Staycation

Zane and I have had a really lovely fortnight; perfect for the end of summer! It started out a little rough in that Zane had several days of a high fever (up to 105), most likely from a booster shot. He didn't seem too miserable, but we stayed home from work and daycare a bit. I went back to work for one day, and then it was time for our staycation! Daycare was closed through Monday the 12th, and I actually was away from work from Saturday the 3rd until today when I went back (to a ton of e-mail). After the fever was finally out of Zane's system we went on many adventures. Swimming twice, to the zoo twice (once just with Michael), to the zip line park several times (where we finally did the zip line from the top), bicycling, on the bus to the Pacific Science Center, and on the bus to the Seattle Children's Museum. Taking the bus itself is a wonderful adventure; our neighbor Gavin has snagged us several times with his camera, and we lucked out to have him on our bus for our second adventure. And for this whole week and a half of adventures, we had beautiful temperatures in the 80s!

I got to have a taste of the stay at home parent life. Because I was home each day, I was able to finally make some progress on projects during Zane's naps. I got the back porch pressure washed, sanded, and re-stained and painted. I put up some blackout curtains in Zane's future room downstairs so that he could start using his big boy bed. For 5 days in a row he easily had really long naps down there in the "new bed." My plan is to let him have naps there for about a month and then try to get him to sleep there at night. Once he successfully transitions, I can move my computer and desk out of there and make it more his room. I think I'll get him a Zane sized table and chairs for art projects and the like.

Zane and is working on new skills, such as sitting at the table in a booster chair instead of in a high chair. We've started using one at restaurants, so I thought I'd try it at home, too. He's still a bit messy with food like yogurt, so a full transition is a ways a way. He has also taken a few steps down stairs without holding on to anything. I think he needs to actually get a little longer in his legs before that becomes much easier. Language continues to really get more fluid. It's fun to have him explain complex things to us now, and tell us stories about things that have happened. I can now ask about his day at daycare and get an answer!

One thing that was hard about being home all day was not relying too much on videos when I needed to cook dinner or some such thing. I was able to get him interested in a few new things to stave off too many videos. He really loved the button box, and he experimented a lot with running different buttons through his ball tower maze thingy and then poking at the buttons with a moai swizzle stick.

I think all of these skills are taking some brain power, because his naps and nighttime sleeping have been really good lately. I keep expecting him to grow, but so far I'm not seeing it. I think Zane's body believes in punctuated equilibrium rather than slow change.

I'll leave you with a few more great pictures from our neighbor Gavin. Enjoy the last days of summer and the crisp descent into fall!