...that is the question. When, on a given weekday night, we have run through the gauntlet of chores to be done to put Julian to bed and clean up from dinner and prepare for the next day, and we finally collapse on the couch for a few precious moments together, we must decide if we will muster the energy to attend to ONE MORE THING. This is why I can't do laundry on weeknights, why the bathroom cabinet still doesn't have a lock on the door, and why Julian's Baby Book is still woefully blank. And why we often fall off the horse with regular blogging.
Apologies.
But, ever the optimists, we'll keep at it as often as we can.
We had a good St. Patrick's Day with Bangers and Mash, and Julian was properly decked out as the (unquantified-but-likely-more-than-half) part-Irish boy that he is. In this photo, it looks like he's combined St. Patty's Day with Mardi Gras...
J is also walking all over the place. Below is a video of him roaming the backyard, letting loose in the (temporary) Spring weather and navigating some obstacles. My favorite part is how he pumps his arms when he starts going fast or needs help with his balance.
And a few more hodgepodge pictures below.
This is how Julian likes to ride his tricycle. He'll stand on the front and wait for one of us to push him. Apparently he's more of a scooter guy.
Ball...still one of his favorite toys.
He also likes to climb up his slide. Oh, that boy!
Julian has gotten a lot of quality time with each parent since last time. I was gone for a conference for 6 days last week, returning on Friday evening. Melissa left for a conference of her own on Sunday morning and won't return until Wednesday. So, Julian got 6 days alone with Mom (well, with a few days of Grandma Trainer helping out, too) and is in the middle of 4 days alone with Dad. He seems to be coping pretty well so far. I was shocked at how much he'd changed in 6 days. He's in the middle of one of those spurts of development he seems to have from time. When I left, he was tinkering more and more with walking but was still primarily a crawler, but after I got back he was walking as his primary mode of transportation. Likewise, in the time I was gone he developed names for all his favorite books. For example, he calls "Go Dog Go" "Dog-go," as you can hear in the video below.
I've also noticed as he gets more verbal that he can conceive of things that he can't see. Last night, he asked me for water (he usually pronounces it wha-TEE, although he says it more like wha-tuh below) even though we were in the basement and there was no glass of water within of a flight of stairs from him. Likewise, today at dinner he started asking for Mommy even though she's across the country. Fortunately, in the latter case he let it drop before he got too sad about it.
I posted a couple of other videos this week. One is Julian having some water and walking around, where you can kind of hear him whisper the word "water" and see the improvement in his walking.
The other one is more than a week old. It's kind of tough to describe, but it's basically J being J. He likes to take things off of our "Mormon shelves" and make toys out of them. One of his favorites is an aluminum roasting pan that he takes down and climbs into. On this occasion he decided to wield a box of tin foil like a Samurai warrior. If you listen you'll hear him counting to two as he swings it around. I have no idea why he felt it necessary to do any of these things, but it was funny to watch.
Linus had his blanket, Christopher Robin had Pooh, and now Julian has....Llama.
In parent-speak, this is known as a "lovey", and is considered a helpful aid in learning to feel secure as he ventures out into the big bad world. Supposedly more than half of all toddlers do have a special blanket, doll, or stuffed animal.
I've been told that I had Night-Night Baby when I was J's age, but I have clearer memories of Freddy my stuffed dog. Chris had Hug the Bear, which is still known to be seen around these parts:
Julian calls his new special friend "Hi Llama" or "Llama", and it is very cute. It's lucky that his name is Llama, since he is in fact a llama. We can't brush J's teeth unless Llama is with him, and they go to bed together every night. Llama was a birthday present from Uncle Mark and Aunt Kelly (thanks!), but it was only in the last month that Julian has become so attached. We're not sure what triggered the friendship, but one evening Julian just walked over and picked him up from a chair and that was that. Now he thinks Llama is the cat's pajamas. Below you can see Llama in his role as Comforting Companion.
We look forward to years of Llama's friendship, the only question is....should we get a "spare" now to avoid possible future meltdowns due to loss/mud baths/washing machine destruction?
P.S. Check out recent uploads to Picasa album (should show teaser at left) for some new pictures and a good walking video!
Julian is sad to miss his cousin's first birthday (2/15), but he's trying to give him a call. We did get to see Devin and his parents via video chat on Sunday. He's getting to be a strapping lad.
Note: the lump on his head is not my fault. Well, okay, it is a little. J and I took a walk yesterday, and we managed to get two houses down the street (he was holding my hand, but doing it under his own power). He took a little spill on the pavement en route, from which I failed to save him. He got back on the proverbial horse and kept playing outside for another half hour, so I don't think I broke him.
Julian is taking to his feet! Watch out world, here he comes. At almost 16 months he's finally decided that he'll try out this whole walking thing.
So far he reminds me of Frankenstein's monster
but we know he'll be running all over the place in no time.
He wasn't too big a fan of the big game on Sunday, and decided not to let me watch more than 30 seconds or so. It's funny, because he spent all morning getting geared up for kickoff:
I guess he'd rather play himself than watch the pros.
It's been quite a week here in the post-snowpocalyptic wasteland of the DC area. We had ~8 inches of heavy, wet snow during the PM rush hour on Wednesday, which completely crippled traffic. My car battery died while I was stuck in traffic, and I had to push the car to a parking lot and talk a McDonald's patron into giving me a jump. It took me more than 5 hours to go the 10 miles from work to home. And I was one of the lucky ones. Our neighbor took 8 hours to make a similar trip. Lots of people ended up abandoning their cars for the night because they got stuck or ran out of gas.
Oh, and the power went out all over the area. For 50 hours at our house. This is the third time in the last 7 months or so that we've gone more than two days without power and had to live like refugees. We stayed with some friends in the city for 2 nights while the house got down to 40 degrees before the power came back on late Friday night (thank goodness we know nice people!). I hope Julian didn't learn any new vocabulary words from our conversations about the power company's "response" to the outages.
In happier news, Julian has figured out how to talk on the phone, and practices regularly:
We're trying to get a video of him walking, but he's taking a bit of a sabbatical from practicing. We'll catch him one of these days.
So a pony walks into a bar and tries to order a drink. The bartender says, "Speak up! I can't hear you". The pony says "Sorry - I'm just a little ho(a)rse".
Julian is sick again, this time with a cold that has left him with rivers of snot and a hoarse baby voice. I feel bad saying this, since it's due to illness, but his voice is super cute. Because of the cold, though, we ended up mostly housebound this weekend with no fun stories to report. We did get to listen to the Prairie Home Companion - Joke Show Episode twice (yes, we listened again when it reran a mere 18 hours later), which allowed me to greatly expand my repertoire of excellent knock knock jokes.
Here's a gem for you:
Knock knock Who's there? I like Herbie. I like Herbie who? I like Herbie Hind.
Last week Julian was sick with a stomach flu that, by all accounts, is plaguing the land from coast to coast. One of the many unfortunate consequences of this (aside from the 10+ times I got puked on) is that he had to skip his first "Waterbabies" class. But, thanks to the magical healing powers of time and jumbalaya, his strength was up enough to hit the pool this week.
Since I had just had some highlights done, and didn't want them to immediately turn green, Chris was the designated swim partner. I felt really guilty about this until I saw the four other mothers sitting by the side of the pool while their husbands got in the pool with the tots. I managed to catch the photo above before I got kicked out of the pool area to stand behind a glass wall waiting area. Dad reports that Julian liked being in the water, but not necessarily the swimming part. Next week I'll get in the pool with him and he'll be doing his flip turns in no time.
In other J-Wow news, our little Goldilocks got his first haircut! Stylist was Mommy, and the primary objective was to tame the mullet. The kid had started to grow some dreads, and people were beginning to ask him to go around back. I think I did an OK job, and thankfully the hair that was left on his head started to curl again. Here you can judge for yourself:
Our goal is to get back to doing this every week or two, so if we have any friends left that read this look for it this year!
Some additional New Year's Resolutions for 2011. It's going to be another busy year!
Chris 1. Resuscitate the lawn. 2. Explore the region more. 3. Get my knee fixed up and rehabilitated so I can get some more running in this year. 4. Take J to visit Washington (the state, not the federal district). 5. Resuscitate the golf game.
Mel 1. Grow an herb garden 2. Yes, it's a cliche, but....get more exercise. Actually, any exercise. 3. Spend more time in my resuscitated backyard. 4. Clean/organize the basement and garage.
Julian: 1. Walk. 2. Grow another tooth, so my one is less lonely. 3. Face forward in the car. 4. Perfect dance moves. You can see on my way with this one:
I should hasten to add a couple things about the allergies. 1) He came up clean for celiac disease, so good news there. Bring on the wheat gluten. 2) The pediatrician thought there was a good chance he'd outgrow these things, including the egg.
This allergy stuff is an evolving situation that we're just trying to manage and keep an eye on at this stage. It's not like we just found out that we'll have to have the Secret Service clear a two mile radius of any trace of peanut before Julian can go there. Hopefully, he'll be eating peanut butter frozen custard in no time.
It's been awhile, so this post has a lot of ground to cover. We thought Julian was going to take over the updates, since he has the most free time, but he had some excuse about not yet being literate and so I guess I'd better just get back to it.
Since the last post, we took Julian on his first camping trip. We had fun "roughing it" with our friends Stephanie and Todd (pictured below). We camped out at Cunningham Falls State Park, which is apparently near this guy's vacation home. Julian seemed to enjoy hiking and sleeping in the tent, but he passed on the S'mores.
We were slow about putting away our camping gear, which was a good thing because shortly afterward we got the opportunity to go "camping" in our own house. Thanks to two storms that blew through the area, we found ourselves significantly without power twice in the course of three weeks. That means that our freezer and refrigerator are sparkling clean, having been cleaned out twice each. We've also gotten more use out of our basement, since it is by far the best place to be when one is AC- and fan-free. Rain is forecast for tomorrow - keep your fingers crossed that the power lines in our neighborhood manage to stay up for once.
We have also learned that J is allergic to eggs. After a minuscule bite of some egg yolk, the boy turned as red as a lobster and was covered in hives. Also vomiting. All made a fun Fourth of July for mom and dad. After a traumatic experience with a blood test we've learned that he's got a strong egg allergy and mild allergies to milk, soy, and peanuts. Sadly, this means I have to cut out all these things from my diet while we wait to see an allergist and further strategize. Yes, this means no ice cream. Yes, I am sad. Chris mentioned the other day he may also cut out ice cream in solidarity. How sweet! I am writing here in a public forum so that he is forced to stick with it.
Crawling! J used the break from all that annoying electricity to perfect his crawling. Once the lights were back on we got some videos of his ever-improving technique. (Note: we know it looks more like he's swimming than crawling, but he's getting pretty fast at "slithering" around like this and technically it still counts as a crawl.) Here are some videos of our super cute boy, who is no worse for the wear after all of our adventures/misadventures:
Also, he's getting to be a good drinker.
In cat news, Morrie bagged his first bird. Looked a bit like this. When I pulled up into the driveway after work he was so proud to come and show me. Ah, the joys of the outdoor cat.
Julian and I had an outing to a splash park with some of the other mothers/babies I've met using the lactation room in my building at work. It was fun to get all the babies together, since they are all within a year in age. In this photo J is surrounded by girls. He's been working on his skills.
Finally, I wanted to comment on an anniversary that falls on today - it's been 10 years since Chris and I first met during orientation at CU. It is simultaneously hard to believe it's been that long, yet hard to believe it's only been that long. Check out this picture from that infamous day:
If you look right at the center of the photo, you'll also catch a glimpse of Adam G., who has previously starred in this very blog. This week Adam is again in CU orientation, this time as a new law student. Good luck Adam!
Hola amigos. We finally got our act together and got some videos posted on the ol' blog. J is trying out more and more "words." I got a couple videos of him making funny noises. He's also starting to get the hang of feeding himself. I emphasize the word "starting." He kind of picks stuff up, and then shoves his whole hand in his mouth and hopes for the best. You have to admire his perseverance. We'll keep the camera trained for things like crawling....
Yes, we've been slackers. Things in the Trainer-Downey house have been pretty hectic of late, and we have been slow to post news. Rest assured, we have been taking plenty of pics and videos of the little guy, but there is a big bottleneck at the editing and posting stage. We should be posting things soon.
Here is a teaser: motorboat noises, swimming, more advanced rolling, dropping things from his high chair, sliding at the park....
Raising little Julian is quite an adventure, and we want to share the special moments with all our friends and family. Check back often to see photos, videos, and stories of our little guy. And the occasional commentary on our new life here in the Old Line State.
In this photo, it looks like he's combined St. Patty's Day with Mardi Gras...
This is how Julian likes to ride his tricycle. He'll stand on the front and wait for one of us to push him. Apparently he's more of a scooter guy.
Ball...still one of his favorite toys.
He also likes to climb up his slide. Oh, that boy!
He's already a better golfer than Dad.
