Mel's Fantastical Insights

So this last week I cleaned my room, from the closet to the nightstands and everywhere in between. Daniel enjoyed being in the closet a bunch and also loved being able to lay on my bed all day. He loves laying on the pillows and then flopping on the blankets and well really, he just likes moving. On a more serious note, Jason and I have tired on listening to annoying music and have once again switched to listening to NPR. Jason has more opportunity to listen since he drives more often and frankly Daniel doesn't appreciate that NPR is not singing Veggie Tunes every few minutes. The funny thing is that now we are news junkies. Jason knows everything that is going on about everything. From the problems on the Mexican border with the bandits, and all the campaign issues, and has followed the economic disasters faithfully. It is the first time in our marriage that I am the ill-informed one. I have to be honest, it is kind of hard for me to be in this position. Hence I too have...

Daniel did really well during the eight hours of Conference that was on over the weekend. He folded his arms when every speaker got up to address the congregation especially when President Monson spoke. I told him Pres. Monson was talking to us about temples and so he would point at the temple picture and make a horse sound which we aren't sure where that came from but at least he is using his imagination. He was just convinced that everyone was praying the whole time. The music was inspiring to him as well and caused him to rock out every time they sang. Daniel did have a hard time on Sunday morning so Jason built him a fort. The fort held some challenges. We tried building it with the kitchen chairs but Daniel just wanted to sit on them. So we moved the couch and Jason built a better fort between the couch and the chair. We gave him a flashlight and his favorite thing was to come in and out of the "door." The only truly hard thing about Daniel is how particula...

This week we went to the doctor, all of us actually. Daniel went and he is 23 lbs and 31 inches tall. I went and we do indeed have a baby growing inside me. Jason also went but I don't remember what for so I guess it doesn't matter. Anyway, our pediatrician told me that Daniel is at the age where he will start to climb. Literally the second we walked through the door he started. He now tries to climb over the arms of the couch, on the coffee table, the chairs, the shoe rack, and his table and chairs. So far no casualties yet but I am sure eventually we will end up with broken stuff or a broken Daniel. We discovered today that the main reason for his climbing is that Daniel wishes for everything in the house to be used as a slide. I think that if he had his way half the house would be a playground while the other house would just be full of his drinks and snacks.

So Daniel is really becoming quite funny. This last week he has been working on his verbal skills. At last count he can say about 50 words on his own and then he can say many more with lots of prompting. Sometimes he knows what word comes next in our promptings and he shouts those ones out with gusto. Colors are his new learning this week and so far most everything is blue, a few things are black and fewer things are red. As to not confuse him we try to mainly ask him what color blue things are and then we applaud his correct answer. Cars are also a big ticket item at the Webb house. He loves trucks, cars, and especially lawn mowers. Wednesday is my least favorite day of the week since the landscape guys come and do maintenance that day. The lawn mowers are here from 8am to 3pm since our apartment complex is large and Daniel insists that we watch them, the whole time. We set a compromise to we can watch them if they are near our building but he just is so obsessed with lawn m...

Daniel has graduated to a booster seat and now sits with us at the table for about twenty seconds longer than he did in his high chair. It is an improvement though because now we say "would you like to sit in your big boy chair?" and of course he comes running. We'll see how long it lasts. I give it about a week. As many of you know I have been waiting somewhat impatiently for Daniel to start talking, and really I just want him to make animal noises because I think that is so funny when kids do that. So last night at dinner Daniel of course had thrown his on the floor and we were trying to get him to say words and noises. He made a "ruff" sound for the dog, a "meow" type sound for the cat and then we asked him what a horse said. He smiled and out of his mouth came this shrill type of neigh (which was the very first time he'd ever responded to the horse question) and it was awesome. Apparently our laughing encouraged this shriek from continu...

So a few months ago Jason and I decided to try to make our lives a little greener. Since that time we have sold one of our cars (the gas guzzler)and bought bikes and a trailer, we are trying to use reusable grocery bags, and switched away from using bottled water everywhere we go. We found these cool Nalgene bottles (reusable plastic bottles)that have been awesome for us. The big problem with them has been that Daniel has been fascinated with them. He has almost perfected dumping huge amounts of water on his face while trying to drink from my bottle which is pretty impressive to watch. So today, we went up to REI to get some more biking stuff and saw that Nalgene makes a toddler water bottle. Imagine, I thought to myself, would I really add another sippy cup to Daniel's infinite collection? The answer was easy when I saw his reaction to the bottle I was holding in my hand, euphoria. He got to pick out his color bottle, he picked blue just like mine, and carried it up almost...

Sometimes I wonder if we are insane for spending as much money on baby stuff as we do. As a student of history I wonder how anyone made it without "signing time", or plastic blocks, or disposable diapers! How any baby survived without diaper ointment and how mother's still had time to do anything else I guess is something I will never truly understand. We purchased a Chariot Cougar 2 (basically a bike trailer) today after much deliberation. Granted it is really cool and avocado green at that, but only time will tell if it was worth the money. Daniel of course will never care nor understand why his ride behind my bike cost twice as much as my actual bike. Nor will he know how much trouble I went through to get the green trailer despite the popularity of the red one. Even though it takes up the whole trunk of our little subaru, hopefully Daniel will enjoy the view of my back tire from his seat.