Recap of the Past 9 Days

Lots of stuff has gone on this past week or so. So, this may be a long post, but it’s a lot of good stuff IMHO. For those not abbreviation savvy, that means In My Humble Opinion :-).

My brother, Bruce, was here from Poland. He’s a missionary with SEND International. The link to their page on SEND’s website is a couple years old, but gets the point across. Anyway, he was here alone to travel the western states to meet with supporters and try to attract new supporters due to some changes in the exchange rate between the dollar and the euro. We were sad to not see the rest of his family, but know it was for a good reason. It was still a lot of fun to see him and spend some good quality time with him between all his meetings and presentations.

One thing that will make the distance not so bad is Skype. Bruce has been encouraging the rest of the family (one brother in San Diego, myself in Fullerton and the other brother and the parents in near Portland, OR) to get on Skype so that we can essentially talk with each other free through the Internet. Not only that, but the latest version of Skype has video. So, I will break down and get a webcam and join the crowd. It should be fun.

On to some things Joshua is doing. The other day, he climbed into his crib…sort of. We lowered the side of the crib and he was able to get up and almost get his foot over. So, Danielle helped it over. He just needed a little help! He does seem like a good little helper. We’ve “taught” him to help put things in the trash, especially Abigail’s wet diapers (dirty ones are off limits). So, not only will he put the wet diapers in, but he likes putting other things in the trash, like socks, sippy cups and so on. Definitely something we have to keep an eye on. Although, sometime later, he took 2 or 3 of Abigail’s diapers from our bedroom trash, walked into his bedroom and put them into the diaper pail. That was pretty cool. Of course, he’s been known to put other things in the diaper pail…but I digress.

He’s decided to also change his sleep schedule on us this past week. Not drastically, but enough to cause us a little grief. He used to sleep from about 12 Noon to 2PM (give or take a half hour) and then go to bed between 7 and 7:30. He would then wake up between 7 and 7:30 in the morning. Now, he isn’t falling asleep until 1PM or after and sleeping till well after 3PM. It seems he also doesn’t fall asleep at night till after 8. But he does make up for that by sleeping in till almost 8 most of the time. So, it’s not horrible, but does cause us to accommodate.

Joshua had been teething for the longest time a while back and we figured he was getting his molars, but wasn’t sure. Then he stopped teething, but we never noticed any additional teeth. The past week or two, we’ve noticed he’s started teething again. But this time, we noticed a molar in the back had come in, presumably from the previous teething session. By the way, his sign that he’s teething is when he begins chomping on his fingers and hand while his mouth and nose are dripping almost uncontrollably. So, hopefully, another one is coming in this time. I’m sure it hurts a lot, so the more that can come through now, the better.

Danielle and I do like taking Joshua to various parks and Joshua has really begun to enjoy going down the slides. When Bruce was here, we went to a park next to the Brea Plunge. Here’s a picture of him going up the slide…notice daddy behind him with his hand ready to catch him when he falls back. Of course, I’m not sure how successful I’d be since I’m holding Abigail with the other arm. Fortunately, he didn’t fall back and he actually made it up the slide. Later on in the week, we went to Arovista Park in Brea. I hadn’t been there in years and so it was fun to see all they had done to that park (I played some Little League games there “back in the day”). We played on the slides for awhile and then I took him down to where the ball fields are and explained to him the basics of baseball. He told me he’s looking forward to playing when he gets older – well, I know that’s what he was thinking at least.

Friday was his 18 month checkup. He weighed in at 35 lbs and measured 34 ½ inches in length! He got his last shots until before he enters kindergarten. As always he did fine…cried a little bit…well, a lot…but he’s a trooper. Our doctor really encouraged us to have him use his words more. We know what Joshua is asking for half the time, but to tell him to say “ball” or “juice” and have him actually try to say the word. We can already see him getting closer and closer to saying things. It’ll be fun when he actually starts putting those sounds together and forms the words themselves.

Not too much to say about Abigail since all she does is eat, sleep and cry. But she is smiling a lot more and is in general less emotional than she has been. She’s enjoying her bouncy more and we’ve also introduced her to Baby Einstein (Baby Mozart to be exact) which she seems to get into most of the time (provided she hasn’t pooped). This has allowed us to get more things done in between feedings because we’re not having to always entertain her.

She seems to be sleeping a little better now. She is more consistently getting about 6 hours of sleep each night which has been really helpful. But throughout the day, it seems she won’t sleep for more than 30 minute chunks. Maybe when she’s in the car, she could go longer. But that’s not always possible nor do we want her getting a preference for it.

In a previous post, I mentioned Abigail’s pattern of pooping once every 2-3 days. Well, for whatever reason, she’s pooping more often too…usually once a day. The other day she went three times.

There's probably more...but I'll save it for another post that won't be nearly as long.