The Small Family     

Well, the title of this post comes from my most recent activity--not the biggest activity of the week. I spent Sunday morning making homemade strawberry jam, while Chris kept Theo entertained. Twenty-eight jars of jam! I was jammin’ to try to get it all done before Theo’s nap! ;-)

But that wasn’t all we did on Sunday--we also spent an hour at the park in the morning. Would’ve spent longer, as it’s a lovely park, but Theo is still in his bee/fly phobia phase, and after about an hour, he decided the bees were lurking and waiting for him. Our strategy is to more or less ignore this (because if we try to reason with him, he gets hysterical and the whole situation gets worse), so we just left the park. Ah well, it was a nice hour…and I got some good pix. The point was for me to play with the lens and flash I rented to shoot a wedding tomorrow (with Amber and Kim), and I did accomplish that. I later practiced inside shots by photographing the dogs while Theo napped, so you’ll see several Luna and Zoe pix in this week’s album, too.

Before I forget--in case anyone didn’t hear the big news earlier in the week, Chris and I are expecting Baby #2! See the “And Then There Were Four” blog post for all the details, but in short, I’m 9 ½ weeks along, and as of my nine-week ultrasound, the baby had a good, strong heartbeat and was measuring exactly the right size. Yay!! I’m still having morning sickness and feeling very tired, but it’s getting a bit better. Some days I don’t feel very sick at all, though others I feel pretty blah. Should just be another few weeks of feeling icky, and then smooth sailing until I get big as a whale and uncomfortable. I have a tiny belly right now--you can see it if I’m in my spandex gym pants (Theo kindly informed me that my pants were “way, way too tight!!” the other day), but if I’m in regular clothes, you can’t see anything.

Our other weekend activity was a short trip to Santa Cruz and San Jose. Auntie Lisa, Uncle Chris, and Cason were in town visiting Lisa’s dad (who lives in Santa Cruz), so we drove down Friday to see them. Chris and Theo spent Friday with Grandma Kathy and Papa while I drove “over the hill” to Santa Cruz to spend the afternoon with Lisa and Cason. (Chris D. flew in Friday night, as he recently started a new job and couldn’t take much time off.) Lisa, Cason, and I went to downtown Capitola for some yummy Mexican food, and we intended to go to the beach, but we ended up wandering around town instead, hoping Cason would fall asleep. (He didn’t oblige, but he got a nap later, so all was well.) I had intended to take a bunch of pictures of him, but the only place to take them was in the Mexican restaurant, with its rather garish décor and wall color, so I can’t say they’re the best pictures I’ve ever taken, but I think I got some cute ones anyway. It’s hard not to get a cute picture of Cason, as he is crazy cute!!! And he likes me--he let me hold him a bunch!!

I joined Grandma K, Papa, and clan for dinner on Friday night, and then Chris, Theo, and I went to the hotel for the night. Which was…interesting. Theo was pretty tired, so he went to bed quickly, but our hotel neighbors were so loud!! They were slamming doors until almost midnight--I was so irritated! I finally got to sleep around midnight, when the slamming and thumping stopped, only to be woken up at 4:15am by Theo announcing, “Daddy’s awake!” Well no, Daddy and Mommy really weren’t awake until then…but we were after that! We couldn’t get Theo to go back to sleep (big shock--he never goes back to sleep if he wakes up early in a hotel), so we just tried to function on four hours of sleep. Zzzzz….

As soon as it was light out, we got ready and headed out to breakfast at Hobee’s, a healthy-food restaurant in the Bay Area that we love. And then we drove…and drove…and drove…to try to get Theo some more sleep. It worked--he napped on and off, and we had a lovely three-hour drive through the Santa Cruz mountains and down to Watsonville, where we found a fruit and veggie stand with fantastic prices on produce! We got fresh corn, avocados, artichokes (of course--Watsonville is the artichoke capital of the world, I believe!), cherries (for Grandma Diane, who loves them), and strawberries (for our jam).

At noon we headed back to Lisa’s dad’s house, as they were having an open house for people to come visit. Auntie Jeanette was there, as well as a bunch of Lisa’s family that I know but rarely get to see. Lots of yummy Armenian food, courtesy of Lisa’s dad (he’s an awesome cook!) and mom, and we had a great time visiting. We had to leave a bit earlier than planned, as Theo got pretty tired and was starting to get feisty by around 2:30, but it was still a nice visit. And he took a two-hour nap on the 3.5-hour drive home, so that was lovely!

Preschool continues to go well, although Theo is settling in, feeling comfortable, and pushing the boundaries--as we expected he would. Apparently his teachers got to see his feisty side on Thursday. Long story short, this came about due to a dispute about a musical instrument--which should be of no surprise to anyone who knows Theo! The teachers have a cymbal they use to call the kids to circle for stories, and Theo evidently thought he should be able to play the cymbal. No amount of discussion would convince him otherwise, and apparently he got rather heated about it. Ms. Dorothy, the head teacher, was smiling when she told me about it and said, “He definitely has a temper!” Yup, indeed--I do not dispute that.

The funny thing about Theo is, I don’t know why he hasn’t yet figured out that no matter how hard he pushes, if a grown-up says no, it means no. Chris and I are not overly strict parents in terms of having a lot of rules--we believe in giving kids a lot of freedom to explore, where appropriate, so we’re not the type to set a lot of arbitrary rules about every little thing. That said, we do have rules in our house, and we expect him to follow them. They’re simple things, such as treating the dogs kindly, not biting or hitting the furniture, not playing with electrical sockets, etc. You get the idea--we don’t spend our time dictating every little thing he does, but we set certain major rules that we expect to be followed. And we have never once backed down on those rules. No matter how tired we are, we enforce them consistently every time, because both of us know full well that all it would take was one time of us backing down for Theo to feel as if he has the upper hand in the household. So we have spent three years consistently enforcing the rules that are important to us--and yet he is still convinced that if he pushes enough, things will eventually go his way. It boggles the mind, really. I think an outsider would look at it and say, “Hmm, his parents must let him get away with whatever he wants”--and that’s so not the case. We’ve always made our rules very clear and enforced them--he just chooses to try to push it. Strong will, that one…

It’ll be interesting to see what his sibling’s temperament is like. I’m not going to know what to do if I get one of those kids that you just look at, and he/she stops what they’re doing.

Anyway, at least we’re in good company--his preschool teachers are getting tested, too!

And so wraps up our week. Hope you are all having a nice summer so far!