Day 40

So today was very busy, but very fun and insightful.

First, I have to talk about Sunday morning, because Zak just cracked me up. We stayed up the night before very late. We have visitors from the Polish tennis team staying with us since they are playing in the ATP. Zak simply would not go to bed...he was having way too much fun with these guys, who adored him. Finally at 11:30 we went to bed. At 8:00, I got up and I checked on Zak. He was kind of awake and said "No Mommy, I don't want to get up!" Wow, that's a first :-) I guess we really wore him out.

We started the morning as normal, doing some light housework, hanging out together. He needed to go to the bathroom at some point, and usually I go help him reach the toilet. This time he told me "No Mommy, you stay here" and put out his hand to stop me. So I let him go on his own, peeking around the corner to see him standing up going to the bathroom on his own. They grow up to fast.

Then at 10:30 we biked up to Zak's school because a police officer was coming to talk and show them a police car. It was very cute to see the police officer trying to get 20 or so 3 year olds to listen to his lesson about how to shout out for help if someone they don't know asks them to go home with them. He gave them all police badges, and then they got to sit in the police car. So fun. Today at school, Zak pointed to where the police car was on Tuesday and said sadly, "Police Car all gone."

Then I decided to try out the Blue Ash rec center gym for a half an hour. They have a tot room for Zak, so we went there together and hung out for awhile, then I got a quick run in on the treadmill, it felt great! Zak did great too, so maybe we'll make it a tradition. I need to start getting more exercise in besides just tennis.

Anyway, then it was lunch time, so we ate at the Blue Ash Cafe, then went home for a nap. At 3:00 he woke up, and we went up to the ATP to watch Ala's practice match. The drive up there was what was so insightful.

As we started heading north on Kenwood Rd (just a couple blocks from our house)...Zak said, yeah, we're going to King's Island.! And sure enough, the ATP is right next to King's Island, and it's about the only time we take a left there on Kenwood. I know many adults who wouldn't make that connection (but I won't mention Jelica's name). Anyway, I explained to him that yes, this is the way to King's Island, but today we're going to watch Ala and Maciek play tennis. He said "Oh. Ok. Let's go watch tennis." Big Smile. THEN, as we are driving on 71 North, we go past Home Depot and Lowe's at Fields Ertel. Zak says, "Look down there....Tato's shopping." That man takes Zak shopping way too much apparently.

We park at the ATP, and it's like 100 degrees. I'm sweating just stepping out of the car. 5 minutes into our walk from the parking lot to the tournament, Zak asks me to carry him. I say "No Zak, why don't you walk." He stops and says "Mommy,carry me. It's too hot to walk." Really. Anyway, we get to the tournament, and we get to go through the players entrance because Maciek and Ala put us on the "Family list", so we have VIP passes for the whole event. Zak walks straight to the players lounge and is pretty adament he has no intention of going outside to watch any practice in 100 degrees. We did manage to go watch a half an hour or so (Ala always comes over during breaks and gives him things, so that kept his attention a bit)...but we pretty quickly had to give up and go back to the players lounge. Kuba joined us after work and we took turns watching some games and hanging in the loung with Zak (who loved the arcade inside.)

I love his new "Oh, ok" saying. Diane had asked for a couple pictures of Zak. He was upstairs with the printer, so I printed the pictures, and as he was coming down the stairs, I asked him to go to the printer and bring down the pictures. He stopped and said "Oh, ok. I'll get pictures." And he went back up and got them.

Anyway, a very nice day. I think I mentioned already that working Monday, Wed and Thurs doesn't feel as natural to me as working Monday, Tuesday and Thursday...and the interesting thing is my new team asked me today if I'd kill them if we switched back to Monday, Tuesday and Thursday as of Jan. :-) Cool. Still 5 months like this, but then back to something that feels a bit better to me. By then I'll probably be used to this way :-)

Day 39

Today was another rather lazy day, even though it started out looking very busy. We got up, and leisurely cleaned a bit. Zak loves mopping the floor and cleaning the windows. The only problem is the excess Windex and water he likes to leave behind. He went to cleaning the windows and floors (with me coming behind him every 5 minutes or so), and I did the dishes and laundry. We got dressed, and Zak was very opinionated about his clothes today. In the end, he picked out "Diane's shirt" (a tye dyed shirt Diane gave him), which I luckily found in the clean clothes basket, I just hadn't had a chance to fold them. At 9:00, we headed out, with the plan of going to the car shop to get our turn signal looked at, then up to King's Island for a couple hours, and then to meet my friend Melanie for lunch.

As we were driving to the car shop, Zak saw Toys-R-Us and asked to stop. So I told him sure, we could do it on the way up to King's Island. I wanted to buy him a pair of skates anyway, those Fisher Price kind that adjust over your shoes...they are so cool now, look like little roller blades :-) Anyway, we went there and I told him he could pick out one toy. I picked up the roller blades, and he kept telling me "No, put them back Mommy" because he thought those counted as his one :-) Eventually he picked an electric drum set (a cheap one), and we took it out of the box so he could play with it in the car. And that was it, he didn't want to go to King's Island anymore. He wanted to go home and play with his drums. I kept asking him, but he was adament to go home, so we did.

We hung out a bit at home, then went to meet Melanie for lunch. Zak was already a little tired, so I wouldn't say it was a relaxing lunch, but Melanie has 2 kids, so she understood :-) After lunch he asked me to lay down with him ("Want to lay down Mommy?") Of course I did :-) He's now got this thing where he WANTS me to sing...but only the "Rock a bye baby in the tree top"...except I always replace baby with Zakie, Katie, Ann...whoever. Now he tells me WHO he wants me to sing about...today we had to go through the whole list (Ethan, Logan, Ann, Dave, Tato, Mommy, Dana, Matt, Rowan, Katie, Jude, Chad, Maya, Paul, Grandma, Grandpa, Babcia...even more...I think Diane and Aiden his buddy from school, was even in there somewhere) At one point, I just wanted to see how asleep he was...and so I started the song with "Rock a bye Ethan in the tree top..." and ended with "and down will come Logan, cradle and all" and he laughed and said "NO!!!! Ethan!" He thought I was joking with him (I was)...unfortunately he was wide awake again :-)

Anyway, he slept for about 2 hours, so I quickly did the floors, called to make some dr. appts, finally had the guy come and estiate the cost to fix our roof over the porch, those normal things that I don't know how we ever got done when I worked full time.

Then Katie came over for an hour or so to visit before going off for her 10 year high school reunion, and Ann, Dave, Ethan and Logan came over and we had a great dinner with the kids. It's really nice having my sisters so close. The boys had a great time together.

Day 38

Tuesday was kind of a weird day. Zak didn't get enough good sleep. At around 8 he said he wanted to go to King's Island. I told him we could when it opened. But then by 9:30, he said no, he didn't want to go to King's Island, he wanted to stay home. The whole day he didn't want to do anything (pool, library, toy store)...he just wanted to stay home. I'm one of these people that always wants to be on the go, but I decided if he didn't want to be, then I guess it was ok. So we had a very lazy day, a little on the boring side.

I'm also not sure if my new Monday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule is working out as well as Mon, Tues, Thurs...but maybe I just need some time to get used to it. I feel like taking off already on Tuesday kind of breaks my stride. I had a lot of work on my mind Tuesday, which was probably also contributing to the feeling of not having the greatest of days.

On the other hand, going back through my notes (which I just jot down randomly throughout the day), he did crack me up quite a bit :-)

At one point, he took a gold pencil that his friend Chloe had given him. He came up to me and said "It's a magic wand" and then started waving it around in circles obviously trying to cast some kind of magic on me. At first I was shocked! But then I remembered they had a magician come to his daycare last week...so I quickly recovered and turned myself into a frog and started hopping around. I begged him to turn me back into a human, which he graciously did. But then for another 15 minutes he transformed me back and forth and insisted that I hop around at least a bit as a frog...my thighs were burning, geez I'm out of shape :-)

He has a Little Einstein globe that we were playing with, finding different parts of the world. He saw the Eiffel Tower on France and started exlaiming "King's Island! King's Island! With Ethan and Logan!" I tried to explain to him that King's Island's tower is a small version of the Eiffel tower, but I don't think he was listening. He was already imagining going up in the tower again with Ethan and Logan.

Dana called at some point during the day, she has a special ring tone...immediately Zak said "Dana's calling!" He's so observant. Dana and I finally got pedicures a couple of weeks ago...and I got a flower painted on my nails. Zak insists that now my toes look like Dana's toes, because she had a flower last time. We were at Michael's Crafts, he saw a small pig with flowers on it and wanted to buy it for Aunt Dana. I can't believe he associates flowers with Dana now because her toenails had flowers on them before mine.

Anyway, in the afternoon, since we were just hanging at home anyway, I decided to try to make a new enchilada recipe that my friend gave me. Zak helped and they turned out great! Then Aunt Katie joined us after work so Kuba and I could play some tennis.

Anyway, I didn't feel it was the best day, but maybe I just need to learn to relax and not have to be on the go all the time. I also think Zak was fighting some kind of sickness, because he was a little lazier than normal as well...so it was probably good that we could just take a day to fight it off. I'm hoping we have a more active day today though :-)

Day 37

Today was so much better than the last two weeks. I think Zak could sense it from the start. Kuba and I had some coffee together, Zak was sleeping in, so I decided to wait on breakfast for him. I think Zak does have a radar sense when it comes to me working though, I was just about to head up to my office to do a little email when he woke up (about 8). He didn't have to come searching for me in the yard. I wasn't immediately rushing him to eat breakfast so we could get to some appointment. He came out and climbed into my lap and we sat and rocked in the rocker for 30 minutes or so until he was completely awake. We read a couple of books, had some milk, then he took a bubble bath and I took a shower. We slowly made some breakfast (waffles), he helped me with the dishwasher and fold a basket of clothes (well, he played in the basket of clothes while I took things out around him).

Then we got on the bikes and went to the library. They were having story time, which he usually doesn't like, but after a few minutes he decided to join in some of the songs. One little baby, he was probably 1.5 years old, really took a liking to Zak. He came right up in his face and was just looking at him. Zak just let him look. Then the baby start touching Zak's ears, eyes, nose, etc, etc Zak just let him. He closed his eyes when he wanted to touch his eyes, said nose or ear when he touched his nose or ear. It was very sweet. On the way out, when I was lifting Zak up into his bike seat, I said "Super Baby flying up in the air". He said, "No Mommy! I'm not a baby! I'm a BOY." Sigh.


My friend Sanja came over for lunch, and straight after Zak took his pillow to bed to lay down. I laid with him for a few minutes, then got up to do the lunch dishes and another load of laundry. I was about to start making the phone calls I need to make (porch repair, deed questions, etc)...and then decided, no, I'm going to go take a nap with Zak. Such a good nap! He woke up a few minutes after I laid down and smiled. I cherish these times.
And now Zak is still sleeping (3 hours!) I think we wore him out these last couple of weeks, staying up late working on the yard.

Ahh, he's up! Now off to King's Island with Tato!

Days 33-36

Well, well. I've been rather lazy, and I'm sorry for that. Actually, It's not really lazy, we decided to take on a rather large home improvement project...we installed an automatic sprinkler/irrigation system on our own. that meant lots of digging, trenching, plumbing, electrical work, shovelling dirt back over trenches, re-seeding the yard, adding straw, etc. etc. etc. Mostly it meant lots and lots of mud and dirt tracked through the house for the past 3 weeks.

Anyway, on all my days with Zak, if we weren't doing something together, then I was out in the yard trying to do at least a little to help move the project along. Especially this last week in covering up the trenches. And it was HOT! Over 100 degrees with the heat index on many days...but I enjoyed it.

I must admit though that I didn't spend as much time as I should have with Zak on those days. I kept trying to convince him to play with his diggers and shovels and help me...but he wasn't so interested (who can blame him...he didn't even want to be outside in this heat!) I remember someone posted on facebook to me early on...be careful April, don't let one type of work slip into another type of work. So while I think it was ok for a few weeks, definitely I'm happy to have this project over so we can do more fun things again. I must admit, I struggle a bit with knowing how much I should expect us to do together that is productive (ie, cleaning up his toys, doing dishes, laundry, etc) vs fun stuff (ie King's Island, the pool, the park, the library). Yet another balance to get right :-)

Right now I DO feel like generally I've got my balance right. I'm energized for work, I'm energized at home. The only thing I still haven't managed to do is get my personal time figured out. I've got days for work, days for Zak, and days for the family...but I still only manage a couple hours a week for tennis or exercise. I'm hoping now that we've got that irrigation project done I can get back to it.

Even with the project, we did manage to have some fun! And Zak is just hilarious now. We now do time-outs on the stairs if he's doing something unacceptable. Last week he did something, I can't even remember what, and I asked, "Zak, why did you do that?" He said "Sorry Mommy, I go sit on the stairs." Ahh.

He also is very sweet to all animals...and bugs. We saw a worm the other day outside a restaurant. A long, 3 inch one. I stopped to show it to him. He said "Ahh, he's going home." And then he reached down and petted it. Then he wanted me to pet him. Ugh. He also found a lady bug in his room last week. He knows to pick them up and take them outside, but on his way, he brought it to me and said "Mommy, ladybug needs a kiss." Oh geez. So I pretended to kiss it and we put it outside.

We were coloring on Friday, a Thomas the Train book. I thought I was coloring Thomas, so I made it blue. It was mostly the front of him, so I couldn't see the clear number 1, which would have told me it was Thomas. Anyway, as I was coloring, Zak calmly told me this was Percy, but I could color him blue if I wanted. I read the story next to it, and sure enough, it was Percy. I have no idea how he can tell this stuff.

The last thing I'll share from these last two weeks, because I'm not sure how to think of it. While we were busy working in the yard one day...Zak kind of "adopted" 4 large rocks. They become his friends, and he would trike ike up and down the driveway with them. He'd pick them all up carefully, put them in the basket, get to the end of the driveway, take them each out...and talk to each of them. "Ok guys, now we're going to eat something" or "ok guys, time to go to work." It made me kind of sad, thinking of him being alone and needing to make up fake friends. I hope this is normal...I need to do some researh.

Oh! And we got some pictures made! It was really great. Since Zak and I had the day off, we scheduled the photographer to meet us down at P&G so that Kuba could come down and join us. They turned out great!
http://www.kencrites.com/People/Cielica/13012724_FdDRZ#942002712_HXKi8

Day 32

And we are better today!!! I ended up with a 4 day weekend because I have Fridays off, and our 4th of July holiday was Monday. Monday was the turning point for Zak. He only woke up once Sunday night, was in a good mood Sunday morning, and at around 12:30, he asked to take his nap. Wow! He slept in his bed for about 1.5 hours, got up to go to the bathroom, then went back to bed for another 2.5 hours! He was so smiley after that and didn't complain about his mouth at all. He went to bed at the normal time on Monday night and slept through the night. So we are in a much better place.

This weekend we started a major house project of trying to install an irrigation system...and we accidentally cut our phone line...so we were without internet for a couple days. Unfortunately, they gave us an ETA of 8:30-12:30 this morning to fix it. At least I didn't have to take off work for it (can't work from home without internet!) but still, it kept Zak and I tied to the house during the best part of the day.

We cleaned a bit this morning, he vacuumed while I cleaned the bathrooms. We also made up a new game where we sit on our rug and act like we are on a flying carpet gone crazy...so we accidentally say the word up, it jerks us up and we fall backwards. Same thing for left and right.

He's definitely reached a new level of conginition over the last couple of weeks. He's forming complete sentences with prepositions and articles, etc. He told me "I don't like Tato's pillow because it has feathers." I was impressed with the sentence construction :-) Aunt Katie came over for lunch and when she left, he said, "Aunt Katie has to go back to work." I know I'm silly, but it's cute to see him learn.

The other thing he did today is he went up to our map on the wall, and he said...A! A for April! I don't think I realized he knew my real name! He proceeded to show me T for Tato and E for Ethan. Then we learned a few new ones...L for Logan, M for Maya, etc.

Anyway, he's napping now. When he wakes up, we'll probably go to the pool or King's Island water park. I can't wait for him to wake up!

Day 31

We kept Zak home from school on Thursday for fear he might have the hand, foot and mouth disease. Kuba stayed home with him, which made it very easy on me work-wise. But poor Zak drooled through 3 shirts during the day.

The doctor said it wasn't hand, foot and mouth...but just very bad cold sores. He said that when children first get cold sores, they often get them throughout their whole mouth because they just don't have any build up to fight them. Poor Zak. He doesn't know what's going on. All his favorite foods and drinks hurt really bad.

He keeps saying he has boo boos in his mouth and wants me to kiss them. I can't help but smile at that. He absolutely hates the Orajel that I put on them...but usually feels better for a bit afterward when I manage to get it applied.

Friday I just took the approach of trying to keep him as busy as possible to keep his mind off them. Dana and Rowan helped with that. We went to the park in the morning, then met my friend Mitch for lunch. After lunch, Zak just wouldn't sleep for longer than 15 minutes unless he was in my arms, and I really wanted him to sleep. So we rocked in the rocking chair for 2 and a half hours (I had to go to the bathroom so bad at the end!) At least he got some rest.

We had planned a date night Friday night with Dana and Matt. We were going to try out this new "night time day care" in Montgomery...we thought the boys might have fun doing it together actually, but with Zak's mouth, and Rowan was actually showing signs of not feeling well either...we left the men at home with the boys and Dana and I went out for a couple hours. A friend of mine had this really cool idea to showcase 40 of her husband's best photographs (he does photography as a hobby now...but has won several contests) at our local art gallery. So the art gallery was closed except for her party and we got to see his pictures. It was really, really nice. Then we took my friend from Poland, Lukasz, to Mt. Adams and had a drink. It was a nice evening.

But Zak still couldn't sleep well last night. About every 2 hours he woke up, probably from the drool on his pillow, and complained about the boo boos in his mouth. The one I can see is definitely getting better though, so we're on the right path. Lack of sleep makes me grumpy for sure...I don't know how I did it those first few months back to work when I was still breast feeding!

Anyway, I'm grateful I had Wednesday and Friday off last week so I could take care of him.