Developments

This has been such a long week. I spent Tuesday and half of Wednesday in Santa Rosa, at my (hopefully!) very last CORE training. This one was on child maltreatment: indicators of physical abuse. With pictures and everything. Pretty much what you'd expect, so I won't go into detail for those who haven't ever been exposed to anything like that, and it wasn't like it was the first time I was seeing those sorts of things. But it's made it a lot harder this week to leave Kid A at daycare and go to work.

And she's been sleeping so much lately, that I hardly get to see her when I am at home. With the exception of last night, which I'll get to shortly, she's been going down between 6 and 7 pm, and sleeping until I wake her up at around 6:45 am. Considering that I drop her off at daycare as soon as she's changed and dressed, and that I don't get home until 6 pm, you can see that it leaves very little time to be together. I realized this morning, as I moved the box of formula out of my way while I made my breakfast, I've prepared maybe three bottles all week. If that. That's pitiful.

It makes me feel so sad. I know I'm not stay-at-home material. I do like my job. A lot. But Kid A is just so much fun these days -- so happy, smiling and laughing all the time, getting into everything, learning new stuff practically every day -- I would love to have more time with her. This week really makes me despise spending 40-50 minutes commuting each way. Bleh.

So last night*, she decided to stay up until 8:00. It was so nice to be able to finish feeding her her dinner, take a bath with her, and watch her play. Such a nice change from the rest of this week. TM even said she took an independent step while I ate my dinner and he supervised her playtime! We're pretty close to walking, I think. I predict before the end of the month.

* I began this post on Friday morning before work. It's now Saturday morning, and she's napping. So "last night" actually refers to Thursday night, for those of you following along at home.

Still no words yet. Lots and lots of babbling, and lots of new babbling sounds. She babbles along when TM or I sing to her, and "dances," too, by moving her little belly back and forth. A couple of weeks ago, we had our first heat wave of the spring, and we took her to TM's parents' pool, where she had an absolute blast. Splashing in such a big pool was big fun for her. Last weekend, we took her to the beach** for the first time, and she was amazed by the sand. She had an opportunity to check out both dry, sandy sand, and harder-packed sand. When we got her onto the harder sand nearer the water, she crawled around in huge loops, as fast as she could go. It was great to get her out into the fresh air and let her blow off energy. She's a very kinetic kid, constantly moving or trying to squirm her way out of a cuddle to get moving again. She loves to have her daddy hold her while he dances and jumps around -- she laughs and giggles like crazy. She loves it when we dangle her upside down. She's beginning to try to launch herself off of couches and chairs, and is starting to crawl up stairs and trying to crawl over things. She has discovered that she can open doors, and that there are things behind the doors that are interesting to check out. She opens the pantry door, and pulls herself up with the middle shelf, where there are boxes of cereal, and heavy cans of things. She'll take interesting things off of the shelf, and hold it with both hands while she sits back down to check it out. She carries things in her hands, or pushes them along with her, while she crawls all over the house.

And she is beginning to demonstrate her will. This is interesting to me. She is just beginning to push or swat at our faces if she doesn't like something. Nothing too serious yet, nothing big, but it is interesting to see her "push back" in an effort to change the course of things.

** The "beach" was actually a river beach. Even though I've been hankering to take Kid A to the ocean, our heat wave didn't last, and so we remained inland. Nice to have options, though. We'll eventually make it to the coast!

TM was laid off, and then his lay-off was rescinded. He will undoubtedly, though, be teaching at a different school in the district next year. He is credentialed in both biology and chemistry, so there's also a big chance that he might be teaching a new subject next year, as well. The district has not yet told him where he will go, and, as with most beaurocratic systems, their process leaves much to be desired. But we are thrilled that he has a job, and things are still looking ok in my line of work, so we feel very lucky and grateful.

I have taken a bunch of amazingly adorable pictures over the last few weeks, and plan to upload them this weekend, so I might add another post of pictures in the next day or so. Check back!

Oh, and Kid A is eleven months old today. The last month of her first year! I can hardly believe it.