The Water Baby

Carolyn loves the water.

To tell you the truth, I wish she were a bit more cautious or scared around the water.

A Fun Family Weekend

In Utah, we have a second holiday in July; we celebrate the arrival of the pioneers in the west on July 24. We started out the long weekend by going to the parade downtown. Then, on Saturday we had two BBQs, and another one on Sunday. Carolyn loved playing with all of other kids, and especially the other kids' toys.

The Biter

We have now received three incident reports from day care, all of them for biting. So, I guess it is official:

Carolyn is a biter.

The first incident was when she was pissed off that she had to go inside, so she bit a kid's hand when sitting in the buggy going back to her classroom. The second one she wanted to get to a toy on a shelf behind one of the boys who was apparently in her way, so she climbed over him, pulling down the neck of his shirt and biting his back in the process. Then, on the same day, she bit the hand of a little girl.... but this one was not totally her fault. The girl put her hand in Carolyn's mouth and she bit down. Naturally.

How could my sweet little girl be the bully in her classroom?

What have we done to teach her that behavior?

Are they going to kick us out of daycare?

And, do the other parents suspect it is Carolyn?

Ah. Maybe I should not be so worried. Her teachers aren't. They just say that she is probably having a lot of mouth pain right now from teething, and she is biting to relieve some of the pressure. Then, Steve reminded me of the stack of letters we just recently read at his parents' house which detailed his misbehaviors in elementary school, like not paying attention to the Safety Patrol in kindergarten, running up and down the halls in first grade, and my favorite, the report card in 2nd grade that said, "He waits for an opportunity to take advantage of the situation." He reassured me that these incident reports may be the first time Carolyn has gotten in trouble, but they certainly will not be the last. I am pretty positive that this girl will give us plenty more wrinkles and gray hairs in her life, as it is already clear that she has a very strong will, and not to mention, an independence streak that would rival any teenage girl.

Where has the summer gone?

doing laps and playing the kazoo
Originally uploaded by boo4172002

Why is it that time seems to move so fast in the summer? We have been extra busy lately, but have not really done anything notable, or at least not anything worthy of picture-taking. So, I do not even have pictures on my camera that I could use to fill in our blog from the past few weeks.

Here is what's happening in our household:

I just found out that my research team and I received a small grant ($25,000) for our project. YEAH! But, we also found out that we are not going to get the funding for the much larger grant proposal we submitted. BOO! Oh well, in this economy, we take whatever money we can get for our research.

Steve was sick last week and completely out of commission with a terrible and strange headache -- so strange that I made him go to the emergency room after it had lasted for more than 48 hours. Thankfully, after doing some tests including a cat-scan, the docs said he was just suffering from a BAD headache (i.e., muscle spasms along the skull), on top of his body coming down with the flu. Phew. Relief. For a moment there, I was worried it was something terrible, like a tumor or aneurism or who knows what. Then, my mind wandered to all sorts of bad 'what if' places. I guess, sometimes we need a reminder to not take our good health for granted. I love my family and cannot imagine if either Carolyn or Steve had a serious health problem. We would deal with it, but it would be devestating.

Earlier this week, Carolyn received her first incident report in which she was the perpetrator, and not the victim. According to the teacher who witnessed the incident, Carolyn was getting tired while playing outside and started bullying the other kids a bit. Then, she got really angry when they left the playground. As they were riding in the buggy going back to their classroom, she bit another kid's hand. She can be a mean little bugger when she is tired or does not get her way, but I really hope that this was an isolated incident. Otherwise, I do not know how to teach a one year old to NOT bite other people.

To her defense, I think she may have had a touch of something this week, as she exhibited all of the behaviors of not feeling well, even though there was no fever, no runny nose, and no other noticeable symptom other than a hoarse throat, interrupted sleep, super clingy and irritable, and terrible diaper rash. She is slowly coming back to her sweet self, especially after taking a 3.5 hour nap at daycare today (typically, we are lucky if naps last longer than 45 minutes).

Carolyn also just completed a series of swim lessons. She learned how to climb out of the pool, jump in, blow bubbles, kick her legs, float, and put her head under water. She is a real water baby. I wish we would have taken some pictures of her in the pool, but we forgot the camera each day.

The only thing I have to share is the video Steve took the other day of Carolyn learning how to play the kazoo. She makes laps around the downstairs, while humming into it. You will need to turn the volume pretty loud to hear her beautiful music. And, please ignore the piles of laundry, the unmade bed, the broken vacuum cleaner, and the generally messy house that you see in the video.

On that note, we re-hired our cleaning woman. She came today, worked 6 hours, and the house is now de-fingerprinted, dusted, and scrubbed. What a good feeling. So worth the money.

Carolyn will be 13 months old tomorrow. Hopefully, I will get some pictures this weekend while we are out. We are going to the farmer's market and a parade with some friends in the morning -- and to the pool on Sunday.