I
Yesterday was Little Bear's 15-month well child checkup. They never used to do one between 12 and 18 months, did they? The poor boy definitely knows where he is when we walk in the door, and starts whimpering and clinging to me. He got the MMR vaccine and had blood drawn to check for anemia, which if I'd been able to think straight instead of focusing on calming down the distraught child after the shot I probably would have declined; we eat a lot of red meat, and I'm not anemic, and he still gets the majority of his nutrients from nursing, so there's no way he's anemic. We did decline the chickenpox vaccine, and it was nice to have our pediatrician agree that really the main reason to give your kid that particular shot is for the parents' convenience so they don't have to take a week off work when their kid gets sick...
II
It is date night in the Shifflerhaus! Nothing too fancy going on here, we're just borrowing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and picking up a pizza, but Little Bear is going to go spend an hour or two at my family's house playing with his aunts and uncles so that Matt and I can have a bit of quiet time to talk. It's been several stressful months since we've taken an hour or two to ourselves, and we are looking forward to it.
III
Well, we are hoping that it happens... Matt has had to stay late at work several days over the past two weeks, trying to solve an on-again-off-again wiring problem in a conference room. If he has to work late today, we will have to put tonight off. Little Bear is also something of a wildcard right now; the MMR vaccine has a high incidence of fevers associated with it, and I don't want to send him over if he will be miserable. Also, he hasn't taken more than one nap a day since well before his first birthday, and he decided that it was nap time at 8:45 this morning. By late this afternoon, he could be pretty cranky. So we will see.
IV
The other day, Little Bear was helping me unload the dishwasher when he got bored and wandered out to the living room. I came out when I finished to see this:
He was stirring the penguin around with a spatula, in the frying pan he'd taken from the dishwasher. Mmm, fried penguins for lunch today!
V
He's quite the cook; whenever I make bread, he will come running to help me kneed it (i.e. stick his fingers into the dough). This backfired on me the other day when I was making pumpkin bread--I turned around for just a minute after pouring the batter into the bread pan, and when I looked back he had a handful of orange goop and a huge grin on his face! He couldn't understand why I took his new toy away, and tugged on my skirt shouting "Bread! Mama, Mama, bread? Mama, bread!"
VI
Actually, he's reached the wonderful stage where he wants to help with anything I'm doing: sweeping the floor? Give me the broom, Mama, I want to do that. (As my little brother learned the other night, he doesn't like to give it back once he has it!) Unloading the dishwasher? He hands me each piece of silverware, one at a time, and the small pots and pans when he can get them out. Dusting? He will follow behind me with his own cloth. Everything takes a little longer than if I was doing it by myself, but it's so much easier than just a few weeks ago when he would be hanging on me and fussing as I worked! Plus it's adorable.
VII
We have had heavy frosts the past few days, with snow in the hills but none in town. Yet. It seems like half the leaves never bothered to change color this year and just fell while green, which is weird, but at least we now have mostly bare trees to match our 30-something daytime temps. Compared to other places that sounds cold, but it's proper October weather here, and we've acclimated enough now that it feels pleasantly brisk outside. Little Bear gets excited about putting his boots on when we get ready to go outside, and he's really getting better at walking in them. Mittens weren't as much of a struggle as I expected them to be; he seems to like them, and the light pair he's wearing in these relatively mild temperatures doesn't keep him from holding onto things, so I'm sure that helps.
Have a lovely weekend; I hope you have the chance to enjoy some pretty autumn weather!
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