Aurora Borealis

Lemon the Lion became Agent Murphy’s favorite stuffed animal some time ago, when he was somewhere between 6 and 12 months old. Lemon displaced a little yellow elephant named Butternut, who got his ears and trunk and tail sucked on quite a bit when the Agent was an infant.  And then somewhere around 18 months, Agent Murphy let a roly-poly white polar bear named Snowflake into the club.  Mind you, Snowflake has been around since the Agent’s birth and was the only stuffed animal he actively disliked.  But it seemed to us that Lemon and Snowflake became a couple, and apparently Lemon convinced the Agent that Snowflake is alright.  The two of them have been his sleeping companions since he moved to the big boy bed.  And we’ve thought that a little polar lion might be in the works.

During our move, numerous stuffed animals got jumbled up and ended up in different areas than their previous assignments.  Lemon and Snowflake, of course, retained their favored status as sleeping companions.  Sometime after the move, a hitherto unknown little brown bunny rabbit was promted by the Agent onto his bed along with Lemon and Snowflake.  Once it became clear that this was the new order of things, we named the little bunny — Nigel.  We then took to calling Nigel a “needy bunny” because, while the Agent gives Lemon and Snowflake kisses and demands that we do the same, he gives Nigel lots of kisses, and we are required to do so, too.  Then we realized — little Nigel is Lemon and Snowflake’s baby!  That’s why he’s so needy.  Who would have thought they’d have a little brown bunny?

Our little shindig for Agent Murphy went well.  He seemed to really enjoy himself, and it was good to see some of our friends.  (We were shame-faced when we realized we hadn’t seen Aunty M. since The Agent’s first birthday party.  Yikes!)  And a new friend — Chef Knight from All Saints and his son G. (age 5) joined us, too.  G. was being shy, though.  He didn’t want cake or to blow bubbles.  At least he had some root beer.

The Agent, of course, was not shy about food.  He dug right into his piece of carrot cake, and tried to eat off the big cake plate.  He and Aunty M. and Aunty N. and A. went out on the deck and played with the bubble bucket from Uncle RW and Aunt S.  The Agent appears to have had a blast. I. slept through the party again, just like last year — but this time in The Agent’s bed instead of the playpen.

The Agent got some cool loot, too.  In addition to the bubble bucket, he got some really cute Christmas PJs and a children’s book about the real St. Nicholas from Uncle R. and family.  G. and his twin sister M. (who didn’t come to the party because she was arguing about what she could or couldn’t wear) got him a fun See-n-Speak, which is awesome because just the other day I was thinking that’s something we should get the Agent to help him with his sounds.  And Aunty N. and family got him a Play-Doh activity kit, which has him really fascinated.  Maybe we’ll dive into it tomorrow or one day this coming week.  Aunty N. always picks great presents, I guess because she has such good “product testers” to help her!

And we got to start a new page in our guestbook for our new house.

Definitely a happy birthday party.

Mmmm... carrot cake with cream cheese frosting!

Agent Murphy saw the pediatrician today.  He measured 37.25″ tall (still off the charts) and his weight is catching up with that height some at 32 pounds 6 ounces.  The doc is very pleased with his growth pattern.

Little guy was very good about going on the scale today, unlike last time.  And while he’s still freaked out by the crinkle paper, he tried very hard to be stoic.  He was upset after he had to lay on it to be measured, but when the nurse sat him up he was sniffling and practically biting his lip — very obviously trying not to cry.  He only cried when he got the two shots.  (Not even the toe prick to check for anemia seemed to bother him; his iron is fine, by the way.)

Oh, and the doc assured me he is too young to drop his nap and she thought it was a good idea to try confining him to the playpen to get him to nap.  Whew!

At the end of his appointment he got a special little bag to keep his treasures in.  He really seems to like it.  And now he gets to start a daily chewable (half) vitamin.  Our little boy is so big!

For the last couple days, Agent Murphy did nap in his playpen.  Yesterday he really struggled with it but eventually fell asleep.  Today he was out pretty quickly.  Whew!  He really does still need his naps (and so do I!).

Perhaps it helped today that he got to play at the church nursery while I went to the St. Monica’s Circle (moms of young kids) meeting about the Catholic school admission process.  It’s doubtful we’ll go that route when the time comes, but it’s good to have the info.  The babysitter told me The Agent had a grand time in the nursery.  Apparently he spent a lot of time in the little stage/puppet theater.  Good times.

Birthday cake is made.  Waiting for it to cool to frost it.  And Mr. Tldz should be home soon.  Vacation for him tomorrow.  Hooray!

Mr. Tldz was inducted into the Knights of Columbus last night.  I’ve been telling him this means he’ll really be my knight in shining armor.  He came home last night to inform me there is a Shining Armor Award available to Knights who accomplish certain things in their first year of membership.  So if he wins that, he’ll really really be my knight in shining armor!

I think this will be a very good thing.  Apparently our parish has one of the more active Knights councils in the state.  And since he was inducted on Agent Murphy’s second birthday, we’ll always have a way to remember how long he’s been a Knight.

Hard to believe, but our little guy turned two yesterday!  We had a good day.  We went to story time at the library (the two-year-olds group!) and at the end everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to him.  He got a phone call from Grandma when we got home, and then during lunch, since Daddy was working from home, he got to open his presents.

He got a dress up doll we’ve named Zack, and a book of nursery rhymes with a sing-along CD.  Both seem to be hits.  Zack got dragged around everywhere, and now The Agent has decided he needs to wear Zack’s wristwatch.

In the afternoon The Agent made his regular trip to the mailbox with Daddy and found a birthday card from Grandma.  All in all a good day.

However, in the last week or two, The Agent has seemed pretty intent on NOT napping.  It still seems to me like he needs it, but he just refuses.  I’ve started putting him in the playpen for naps so he doesn’t have the option of getting up and playing, but he’s still not sleeping.  If he really drops the nap already, Mommy may have to run away from home!  For the last few days, since he wouldn’t nap, we’ve just started putting him to bed a little earlier.  We’ll see…

Oh, and I forgot to mention that on Monday, Agent Murphy figured out how to climb up onto his big boy bed by himself.  Hooray!  And over the weekend he started singing along to the Matlock theme.  (“Dah dah dah dah duh, dah dah dah dah duh…”)  Yeah, that’s our boy.

Other than out of necessity bringing the fall clothes up from the basement a couple of weeks ago, I’ve kind of stalled out on the unpacking.  Still have a few boxes in the garage to finish dealing with, and all the stuff in the basement to organize. And I’m starting to get a little restless about hanging up some pictures and stuff.  I’ll have to figure out what items I’ve more or less identified placement for.  I guess after having lived in a rather barren house since listing in April, I’m ready to have things look a little more cozy again.

Had a few more things done on the house by the contractor who lives up the street.   They finished up this morning installing the cell phone signal booster gizmo we got.  So far it seems like it’s helping.  But the biggest thing we had done was putting a railing around our front porch with a gate.  It looks cute, and will even more so when the wood has “aged” long enough to be painted.  Now the Agent and The Dog and I can go out and sit on our church pew and I don’t have to worry about anybody dashing off!

Mr. Tldz has been working to get his team at work on track to go back to their shift coverage.  The whole crew has been on first shift with on-call coverage since the beginning of October with the goal of getting all the policies and procedures in place that this new group needs.  (That was only supposed to be a one-month arrangement.) It’s been tough for him because he’s not officially the team lead, but he’s had to try to function as a shadow team lead so stuff will actually get done.  The boss seems to be recognizing him as something of a co-team lead now.  Anyway, the date is set to go back to shift schedule on November 23, which will leave just Mr. Tldz and the team lead on first shift; and Mr. Tldz should be able to start to work from home pretty regularly then.  We’re looking forward to that.  He has a nice, private office setup in the new house, so it’ll be good to get to use it!

We had a little bit of progress today for the first time in what seems like a long time.  We tried food as a motivator, and surprise, surprise, that worked for our little guy!  He’d do lots of stuff to get another bite of Daddy’s homemade sourdough bread.  He’s still not vocalizing a whole lot for the therapist, though while they were playing with a wind-up puppy dog he did try panting like a dog when she did.  And he’s more willing to let her touch his hands to show him how to make different signs than he was before.  He learned the sign for “eat” really quickly today, and he kind of picked up “bread” and “block” today, too.  He’s more willing to look at me and immitate the signs I’m making than the therapist, which I guess is just fine since I’m with him all the time.

Maybe we will get to words one of these days.  It would be nice.