Squirrels and other things we’ve been getting up to

I’ve been quiet on the blog recently, I know. Enjoy it while you can, because Love At The Speed Of Email launches on June 11^th and then it’ll be anything but quiet on here for at least a month. I’ve been working behind the scenes on website updates and launch announcements and more than a dozen guest posts as well as a couple of “just for laughs and fun” posts, so things are going to liven up around here fast.

Speaking of livening things up, Dominic is crawling. Here are some of the things he has managed to accomplish this week while under the direct supervision of at least one parent*:

1. Pick up the dog’s water bowl, drink some, and spill the rest all over himself and the floor.
2. Discover that there is baby powder in the plastic bowls that each leg of the ant pantry stands in (the ants can’t crawl over the powder, and therefore can’t get in the pantry). Paint himself, the floor, and all the furniture within a one meter radius, a powdery white.
3. Break off dieffenbachia leaves and put them in his mouth (three times).
4. Eat a fistful of dirt out of the bamboo pot.
5. Find an ungated stairway and climb up three stairs before being stopped.
6. Pester the dog so unmercifully that, for the first and only time, Zulu growled at him. (For this, Zulu was unceremoniously dragged down the stairs by one very angry mama bear and tossed out of the house for an hour. He has been watched like a hawk ever since).
7. Stop drinking milk before bed. He’s always happy to see me for a milk-feast first thing in the morning, but for five days in a row now he’s refused to feed before bedtime. I thought the bedtime feeding was supposed to be the last to go, not the first, but if he wants to forge his own path … OK. Weird baby.

I should mention that he’s also slept by himself in his crib in his own room for the first time since he was born. We’re four nights into this new routine now, and it’s going surprisingly well (though I was up with him twice last night putting him back down). Hooray!! Now to make him learn to go to sleep by himself. Sigh.  

(Why does that doggie keep getting up and walking away from me? Huh? I loooooooove him.)

Here is what mama bear has managed to accomplish this week:

1. Finish antibiotics. I still can’t hear much out of my right ear and the pain is not completely gone, but hoping hoping hoping it clears by itself without needing yet another trip to a hospital in Bangkok.
2. Fall down the front step of the house and sprain my ankle. I have been able to hobble around, but barely, and wasn’t able to carry baby up or down the stairs for a couple of days. It’s been a royal pain in the ass, not to mention in my foot which is now black and blue.
3. Stick Peter Rabbit decals that my sister gave me up in the baby’s room. This has been a ridiculous amount of fun. Although, when Mike walked into the room last night and saw me balancing with one stockinged foot on the rolling desk chair and one bandaged foot in the baby crib, reaching so that I could stick a squirrel above the window frame just so, he was not amused.
4. Write a gazillion guest posts while the baby was sleeping. 

(Despite what some might think, this is not how I spend the majority of my time. These photos were taken in Pennsylvania when we were on holidays)

Here are just some of the things papa bear has managed to accomplish this week:

1. Take baby and dog to the market over the weekend to do the week’s grocery shopping.
2. Take care of dinner four times.
3. Take the baby every morning between 5:30 and 7:15, change him, dress him, and feed him breakfast so that mama bear can work.
4. Bring crippled mama bear coffee, fruit, cereal, antibiotics and probiotics in the morning at her desk.
5. Oh, and you know, that full time job of his. The other one.

(He’s old enough to play on the swings, right?)

All from the Laos front for now. Have a good weekend and I’ll see you back here next week for some fun and games – including a post called Amazturbation and Other Perils of Publishing.**

*Direct supervision means parent was in the same room. Parents may, however, also have been making dinner, checking email, or (worst of all from a baby supervision standpoint) talking to each other.

**I love this title. My mother is less fond of it.