Ah, yes...the blog

I have neglected you, dear blog, for some time. As you are a blog about my life with Emmett, a recent lack of Emmett has been much of the reason. Last weekend was the first night's separation between Emmett and myself (two in a row, in fact) as Andrea and E headed to the Pacific Northwest to visit Angela, Scott, and Tyler. It sounds like they had a great visit and Tyler, now 15 months rather than the 12 when he last saw Emmett, is learning to treat Emmett with care and a light touch. Andrea was raving about how good Tyler was with Emmett, with the former showing the latter how to operate toys, etc. But, alas, I missed it all as I was in the city.

So, this is part of the reason for blog negligence. The other part is the fact that I have been working toward the last day at the office, which has kept me mighty busy, and today was said final day. The original plan was that today was going to be my REAL last day, but now I am going to be staying on through the end of September so that I can attend a conference and will be working from home here and there with a couple of trips to the lab thrown in every once-in-a-while. Should be a smooth transition, hopefully, to what will happen at the end of September which is always-at-home for me with some consulting work taking place from home.

So what does that mean for Emmett and I? The picture at the left tells the tale, and as Emmett will soon learn: it is always 5 o'clock somewhere. Andrea will be starting work in a week's time (we have a week's vacation before then), and then it will be party time for the boys.

The nice thing about being slow with the blog (which is all going to change when I start doing the stay-at-home-thing, I swear) is that each new post has Emmett leaping forward in his abilities. I came home this evening and Emmett was in the Plastic Monstrosity(tm) or whatever it is called turning himself around and playing with all of the toys. I found myself quite surprised at how much more advanced he seemed (the advances have seemed big to me, too, as during the week i am only seeing him about an hour or so a day and I lost all of last weekend to the Portland trip). Anyway, I uploaded a quick video I took of the kid playing in the thing (the seat is filled with blankets as he is not to the official size/weight to play in the plastic machine---doesn't stop mom). The video shows that he is picking up some arm control, but it isn't always there as though he is able to get the flag into his mouth once, the hands make a big swing-and-a-miss later. Not a very exciting video, I know.



The head turn at the end of the video is the new thing for him. In the last week he has found that he has little interest in what is in front of him as he has discovered behind him. If he is sitting in his bouncy chair (still a 7 sock-monkey item) he will suddenly start leaning forward and turning his head around to see what is taking place behind the chair. This is a cute trick but has made the elimination communication stuff a little difficult as the normal Emmett's-back-to-my-front puts me behind E so when I start with the ssssss he just turns his head and checks out the source of the noise rather than peeing. We had lost some ground on the whole EC thing with travels and such, but we are getting it back. He has gotten so he can hold his pee for quite some time now and leaves a pretty good puddle in the bottom of the baby bjorn potty when the time comes.

Right now E is asleep, and we have on loan a video monitor from a friend. Tonight was the first trial of it and it is pretty neat as we can see exactly what Emmett is doing as he sleeps (shown to left). It is a two channel deal (for those with two kids, I suppose), and while we were sitting in the front room watching Emmett I changed the channel to learn that not only can we watch Emmett, but we can also watch some neighbor girl sleep. The funny part is that we have no idea who in the near houses has a ~18 month old. Anyway, we get the chance to be entertained by a neighbor's sleeping baby, too (at right). Life is too good.