Out on the town on St. Patrick's Day

Daddy and Me

Outside

Thoughts

I've been enjoying seeing the sun rise these days. It's amazing how thrilling it can be when you woke up at 4 a.m. and the world is dark and cold. Right now the sun is coming up through the bare, stark, winter-time trees in a big ball of orange. The rest of the sky is pale and blue. It will be a gorgeous day. Hope, for nothing in particular, is feeling stronger every day. It was fifty degrees yesterday, and will be so today, and tomorrow, is it true? Will it be in the sixties?? This is thrilling news. Sterling went on two walks yesterday and seems to love the outdoors. There have been a lot of of new things in his world. He started eating new foods, first with rice cereal, then to prune juice, and now pears. He loves pears. He eats like an old pro. He's been sitting up very well, and just the other day he sat in the front of a shopping cart! He enjoyed that immensely and so did I. It will make shopping a million times easier. What else, you ask? Just yesterday morning there were two front teeth popping out of his lower gums! And I thought all that whining he was doing was just a new form of expression, a sound thrill. Every time I made the sound back to him he would laugh. What a good sense of humor--he can even laugh at himself! Humility is best learned early...

Sleep isn't so elusive any more, either. I have done the dreaded task of letting him learn to sleep on his own (read: crying it out) because I did everything else. And you know what? It's true, it wasn't that bad and it does work. I had been prepping him for it for a few weeks. He mostly only cries for about ten minutes, and last night, amazingly, he fell asleep without a peep. (Full disclosure: he was really tired, bad day of naps.) But still! I've been sleeping a lot better and I really needed it. This morning I had all sorts of aspirations and I stopped myself and thought: I'm back to normal! I want to do things again!