For Valentine's Day this year, both Meh and I unfortunately had full days of work. Rather than try for a remote bouquet delivery, I opted to get Meredith a fun (and only mildly embarassing) gift of a singing valentine, where a local barbershop quartet went to her work and sang her a few songs in front of the apparently delighted patrons! She really liked it, and apparently it made an impression on the witnesses as well, as multiple friends and family members pointed us at the bottom of the "rants and raves" page of this weekend's Seattle Times. I'm glad everyone enjoyed it so much, and am just sorry I didn't get to hear the singers too!
Tomorrow I head to San Francisco for the annual Game Developers Conference -- I skipped last year due to a certain tiny man's arrival (picture at left). :) While I'll be kept very busy with three presentations and too many meetings to count, it's going to be hard to be away from Meh and the boys for the whole week. Thankfully Mima is going to be staying over and helping out - huge thanks to her in advance, and here's hoping the number of 5 am wakeups are minimal.
The snow has returned! Thankfully it's been mostly a dusting at the house, which is enough to entertain Zachary but not enough to pin us at home. In other news, Owen is doing all sorts of new and exciting things lately. The words (or at least syllables) continue to sporadically appear. Here's a video grabbing his frequent favorite:
He's also decided he wants to try to climb the stairs. Thankfully he's stuck at the first step, but will try and try (often while saying "up!"). Time to bust out the safety gates again...
He's also started signing "milk!". It's particularly cute when I'm giving him a bottle, he'll stop drinking, look back at me, and sign while smiling. Meh says it's as if he's saying, "Look! We're having milk! Milk!!!". And lastly for today (sorry, lots of videos!), he's gotten into giving people big bear hugs, particularly if they happen to be at his height, like a certain older brother:
And the milestones keep on coming for both boys. Zachary is doing better and better with pottying, even going standing up as long as there's a step stool handy. And Owen has begun to actually "play", as in make-believe. He was eating pretend food (and sharing some with mommy) the other day, and yesterday began pretending to talk on his toy phone. Mommy caught this video:
And a shared milestone - while I've seen both boys laugh at me (er, hopefully with me?), today they really actually started laughing with each other and sharing a clapping game. Super cute, super silly:
We've been having a busy weekend with grandma and J! The boys have had a great time playing with them; Zachary even told what might be his first self-created "joke":
The only minus was that Owen appears to have forgotten how to take a nap; he'll get very sad and worked up if I try to put him down, even if he's rubbing his eyes and about to conk out in my arms. Hopefully it's just a brief phase, but for now it's pretty exhausting all around! Yesterday while Meh worked, we took a walk around everyone's favorite Seattle market, had a tasty lunch (at a table Zachary picked out!), and even visited the local architectural landmark masquerading as a library. Zachary had great fun riding the escalators all the way up to the top floor.
Mima and papa graciously had us all over this morning for a super-tasty brunch (featuring some extra decadent chocolate chip french toast). Owen promptly decided to make some music:
The afternoon was a bit more challenging -- after doing some arts and crafts with Zachary (which of course involved him somehow getting marker on his face), and with Owen once again nap-free all day, we opted to take a walk around our neighborhood and over to the elementary school. The boys loved getting some fresh air, though Zachary had to potty (and wonderfully announced it!) and we had to make a bit of a dash home, before heading right back out to friends J & S in the city. Owen finally fell asleep on the drive, and I successfully transferred him to the ergo. But when we got into J & S's house, Z had a total meltdown tantrum and wanted to be up as well. I ended up carrying around both boys (Owen at least stayed asleep just long enough to qualify for a "lousy" nap) in varying states of sadness while S gave grandma and J the grand tour. The boys had travelling dinner on the way home before a brief bathtime and bedtime. Whew!
Grandma and J head home early tomorrow morning - we had a wonderful time with them and hope they had a fun visit!
Owen has several new favorite activities - he's gotten quite good at putting things into (and taking them out of) containers. So once he has gotten past the first round of chowing on food at a restaurant, he'll switch gears and just focus on picking up and putting back. Perhaps more amusing, he's gotten into balancing objects on top of each other; again, with the love of food, this most frequently manifests as him picking up food, putting it onto the lid of his sippy cup, bringing the sippy cup toward his mouth, and slurping the well-balanced food off the top of it. Silly tiny man!
Grandma and her friend J are here to visit for the weekend. While Z was at school, Meh, Owen, and I picked them up at the airport and headed to lunch at a tasty spot we hadn't been in ages. O enjoyed some french toast while the rest of us got caught up. In the afternoon, we all had some good quality hang-out time back home, and grandma helped out with bath time too. Tomorrow night they've graciously offered to babysit so Meh and I can have a pre-Valentine's date -- hooray!
He slept straight through until 5:45 am this morning. Hard to say if he would have slept longer if Zachary hadn't started talking loudly about elephants peeing in the potty.
We can finally feel his first tooth just starting to come through on the bottom -- and thankfully no teething discomfort that we can tell.
Meh reported that he pulled himself up to standing for the first time today (first observed on our living room ottoman).
When I came home tonight during baffy time, he smiled, pointed at me from the tub, and said "dada!"
Speaking of which, Zachary's continuing to improve with potty training (and certainly bladder control). Today mommy took the boys to Swedish Flat-Pack Land, and despite long drives both ways and two declined offers in the public restroom, he was dry when they got home -- and prompty had a successful sit on the potty.
With Owen once again waking up and sitting up in the crib this morning, I finally took the time to drop his mattress height down to the next setting -- which is actually pretty darn low. I'm even wondering if it might soon be time to flip the mattress over to non-infant mode. Yup, life moves pretty fast -- if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Or you might just miss Owen making yet another attempt to snag one of Zachary's toy cars.
Meh's annual choir retreat is this weekend, so the boys and I said goodbye to her late yesterday morning and had about twenty four hours to ourselves. Zachary's potty training continues to improve - just one accident yesterday, though that's in part still due to frequent sits on the potty. Still, once there he's doing better and better -- we even get glimpses of how he's getting encouragement at school, as he sings such hits as "Go! Pee pee! Zachary!" and (to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle) "Pee pee, Zachary, in the toilet". We had a fun day around the house, with Zachary enjoying some quality time on the swing -- a slight logistical adventure ensued as I tried to figure out how to get him into the swing without putting down Owen on the damp ground. (The out-of-the-box solution was shoulders.)
Everything went great until late in the day, when Zachary had an accident, then a bit of a meltdown at bedtime (right after mima, who had graciously come over to help with bedtime, had headed out), and then Owen began waking up every hour or two and wouldn't take milk, and then Zachary had a nightmare, and... Suffice it to say, I still can't imagine how solo parents handle the challenges of two kids! We all three did have some nice snuggle time this morning, as well as some silliness (such as Owen deciding to play with his cup under the dining room table, often impressively balancing it on the crossbar and then screeching happily) and laughing that made it all worth it. Nonetheless, we were very happy to greet mommy when she returned early in the afternoon!
For Valentine's Day this year, both Meh and I unfortunately had full days of work. Rather than try for a remote bouquet delivery, I opted to get Meredith a fun (and only mildly embarassing) gift of a singing valentine, where a local barbershop quartet went to her work and sang her a few songs in front of the apparently delighted patrons! She really liked it, and apparently it made an impression on the witnesses as well, as multiple friends and family members pointed us at the bottom of the "rants and raves" page of this weekend's Seattle Times. I'm glad everyone enjoyed it so much, and am just sorry I didn't get to hear the singers too!
Tomorrow I head to San Francisco for the annual Game Developers Conference -- I skipped last year due to a certain tiny man's arrival (picture at left). :) While I'll be kept very busy with three presentations and too many meetings to count, it's going to be hard to be away from Meh and the boys for the whole week. Thankfully Mima is going to be staying over and helping out - huge thanks to her in advance, and here's hoping the number of 5 am wakeups are minimal.
