Making Progress

It's been an eventful week around our house.

Over the weekend baby David took his first solo steps - 3 on Saturday, then 4 on Sunday. I missed it both times -- I was out and David was home with the kids. He finally walked for me early this week. It was just a few steps and he'll only do it when there's an incentive. Crawling or cruising are still the preferred modes of transportation. He also cut another bottom tooth, which brings the total count up to 7 (4 on top, 3 on bottom). I think he's working on #8 tonight because has has woken up twice already and he's really grumpy. He's also been sleeping better at night, except for when those teeth come through. He sometimes sleeps for 12 hours straight now! You'd think I was getting a lot of sleep now, but there are 3 other kids who often wake up at least once every night too. Sarah likes to get up and dig around in the kitchen for a snack around 3am. She is also prone to nightmares. Joseph wets the bed almost every night. Kathryn...she's my best sleeper right now. She'll sleep for 12 hours straight nearly every night (probably 29/30 nights).

Speaking of Kathryn, she decided over the weekend that she was ready to be a big girl and start using the potty. Previous attempts at potty training have been utter failures because she had no desire to use the toilet or ditch her diapers. Now, she won't even let us put a diaper on her at night. She's done well - today she didn't have any wet accidents. We're still working on getting #2 into the potty..but all in good time. She is doing almost all the work herself. She got a new little potty so that she can "take herself" whenever she wants to...and she does! I think she prefers going alone. We're are fully into the "I can do it myself!" phase. (Yes, she speaks in clear and complete sentences).

Joseph and Sarah got a little guitar this weekend ($5 at a garage sale). They've had fun tinkering around with it and playing alongside their daddy. They took it to school for show and tell this week and got to play on it during singing time there. At school Joseph is making a lot of progress with reading and writing. He surprises me everyday with his ability to read random things around the house or while driving. Sarah reads some too, but mostly she is artistic and will often choose crafts over reading/writing work. Her ability to focus on one task and finish it has increased substantially in past few months as well.

Today I found some babysitters and went to school...to hear David give a lecture / speech on Mario Vargas Llosa (the main subject/author of his dissertation). He spoke for nearly an hour and a half to about 60 students and teachers. He was awesome! I learned a lot of things about Vargas Llosa and it was quite entertaining.

David has been super busy. (What's new, right?) In the next two weeks his To Do list is going to get much shorter. He'll be done with a lot of committee work and other mentoring projects at the college, not to mention the semester ending, and his work load with his second job will decrease substantially too. Until then, he's putting in 12-15 hour work days to get it all done.

We're both looking forward to the summer when he'll be home half of the day and we can finish some projects around the house.

Other good news - I am getting my own brand new laptop!! For FREE! I am going to be teaching an online Spanish course for the college this fall and they are going to provide me with a laptop (owned by the college, of course), to aide me in my work. =) It came in this week so once I have all my accounts set up with HR and IT then I'll be able to use it. I'm so excited. Our current laptop is nearing its 5th birthday and has seen better days. It will be nice to have two computers in the evening too when David and I both need to be working at once.