updates all around

so, what have we been up to lately?

jake has been working very hard lately.  he has a variety of projects going on at work.  he works remotely most of the time which means he gets to work from home, but this isn't nearly as convenient as i originally thought because it means that he has to sequester himself away from the household chaos in order to be on conference calls a lot of the time.  he's also been working about one night a week - but he thrives when he's working nights.  which is amazing to me, because it would make me absolutely miserable.

as mentioned in my previous post, i've been very busy at work.  business is good, and i think that long-term opening up my own practice is the best possible move i could have made for my career and my family.  but it's keeping me very, very busy as i work out all of the kinks.  who knew that keeping track of your own trust account and doing your own billing are such colossal time-sappers?  as a result, on the weekends we've mostly been staying home, resting, and catching up on housework and sleep.  recently that's been getting to me a little bit and i've felt the need to get back in touch with my friends and family who i used to see much more often.  so you should take that as an open invitation to make weekend plans with us.  anyone up for saturday brunch?  want to meet at the cherry street farmer's market when it opens?  head over to lowe's and pick out some potted cherry tomato plants for the back patio?  i'm up for it.

autumn is finishing up kindergarten and she's doing great.  she is reading books from cover to cover completely on her own, and they are going to test her for the gifted program in the fall.  she is still the sweetest kid around and a great big sister.  she's listening to the jonas brothers and starting to pick out her own clothes (with interesting results, but i try to go along with it since it's part of her developing personality).  this summer it looks like we're going to enroll her in the summer camp that aislinn's daycare is putting on for the school-age kids, and it will be WONDERFUL to have them both in the same program.

aislinn will be seven months old tomorrow--and she was diagnosed with her first ear infection today.  last night i left her with jake, a happy baby who was ready for bed, and went out with a friend for a few hours.  when i came back jake was completely, completely frazzled.  apparently he'd put aislinn down to bed and she woke up thirty minutes later, screaming, and proceeded to scream for the next two hours until i got home.  it was a miserable night, with her waking up in obvious distress every thirty minutes.  i wasn't quite sure what was wrong because she wasn't running a fever, and it's hard to pin down the source of discomfort in an apparently healthy but extremely fussy infant.

this morning i woke up after very little sleep and had to leave the house at 7:45 a.m. to get autumn to school and make it to a hearing, so i left aislinn asleep in bed with jake.  7:45 a.m. is early for me.  i usually leave the house around 8:30 a.m.  anyway, i was so out of sorts that i filled out an Order and Notice of Hearing as "111 o'clock a.m. in courtroom 9:00."  thank god the court clerk noticed my error because it would have been super embarrassing to have sent that out to opposing counsel.

when i got back to the house at 10:00 a.m. i found a happy, cooing baby.  what????  but she was still refusing the bottle so i went ahead and took her to the pediatrician.  sure enough, ear infection.

hopefully tonight will be a better night.

other milestones: aislinn isn't really on hands and knees yet, but she's on hands and toes, push-up style.  unfortunately she hasn't worked out how to transition this position into moving, and since she goes from hands and toes to resting on her heels over and over, she tends to move away from her goal which makes her very angry.

yesterday she "pulled up" for the first time.  aunt erin was visiting and had set her in the laundry basket which aislinn thought was just hilarious.  and then the next thing we knew, she had grasped the top of the basket and pulled herself up like it was no big deal.

she's figured out "object permanence."  that is, when you put a wash cloth over her pacifier, the pacifier doesn't just disappear - it's still there, and now she knows she can move the wash cloth and retrieve the pacifier.  this is a big step, but at the same time now when i take my blackberry away from her, she cranes her neck around in every direction to figure out where i put it and how she can get it BACK.

she's eating veggies, fruits, and oatmeal.  today i gave her a wheat "biter biscuit" for the first time, which she promptly turned into mush.  i also gave her a handful of banana flavored gerber "puffs," which are like airy graham crackers the size of oyster crackers.  she couldn't quite figure out that they were food, but she found it very entertaining to chase them around the high chair tray trying to gather up every single one of them in her chubby little hands at the same time.

as far as the house goes, the shelves in the living room have been painted, which took me about a week of working an hour or two a day. it was a big project.  now i'm trying to nail down the wall color, and i have swatches painted all over the walls.  i thought i had come pretty close to a decision between three nice khaki-gold colors until erin came over to give her opinion and declared them to be "olive, peach, and pumpkin" and every one of them ugly.

harmph.  i wish i valued her opinion less, because now i'm seriously bothered.

tonight i made a huge pot of chili and jake and autumn picked up some fritos on the way home.  (and caramel corn.  this is why i don't send jake to the store.  he always buys sweets.  always.)  aislinn has been asleep for two hours so that bodes well for the rest of the night.  jake and autumn are watching "darby o'gill and the little people" and eating caramel corn on the couch, and i am going to spend some time zoning out on my laptop and then i'll be in bed by 9:30.  blissfully boring, and i wouldn't have it any other way.  i had my crazy days in the sun, and i'm so glad that i did when i had the chance, because if i hadn't then i don't think that this new season of my life would be quite so satisfying.

so that brings everything up to date.  see ya'll on the flip side.