Thursday: 17 months

Happy Birthday (again) to Isaac!  We've made it 17 months.

Isaac now says hiss if you ask him what a snake says.  (I think we're close on monkey noises too, but not quite there.)  He seems to have a thing for saying sounds, but he uses them as nouns.  He'll often quack when he sees a bird.  All birds say quack.  He can also sign "more" and "please", although I think that both of those signs just mean "give me that" to him right now.  It's a start though.

He now gives kisses.  Not on request, but when he's in the mood.  Sometimes they're nice and dry, sometimes they're rather wet.

Isaac is currently transitioning from two naps to one and it seems to be hard on him and me.  I don't think he's getting quite enough sleep and so he gets grumpy a little more easily.

He really likes shoes.  Since he can open the closet door now it is rather common to see him taking shoes out (or putting them in).  He also really likes rocks.  We searched the asphalt for loose rocks this afternoon and then he played with them for a while on the deck.

Thursday: carrying water

Tonight, for entertainment, Isaac carried water to Ben and me.  He did so by sticking his hands in a play shopping cart that was full of rain water.  He then ran over to us so we could wipe the water off of his hands.

This kept him busy for quite a while.  Probably because he didn't want to move the cart closer to us.

Tuesday: napping

Isaac fell asleep while eating lunch again today.  We were even having an early (11:00) lunch to try and avoid it, but it didn't work.

Next time we're in this situation I think I'll put him in his highchair and see if he wants to color.  Falling asleep while coloring would be a lot easier to clean up than falling asleep while eating.  OR...he should start going to sleep in his crib.  That would really be ideal, but it isn't working well lately.

Monday: Happy Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day!  Today Isaac and I went to the parade.  We almost didn't go, but I was feeling a little bad about not bringing him to a tulip time parade.  Turns out that the Memorial Day parade was probably a much better idea and we had fun.  It was shorter and easier to get home when it was done, and both of those were good things for us.  He enjoyed the bands.  He also waved to some people in the cars, but usually after they had passed.

I was feeling oddly...patriotic.  Maybe that's the wrong word.  But after seeing Band of Brothers what some of these men had probably seen really hit home and I was happy to be standing there honoring their service.

Isaac really didn't want to take a nap.  We're still struggling a little bit with nap times.  So, of course, he fell asleep while eating lunch.  I usually try to catch it and keep him awake but it happened really quickly this time.

Sunday: beach

Scarlet and Autumn spent a few hours with us this afternoon so we took a walk down to the beach.  I was expecting them to play in the sand, but it quickly became playing in the water too.  Oh well.  Hopefully their parents didn't mind too much. :)

Isaac on the other hand really wanted nothing to do with the sand or water.  But he nicely sat next to me on the beach towel.  He did get up after a while, but was mostly interested in drinking water from the water bottle.

Friday: yesterday

Well, today went ok but Isaac woke up in the middle of the night and then didn't want to nap even though he was tired... I was tired and wanted a nap, so that wasn't really helping anything.

So I leave you with a picture from yesterday after swimming lessons.



He doesn't move when bundled up, so it is easier for me to get dressed without chasing him.

Thursday: pointless

In between racquetball games, Ben tossed me the racquetball.  However, I was busy getting my racquet back around my wrist and it ended up back with Ben.

Amanda: "That was pointless."
Amanda: "Haha, it is pointless because it's a ball."

We start getting ready to play.

Ben: "Ovids.  Rounded cubes."
Amanda: "[The score is] zero zero."
Amanda: "That's pointless too!"

Wednesday: rocks

Isaac loves rocks.  It's nice, because they keep him entertained if I'm outside gardening/weeding.  He especially loves to carry as many as possible in his hands...usually around four.  And he gets very upset when it is time to leave his rocks.

Monday: We're home

We're home!  We slept in (ahh), had a delicious breakfast, watched the new StarTrek movie, and relaxed a little bit more today before going to pick up Isaac.  He saw me, and promptly turned around to run away because the puzzle he was playing with was more interesting.  While it was a little sad, and I would have at least appreciated a hug first, I'd rather have that than missing me too much.  And I think he played hard at Cheryl's as he was exhausted when we got home.

Sunday: disappearing

Ben and I have disappeared for the night. Dad (and Pat) are watching Isaac tonight and Cheryl is watching him tomorrow. This is the first overnight that I've ever been away from him...and I'm not sad at all. I tried waiting until he was sleeping though the night before asking someone to watch him...of course, this past week he has woken up several times. But hopefully he'll do better tonight.

We are at a bed and breakfast. We have done a lot of relaxing...there is a little gazebo and the weather was perfect to sit and read. There were also some delicious dinner appetizers.

It's nice.

Saturday: "10 minutes with Dad"

Take special note of 0:10-0:13.  Although my favorite is 0:25

Friday: two rocks and one spool

If you give Isaac two rocks and one spool what do you get?  Over an hour of great play outside.

Thursday: Duck Duck Moose

I'd like to give some props to the Iphone/Ipad apps by Duck Duck Moose.  I was kind of having a hard time finding apps that Isaac could easily use by himself, and since I really like these I thought I'd share with...anyone else that reads this blog.

Isaac likes to tap the screen.  He's good at tapping things on the screen, but is bad at waiting and sliding things on the screen.  The first app we got, Itsy Bitsy Spider, is really good at dealing with lots of taps.  There are lots of things that change based on the tapping.  We also got Fish School.  While it is geared for slightly older children, Isaac can still use it and enjoy it (even if he doesn't quite get the point of the games by himself yet.)

I expect several more Duck Duck Moose apps in the future.  And seriously, I love their name.

Wednesday: grrr

I sent a package to the wrong address.  If the people at the address are decent folk, everything will probably work out without any problems.  But I'm annoyed.  And I'm annoyed that I can't do anything about it.

In other news, Ben and I have now been married nine years!  We are celebrating this weekend, so didn't do anything really special today.  We did grill out with the family to celebrate some birthdays, so I guess that counts.

Isaac and I also saw Betsy and Ethan this morning.  I had a really good time.

Tuesday: Isaac

Today Isaac and I went to "baby day" again at Hope, where the observe several kids and then guess the age.  They guessed Isaac was 11-13 months.  Sadness!  I know they are only untrained students, but...I was a little sad.  I'm not really sure why they thought it was so low when he did demonstrate several of the higher functions.  But then, there were several kids there to watch too, and Isaac was being a little shy.  I did end up looking at a milestone chart when we got home.  He's ahead in a few places, behind in a few places...so overall doing fine.  Phew.  And when we went to the gym one of the Kid Zone people said "Hi Isaac" (so she recognized him.)  A minute later she said that he is one of the happiest babies ever.  Hooray!  It was a nice confidence booster after earlier.

So I'll leave you with this video that I think is the cutest ever.  But all videos of Isaac are the cutest ever.

Monday: shoes

Isaac was grumpy today.  We've had some difficulties with sleeping (and napping) and so today just didn't seem to be working well for him.

We did take a break though to play with his shoes.

Isaac then wrote the following email to Ben:
"Dad, mom keeps putting my shoes on the wrong hands.
Isaac"

Ben responded:

"Clearly [you] was born with [your] hands backwards then."

Sunday: Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!  I had a great one.

First of all, Isaac slept until 8am.  He once in a great while will hit 730 or 7:45, but he's never slept until 8am.  Ben was getting up with him so it didn't matter too much to me, but at the same time it is a lot easier to sleep without little toddler squeals all the time.  Ben and Isaac brought me a mini-breakfast in bed...chocolate covered strawberries.  Yum.  Isaac wanted a taste, but very "politly" just opened his mouth wide.  He didn't grab or try to move too closely.  (It was actually really cute.)  And a gift card to the fabric store.

Then we went out for a Mother's Day brunch.  Yum Yum.  There was orange bread.  I love orange bread.  Everything else was really good too.

We hung out with family for the rest of the morning/afternoon.  Isaac did an amazing job staying happy since he didn't take a nap.  By 5pm though he was starting to be done, so we took off.  He got a short nap in, but it wasn't very long.

Unfortunately, he had a really hard time getting to sleep.  Ben ended up finally getting him down an hour after his normal bedtime.  Oh well.

Saturday: alone

Ben took Isaac to do some errands this afternoon.  I can't remember the last time I was home alone (and awake and not scurrying all over the place).  I did my normal things, but it was really nice.

Friday: Quilt Show and ant update

Today Liz and I went to the quilt show!  It was fun to see all the quilts, but especially the one in the top center...it's mine. :)  I decided to enter it because I figured they worst they could say is no.  And it isn't an officially judged show, so the quilt didn't have to be perfect.

The boys did well with the quilts and at the subsequent fabric store.  

And I only saw one ant today!  I moved most of the traps away from the sink, although I am going to leave one there a few more days in case there are any stragglers.  Hooray, I think I got them!

Thursday: swimming lessons

We had our swimming lesson again today!  Isaac was still pretty calm about all of it, although I think he got cold a little sooner.  I told him he should kick and use his arms, but he ignored me.  We take a warm shower afterwards, but it still seems to take him a while to warm up.

The whole process also seems to make him so tired!  We had an errand to run again and he slept on my shoulder the whole time (ok, about 5 minutes).  But still...I got him out of the car seat and it was a little noisy.  We'll have to make sure to continue swimming once lessons are done so that I continue to get good naps!

Wednesday: Isaac

Isaac has a new word today! His list of words he can now say includes "mamama" and "dadada", although those two I usually can't get him to say on command. Then came "quack quack" followed by "woof woof". Today we got "baa baa". Guess he likes his critters.

We all went to play disc golf when Ben got out of work. There were three discs, so Isaac caddied for us. He took the job very seriously...when we took away his disc at the end he burst out crying.

Tuesday: Today! (again)

Here are a few things from today...

Isaac trying to play with Flurry.  It didn't work very well.

Isaac has some tea bags that he gets to play with, and they were all over the floor today.  He also got to go barefoot.  This meant that the tea bags often were sticking to the bottoms of this feet (yes, it was rather funny).  Once he bent over to try and get one off, tumbled forward, and started crying.  He kept crying, so I said, "Maybe you need some M&Ms as get better pills."  The crying instantly stopped.

We went downtown to eat vendor food with the family.  It was nice to see everyone.

Monday: Today!

To start with, Isaac is definetly enjoying being able to open the closet door.  He spent quite a bit of time opening the door, taking out one shoe, closing the door, and bringing the shoe...somewhere.  Happily, this entertained him for quite a while.  Sadly, shoes are now all over the house.

I had a dentist appointment today.  It went fine.  Isaac was awesome and quietly played with his pig for forty-five minutes.  They put a stain on my teeth to show me where I wasn't brushing well.  I have one tooth that I manage to miss a lot...I found it very interesting.

Then we got to have lunch with Ben!  Whoo-hoo!

Oh, I wanted to give you an update on the Roomba and the ants.  The Roomba is working well.  I think we are past the initial cleaning by now and it is still picking up a lot of dirt.  Not a ton, but a lot.  The ant population has been relegated to "small".  While still unacceptable (I'm going for "none"), it is nice to not see a steady stream of ants going up my counter wall.  They seem to be most active in the afternoon.  I often get my hopes up in the morning when I only see one or two, but by the afternoon there are many more.  I have three of the preferred traps sitting out.  There is bait in all three, but they only seem to prefer one each day.  I thought it would be split more evenly (they're not very far apart) but I'm sure there is a method to their madness.

Sunday: sleep

We put Isaac to bed early tonight because he seemed really tired.  He went right to sleep, but I always feel a little guilty when we put him to bed early.  I'm not really sure why.  I mean, I usually get tired plus or minus an hour of my normal bedtime, so why shouldn't he?

Saturday: outside

Today was a beautiful day outside.

This morning I brought Isaac outside.  I was going to try and move some sod pieces, but Isaac wasn't having any of that.  Apparently I was too far away and he doesn't like walking on the grass.  So we did some weeding of the front area.

After Ben woke up I went back outside to do the sod.  Luckily, the neighbor that is pulling up the sod was also out there and he had a wheelbarrow.  Two people and a wheelbarrow made it go much more quickly.  He did a lot more after I was done, but I at least helped him with everything that he had already taken out.

This afternoon I got a little mulch to put down where we weeded in the morning.  It's kind of sad how a ton of mulch doesn't really go very far.  I knew it was going to be bad, but I was hoping it would be a little better.  Oh well.  One section down, several more to go.  It'll probably be an all summer project.  But hopefully it will help with the weeds.

Then this evening we brought the grill back out to the deck.  We bring it through the house, and so move all the furniture out of the way.  This excited Isaac to no end.  Moving the grill was significantly more fun this time because Isaac was so excited about it.

Friday: 16 months

Isaac turned 16 months (a few days ago)!!  He's still a lot of fun.

Thursday: growing up

The last two days have seen a lot of new "big boy" things for Isaac...

*He found that he can flip the light switch from his crib.  While I think this has kept him entertained for a while, it's not ideal.  I think I'm going to remove the leads from the switch so that it doesn't do anything.

*We started swimming lessons!  I was a little nervous because the pool water is always a little cool, but Isaac did great.  I learned some things to do with him in the water and he is learning to be more comfortable in the water.  The class only has three students (maybe two next time), so that is nice.  Our goal is to get him to hold his breath if he is pulled under water, but we're also working on leg and arm movements.

*He learned how to open doors.  He can now push them open (yesterday) and pull them open (today).  It helps that we have the lever knobs.  I don't think he's realized that this will work on all doors yet, but I'm sure that's just a matter of time.

*We finally changed his car seat from the infant carrier to a bigger seat.  I was kind of dreading this day because I still like to bring him inside when he falls asleep in the car.  But so far he's transitioned just fine.  We made the switch because the weather is getting warmer and his head was always really sweaty when I pulled him out.  The new seat seems to let him stay a bit cooler.


(In other news, the ants seemed to decrease today.  There were still a lot, but not a ton.  And the roomba seems to be working well.)

Wednesday: dirty, almost not dirty, and cleaner

We'll start today's post with the dirty.  Ants.

They found their way to the top of the kitchen counter last night.  Yuck!  I didn't sleep well because I knew they were there and had nightmares of them overtaking the kitchen.  While they didn't overtake the kitchen, it was still disgusting when I got up.  I found some ant poison that they seem to love.  Hopefully it's actually killing them too.  I took some pictures because I was so excited that it was working, but decided it was too gross.  Yuck.  *Shiver*.  The only good thing is that now they're pretty much only in one area and not wandering all around.

Moving on to cleaner...
I got rid of two boxes of the stuff going to Good Will today.  They came by to pick it up, so I happily put it on the street.  It's a small step in trying to get the basement room cleaned up.

And finally, almost not dirty...
The roomba came today!  Of course, it came at 4:30 and Isaac fell asleep on my shoulder at 4:35.  I did manage to charge the battery later though so we got a short cleaning in.  It's a little bit noisy and so might need to run it while everyone is awake, but in fifteen minutes it picked up a lot of junk.  I'm still optimistic that this will work really well.