Two!

Unbelievable to me but my little baby turned two last Saturday. He had a grand time despite the bloody nose he gave himself tripping and falling onto a chair and the cut he got on his finger from a pop can (which he didn't even notice but bled profusely). All the family was there and he got some great new toys which he needed. What surprised me is that he ate the entire piece of cake I gave him. Last year he turned up his nose at the cake but this year he ate the whole thing, frosting and all. And he wasn't too crabby later either. It is probably more sugar than he gets in a month. We try to give him pretty healthy stuff.
Speaking of healthy Peter also had his 2 year check up Monday. He weighs 36 pounds and is 37 1/2 inches tall - basically 100% for height and weight. He's a big boy all right! Doctor seems to think he should be saying a bit more than he does so we are going to a speech therapist in a couple weeks to make sure. He says words - but he doesn't say many so he might be just a little behind.
But without further ado I give you photos - Happy 2nd birthday Peter!

A new year

I think I'll try and blow the dust off this journal again. In reading the last post it really is pretty good - I'm a better writer than I often give myself credit for. But when you only use your writings to get sales reps and district managers to do stuff they really don't want to do .. well .. you tend to lose some of those skills.

Ah work. Yes, work. I have a decent job - it pays about what you would expect for how challenging the work is that I do. It's a far cry from McDonalds but it is still by and large boring. Overall I don't mind boring - it lets me have more energy to enjoy my family - but since I'm an intelligent woman it does get to me sometimes how hideously boring my job is. But! I get to start an intership to learn how to be a business analyst. I think this will be good for me - something different than what I do and potentially move into a different position. That would be really good. The day in/day out of negotiating with an aggressive sales force does tend to get to me after awhile. And this week is particularly bad because it is quarter end. My company has it's fiscal quarters quite wonky. Our fiscal year end is the end of April. So this week is 3rd quarter close. And it is really kicking my ass this week, don't know why specifically but it is. I'm just so tired when I get home this week, it really sucks.

The 2nd baby debate still continues. I really want to have a 2nd but Shawn isn't convinced yet. He absolutely flipped out a couple weeks ago about the mere idea of me being pregnant again ... so I put the idea on hold for at least two months (as that is when I run out of birth control again). I'm HOPING after this last month of birth control I can just go off it and see what happens. I'm already 36 so I have to keep moving if I want to try. I'm ok if I don't ... but I want to try at least. Shawn has a review today so let's hope that he gets a good raise and feels we can 'afford' another kid (an argument I find totally irrelevant and pointless). Also he wants to get the family room done and has made good progress towards doing so ... but I do agree it needs to be just a bit further along before we can really start factoring #2 into the equation. We need the room and not the extra deadline. I'd like to get it sheetrocked and then get pregnant. But I can't organize the world.

But I need to end talking about my adorable 22 month old Peter. He HATES the word No right now, to the point if you tell him no about anything at all he squats right down and starts to cry. Silly munchkin. He thinks the world is out to get him or something. But when he's adorable he just soo adorable. He's really into hugs lately. He comes up to you and wants you to hold him and he puts his head on your shoulder ... makes mama melt. And he does have a handful of words. Dad is 'da-du' or 'da-da' Grandpa is 'bam-pa' or 'bam-ba' . He knows how to use 'no' correctly and does identify a few things like 'boat' and 'ball'. He talks constantly but doesn't say a lot that we completly understand. That will be coming soon though I'm sure. Our biggest accomplishment this month was what we call 'sucker management' - basically breaking off the use of the pacifier. Peter doesn't get a pacifier now when he's awake. It was bad at Christmas - he needed it all the time, especially in car rides. Right after New years we stopped that - he fussed some but seems ok with it. I let him have it at night though because 1) he isn't talking 2) he spits it out quite frequently and sleeps through the night fine and 3) I'm convinced that one day he will just decide he doesn't need it at night. I was very proud of our 'no sucker during the day' committment. What helped is that at Pam's he only got it for naps - so it wasn't that much of a stretch to get him to give it up other times. And I'll end with a photo. It snowed new year's eve so Peter had the perfect opportunity to try out his new sled. What fun!

Nothing much, really

Sadly another month goes by before I once again think to post. Such is life.
Peter has what we call his 'crabby' days now. He has reached an age where he knows he can do things and not do other things - and sometimes he is ok with his limitations (these tend to be nights when he's happier) and other nights he gets irritated with himself and cries a little when he can't do something (his crabby nights). He also ran a low-grade cold for about 2-3 weeks but I'm hoping we are beyond that now. The snot is the worst - it keeps coming and coming and you have to wipe it which annoys him. Otherwise 18 months sits well on him. He ADORES cousin Jack who is 4 1/2 and has Downs. I do think Peter would be speaking more but Jack has a pretty limited vocabulary and this is what Peter picks up on. But I'm not worried. He doesn't spend all his time with Jack (only 3 working days) and Peter will master languages better than Jack will. It's just the way things go. I'm so happy Peter has this experience with his cousin and also his wonderful mom (my cousin's wife) that the tiny tiny setback is worth it in the end.

Peter does have other young friends - Olivia who will be 2 at the end of the month (who does NOT like to share!) and of course cousin Carter who is a scant 5 weeks younger than Peter. I barely see the age difference between Peter and Carter anymore in terms of development - Carter did get walking down first but Peter had crawling down first etc etc. Except for size. Peter is HUGE in comparison to Carter - most people peg Peter as a two year old. But I do see the 5 month age difference between Peter and Olivia, even though they are exactly the same size right now.

And I always have to post a photo. This was taken about 20 minutes before the fall off the front step. My poor silly baby! He had mastered the idea of going backwards down the steps a long long time ago - to the point that we hardly watched him anymore. Well now that he's walking he 'experiments' with walking down the steps. Normally he is pretty cautious. But! He decides he can just walk off our concrete step onto the hard concrete walk below - without holding on to anything - and me behind him and not able to catch him. Needless to say he clobbered his head near his eye pretty good and actually got sores that bled a bit. They were pretty shallow and healed up quickly - but he does still have a bit of a scar there (you know that slightly pinky color of new skin? that sort of scar). And the crazy thing is that he did it AGAIN the next day - this time crashing onto his nose. Silly boy. Now momma is very careful to make sure that he is at least attempting to hold onto something or that I'm there to offer a catching hand. And in studying this photo I see he is going to need a haircut again soon - it is just getting too long to wash properly. He sure can grow hair! It is actually getting much less blond overall again - less exposure to sun - but is still very light and fair. I suspect he will have sandy brown hair as an adult. I didn't keep my blond hair after childhood and neither did his dad. My blond hair was more the golden variety though - Peter's is very ash blond - so maybe it will be lighter when he's older.

Trying to be more posty

A journal is only as good as its updates, right? I'm actually being naughty and writing a post at work but I really just felt like writing a post at work. I am going to try and be more concious about keeping a better journal and I do think it will be easier now that we have the all powerful DSL at home (smite to dial up!). You would think that living in a Minneapolis suburb we would have all the benefits of living in a Minneapolis suburb. But no. We were (until just this summer that is) just a bit too far outside of the Minneapolis ring, living in a rather backwater, stupid community that won't allow Comcast into it's hallowed streets and Qwest felt no need to expand it's DSL out to us. But we persisted! There was a reason we moved out so far and it wasn't just the relatively inexpensiveness of our new home or the bigger lot we could get with it for the price. And now we are justified because we have DSL! Can you tell that I'm happy about this development?

The only thing that is difficult for me to deal with is that I've had my winternet email account for probably 9 years now and A LOT of people have that address and I get A LOT of stuff at it. So I don't know what to do about it going away. I told Shawn that I'd probably end up paying another month of dialup so that I can get my email account cleaned up but even after having almost two weeks to think about it I'm still drawing a blank as to how to go about it. I have no problem emailing a whole bunch of people and saying 'hey! I have a new address!' (I have to email people all day long so I have no qualms about bugging people). I'm just afraid I'm going to miss someone. Chances are it would be someone I haven't talked to for years but still. I hate losing track of people that I once knew and had a relationship with.

After a couple weeks of ... well, we shall say trying times ... with Shawn I was finally able to get my hobby started again - scanning family photos. I did break down and start scanning old photos in my family. My sister loaned me all her photos from her 'arrival' into the US. Some of them are getting very delicate because my mom had used scotch tape back in the day to get them to stick in the bad book she had bought *shudder*. So some are permanently damaged due to the tape. I also went through all the photos I've been hoarding and pulled out ones that had my sister in them - both so that I could scan them for her and also so that she could have them if she wants. This year marks her 30th 'birthday' of her arrival into the US - she joined our family on December 13th 1976 from Korea. I'm still trying to figure out if she'd like a party or not. That day is also my mom's birthday (well, not just 1976 but all years since 1941). Does one celebrate ones arrival into their adoptive family? I think my family was still so new in the adoption process (international anyway) that we did things that are probably 'wrong' today (note grain of salt). I think my sister did go through some of the identity crisis that is assoiciated with being adopted but she seems to have come out the other side a happy, well adjusted adult. Now if we can just get her butt in gear and marry her boyfriend then we will be all set. :-)

I like to post a photo. Photos are my life. Normally I wouldn't post a portrait photo but this is the best I have today. Yes his hair is that blonde. Amazing. I still can't believe he's 17 months old. Such a wonder to behold.

Wow I actually remembered my login

Even though I haven't posted here in so long. Bad me. Always too much going on. But that's just an excuse I know. I have a request for an updated photo of my adorable 16 month old. He has finally decided that walking is his preferred mode of locomotion. It took him forever to weigh all the possibilities of walking and make sure it was more desirable than crawling. He sometimes still forgets and drops down to his knees if he needs to go really really fast. But even in the past two weeks (I count as two weeks ago today as the day he really decided he wanted to walk everywhere instead of crawling) he has gotten faster. His steps are more sure and less 'baby steps' and even quicker.
But right now I'm working on borrowed time. I had a stress test yesterday and today (having chest pains that I can't explain) and have lost a little bit of work that I'm trying to catch up on. So I better get back at it. I'm going to get one photo for sure to post and maybe another ... we'll see.

The cutest photo ever!

This photo is actually from Easter but blog has been being a pain for me and has thwarted my previous attempts to post it. I think this one of the cutest photos I've ever taken of my baby boy. Peter was born 4 days before easter last year and got a lot of stuffed rabbits because of this (I suppose part of that is the association with Peter rabbit - but his name would have been Peter if he had been born in July). So I gathered all the bunnies, put him in a chair, and snap! Here we go. Some of those are mine but the bulk of them are in fact his bunnies. I tried at first to put him on the couch but setting him on the couch is a sure-fire way to get him to bounce up - he acts like he has a spring in his butt and pratically leaps up. The deck chair worked better because he wasn't used to it so he wanted to know what it was about.

He is JUST about ready to take that first step - he can balance on his feet for about 2-3 seconds before he suddenly notices what he is doing and then has to sit down. But he crawls everywhere like a maniac and pulls himself up on everything. He's just 13 months so he's doing pretty good. I believe his rather large size (100%ile for height, 85%ile for weight) makes it just a bit tougher to get some of those motor skills down. But he does eventually.

Ok I'm going to put this photo in this post and try to submit it. This is fiscal year end day so it is a bit busy at work.

April craziness

April is a bit of a challenge for me - mainly because of work. I usually don't have any free internet time to write things or reflect about my day etc. But since this is Good Friday I have decided it will be slow at work and I'm going to make time to write. I've just recently been making time again to scan photos - probably one of my favorite hobbies. Which is good because there are a loooottt of photos in my family to scan. Which I think is why I always end up scanning photos from Shawn's family first - the sheer volume of photos from my family is simply overwhelming sometimes. But I do love doing it. I feel like I'm really preserving memories that would fade and disappear if I didn't make a concrete copy of it. I got out of doing it around Christmas a bit because our scanner decided it didn't like our computer and wouldn't work. Viruses had taken over o'l big blue (as we call the main computer) and she had a through cleaning in January. This made the scanner happy too and it started to work again. I got a really good one a couple years ago and I'm still happy with its performance.

Peter's birthday was good. There were 44 people, including Peter. He did really well - only cried for real once. He gets a bit overwhelmed when so many people come at him at once. He all of a sudden conked when I was holding him about 6pm - he'd had enough. But we made chilli and had cake and everyone was very happy and nice at the party. Always a good sign. We had it at my parents house because it is so much bigger than our house - it would have been tough to have 44 people in our upstairs. Our basement isn't done yet.

Speaking of basements we did a bit of spring cleaning a few weekends ago and I was amazed at how well we got everything to fit in our crawl space. We have some things in storage that will come out once the family room is done - my books, an entire futon and frame, some other small stuff. And we have also stored some of the big 'baby' stuff under the stairs as well - for the just in case time. But those items won't be stored indefinately. If we have another child it will all be pulled out again and then used and gotten rid of at that time. My mom hung on to our crib for years only to discard it recently because it was in such bad shape. I don't plan to do that. I hope to have another child and then use the stuff and then get rid of it but if another child never comes then we will just get rid of it later. I even was able to get some baby clothes in the crawl space. We were amazed that everything fit - with room to spare - but we had it packed much more intelligently this time so that helped a lot.

I will have to end with a photo of my big boy. He had his one year appointment and he is at 85th percentile for weight (25lbs 9 oz) and 100th percentile for height (33inches) and 95th percentile for head circumfirence (don't recall the actual size right now). So he is officially a really big boy. He did well with the shots. I really like our doctor - she spends all sorts of time with us discussing his growth and development. I don't always agree with everything she says - I know my kid - but I'm amazed at how much time she will spend with us.

The photo is from his birthday - I got the sunglasses that I hope he will wear this summer and we got him that rocking bike. He is big enough for it size wise - but he still doesn't quite have the balance for it.