SPL's Blog

for all you RSS folks and early birds, I tweaked this tonight after first posting it this afternoon.  I realized there were a few more video clips that I wanted to add (one of Aunt Suchi and one of SPL’s cousin KAR).

This month has been busy and I haven’t made as many notes about the details of his development — so we’ll see how memory serves :-).  The verbal explosion continues and of particular note were colors and numbers.  SPL started out with green and for most of the month he thought everything was green :-).  Towards the end of the month, he added purple and sometimes orange.

He also began to understand counting — which is a change from what he could do last month which is answer "1, 2, 3" if you asked him to count (but it was just a memorized answer, he hadn’t made the connection to objects yet).

His sense of direction continues to blow me away.  He’ll routinely point towards and say "home" when we’re in our neighborhood, especially if he doesn’t want to go wherever it is that we’re going :-).  He also knows where John’s office is (generally), where we turn off Hwy 85 to go to the recycling center,  where the dry cleaners and Lenny (the dog @ the dry cleaners 🙂 are, where Aunt Beth’s house is, and where the gym is. 

One other funny thing about SPL this month — he’s not only in to putting the "big trashcans" out at the curb on Wednesday (trash day), but he’s now very keen on bringing them back to the side yard as quickly after they’re emptied as possible :-).

I was thinking about what "a day in the life of SPL" looks like recently and thought I’d close with that:
— wake up between 6:30 and 7:00 (sometimes 6:00 or 6:15 (yawn).
— run around the house noticing anything new or out of place like laptops that are now in the living room or hallway doors that are open (usually all doors are shut during the daytime)
— play and then eat breakfast (depends on wakeup time — but usually 15 mins or so of play).  Breakfast is often cereal or eggs, sometimes a "bye ee bye" (banana) or other fruit
— play some more, eat some of mom and dad’s breakfast :-), help mom make coffee by pushing the buttons 🙂
— Go outside to say goodbye to dad (and then have a hard time coming back inside) (between 8:00 and 8:30 usually)
— Morning activity: play with babysitter (M and F), Mandarin music class (T), swimming (W), and preschool (Th).
— Depending on how long the activity is and its start time, we’ll usually play outside before and/or afterwards
— 12:00-12:30 pm is lunchtime.  He usually eats fruit plus yoghurt & applesauce or mac & cheese or pasta or cheese sandwich
— 1:00 pm: naptime
— wakeup is variable but after nap, he eats a snack and then we don’t have anything scheduled usually for the afternoons.  Most days we spend the afternoons either at the park or outside in our yard gardening or both.  This month our neighbor left their orange (play) cones outside and SPL loved moving them around and providing obstacle courses for those who walk down our sidewalk 🙂
— we usually run errands in the afternoon too.  I’ve learned 1 "family errand" is optimal and if we need to do more, it’s best to throw in a "SPL errand" like going to the pet store or at least a "combo errand" like the dry cleaners (SPL looks forward to seeing the dog, Lenny).
— around 5:30/6:00, we start getting ready for dinner and then he eats around 6:30 pm (since we switch to daylight savings time) (we’ve been trying to time dinner w/ John’s arrival so we can eat as a family more during the week — so that’s also a factor re. timing)
— between 6:30 and 7:00, John gets home so all kinds of fun ensues 🙂
— 7:15 we start our bedtime routine of bath (some nights), snack/milk, stories, songs and bed
— 8:00 in his crib with Bobo and his blanket 🙂