Calendar

You will see to the left there is a new button, . By clicking on this button you can see a calendar with Oli's work schedule and any other important events.

Sick Panda

We had a good Christmas with my family (sans Jakob, who was at the Olson's). Christmas Eve we went down to Lewiston (sans Oli, who was at work) we stopped by Costco which was the emptiest I had ever seen it. It felt like we weren't supposed to be there. Then we went to Pizza Hut for Christmas Eve dinner. While we were there Layden learned how to drink out of a straw. Then we capped off the evening by driving all around Lewiston/Clarkston in search of the Christmas lights. The park on the way into town was all lit up with lights. Every tree was liberally draped, there were lighted colonnades, and there was an old train engine lit up. It was also quite chilly but Layden loved it. We had a nice low key Christmas, opened presents, did laundry, made lasagna. Layden received many fun toys for his birthday and Christmas, the ones that made noise were especially great.

Layden got his first hair cut from Mom and Becky, the day after his birthday or so and he looks much older now.
The day after Christmas Mom, Dad, Becky, Layden and I headed up to Sandpoint, Idaho to visit with the Olsons. That afternoon, after we had arrived, Layden threw up. He continued to throw up anything that went in his mouth until 9:00 the next morning. He had stomach cramps and a fever. Eventually he started keeping small amounts of water and milk down but he had a couple of bouts of explosive diarrhea. Currently he is keeping most of his food down but tends to throw up once first thing in the morning. He is mostly better but still goes through periods when he feels pretty gross and needs mommy. He had his well child check up yesterday and is doing well, though in the past three months he has gained less than a pound (up to 20lb now). The doctor figures he just had a case of rotovirus, which generally lasts for about a week. My mom came down with the same thing a day after Layden and is still feeling a bit gross, Brita may also have come down with it but so far they seem to be the only ones.

Other than the whole people getting sick and me not sleeping thing we had a good visit up in Sandpoint. There was a veritable cornucopia of goodies, most likely resulting in a significant holiday weight gain.
We are back home and enjoying a few days off with daddy. Today Oli taught Layden "So big". To "How big is Layden?" he responds by raising at least one arm and saying "so big" (barely intelligibly).

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Today we drove up Steptoe Butte. It is a quartzite formation over 400 million years old, 3,600 ft elevation, the view is spectacular. It was very cold. Then we drove back down and had waffles with berries.

One Year

Well we have made it one year. You have grown so much it is hard to believe. When I first held you I could not have imagined that you would grow into such a wonderful little boy. Though sometimes this last year has been hard it has also been filled with joy. So many times when I have been frustrated or down you have smiled and whatever was bothering me was no longer so important.
You have had so many firsts in your first year. First time rolling over, first time crawling, first smile, first word, first tooth, first steps, and each was more exciting that the last. When you started crawling we thought you were so talented, so precocious. Then you pulled yourself up to standing and you were so amazing, so strong, so smart. Then you started climbing up the furniture and while we were still impressed we were maybe a bit less excited. You are such a strong little boy, but I guess that isn't really a surprise. A few months of using my bladder as a punching bag, followed by squats and chin-ups would make anyone strong.
You are a very curious, investigative child. Everything is worth investigating, especially if it is a grown up toy. All of Dad's tools are wonderful, but the best thing of all is the screwdriver. Nothing makes your eyes light up like an 8" #2 flat head screwdriver, except perhaps any other screwdriver you manage to lay hands on. What is on the counter top? You don't know, but you are going to find out, drawer handles make great ladders. What's in the roll top desk? As soon as you can get it unrolled you will find out.
You are quite the animal lover, though animals don't always love you. Gentle is still a lesson you need to learn. The cat is trying to teach you but you just roll with the punches. You show up with the occasional scratch but it doesn't seem to faze you. You think Lucy is wonderful and you would love to just pet her and dig your face into her fur but you respect that that is not what she wants.
Even though you put everything from the floor into your mouth (the less edible the better) and you insist that the world is your oyster and won't believe it really isn't OK for you to climb on the table, even though it has been near impossible for me to get anything done for a year now, I would not change a thing. I don't regret a minute of it. You are the greatest gift your father and I have ever received. And now you are starting to talk. You will say Peek-a-boo, uh-oh, sometimes doggy, and maybe even daddy. You have other methods of communication, some more subtle than others. You make the sign that we are trying to teach you means milk for just about any food you want, you have found that trying to pull off my shirt is very effective at communicating "Milk, now!"
One of our friends from college recently found out she was pregnant after 5 months of trying. I remember learning I was pregnant with you, I was excited, a little scared, but excited. I though I knew what this would mean, Blah blah blah, awesome responsibility, blah blah blah, your life is totally different, blah blah blah everything will change, well I didn't know. I thought I could imagine how my life would change, but I couldn't. But I also couldn't imagine how much I would love you, how much joy you were going to bring to my life.

Pak-boo!

Today Layden finally said pak-boo for Mommy and Daddy, first for Daddy (of course) then, finally, for mommy. Last night he said it for Grammy on the phone. Layden, Lynda and I headed up to Costco today and then went for a nice walk downtown and stopped by Rosauers to pick up cake mix for Layden's birthday. Layden had tons of fun looking at all of the Christmas lights, towards the end though he was torn between pointing at the lights and keeping his fingers warm.
I love it when every so often when he is babbling away to himself he seems to say something that just cracks himself up and he has to giggle a bit. Babble, gabble, babble, blurt, da-da-da-da-da-da, click click, tee hee.
Soon (Julyish) we will no longer be the only of our college age friends to have a baby. Lisa (Loveland, ne McDermott) is pregnant after years of saying she wouldn't have kids. Congratulations! Your life will never be the same but on the whole it is fun. Sadly her hubby is off to Iraq in January so she will be move back to Washington for a bit to stay with her parents.

Earplug Check

Joy has headed home now. We had a good visit and she and Layden had a lot of fun together. She gave a couple more of her photos framed for Christmas and now are walls are starting to look very nice. I also got the winter photos up on the wall so we are decorated for the winter.
Layden was fascinated with the earplugs Oli was wearing yesterday. Today when he was sitting on Daddy's lap he turned his head so he could check in his ears. He felt around a bit but no earplugs today. Oli is at work now, he works 4 days of night shift than has a couple of days off. Hopefully by the end of January he will be on a regular schedule of evening shifts. Five 8 hour shifts with alternating weekends (1 or 3 days off). But I can't remember how many times we have thought he was getting off nights and on to a regular shift, but then they have a budget cut back or some one quits and because not every one gets trained to do QC and maintenance, he is back on night shift. It is hard on both of us when he is on nights, Layden seems to hold up pretty well but then we arrange our lives around him so that isn't much of a surprise.
I made a curtain today. It actually looks decent. I won't be ashamed to hang it on the wall. Of course it was pretty simple, two seams up the sides then tabs along the top. Layden found the sewing machine fascinating and was not terribly helpful. He was pretty sure it would be a good idea for him to sit on the table and play with the needle, I was pretty sure it wasn't. He also wanted to help cut out the fabric, first he generously offered to sit on the fabric to hold it still. Unfortunately he insisted upon sitting right were I was going to cut. Then he decided I needed more help than that because I wasn't getting any where fast and kept grabbing the rotary cutter. Baby + rotary cutter = very bad things. I persevered and in less than an hour produced an entirely decent curtain. I will make a few more and then we will work out some sort of curtain rods and voila, privacy at last.

Gotcha!

Today the weather was clear and not too windy so we headed over to Klemgard Park for a hike. It was quite chilly but is was nice to get outside after spending the morning inhaling vinyl fumes. The glue from the floor didn't stink a bit but the floor itself is rather stinking. We have one wall of beadboard up and a coat of paint on it. Next Oli has the most difficult wall to get up, the one with pipes, and light switches, and cabinets. Then I will have a good bit of painting to do, 2-3 coats on the beadboard, the trim and the cabinets.
Today Layden was playing with the toy that has different shapes that you push through correspondingly shaped holes. He managed to push four of them through the correct hole, the first one all onhis own without coaching. That boy is smart enough to keep us quite busy. He is also saying gotcha now. If you chase him around and then grab him and say "gotcha" he will repeatedly make a noise that is reasonably close to "gotcha!".
Joy has been having fun with Layden, he never ceases to impress. She was a big help keeping him out of our hair and the glue while we put the floor down. It is looking like she will continue to have good weather for her drive home tomorrow afternoon.

Floor

Joy is visiting for a few days. She has brought her brand new Pentax K10d. Very nice. She is having fun getting it all figured out and we made a trip into Moscow to get some protective filters and lens cloth. With her here to keep an eye on Layden we have also managed to get our new bathroom floor down. I am ever so excited. Mostly because this means we can put in the new sink, I am anxious to see how it looks and fits. Tomorrow we plan to put up the beadboard wainscoating, and hopefully put every thing else in too but we will see how far we get. Yesterday Layden once again said Peek-a-boo. For Joy. We weren't in the room and he hasn't said it when we were around. Just for Joy. Maybe peek-a-boo means grandma.
I finally got around to unpacking our box of photos and we have the family photos on the bookshelf. I printed off a few of our winter photos from last year and we will put them up to join our snow globe as our "Christmas" decorations. On our street we are definitely the Scrooge house, especially compared to the house across the street. Yet I don't really mind. In this house putting up a tree would just be asking for disaster. Speaking of disasters Layden just took a nap from about 6:30 to 9:00pm. You probably are thinking "why are they so stupid as to let him take a nap so late?" Answer: good question, shows you're thinking. Now tell me if you could tell a baby as cute as Layden that even though he is exhausted and crying that no, you can go to sleep.

No More Quizzes

Today I graded my last quiz (at least for a while). I have office hours on Thursday and then I am done for a bit. I will be free to devote my free time, such as it is, to graduating (and chasing Layden, and cleaning, and remodeling...). It feels nice to be done with that for a bit, to know that next week while Layden is napping, or playing by himself, I can take the opportunity to do what I would like to do, rather than torturing myself by grading quizzes of students who are either receiving very poor instruction or are quite dense or are some combination of the two.
I have been slowly working on getting Layden's room painted, it is the same color as the bathroom since there was extra paint. Since he is asleep again I will go see about getting some more done. Until it is finished the room is stuck in a disarranged mess.

Snowshoeing

Layden and I had fun snowshoeing. I got some good exercise and he got in a couple hour nap. His hat from Joy was a huge success. Everyone wanted to know I got it, and was very impressed to hear it was handmade. It kept his head warm too. Snow shoes could be fun to have around here, actually be able to get some fun excercise in. We hike up a hill, accross a wheat field then down the hill. We didn't have a trail to follow on the way down so it was a bit more interesting.
Our basement door has been turned so it opens the correct way and has a working knob. The floor is ready for the vinyl to go down.

Signing

As you can see Layden has been keeping busy. He is determined to leave no stack undisrupted, no pile shall remain piled! He even managed to disrupt the transfer of files from the old laptop to the new. It is a lot of fun to turn the little indicator light for the power strip on and off, it is also fun to unplug the router. This led to much not-fun for mommy and almost lost a great many photos. This Saturday Layden and I will be going snow shoeing. So today I will be going shopping for snow boots, or work boots, or something. I have been meaning to get some and this is the motivation.
We have decided that Layden is at the point where an attempt to teach him sign language has a chance of being both beneficial and successful. Please wish us luck in this venture. He is so good at imitating us already that it just might work. His current "sign" for hungry is trying to rip off my shirt. I am hoping we can work out something a bit more subtle.

Learning Curve

Layden seems to have hit that point in the learning curve where it suddenly sweeps up. He has made it past the grub stage where he would just lay where we put him, barely wriggling. Then he made it through the just barely mobile, randomly chaotic stage. Now we are at the increasingly mobile, monkey-see-monkey-do-monkey-innovate stage. In the second stage he would crawl over to a pile of dirt we were trying to sweep up and spread it about, then stick his fingers in his mouth. Now he crawls even quicker to the pile, spreads it all about, but now he dusts off his hands afterwards. He is getting very close to walking. He took a step to the microwave. He took a step all on his own, stood up midcrawl, took a step, then continued crawling. He also will dance with music on occasion. He an a paint pail were really getting down with their bad selves. He is also getting us very well trained. Oli commented that Layden seemed to be developing his own version of sign language and that he used a certain gesture so Layden knows he has something to give him "That one I learned from him".
He still really likes tools, power or otherwise, in fact screw drivers may be his favorite. Today he grabbed a screwdriver, then a screw then put them together in the correct way. Coincidence? I think not. (In case you were just realizing, yes, this is just a look-how-wonderful-and-smart-my-baby-is post.) Sadly screw drivers are rather dangerous looking so we had to take it away. We investigated the snow today and found the texture and consistancy quite interesting but the temperature left something to be desired. He saw a picture Oli had taken last night of the deer lying in the middle of our backyard in the snow and he got very excited. He bounced up and down and made happy noises looking at the picture of the deer on the laptop.
Layden is definitely his father's son. He loves tea. He always wants a sip of Daddy's. He liked Jasmine gree, green and white, morrocan mint and is currently enjoying green with lemongrass. Strange, strange family. Oli blew a raspberry on my stomach and Layden thought it was awesome. So he just had to try. At first no success, the key is to exhale, not inhale. Then success! It was so exciting. The he kept making movements like a chicken pecking for grain, rarely leaving himself time to exhale at the tummy. Good times were had by all.

Testing: So Big

Now that Oli has fixed our little canon point and shoot we can take videos and put them on the web. Here is the tester.