The Happenings

Here's what we've been up to.

-The radio silence has been partially due to a lovely flu bug making it's rounds in the Lewis household. First Dallin had it, then Dorothy. I thought I was off the hook when I went a week without getting it, but I just spent last night getting reacquainted with my Sunday dinner. Rats. But I'm definitely feeling better now. Hats off to you ladies who feel like this when you're pregnant. Yucky.

-We're not big Olympics watchers, but it's been fun to turn it on every so often. My favorite moment came yesterday when we were watching the overtime period of the USA/Canada hockey game (AWESOME game, BTW). Dallin and I were trying to explain to Dorothy that hockey is a sport like basketball and football-- both sports that she is a little bit more familiar with. After the explanation, Dallin asked, "So, Dorothy, do you want to play sports? It's really fun." She thought for a second, then said, "No, Daddy, I want to stay home. Do-tee no want to play sports." Ha! It was hilarious. We kept trying to talk her into it, and she just kept saying, nope, she wants to stay home.

-Coming from a speech and language background, it's really fun for me to watch Dorothy's language development. Right now, she's still using a lot of third person ("Dorothy hungry"), but she is starting to experiment. Today we were playing peek-a-boo, and she kept saying "Where did me go?" All very normal, but still fun.

-Dallin just finished a round of presentations, and he is almost all ready for his upcoming conference in Albuquerque, so it has been really nice to see him around the house more. : )
I think I often take the flexibility of Dallin being a student for granted, even if there are bouts of extreme busyness. I hardly got any sleep last night between getting reacquainted with my Sunday dinner, like I mentioned earlier, and Dorothy waking up in the middle of the night (grrr! but atleast that's super rare). Between all of that, I hardly slept. Dallin, good guy that he is, got up with Dorothy in the morning (and in the middle of the night) and took care of Simon while I slept for two hours. Then he went to the store to buy me saltines and didn't get to school until 10:30. Most husbands aren't able to be so flexible. I'm making a more concerted effort to really appreciate this stage in life. There are so many benefits to student life that aren't readily visible.

-Dorothy is almost potty trained. I've heard so many potty training horror stories that it really doesn't seem fair and I feel a little guilty about how easy this has been. If you want the gritty details, still no #2 in the toilet, but she's nice enough to ask for a diaper to do her business in rather than having an accident of that nature : ). #1 has been a smashing success.
It's been fun figuring Dorothy out. One thing that I learned about her is that if I push anything too much, it generally backfires. If I encourage vegetables too much, they are suddenly unappealing. But if I leave them on her plate with a brief thought about how excited I am to eat mine, she'll totally eat them and love them. It's been the same way with potty training. We bought her undies and a little toilet seat, made it available, and then quickly learned that it was best to leave it alone. And it worked. She won't go if we ask her to sit on the toilet, but she will very independently go into the bathroom when she has to go and do it all by herself, preferably with neither of us even peeking in. She hates it if I ask her if she has to go because she wants to "self do it", but I guess she knows herself pretty well because there's only been a few accidents.
This is bizarrely easy. It's definitely not my parenting, I think it's more a combination of Dorothy's personality and using cloth diapers.
She's turning out to be a very opinionated, self-assured, and independent-minded little person and I'm learning to really love it.

That's us! I hope you're all doing well, staying healthy and having fun, dear family and friends!