January 2015 Round Up

Starting off 2015 with a bang!  I have been trying to take notes in Memento on certain stories I want to remember to document, and true to my goal for this year, I have completed this months Roundup. The monthly roundup was created by Katie the Scrapbook Lady. It is not only a reminder to journal the stories while they are fresh in your mind but also to do those tasks that can sometimes get out of hand if you let them sit unfinished for long periods of time, like downloading photos, tagging them, and backing them up. I have officially completed all of that. I am hoping to add choosing photos for my PL spread as part of my roundup in the near future, but for now, I am feeling really accomplished for getting all of these other tasks done. So here goes:

JANUARY 2015 ROUNDUP

What We Did:

01. New Year’s Party at the Bahlman’s  03. Mommy and David day at Veteran’s Memorial Park, or as David calls it “different park,” then off to the Winslow’s to help them unpack at their new house  09.  Stopped by House of Chicken and Ribs in Antelope to visit with my old boss Kim  10. Daddy and David day at the International Sportsmen’s Expo  17. Through lots of tears, David’s first time successfully going potty in a public restroom at Joann's  19. Daddy and David day the Sacramento Discovery Museum  31. Jaxson Bahlman’s 4th birthday party.

* I am looking to implement the format used by Green Fingerprint shown here of documenting activities throughout the month on a journaling card. And I am soooooooo jealous of her awesome handwriting!

Watched:

Unbreakable in the move theater

Dallas Buyers Club, Lee Daniel’s The Butler, and Philomena on cable

The return of Downton Abbey and Shameless on TV

Read:

The Godfather by Mario Puzzo

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

 * I am not sure if I want to write more detail on how we liked the movies or books, but I probably will at some point. I think this would offer some insight into our personalities way down the road when David or our grandkids are reading these.

Listened To:

David started singing along to songs we sing to him like "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," to which he sings “weemo way, weemo way.” He is also signing along to songs he hears on the radio like "Stayin’ Alive" (“hi, hi, hi, hi, stay in 'ive, stay in 'ive”), or my personal favorite, Bob Marley’s "Three Little Birds." It was on my iphone shuffle one morning on the way to daycare and I could hear him in the back seat singning “ebery wittle fing, gonna be a'right.” This hit a particular chord in my heart since there was a time in 2011 when I was having a difficult time in my pregnancy. I was headed home to rest, crying and freaking out that I might lose him, and this song came on the radio. Suddenly, a sense of calm came over me, and I knew everything would be alright. Hearing him sing it in the back seat was a great reminder of that moment and that everything truly did turn out alright!

The Stories:

• David is doing excellent with his colors. He knows the colors of the rainbow and even recognizes some of the more difficult colors like white and “grape” for purple. He can count up to 16 and knows his abc’s from the song. We joke about how his mind is a steel trap, but we are finding that he remembers stuff from weeks or months ago, like seeing Jonathan’s old phone sitting on the table, he said, “Daddy says ‘Go ahead’,” which is something Jonathan used to say on his push to talk phone, that he has not had for several months. Or when we went shopping at Joaan’s and he remembered that he got a candy bar for going potty there and wanted to go again. The first time he went there, I lost my keys and was really upset searching for them a few times in the bathroom before I was able to find them at customer service. This time, after we left the bathroom, even though this was two weeks later, he said “Oh, Mommy, your keys!”

• In the second week of January, David started asking to wear big boy underwear. We had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get him out of diapers over the weekends, so I told him no for two days and said we needed to wait for the weekend. By the third day in a row of him asking for them, I figured I better encourage it now while he is showing interest. And he did great!  There have only been a few accidents since then, but we can officially say he is now potty trained! 

• David says “I want” quite a lot. We have noticed this month that he has really embraced “maybe later” as an answer. We may say no to things, but when he replies “maybe later?” and gets a yes, he seems to accept it as ok instead of getting upset like a lot of other kids would. What is truly mind boggling is that, even at 3 years old, he actually understands too that this truly means no for right now may not mean no forever and if he asks again later, we may say yes.

• David is starting to tell us about his dreams when he wakes up. This month is was all about “The lion is up the stairs and I was scaredy.” He has been talking about the lion for days, saying “He would eat me in a minute,” or “He made a mess and Daddy had to clean it up.” We started to tell him how Reba and Maggie would protect him or how he could tell the lion to go away. So now he tells us in a deep, Damien like voice