I'll have to keep this quick since the little one is sleeping, and heaven only knows how long I've got before he wakes up. He's at least figured out that nighttime is for sleeping, and he routinely sleeps six to eight hours at night. That's pretty nice. We're going to start having him sleep in his own room now. Should be interesting. He may sleep well at night, but not so during the day. He'll be up every hour or two, eat a lot, nod off for ten minutes, then be back up and want to eat some more. It makes it rather difficult to get much done because while he's awake, he (of course) wants to be held. Not to mention that he thinks I'm a buffet, and he wants to take his time to let the first course settle before going back for seconds. I might as well go topless with how often I have to whip 'em out. It's easy to think I'm exaggerating, but when Vanessa and Rachel were here, they were shocked to see him eat three times in ninety minutes. That's not something he does all day long (thank God); I would think there was something wrong if he did. I'm trying to work towards him eating just once while he's awake, and then sleeping for several hours. I think that would be better for both of us. But we'll see. His body knows what it needs better than I do, so we'll go by that rather than the clock.

   Steve went out of town for two days this week, and it was just me, the baby, and the puppies for the first time. Of course that's the status quo while he's at work, but it felt different this time. The beginning of the first day was the worst. The idea that I was going to have to work out how to meet everyone's needs on my own was rather daunting. But the idea proved to be worse than the reality, thankfully. It really wasn't so bad. Not that I'm in a hurry to repeat it. But it did bring home to me how much I rely on him for little things like taking the dogs out while I'm dealing with the baby, being there to hold and entertain Will while I do other things like fix dinner or work on a home improvement project. I feel like we've made leaps and bounds in that area lately, and I'm very happy about that. Tami and Ira came up last weekend and spent some quality time with us. Remember what I said about two blogs ago, thinking I should ask them up and have Tami watch the rugrat while Ira and I and Steve do some projects? :D Yea baby, yea! Tami got her grandbaby fix while the rest of us put in a new bathroom vanity in the upstairs bathroom. For any of you who have seen it, you'll understand that was a long time coming and much needed. After we were done with that, Steve and Ira jumped on the ball and installed some latice in the front yard for our new wisteria plants to climb. Add to that the new paint and hardware on the kitchen cabinets, and we're talking some noticeable changes. There are certainly more things we need to get done, but all in good time. I do what I can when I can. My mom is coming next week and is staying almost two weeks, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a lot accomplished while she's here. I have a lot of painting I want to get done (yes, it seems we're always painting something) and it's hard to keep clean so I can drop everything and take care of lil' Will when he's feeling needy. That's where Mom comes in. I'll put her to work. She can have her own quality grandbaby time, and maybe she can do a little cooking too. She's quite a good cook and is always coming up with tasty dishes. But it's really up to her. She may have her own ideas about what she wants to do while she's here.

   Will has started doing this new trick. He knows (like any child) that crying will bring attention. So when he's in his carseat or bassinette and he's fussing, I'll go get him. Well, when the little tyke sees me standing there, putting the burp cloth on my shoulder to pick him up, he gets the biggest smile on his face. His expression is the perfect "I WIN!!" that it always makes me laugh. I just try not to let him abuse his powers over me.