Welcome 2009!

I wasn't going to post anything unless it was 3 nights in a row, but I can't help feeling like we've turned a corner here so here it is. Viv slept 2 nights in a row through the night and a third, last night, waking only once at 4:17am for a little milk. What a great beginning to 2009!! The two earlier nights she cried out once or twice but settled on her own before I could reach her room. She definitely seems to do well if she gets a full dinner at 6 and then a bottle before bed at 7ish. It can be tough to coordinate that timing, but we are aiming for it now that we've seen such results.

She also seems to have grown overnight. Maybe Santa sprinkled a little something on her presents. She seems both plumper and taller ... perhaps this spurt is indicative of an overall change in maturity. With the change she looks a bit comical in her baby sink tub, so tonight I decided it was time for the big bath and we plopped her in with Pip.

At first Pip rebuffed the idea of sharing his bath, explaining clearly to me that Vivie's bath was downstairs and this was his bath. But the little man can be convinced of anything reasonable and even he had to admit that she no longer fit in the sink. So he happily shuffled over in the tub and made room for her. Then he proceeded to squirt her incessantly with the Windex bottle (rinsed and filled only with water, toes only Pip!) which is his new favorite thing to do. He prefers actual Windex and will go out of his way to make messes so that when I tell him he needs to clean it up, he smiles broadly at having trapped me at my own game, and requests the "squirter" so that he can properly clean up his mess. Outsmarted again.

Just one other note before I go read in bed (little pleasures). I don't know if this will translate, but I will try. As Pip, Viv, and I were leaving Pip's classroom at school today, I thought I heard Pip say "Thank you" quietly to Nancy, one of our favorite teachers. I thought it was sweet of him to thank her but she hadn't heard, so I asked him to say thank you. He turned back, looked her right in the eye, and said, "Thank you for watching me today!" And with a flourish of a wave, he spun around in his flapped eared hat, fleece mittens, big puffy jacket, reached for my hand, and walked me out of the building. In our wake I could hear Nancy closing the classroom door, remarking on how precious a moment it was. Indeed.

Ok, just one more tale of the day. This one really is from Phil, but I haven't been able to convince him to blog himself, so I have to be his ghostwriter. One of my husband's many qualities is his ability to sing. You have to be extremely cute to get him to do it (or ply him with alcohol). It's smooth and soft and on pitch. He's got an entire arsenal of favorites and Pip quickly learned that this is Daddy's area of expertise. I'm allowed to sing to him when I put him to bed, but if I try to sing anything more advanced than ACBD, Baa Baa Black Sheep, or Twinkle Twinkle, he tells me "No, that's Daddy's song" and redirects me to one of the above-mentioned basics. Anyway, point is this evening Phil came down from putting Pip to bed and said Pip was cute as pie, requesting the "Taven" song. This, Phil smartly discerned was actually "Country Road" by John Denver, which Pip called the Taven song because of the part that goes "almost heaven", which when sung sort of strings as "almos taven". Phil told Pip the song was called Country Road and asked him to listen for the parts in the song when he said those words. Pip snuggled up in his two huge blankets (cuddler supreme) and chuckled all through the song whenever Phil got to the words "Country Road".