catching up

Long time, no posts. A variety of reasons -- bad weather, general busy-ness chief among them.

The boys are excellent. They both have snotty noses, but haven't really been "sick." Allan has had to be back on his oxygen, though. Any little touch of something is enough to pull him down just a little.

Allan has been a real busy little guy. Monday night was Dad's night out and I figured it was going to be a long one when I got home a little before six to find that Allan had just gotten up from a nap and Griffith was still sleeping. After nearly 3 hours. This is not looking good for being in bed and asleep by 8:30. Sigh.

As it turned out, Griffith was not the problem. He was trying to go to sleep at about the usual time, but Allan was wholly uncooperative. First he found the drum and was beating out the alphabet in Spanish. Get up, turn the drum off, give him a quiet toy, sit down, get settled. A-Beh -- what? Okay, so he's figured out how to turn the drum on. Fine. Get up, turn off the drum (adios!), stick the drum in the kitchen out of sight. Sit down, get settled. Beep-beep-beep. Allan has pulled his cord loose by crawling in to the nursery. Get up, get Allan, reconnect the monitor, close the door in to the hallway. Sit down, get settled. All is quiet for a while, then rattle, rattle, rattle, beep, beep, beep. What the --- ??? Allan, bound and determined to get to the nursery, has managed to push on the hallway door which hadn't quite latched and gotten it to open enough that he could crawl through. By this point I am ready to SEND HIM BACK. Honestly he reserves this sort of behavior for when I am least able to respond to it. Willful.

Griffith is a real big help around the house and with his brother. Yesterday, Allan drank an ounce of apple juice from a bottle (something he rarely does -- go Allan!) and we were all very encouraging of Allan. The bottle was sitting around later and Griffith got it, walked over to Allan and put it in his mouth so that he could have a sip. It was so sweet. Another example of Griff's sweetness: Allan spit up yesterday while I was in the kitchen and Griff yelled "uh-oh!" and came running in to the kitchen and got a dishtowel and took it back to wipe up. No joke. Oh, yeah, and he said, "yuck!" (amen) and "mess" (although he says it with two syllables -- just like Bailey).