The First 11 Days

January is giving me whiplash. The past week and a half or so have been crazed at work; long days, big projects and changes (lots of changes.) There are more long days and projects and changes to come, but its going well.

The weather has been lousy so far this winter. We have 5 or 6 days of cold and drizzly rain and then one nice day. I think I am getting seasonally depressed. I need more sunlight. But we've had our usual fun and it has been nice to settle back into a semi-normal routine. We've been to the museum a few times and to the park once or twice when the clouds have broken. We also had a night where the power went out. I am so not a good pioneer. After we used candles to light our way through bedtime routines I was over the novelty of the experience (luckily it was back on around 9pm).

Jilli, as usual, has kept us laughing. In no particular order:

She has some sort of obsession with dust. Not the small particals we inevitably see wafting through the air of the house...just the word. She loves singing The Bear Neccesities right now and it goes something like "I mean the bear ne-dust-da-dust, the simple bear ne-dust-da-dust. Forget about your worries and your dust!" Jilli is an odd bear.

"Mommy, look! I can jungle rope!" (jump rope)

"These are the yay-ers!" (pom poms....)

When allowed to fall asleep in our bed as a special treat one evening she emerged about 30 minutes later, "Daddy, can I go to sleep on my floor? Its more comfortable."

"We played in the monkey-purpose room at school today!" (multi-purpose)

And right now the end of everything (a book, movie, whatever...) is the "edge" of it.

Rory decided to knock off a few (or ten) milestones early in the year. In the past 10 days she has learned to: clap, show you how biiiig Rory is! (SO BIG!), wave (emphatically), pull up on anything that she can hold still for more than a second (the couch, mommy's legs, sketch) and cruise a few steps.

Here's to a slower and sunnier rest of the month....