January Review - Part IV DC visit

Asher and Deenesh went up to DC for the weekend to visit friends and to see the ICE exhibit.  We went to ICE back in 2009 - it was awesome.  And I have some great photos from that visit, but I never got around to posting them. 

Kiera and I stayed home this time because she was feeling sick.  

January Review - Part III

As you can probably guess, these posts are more of a photo dump - so I'm not spending as much time choosing which photos to post.  I'm sure I'll get better choosing once I've done more of these monthly review posts.

January Review - Part II

This photo was taken in the same spot as another post from March of last year.  

January Review - Part I

Despite January being a month in which most of us were sick, we did have some fun. 

I've been told, by a few people on a few different occasions, that I have a tendency to take too many photos. 

Given the evidence that I will regularly take more photos in two months than I have of my entire childhood (including photos of my siblings), I suspect that those people might be right.  I love the photos, but I never find the time to blog about all of them.  So I've decided to do a month in review post at the end of each month and just post the photos that I never got around to posting.  Here's the first try.  We'll see how it goes.  

Kiera

These are from last October, but they were cute enough that I thought I should post them. 

Kiera Update

Well, we all survived Kiera’s first month of daycare (although there were a LOT of doctor’s visits for everyone) and she is officially a daycare baby. 

"I am a mature young lady off to another day of advanced learning." 

I figure it became “official” when she was at the doctor’s for an ear infection and the doctor said “Well, since she’s a daycare baby we better give her the stronger antibiotics.  She likely has a daycare infection and those are harder to cure.”*   

She already looks tougher doesn't she?
Yeah, that's the look of a daycare baby.

So an update on what Kiera is up to these days. 

1. She is now fairly good at getting into a sitting position by herself.  Unfortunately it’s a skill she likes to practice the most when she is in her crib and doesn’t want to go to sleep.  She then sometimes forgets she knows how to lie down.  Ah, I’m alreadylooking forward to when she learns to stand in her crib.  
2. She is working on crawling.  She’s getting pretty successful with the backward push.  It’s just as humorous and sad to watch thesecond time around. 
3. We are officially done with the mellow, laid-back, simply observing, favorite pastime is to lie complacently in mom’s arms part of baby-hood and she is now moving full force into the crazy, must try to grab everything, frantic phase.  I’m already missing the last stage.

"Yeah, I showed that puzzle who's boss!"

Adjusting to dacyare was a bit hard - for her and for me.  She liked the first couple days well enough, except for the sleeping and eating part - but other than that she was fine.  Then as she had to start working through daycare germs she got a bit grumpier.

First day of school!

Asher was there to help drop her off.
I think she required as much stuff for her first day
 as she will need when we send her off to college.  

Deenesh and I went to the cafe after dropping her off to spend a quiet moment together.  Of course, our feelings were a little different - Deenesh practically danced a jig on the way over whereas I was a touch more morose.



*It wasn’t said in a judgy way at all, just as a practical matter.  Still, my heart broke a little. It's almost like she's been tainted. 

Success!

So, after our first failed attempt to have Asher have his first sleep-over at Nana’s, he was successful on the second try.  He spent the whole night at his Nana’s house – even Kiera spent the first half of the night there. 

He and Nana were having so much fun with popcorn and movies that he didn’t even consider the coincidence that his sleepover coincided with his Dad’s birthday – which just happened to fall on the Chinese New Year – and in the year of the Dragon which just happens to also be his Dad’s Chinese Zodiac sign. 

He was having so much fun that he didn’t have time to waste with the regular child paranoia that the parents are having fabulous parties with music and friends and cake that kids tend to have when you so much as leave them alone in their rooms at night. 

Which was a good thing, because of course, we just had a nice quiet evening at home.*

The next day he declared that he had such a great time that he said he wanted to do it again right away!  

And he actually got his wish, two days later I came down so badly with one of Kiera’s daycare viruses that we figured it was just better to have Nana pick Asher up at school for his music class, and then keep him for the night in the hopes that it would be a quick virus (it wasn’t, I was in bed for a WEEK.  I don’t remember the last time that happened) and we could avoid exposing him (we couldn’t, but at least he didn’t get it as bad). 

And he had such a nice time at that sleepover, that he keeps mentioning having more.  We’re going to have to be careful that he doesn’t just decide to move out completely!

*I will admit to feeling a particularly sharp pang of guilt when he came home to find the house covered in Chinese New Year decorations and he said “Mommy, the house looks sooo beautiful!  We should have people over for a party!”