The biggest news to pass on is of course, Imri-related. He is officially a toddler!! He took his first steps the day after his first birthday and about 2-3 weeks later there was no looking back. It's been wonderful, truly. His language is also flourishing now, he uses identifiable words; boo for book, ca for car, tuh for truck, baba for bottle and something only mom understands that means "raisin bread". He understands a heck of a lot more than he says and I am constantly amazed by the things he does understand. Holy crap. I've really started censoring my liberal use of the F bomb and have been on John's case to curb his Marine language but so far, not much change there!
Imri also has a whole slew of animal sounds. He babbles all the time. He has taken to shaking his head 'no' when asked if he wants something in particular to eat - and he eats well. Last pedi visit he weighed in at 26 lbs, 8 oz at 13+ months old.
He can also take a room apart faster than a platoon of Marines. Oh, and you should see him hitting golf balls with the plastic golf clubs - once he hits the ball, he drops the club and starts to clap and laugh, all pleased with himself. As he should be!
In other words - lots of work, but blissful work. He adores his books still and although he often requests us to read to him, he has also started flipping through books on his own and making "words" as if reading. It's pretty funny and amazing at the same time. His fascination with all things mechanized continues to grow; cars, trucks, buses, vacuums - he adores them all.
Right now he is working on his premolars - we thought he had an ear infection behind one of his tubes but a visit to the ENT showed otherwise - glad the pedi was wrong on that account. So the low grade fever is probably teething related - and he has a cold and congestion. Par for the course, I guess.
Do I sound as happy as I am? I hope so - it's been a tough balancing act but we're making it work. I get Wednesdays off, so we always have a day off together and that day is precious to me. I try and get us outside (he loves the outdoors) but with the cold weather, it's not always possible. And there ain't a lot to do with small kids around here (that I'm aware of, anyway) so we go shopping or to the mall, etc. I wish we were closer to DC - museums, music, that kind of stuff ... but oh well.
We are in the midst of "sleep training" here. Imri's sleep had gotten so bad, he was waking every 1.5 hours or so and I was crazy with fatigue. I called a stop to it one night when I had enough and just decided "no more picking him out of the crib". We've been working on that for a week now and things are improving slowly - it's been rough. Long time readers know that I will not do CIO, so we have stayed in the room with him when he's been upset/crying, we go in and soothe him a bit but no picking up, no more coming to bed with mommy. We offer a bottle with water, but no more boob other than when I nurse him to sleep. We actually are starting to get "some" sleep around here. And by "some", I mean that a couple of nights have had uninterrupted stretches of, oh .... 2-4 hours. Slowly, my friends. It will get better. But we're doing it our way - the way we deem best for Imri. He is not a CIO kid and we are not CIO parents.
In other news, my stepson dropped out of college as he was failing his classes. Gotta say that I saw this coming from a mile away - 12+ hours a day online and no homework getting done, no studying and tons of attitude. And yes, we made him pay back every cent of tuition as per our agreement - he wasn't happy about that. He also decided to move in with his mother on his 18th birthday, which is probably the wrong choice for him but it's his choice and that's all there is to it. Hey, there are no rules there whatsoever, no chores and no demands for him to do something - anything - and get off the couch. He also managed to nearly sever his right ring finger while making french fries at his fast food job while here and luckily, a good surgeon saved it and it has reattached well. Oy. John and I tried to make the point about finding more fulfilling and less dangerous (and better-paying) work but it fell on deaf ears. Ah well. We were all 18 once. We have truly done our best for him - hopefully he will clue in one day when he becomes human again. He claims that he will go back to school when at his mother's - but I told him to stop kidding himself and us - if he didn't do it while here, with full support and tuition paid, why would he do it there, when he will have to foot the entire bill, no support, etc? Yeah.
Anyway, it's out of our hands now and if we can just get Imri to sleep more, the stress level here will be reduced tremendously.
So there you have it. Hanukkah is around the corner and I am excited - I bought a bunch of holiday-themed books off Ebay and way too many presents for my boy. Ah well! Hopefully he will like latkes and sufganiyot as much as his mother does!
Oh yeah, speaking of that - I rejoined weight watchers. It was time. 8.6 down so far and 25 more to go. Ouch.
I'll try and stay in touch, I promise.
