall into the category of overachieving parents that try to mold their children into perfect geniuses.