Everything is going just swimmingly. No more funky bad mood for me. Julian is loads of fun and developing like lightning. His birthday is next Sunday the 13th. Dan and I are getting along just fine. The weather has been sunny and beautiful, well...except for today. We are making good progress on getting the house in order, only a few boxes left to unpack. And my bamboo is being installed tomorrow!

Today is the first day for Julian's babysitter Ashley. So far it's great, Julian's attitude seems to be, "Wow, thanks for getting me my very own girl to play with!" He is out there talking up a storm to her, showing her his toys, etc. Ahhh, I finally have time to update my journal, and if I still have time I'm going to take a nice long hot shower and shave my legs. Maybe I'll even get a chance to put moisturizer on my poor dry scaly body! Woohoo!

No more crawling all over at night for our boy. Maybe he has just been extra tired lately, but now once he lays down, he's DOWN. So I suppose that was just a phase. Just when some behavior freaks me out and I think it will last forever, then it goes away.

Julian is just tons of fun right now. I'm having a ball with him and I'm so damn glad to be home with him at this point in time. I think part of it is that I know that I will be getting a little break from 24/7 baby care on a regular basis, so I appreciate the time I have with him much more. The littlest things make such a huge difference. If I know that I can take a long hot shower or compose an email or talk on the phone uninterrupted on Wednesday at 3:00pm when Ashley comes over, then that just makes life wonderful and my patience increases a thousandfold the rest of the time. Wow, that was a good decision. Yes!

Yesterday I was playing with Julian in his room and Bugs came in from outside. He had been out there for a while, so I said, "Puppy, your ears are cold!" and Julian said "They are?" and I said, "Yeah, they are!" Then a major double-take... "Wait, WHAT did you just say?" Of course, there was no repeating it, but I swear he asked me that clear as day and Dan was even there to hear the whole thing. Too funny.

Two other cute and fairly amazing things from yesterday...

Julian woke up late after we had been out at his Uncle Mike's birthday party the night before. He woke up at 6:00am to pee, but fell asleep in my arms as soon as he finished tinkling. That was repeated at 7:30am, he fell right back asleep while still being held over the toilet.

After a little bit of playing we had a third pee in the toilet and a nice big poop. WHILE he was on the toilet, he started making a hand sign that looked VERY much like the sign that I have been using for potty. Then he looked up at me. I was flabbergasted, but I managed to make the hand sign and say "Potty". He looked at my hand, then when I finished making the sign he grabbed it, like he wanted to see it again. I made it again, and then HE made a baby version with his hand. It was so incredible!

Julian peed in the toilet several more times yesterday, and then when we had friends and family over to watch the Super Bowl later on, he suddenly started making the hand sign. Dan saw it and called me over. I made the sign back to J and he put his arms out to come to me. I took him into the bathroom and held him over the toilet and he sat there very nicely, as though he had to pee. (Normally if he doesn't have to go he will fuss and cry and squirm away from the toilet to let me know.) We sat there for a while, and he didn't pee, but he didn't try to get off either. I was just so happy, I didn't even care. If he signs potty and wants to just sit there very once in a while, that's fine with me. As long as we're communicating. That was so freakin' cool. I hope it wasn't just a fluke. I don't think so. He seems to have all kinds of potty awareness all of a sudden. Right on! It's so fantastic that the potty training AND the signing is paying off. See, I *told* you I'm not crazy!

Oh, another cool thing...when I was about 8 months pregnant with Julian I took Dan to a prenatal yoga class. It was supposed to be a partner class, and it was fun, but Dan twisted his back doing one of the moves. It was bad for him but kind of comedy at the same time. Here were all the pregnant walrus-like women doing yoga, and the strong handsome non-pregnant guy gets a sports injury.

There was a vaguely Scandinavian woman next to me, past her due date. She was taking that one yoga class to try to bring on labor. I really liked her, she was friendly and laid back, and we talked a bit during and after class. She was a doula and also having a home birth. I thought it was kind of sad that I had met someone cool and would probably never see her again, since we didn't exchange numbers or anything, and she was about to have her baby.

Well, fast-forward to yesterday. What a day already, I know! But just wait...

So Dan and I had gone to our local park with Julian and Bugs, played, had a good time. We were walking home and I had a sudden urge to go down a different street from the way that we usually came. Halfway down that street I saw a dog off-leash and coming towards us. His people were out in the street as well, so I called to them that Bugs wasn't too friendly and could they call their dog over? They did, and when we got closer I explained that he had been attacked by an off-leash dog recently and was pretty weird around other dogs.

One thing led to another and we ended up talking to the dog's owners, who were a nice couple playing outside with their two kids, one of whom was only 2 months older than Julian. We were talking and talking, and then when the woman mentioned having a home birth it all came back to me. I said, "Hey, did you take prenatal yoga at X place?" And we cracked up because she remembered Dan twisting his back trying to do the yoga pose. It was her! And that baby was the baby she was waiting for, and Julian was, well, he was Julian, and it was all just too crazy. So we exchanged numbers and we'll probably hang out this Friday with the babes. Isn't that something? A year later I run into her walking in my neighborhood by random chance. What if we hadn't walked down that street? What if they had been inside? What if the dogs hadn't been there to spark a conversation? Fate is really weird. Oh, and she's *Norwegian*!

Damn, it's 4:45 pm already. Guess I had a lot to say. No shower time for me today, boohoo. Those two hours flew by! Well, I spent the first 45 minutes getting Ashley situated. Not like she needed it, but it makes *me* feel better. I guess everything went fine. I hear Julian getting his fuss on a little, but not much. It's the fussy time of day for him, but he and Ashley are reading books right now, so no problem.

Gotta go get dinner planned in the last ten minutes of babysitting. Ciao!