Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Had lunch with a some friends from the “old days” – used to get together with 4 or 5 others from San Diego every once in a while at a local (downtown) dim sum place. Funny how we all ended up here. Could have been a lunch 3 years ago – time goes by and yet so little sometimes changes… Of course I have 2 great little kids to show for my 3 years J

Having a rainy time of it today. Another great Acrosports class to start off the day for Aidan – he had so much energy and was so bubbly. Kept chatting away too telling the teacher stuff (what I’m not exactly sure). Quincy seems to be on the upswing from his cold too. Finally had a long nap today (which I was gone for at lunch) and a reasonable night last night and no fever etc. Now if I can get my sinuses back on track and if Pete doesn’t come down with it like he looks to be doing we’ll move on… We know people with Chicken Pox, Strep & Hand,Foot & Mouth disease so a common cold has almost been a blessing ;-)

Aidan was cute – I changed out of sweats for lunch today. He said “mom – you look pretty! I LIKE your pants! And look! They match your shoes! They match!”. Makes you feel pretty good until you remember the interesting outfit he wore yesterday that “matched”… He also is into preferring a couple pairs of his socks – and when he takes them off at night he says he wants to wear them again tomorrow… he wore his “zebra” socks today and picked out some blue on blue camouflage patterned fleece pants to go with them – said they looked animal like so would go with his zebra socks. Interesting.

Quincy has been able to milk this sick thing a bit. We have had him sleeping in our bed as he was waking so much – and a couple of evenings he had a late nap so got to stay up way past Aidan’s bedtime. The one night he started out just about comatose on Pete’s shoulder while Pete watched the playoffs. Then the Tylenol must have kicked in – boy was he raring to go. Pete and I kept looking at each other wondering what happened to the sick little boy who had woken up! At one point he grabbed the tambourine and one of the sticks and was walking around drumming away (Aidan was asleep at this point).

Both boys (at Quincy’s instigation) are enjoying what I like to term “shopping” – they grab brown bags from beside the frig and walk around with them and deposit items inside. I must have spent 15 min looking for my sneakers one day – only to discover after I came home that they were in a brown bag under some toys…

Aidan has been very jealous (?) the last few days of Quincy. Anything Q shows interest in A has to have – yank it out of his hand if that is the only way he can get it. And there has been a lot of “my legs don’t work – pick me up and carry me there”. You should see how pathetic he can look lying in the hall with one hand stretched out and up and him blubbering “help me help me”. Fortunately I know he is not alone in this behavior. Apparently Thomas is a victim too – only Thomas has even more parts that don’t work – hands, mouth etc – “I can’t put the food in my mouth”. Oh well, I know that this too is a phase and will pass…

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

well, Quincy is asleep (nap) and Aidan is occupying himself doing puzzles. His current activity of choice when I nurse Q down is puzzles - I have to take the pieces out (it is too hard mom!) and he puts them back in. He is simultaneously working on 4 puzzles I believe (altho the pieces are kept separate). No more TV these days for him interesting enough. This a.m. we had our 2nd "big boy" Acrosport class. He is in a class with Thomas and there are 5 kids total - all 3 and 4 yr olds - and one teacher. Moms (and Dads and siblings) have to watch from the bleechers way up high. Q gets excited to see his brother running around below. The kids all do great and it is a much better class than the old one. They call it "Tootsie Rollers". They have a trampoline they call the Fast Track - it is maybe 5' wide and I don't know - 50' long - and the kids hop down it - I think you could use it when learning to do vaulting etc. Anyway - today they had the kdis hop, hands on hips, half way down, jump on a mid-way mat and Freeze then turn around and hop the rest of the way backward. You should have seen Aidan go! I didn't know he could do it backward. You will have to come watch...

Aidan & I both have colds. Ick. Aidan came down with his Sat nite and I feared it would be a bad one but despite not getting his normal amounts of sleep he has been in a good mood and doing really well the last few days. Hopefully Pete & Quincy avoid it. We'll see.

I changed YMCAs and now work out at the Presidio - it is nice seeing the bay again frequently. They have all the free yoga and pilates classes I could ever want. I took a Pilates for the 1st time since early in my pregnancy with Quincy and did remarkably well. It was the intermed/advanced class with my old teacher who remembered me right away.

We had been doing well with Quincy before Portland re sleep - alot of 6 hour stretches at night. Now he's under 3 again. Molar #1 is almost all the way in... But we are also letting him cry it out at least once (w/out milk) to try to get him back on the longer stretches. The downside to that is that Aidan was finally sleeping thru the night in his own bed (Ijust jumped in and nursed Q when needed) and now we have to relocate him to another room so that the prolonged crying doesn't disturb him. He isn't woken by short amounts of crying (of course neither is his Dad!).

Quincy is just clearly communicating more and more. The other day I asked him which chair he wanted to sit in (at the little snack table) - he picked the yellow one and pointed to it. He and Aidan now both sit down at the little table for snacks and some meals. I was impressed when I gave Quincy a graham cracker the other day - he then promptly went over to the cupboard and pulled out a bowl and put it in it then returned to the table to sit down. Of course a bite or so later he carried both over to the trash and dumped the graham and then the bowl into the trash... Guess he was done! He also loves to "read" and is pretty active about it. I tell him to pick a book and climb into my lap - and he does! Then we look at the pictures and he turns the page (on command) and we touch the various textures etc or point to animals. He loves dogs - but is a bit afraid of them. There is a new dog downstairs and he loves to look for it in the window - but if he sees it then he wants to be held!

Well, I think Aidan is tired of playing by himself - it has only been an hour! So I should go.

Monday, January 06, 2003

I spy a new tooth! Bottom right a molar has appeared - to join the 8 other existing teeth. This means a little gap between the front ones and the molar - guess that one will appear later.

Beautiful weather - spent 3+ hours at Crissy Field (beach just about under GG Bridge) yesterday with friends. Kids had a blast.

Quincy is our little squirrel. He deliberately hides things. Latest casualty - one of his new shoes... he didn't really like wearing big boy shoes and figured out how to get out of it. I have NO IDEA where it is. The cleaners didn't turn it up either. I have watched him (unbeknownst to him) pick up a random (to me) object and take it to the end of the house, open a drawer (like in the Secretary in the Hallway) and deposit said object then hurry away. Eek! He also enjoys depositing items in the various trashcans around the house...
02/12/31 update…
seems like I will never actually get around to writing unless I start… it has been a long time and I always make mental notes of things I want to write about (mainly something too cute that one of my boys has been doing of course). Ouch – I just went back to look and the last one was early November! Tells you something about our life… we kept quite busy doing this years edition of Cole Valley Herald. It seemed to take on a life of its own and grow and grow… Then it was time for the calendars… now I just need to trim the file sizes to something that will open from the CD for Kinkos to handle – apparently 125mb files just don’t work – and that is only ½ the year in pics only. Oh well.
So, we end the year with a little toddler – and he really does. He now only crawls if he is moving a vehicle around the floor – just like his older brother. Vroom vroom. It was fun to watch the progression just in Portland from wanting to walk to almost exclusive walking. I took the boys shoe shopping on a rainy day the Thurs before the holidays. Aidan got a very nice (expensive) pair too and was very happy. Quincy wasn’t happy at all about having clunky shoes put on his feet – he thought maybe he should just sit down and scream about it. A short while later he forgot about it (at a friend’s house afterwards) and toddled around in them. The toes are already nice and scuffed. I would have put him in Aidan’s old shoes except that he is younger than when Aidan got his first and as I suspected, has smaller feet. We love to watch the glee in his face as he does his best Frankenstein impression lumbering around – usually with something in one hand and the other raised about his head – like he wants to hail a taxi. With nothing in either hand it is both hands above his head – rather hysterical.

Like the rest of Quincy’s development, the move to walking has been progressive. About a week before his 1st birthday he started letting go and taking a few steps – I even captured some of the earliest on video and sent it forth across the web to the grandfolks. Just a week ago before we headed north I watched his persistence in walking the length of our hall (long as you know) – he stumbled maybe 5 times but only crawled perhaps 4’ out of the total length – he just kept getting up. Now he thinks nothing of the hall and back.

I have been interested to see his language skills blossoming the last week or 2 as well – interesting that he is working on both at the same time. He does have clearly distinguishable words now for some things (clear if you are his mom that is!). Mostly things that start with “B”. Ball, Boom, Book. Pete is thrilled that pointing has become a big part of communication. He can be very clear in his intent now. He seems very interested in animals too (I don’t remember this kind of interest from Aidan). He was trying to say “cat” and “meow” and then “woof woof” for dog. He seems to have decided that all furry 4 legged creatures work fine with a “whooo whooo”. Last night at a party he was excited to see a cat “whoo whoo” and we watched it go outside. Several times during the course of the evening when I had him in my arms (usually to distract him from some mischief) he would point to the kitchen then the door and tell me “whoo whoo” – it was clear he wanted to go find that cat. He is ignoring my effort to get him to sign – although he is interested in watching me do it and seems to comprehend my signs.