After many long years, Alan’s patent has
been approved and issued! Yay!! He got a fancy document in the
mail from the USPTO yesterday with a seal and everything. The
patent is for a Mechanical-thermal solar power system. US
Patent number 7,281,381. Check it out!
Lex has become really self-reliant lately.
Just a few examples… Thursday morning he and I ate some
yogurt together (he gets bites of mine because it’s too much
for him to eat alone). Then I went upstairs to shower and he
was down here with Alan. Alan says that he went into the
kitchen and found Lex sitting on the floor eating another
yogurt. Apparently he got it out of the fridge (he does that
for me), opened it, got out a spoon and started eating. This
morning he opened the fridge, got out a plastic container of
cantaloupe, got a fork, and started eating. Yesterday he put
his sneakers on all by himself too. Used to be just the Crocs,
but now he can manage Crocs and Vans. Cool, but scary. They say
that infants have developmental bursts, and I think it must
last through the toddler years too. Besides the physical stuff,
he has started actively working on his pronoun confusion and
he’ll often say something and then correct himself. Or start to
talk, stop, and start again the correct way.
Lex also got in Eve’s crib again during nap time today —
twice! The first time she was sleeping and over the monitor I
heard her laughing and Lex saying “I think Eve is happy.” I
went up and found him tickling her and both very happy. It’s
hard to be upset by that, despite the fact that he was supposed
to be sleeping and she WAS sleeping. Later he got back in, but
she had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up. He took forever to
take his nap and she was exhausted! They are working on
figuring out how to nap together. I was hoping her good napping
would rub off on him, but it looks like he just keeps her awake
instead.
Ha! Who needs naps?! He kept her up for awhile,
so I brought her down and put him in the crib where he
proceeded to entertain himself until a bit past 3pm. Meanwhile
baby and I took a rest on the couch. She slept, I read. She’s
too big to leave alone on the couch now (what with all that
rolling!), so we cuddled. It was rough ;) When 3pm came and
went and he was still wide awake I decided to get him up and
let her nap in the crib. So we made baby food, sweet potato
chips (didn’t turn out quite as I’d expected) and cut up the
cantaloupe. Lex LOVES cantaloupe and picked up 1/4 of the melon
and said “want to eat it like a watermelon.” Then Eve woke up
and we went outside to play with the new toy we bought at Home Depot
yesterday. (and while getting the link I
came across a $10 cash back offer. sweet!!) My leaf
woes may be over!! Then he ended up in bed at 6:30pm, cried for
about 5 minutes and fell asleep. She happily went to bed 1/2
hour later. Now I have to go finish making baby food and clean
the kitchen.
How quickly they go from sweet and
adorable to totally frustrating :( Particularly on days when I
really need to accomplish something while they sleep, such as
paying bills. He’s still up, no longer calm, jumping around,
climbing on stuff, NOT SLEEPING! Grrr…. I’m going to read my
past posts a few times to remind myself that just 10 minutes
ago he was sweet and adorable :)
I wish I could have a recorder going 24/7.
These kids are so wonderful. Now he is sitting in his bed
singing the “banana fanana fo fanana” song. What is that
called? I was singing in on the way home today and he asked for
it over and over. “Sing the mommy song. Sing the Eve song.” I
even did Tessa and Alan. Now he’s sitting up there singing “the
Alan song” over and over. I love him!
It’s nap time and lex is sitting in his
bed reading stories to his toys. He has stuffed animals lined
up in his bed all along the wall and he is reading books, even
holding the books so they can see the pictures. So cute.
Hopefully he ends up falling asleep, not getting up to play.
We’ll see.
I think the Fountain of Eve may be coming
to an end. In the last week or two she has been getting much
better at keeping things down and we don’t go through nearly as
many bibs and clothes (for both of us!) as we have been in the
past. Of course, I’ve been thinking about posting this all of
afternoon and tonight she is uber-fussy (dunno why) and we’ve
gone through several bibs and two changes of clothes. That’ll
teach me to even think about an end in sight :) Seriously
though, I think she’s just having a bad night, but improving
overall.
On another note, they say that
babies look to their caregivers for guidance in uncertain
situations (I think everyone does really) and I’ve been
noticing a lot lately that with Eve lately. When she seems
uneasy or unsure of what’s going on, she looks over to see how
I’m reacting. It’s kind of cool. Alan and Lex were roughhousing
earlier today and Eve was sitting on the floor watching them.
She kept giving them little, hesitant smiles, but also kept
looking at me to see how I was reacting. When she saw that I
was ok or laughing along with them, then she gave big, happy
smiles. She’s so sweet!
‘Cause she deserves to have her picture on
the blog ;)
PS. Love the new hair
cut!
On the way back from walking Alan to work
this morning we saw a pickup truck with an equipment trailer
drive by. The road is a bit away from the bike path we were on,
but Lex noticed and said “That’s a car carrier!” He’s
infatuated with car carriers these days. I said, “That wasn’t a
car carrier. It was a pickup truck pulling an equipment
trailer, with something on it. A backhoe maybe.” Lex said,
“Noooo, that was a tractor!” :) That amused me enough to call
Alan and share with him on his way into the office. But the
funnier part is at lunch today Lex started rambling (like he
tends to do) and we stopped to listen for a minute to figure
out what book he was reciting. Turns out it wasn’t a book at
all, he was reciting my conversation with Alan about the pickup
truck and trailer! So funny. Note to self: he is
listening!