It’s hard to believe sometimes that we have been together here in Florida for almost 6 years.  D’s in his 8^th year of work for a small engineering company that focuses on research and development in high-tech cooling.  Excitingly, this year they have begun to move toward production on a personal cooling unit for the Department of Defense.  D stays busy at work.  Just this morning I asked him what he thinks he’ll be working on today, and he said, “Oh, one of five projects I have going on right now.”  I’m glad he can keep it all straight.  If you’re wondering what a personal cooling unit is, it is a unit about the size of a Pringles can that pumps chilled water through a vest.

Besides work, D is in his third year of being a Deacon at our church and continues to upkeep our house, yard and vehicles.  He’s quite handy.  I even come to him with baby dilemmas and he usually has ingenious solutions.  He recently announced to me that he would like to start a blog.  I was curious to hear as I know he’s not a big fan of social networking or writing.  Well, it certainly will not be a blog with cute pictures and witty quips.  He’s got something highly technical in mind.  My explanation of it would not do it justice, so I’ll let it speak for itself as soon as he’s got it up and running.  A and I have to remind him every once in awhile how much we like spending time with him, so we get some attention too amongst all his pursuits.

Speaking of A, she is definitely a daddy’s girl.  She makes some of her happiest noises when the garage door opens at the end of the day and I say, “Guess what?  Daddy’s home!”  She loves to play with him and read books with him.  I think we’re beginning to realize that she’ll quiet down better for him in the middle of the night too.  It’s fun to see her start to pick up some of D’s mannerisms as she spends time with him.  I’m sure she’s picking up some from me too, but they’re not as noticeable to me.  A’s a very active, sweet eight month old.  She loves to feed herself little finger foods, rock on hands and knees, shake her head back and forth, scoot backwards, finger tags, swing in the backyard and interact with people.  We worry that D and I, a couple of introverts, have a social child on our hands.  I’ve asked, “What are we going to do if she wants to go out all the time and play with friends?”  I guess we’ll continue being happy, exhausted parents.  Right now our main source of exhaustion with her is getting her to sleep.  A has gone from a consistent 8pm bedtime and sleeping through the night, to going to bed late, waking up a few times per night and resisting napping.  It’s trying for us, and most “sleep methods” we’ve tried just weren’t created for our little girl.  Hopefully it is just a phase!

I started the year working fulltime in Human Resources and pregnant.  Now I’m a stay-at-home mom.  Someone asked me if I’ve missed my previous work at all.  My response?  “Not for even a minute.”  I think it a privilege to be home with my daughter.  We certainly have days when we don’t seem to click, but even then I’m glad I’m the one caring for her.  Someone described this phase as the shortest years but the longest days of your life.  Ha, ha.  I can certainly agree sometimes.  Besides baby care I try to squeeze in some sewing, household management, singing at church, time with other moms and cooking.  We’ve been enjoying what we call Gourmet Fridays recently.  For some reason by the end of the week I’m highly motivated to clean the house and cook.  This motivation results in more gourmet cuisine than we eat the other nights of the week.  I think it rather counter-cultural.  When most other young families are probably reaching for the phone to call pizza delivery, I’m dishing up greens, portobello on sourdough and salmon.  If she likes to eat, maybe we can convince A when she’s older to stay home with us on Friday nights!

This year we spent Thanksgiving with D’s parents and sister in Mexico.  For Christmas we will stay home and probably have Christmas dinner with some friends.  We're looking forward to church services and a long weekend.  D and I will most likely spend our extra free time working on a house project of two.  We need to build a new compost area and our bathroom is in process (slowly) of getting remodeled.