Bravo!

Luke has been learning new skills left and right this month at a pace that makes my head spin a bit when I think about everything he can do now that he couldn't just three weeks ago. He can pull himself to standing very easily, crawl across his room in under 10 seconds, and make "T" sounds. The one that I still can't quite believe, though, is that he's obviously starting to understand certain words and phrases we say to him.

His name was the first word he definitely recognized; that was a month or so ago. "No" isn't quite clicking yet (I think when he does react to it he's listening more to my tone of voice than to the actual word--to be honest I rarely had to use the word before he was mobile) but it's close. His newest word, though, is "Bravo!" Our Spanish-speaking nanny taught him how to clap last week, and now whenever someone says "Bravo!" to him (and he feels like it) he'll clap. It's beyond adorable and we're trying to catch it on camera before the novelty wears off.

My little baby is turning into a little boy, and it's going too fast. There are days when it seems like he'll be like this forever and others when it seems that he noticeably grew physically and cognitively overnight.

Stung

Remember back when Juan found a scorpion on our couch? And when I found one in the washing machine? Those were unfortunately just the first two of many ugly, scary little "friends" we've found here in the last two years. Well, tonight my arm looks like this:



because I got stung.

Juan and I were playing with Luke in his room, and when I put my arm down on my knee I felt the sting. It HURT. I haven't been stung by a bee in twenty some-odd years, that's roughly how it felt. The good news is that this type of scorpion's sting is about as dangerous as a bee's, so while Juan did make a point of circling the sting with a pen (and noting how far the redness spread) it's not dangerous in the slightest.

That said, I still kind of can't believe that I was stung by a scorpion.

I'm really not sure what to do about the fact that we've found more of them in Luke's room than in any other part of the house. I don't like having the exterminator spray in there, especially since it's hard to keep him away from the baseboards now that he's crawling, but I also don't want him to get stung. Ugh. We never had to deal with this kind of problem in Maryland.

Done and done

Thank God it's Friday. No, really, THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY. If I had to go back to that school in anything less than 48 hours I would probably go crazy.

(this is where my rant about today's administrative fuckup would go if, you know, I could blog about it. Suffice it to say, there was a fuckup, I will quit if it isn't resolved, and there's nothing I can do about it until people I don't completely trust do what they need to do)

BUT, the silver lining is that today is also the day we booked our tickets to GREECE for our anniversary/medical conference trip in June. It really can't come soon enough.

The cutest thing in the world

I double dog dare you not to agree that this is the cutest thing the world has possibly ever seen.

Moot Point

Well, it seems as though Luke read my last post because he's been waking up at 2:30 for the last three mornings. Oh well, we'll get this "through the night" business down someday, I suppose.
In other news, I've been approached to maybe possibly teach AP English next year. Everything depends on what a couple of other teachers decide to do (one possibly retiring, one probably transferring to a different campus) but if the spot opens up it's mine. I'm afraid to get too excited about this because it's still very uncertain, but since I have to start doing prep work now if I'm going to be ready by next September it's been on my mind pretty much constantly since I found out about it on Monday. It would be huge for me to get this, not only because it would be an amazing challenge in and of itself, but because it will look really good on my resume when we move at some point in the next few years and I have to find another job.

Onward and upward on a number of fronts, it seems.

Advice welcome

I am dying for sleep here. Luke has taken to waking up between 4:00 and 4:30 for the last two weeks, and since it takes him over an hour to go back down and we have to get up by 6:00, no one is getting enough sleep. He's tired and cranky, I'm tired and cranky, and Juan is too bleary eyed to know which way is up.

The good part of this is that two months ago he was regularly waking at 2:30, last month it was 3:30, and my hope is that by May/June he'll be sleeping until it's really time to wake up more than once a week. The bad part, of course, is that we appear to be stuck in this awful pattern until his system matures just that little bit more to stay full an additional 90 minutes overnight.

Most of you readers have kids, so I'm asking for suggestions to help speed things along if at all possible. I'm entertaining all options (including formula) that could help us all get enough rest.

And incidentally

My blog is the number one hit when you Google "babysitter disaster stories." I'm so proud...

Lull

I'm liveblogging straight from parent/teacher night and it's...dull. Many of the parents of my problem students have shown up, many of the parents of my good students have shown up, but it's still slow. Bummer. The one thing that kept me from bursting into tears when I left Luke with the sitter this morning (the first time I've left him for longer than a standard workday and only the second time ever I've not been the one to put him to bed) was the thought that at least I'd be too busy talking to parents to miss my boy. I'll give you one guess as to whether or not it's working.

Can I go home yet?