A Guy, Two Girls and a Pup

It’s been a rough couple of days for Meredith: she finally succumbed to the stomach bug that Aurora had at the beginning of last week. 3:30am on Friday she started throwing up and kept it up for a good (BAD) 3 hours. The strange thing is that in between bouts of puking, she was apparently her normal monkey self, climbing on the furniture and running around playing. So it definitely isn’t slowing her down much. Since then, she’s thrown up a couple of times here and there and had some SUPER runny poops — she’s drinking tons of water, although not eating quite as much as we’ve been used to lately. But I’m sure in a day or two she’ll be back to her old self.

In the meantime, she’s been surprising us with new words and behaviors all the time. She’s becoming more insistent about having things done: if she can’t do it herself, she’ll grab one of our hands and drag us over to do whatever it is she wants us to do. While it’s been nice, she’s be DESPERATE to be outside, grabbing our hands and pulling us to the door to open it, all the time saying “SIIIDE” (outside). This is even after a full day at the park with Esme and Aurora! She’s learned that she has an outfit with a monkey on it, and can point it out saying “MAHN-KEY”. Also, every beverage now is “milk” (MOOK).

We’re looking forward to having Grandpa and Grandma Bingham visit on Thursday! Much cleaning happened today, so we in good shape — it doesn’t look quite so much like we live in total squalor.

We’ve been neglecting to mention that we seem to have turned a corner (temporarily) with Meredith and her sleeping (or lack thereof). It seems as though she’s finally getting the hang of this whole “sleeping through the night” business. For the last two or three weeks, we’ve actually gotten more full nights of sleep than not! It’s amazing how great it feels to be able to sleep through the night again. Hopefully the return of the teething (someday) won’t disrupt the routine…

As soon as I started working with Aptimus, I jumped right in to working on the new design for the University of Phoenix site. It’s been a busy couple of months, but all the hard work has paid off, as the new design goes live April 17! Check it out!

In non-work-related goings-on, we’re trying to get Meredith to start saying “please” when she asks for things. For some reason, she’s not as keen to repeat the word “please” as she is, oh, every OTHER word she hears. You’d think she’s be MORE likely to say it, especially if it gets her delicious Teddy Grahams that much more quickly.

And, last, but not least, happy birthday to Christi!! It’s already April 17 in the Eastern Time Zone, so she’s officially another year older. We love you!

Employment continues to suit us both well. Little M flourishes with near-daily multi-hour excursions to the park and two hour naps. She can repeat (in her cute babelish) almost anything said to her now and there are no more chairs in the house that she cannot climb - though the spare bed will still give her troubles for a week or two, I think.

I’ll be in Wisconsin next week, meeting the rest of the IT staff and sucking their brains dry. Then my folks will join us at home with M for a bit - we’re all looking forward to it!

Employment, Day 1:
Account setups; HR processing; photo ID; all-personnel site meeting; site tour; expanded team overview; international conference call and primary issues discussion; initial system discussions; preliminary trip planning; international information security discussion with legal consul; team lunch; beginning customization of desktop.

I will not be bored.