Twenty Months
Your obession with wheels rolls on this month. It began several months ago when you ran up to a wagon wheel perched on a sidewalk and hugged it as if it was a long lost relative. Since then you spend every waking moment clutching a matchbox car in each hand. The moment you wake up and your feet touch the ground you run into the living room to reunite with your cars. I can practically hear you cooing to yourself and stroking them- "Precious.... precious." You've also developed a fascination with airplanes. Since we live on the edge of the air force base, the sky is full of them in the afternoons and you pause in your play to throw your arms up in delight and shout..."Plane."
This astounding thing has happened this month- you've learned to hang out in your crib and play until I come in to get you. I stumbled on this by accident one day when you woke up early from your nap and I still had several more calls to make. You fussed for a minute and then fell silent so I assumed you had fallen asleep again. More than twenty minutes later I came into the room to find you grinning, constructing tents from your blankets and talking to yourself. Unfortuantely you haven't caught onto the fact that this would be an excellent thing to do in the MORNING.
Amazingly you are still cutting teeth and they made quite a dent in your sleeping schedule. And just last week you got another cold, a minor case of the sniffles that has lingered, making you cranky. I took you to the playground just today and was reminded exactly whose child you are. You ran from slide to swing to stairs, chattering constantly and every line of your body communicating delighted animation. The longer we stayed, the more exuberiant you became, like a spinning top incapable of slowing down. When we visited your grandparents and we all took you across the street to the park, my Mom commented that she thought all the activity would calm you. She was surprised to find there was no end to your energy or your good humor and suggested you might be a bit hyper. Like someone else she knew as a child. Hyper? Never!
You've become quite the performer and show a good degree of talent at working the room. Making eye contact with the ladies, throwing them your best dimpled smile. You also have started to do something we affectionately call "The Daddy Dance." It started one day when you were very excited to see Daddy come home and you started turning in circles, stomping your feet and singing "Daddy, daddy, daddy!" George was delighted with this and since then, you do the "Daddy Dance" on cue. It's funny to see you wait until you have the full attention of the room, act embarassed or shy to build the suspense and then start the "Daddy Dance," becoming more animated as the audience claps and approves. I can see the future now... we're going to have some trouble with this one!
I sit here in a hotel room in St George Utah lonely, slightly bored, and on a business trip. I've been here since Thursday, and I will be here until Wednesday night. But to make it better, Kaz and Owen came down and visited for the weekend. Instead of hiking in the all-day-very-unusual-rain-in-the desert, we drove Vegas to visit the grandparents. Kaz would have stayed with me the whole time, but she had to work. So she drove 5 hours to see me. Sweet!
This is just a sampling of of what we've been going through for the past couple of months. During August we went camping in the Tetons, and to Glacier National Park. In between those trips and this trip, we've tried to keep up with the house, chores, and all the other things you are forced to do on a weekly basis. It's been crazy, and that's why the website has been very sparse. And to top that off, I was working 10+ hours a day (14hrs on one day) to prepare our prototype we are demoing for a customer. I would have said I was working 50+ hours a week, but I broke up that time with vacation days to do some camping in the mountains.
Kaz has been busy working at home which has been a blessing and a curse. It is hard to not work when you work at home. We have an awesome babysitter to help with Owen while Kaz is working. That has helped a lot. But it has still been a challenge to find the balance between work and play. It has also been a challenge to figure out the best schedule for Owen, Kaz, her students, and the babysitter.
Owen is now at an age where it is a lot of fun to play with him. You can actually teach him things. It's been really great being a parent. Actually it is really super cool. When we aren't working or doing chores, we are playing and hanging out with him because he is so much fun. Seriously, he is a lot of fun.
There's been a ton of stuff we both want to post; like a $4 electrical bill in the middle of the hottest summer in Utah, pictures of Owen, pictures of all of our trips, fixing the truck, $350 tires, trip recaps, the "Daddy Dance", our babysitter, and other random stuff. But we've been busy. Very busy. Every weekend I am determined to get ahead of the curve, but like this weekend, I will be glad to be home and will have to catch up from this weekend.
So sometime in the future we will play catch up and then maybe we can keep an actual current blog. In the meantime, keep checking back, we aren't giving up yet.