conversations with invisible pigs and sheep

Colin has them. It started last week ago with “Jim sad”. Yesterday it was “o peez” (open please), and today he kept bugging me with “wa peez” (water please).

I read in one of the parents magazines that I’e been getting (for free, for Jim’s school phonics projects) that kids are supposed to say two word phrases by two years old. So he’s got that going for him.

On the sleep front, things are actually awesome. Colin is sleeping through the night. I’m not waking up in the middle of the night, which is better. He still wakes up cranky when he doesn’t get enough sleep (for naps and night-time), and he’s been waking up before Jim goes to school this week. But as long as you follow the routine (two stories, two songs, sitting on the floor), he goes to bed happy. Laughing even. The big cutie.

I finished Colin’s hat yesterday. It fits him perfectly.

I just got the emai from Jim’s school that the school met its $50,000 goal for the Race for Education, and they haven’t finished opening all the mail yet. The final count will come in January.

Jim’s class won the top class prize and got $100 gift certificate for classroom supplies!

The last six years have had a lot of ups and downs with our little guy. His sixth birthday was no exception.

The down:

This was Jim’s cake an hour and a half before his party. On it’s side, if that’s not clear. It was supposed to be a blue measuring tape, but it fell over. Luckily, he didn’t wig out, and calmly said that he would like cupcakes. Probem solved.

Yesterday we had a quiet time. I recovered from throwing his party by napping most of the time (which meant I didn’t sleep much last night). Jim watched both his new Pokemon videos. He’s really likes all his presents, and he’s very happy to be six now.

So, how do we celebrate our first year in the new house? By going out to breakfast of course! Why breakfast, you might ask. Because we woke up to no power in our kitchen. No breakers tripped, and no power in the kitchen, laundry, garage and family room.

The problem actually started Friday morning — the same thing happened only for about five minutes — long enough for me to find a flashlight and confirm that no breakers were tripped. I called the electrical contractor, who said to call the power company, it sounded like a problem outside our house, that maybe they were working outside the house. OK, plausible, we still have construction going on around us. I called the power company, left an incident outage thing on their automated system, and kind of forgot about it.

Since we couldn’t really call the electrical contractor at 7.00 on a Sunday morning, I called the power company. I left another outage report, and then tried to go back and see if I could check the status of my old report (since we had never heard anything). I fumbled entering the account number, and ended up getting a live person who said that they had been to the house and hadn’t found a problem, but that they would send someone out again.

We got back from church around lunchtime, and I called for a status, since we still didn’t have power. By this time, things were actually flickering on and off, so we had to turn off all the power strips for the computers and TV. Status report said someone would be out by three. They showed up at 2.45, and quickly reported that we lost the 220 line to the house. Yeah, that might be important. It also explains why we lost what we did, and that the upstairs had power. We were surprised to learn that it would be fixed by that night. The utility truck showed up around 4.45, and by 6.00 we had power back, after about ten minutes with absolutely no power.

So, all is well on that front. In other things, Jim has a cold now. He’s complaining about hiccups that hurt his mouth (aka, he has a sore throat and it hurts when he swallows). Not to complain about my little sweetie, but he is the worst sick patient in the house. He won’t eat or drink, and just gets so upset about not feeling good. At least his descriptions of his pain are getting a little more accurate.

Last night was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in about two or three weeks. It may have been because I finally got the to take the 24-hour decongestant right before bed, but I’m hoping it’s because I’m actually getting better. I didn’t need any cough medicine through the night.

Last week, at my worst, I started sleep-training Colin for the middle of the night, and it seems to be working. Last night he meeped and squeaked a bit, but he slept through until 7am.

I’m starting to catch up on the laundry. There’s probably about twelve loads to do. Jim had to wear an unwashed sweater vest today.

Now that Halloween is over, I can concentrate on Jim’s birthday. Darn it that there is only three weeks. But that’s the only way I can work on this stuff. Concentrate on Halloween, then Jim’s birthday, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas. Although for Jim and Colin, with their birthdays so close to Christmas, I just pick out stuff and we sort it out when it comes time to wrap the presents. We decided to have Jim’s party at home this year, which is easier, and over the weekend decided on the “theme”. I found some good games online, and then whipped up the invitations this morning.

I’m waiting for my pants to get out of the dryer so we can go run some errands.

This morning Colin has been in fine form. He got himself a glass of water from the fridge dispenser, and then got some ice for it. After I locked the dispenser, he kept coming to me for more. Then, later, he took the stool, and tried turning the lock off himself. Keeps me on my toes, that one does.

When we went to the “city” two weeks ago, I let Jim take pictures with my phone-camera until the battery just about ran out. It was a little annoying, because we couldn’t go five feet without him stopping. But he did a good job: