The latest

Here's Roan fresh out of the bath, wrapped up in her special flower power towel (notice the bee, so cute!) in her proud papa's arms. Roan and Arwen have been spending more time together lately, especially in the wee hours. Since she's had the World's Longest Running Cold, all the 4 am wakeups were just killing me. So he's taken them over completely. And with such enthusiasm! Aaaahhh...



I've been sneaking in some knitting for my little cutie pie. I knit her up a sweater, pictured here, though it's not the best picture ever. It was supposed to be a picture of her sweater but someone put her hand in the way (oops!). It doesn't have nearly as much growing room in it as I intended, but oh well. It'll fit her great for the next few weeks! Better pictures to follow. And I just finished a hat with earflaps to match it today. It is so cute on her... little pom poms and all. I got called in for jury duty so I had plenty of time sitting around.

So other than jury duty (which was educational but not so fun) the big excitement this week is Lolli & G-Pop's visit starting Wednesday. They're coming in to spend some time with Roan and let Arwen and I have some quality Valentine's time together. I think we might go snowboarding!

Roan is doing just great, aside from being sick with a cold and cough. She is toddling all over the place, as you can see in the videos. And she is babbling constantly, though it's 99% unintelligible. She never fails to say "dada" when she sees Arwen, but sometimes on the first or second try with me, I am also "dada" until I reminder her, and then she says "mamama," like "Oh yeah, I knew that!" She loves her books - whether she's pulling them all off the shelf and onto the floor, or flipping through them, or being read to. When we read together, she always likes to turn the pages. She seems to take the job seriously.

I've been doing some reading lately. The book I borrowed from the library is called "Redirecting Children's Behavior," and I love it because 1) it's very thin and short!, 2) it covers ages birth to 18, and 3) it articulates a parenting philosophy we both agree with. I picked it up on the recommendation of Eric and Pam, whose parenting style we always marvel at whenever we spend time with them and their son Gunther. The basic idea it offers is a way to deal with misbehavior or annoying behavior in such a way that it offers the child choices to make and a sense of control over themselves, while taking the frustration out of the equation for the parent.

Roan's still rather young for most of the techniques, but I get the sense that she will be challenging us soon, and I want to be ready with some tools that are constructive rather than reactive. One of the main things the book says that I strongly agree with, is that as parents our job is to gradually work ourselves out of a job. If we do well, we raise confident decision makers who need us less and less over time. Such a philosophy focuses on helping a child to feel motivated from within to make good decisions, rather than the parent imposing control from the outside. I think it's pretty consistent with the way both Arwen and I were raised. Even though our childhoods were very different from each other, I think all our parents had the same thought in the backs of their minds. Anyway, it sounds good enough in theory that I think it's worth a try!

Well I think I'm going to retire for the evening. Now that Roan is down, it's prime wind-down time for Arwen and me, and he has just informed me that my presence is needed! Good night all.