The Small Family   

Hi everyone – Chris again. Cath doesn’t have much of an excuse for not writing the blog this week, other than the fact that she’s been up with Theo at the crack of dawn for three out of four days and is pretty tired.  Personally, I think that’s a weak excuse, but who am I to judge? J  Actually, she just asked if I wanted to do this week’s, and I’m never one to turn down that offer…especially week 50!

This week was relatively quiet around here, work and Theo’s early risings notwithstanding, but we did have a few fun moments as usual. Before those, though, you get to suffer through a couple of my escapades in the garden. A few days this week, Theo went with me to Lowe’s lately, buying bark and other things for the backyard, which was looking worse for wear after this winter. Given the decent weather of late, it seemed high time to dust off the shovel. Mostly, I put some new stepping stones and bark down the long-neglected side of the house, some bark between the lawn and the house on that side, where the grass had become increasingly hard to cut, straightened out the planting bed around the shrubs on the fence. and patched up the sprinker by the air conditioner, which I had managed to break for the third time in three years. More to do, of course, but it’s just been nice to be outside in the nice weather, when it’s not raining or 115 degrees!

On Friday, we had Theo’s first-birthday pictures taken up at the Galleria, where we also did his three- and six-month photos. (No, it wasn’t only because we had a coupon and some membership perks to use!) True to recent form, Theo was content, if a bit serious and focused, sitting among the props he photographer laid out for him. We did get some smiles, though, especially for Cath jumping up and down and me yelling “BARBA” at him. Once we saw the finished products, we of course ordered far more prints than we had intended, including a very cool new framed picture that we put at the top of the staircase.

Saturday proved to be our misadventure day of the week. We were planning to head to Daffodill Hill out near Jackson to get some landscape pictures for Cath’s next class assignment, as well as getting Theo a good, long morning nap. Unfortunately, rain in the forecast killed those plans, so we decided to take a drive down I-80 toward the Bay Area and consider our options depending on how Theo did. Not our best choice! Theo slept most of the way to Davis, but we then realized we’d left his stroller at home, so we detoured up to Woodland to get a new one (we were heading to the Davis farmers market at that point). After we finally tracked down a Target, we headed back toward Davis, thinking we’d try the Farmers Market, but Theo let us know in no uncertain terms that he was quite hungry and wanted to eat NOW. So, we took another detour to the Starbucks right near UCD, where we decided, after fixing his bottle, that it was too cold and windy to walk with Theo outside, so we kept driving, thinking maybe we’d get him a nap and hit the outlets in Vacaville. Again, though, Theo did not seem happy with that option, and began letting us know immediately. We drove all the way to Fairfield, thinking he’d fall asleep, but he never did. We turned around at the mall there, whereupon we realized that Theo had another good reason for being fussy (clue: it’s in his diaper, starts with “p” and ends with “p”). We changed him in the car, rather than subjecting ourselves to the rain, then resumed course for Vacaville. After lunch at Chevy’s, which made Theo quite happy, as he enjoyed his favorite new game of “throw all my toys and biter biscuits on the ground” (yes, we did pick these things up), we wandered the outlets a while, bought Theo a few outfits, and headed home. 

Somehow, after all that, Cath and I managed to get Theo to bed at 8:15 or so, and sat down to enjoy a movie rental…in a single sitting!  Rachel Getting Married, with Anne Hathaway and a few other people we recognized but couldn’t put names to. I’m not sure what we liked more: the movie, the fact that we could actually watch a movie without interruption, or that it gave us something to blog about other than Theo’s misadventures. J Seriously, not a bad movie at all, if needlessly long in a few parts. I think Changeling, with Angelina Jolie, is next on the Netflix list.

Today was decidedly less ambitious…we headed to Ikea in West Sac to scope out some new bedroom furniture for Theo. We’ve been wanting to get him some cubby holes for his toys, and Ikea has a good selection. A few things caught our eye, but nothing we had to buy immediately, so we headed back home and stopped at Target on the way back to get some odds and ends. While we were there, though, we passed by a perfect set of cubbies, for much less than Ikea, so we bought them and a couple baskets. They’re now under his window, and will probably replace his changing table in the not-too-distant future, along with a very cute coat rack we bought him at the consignment store last month.

On the more general development front, Theo really surprised us with something this week. Cath had been reading on one of her websites that babies at Theo’s age will typically be able to play patty-cake or peek-a-boo, neither of which Theo has done. We haven’t exactly gone out of the way to teach him these yet, but it was kind of a reality check that Theo might not be quite on schedule with absolutely everything. Strangely enough, that night, as I was drying Theo off from his bath, he started pulling his towel up in front of his face, then pulling it down and grinning at me, then repeating. What do you know – peek-a-boo, almost spontaneously. “OK, minions, peek-a-boo you want, peek-a-boo you get….”

Then, of course, there’s our favorite challenge with Theo: naps. We love his naps. He loves his naps. But he hates actually going to sleep, and we don’t really enjoy trying to get him to sleep. Typically, a baby Theo’s age will sleep about 14 hours a day, 3 or 4 of which are naps. Theo is more like 11 hours a day, 2 of which are naps. We’ve never been entirely sure if he’s just a catnapper, or if he’s just stuck in a vicious cycle of being overtired, fighting sleep, and getting bad sleep as a result. Slowly but surely, lately, we’re starting to see some improvements. He’s long been napping in two of three windows during the day (around 10, 2, and 5) for about a half-hour, then going to bed around 9.  For some reason, this week he’s taken several very long naps by his standards (about 2 hours), which has let us skip the late-afternoon nap and get him in bed earlier, around 8, which is doing wonders for our sanity. The price has been that he gets up very early in the morning, around 5:30, but it’s progress! Tonight, we managed 7:45, although I suspect we’ll be hearing him calling for us around 4:30 this morning. J

Finally, since I’m not going to be blogging again before Theo’s birthday, more than likely, I did want to take a minute and reflect on the last year with our son. It’s safe to say that I don’t think I was prepared to be a father quite as soon as I was after our wedding.  Or, maybe more accurately, I was scared to death. It’s also safe to say that neither of us imagined Theo being who he is – an amazingly charming, intelligent little boy, but certainly at  times stubborn, fussy, demanding, and active to the point of exhausting us.  All that said, though, I can’t say enough about my son. Watching him grow from a helpless little infant to our ever-more spirited toddler has been an incredible experience, and not one I’d give up for anything. I think what has hit me most recently is his hair. He has my hairline, with Cath’s color and curls from when she was a toddler. We named Theo in part because of the meaning of his name -- gift from God – and he’s certainly been that.