Barry’s Daily Web News

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Sean starts pre-school on Monday! Today we had the meeting with his teacher, the speech therapist, the school psychologist, and the occupational therapist. I spent most of the meeting playing with Sean and Ethan on the floor, so that Cortney could concentrate on the meeting. Sean qualifies for both his delay in speech, and also a delay in life skills. The teacher set goals for the coming year. Sean will be working on washing his hands, feeding himself at snack time, practice dressing, and working on toilet training, among other things. On Thursdays, Sean will be working with the speech therapist. His school hours will be 1:00 to 3:30, Monday through Thursday. The school provides a bus service, where the bus comes directly to the house, and signs off Sean as he enters and leaves the bus. But for the time being, Cortney plans to drive Sean over. Sean will be eligible for pre-school until he starts kindergarten.

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Sean is 35 months old today. One more month to the big three years!

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Sean missed out on a trip to the park this evening. I was all set to go, but he didn’t want to hold my hand to walk over, so we ended up staying home. It seems he likes holding Cortney’s hand, but not mine. When we walked over last night, he had no problem holding Cortney’s hand. I think the problem is that I have let him walk over without holding his hand, and now he expects not to, but only with me.

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Cortney bought a 128Mb card for a digital camera last night. I didn’t get around to installing until last night. We had been using an 8Mb card, so that means we can take 16 times as many pictures. I bumped up the display quality to the next setting, and we can still take over 200 pictures before filling up the card.

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Floppy went back to the vet today for her water injection. You can tell the injection is working, since afterwards she was much more active and was eating more. I was worried about her this morning. She was congested, probably from a cat equivalent of a cold virus. Her snoring woke me up this morning, and she was wheezing slightly. Tonight, despite a few sneezes, she has been breathing without any problem.

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It was sunny again today, so we walked over to the nearby park after dinner. Sean climbed up the slide on his own today, for the first time (click to enlarge):

This picture also shows a nice sunset.

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I’ve been using the Radio program for over a year now. One of the interesting things I can do is easily create a link for this day last year. If you follow this link, you can find that last year I was writing about Sean using the slide on his own for the first time, and Cortney and me having a glimpse of what it would be like to have two kids.

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It wasn’t forecast, but we had plenty of dark clouds, and even some rain. So rather than go to the park, we decided to go to Costco. A funny thing happened on the way in. They had both red and blue colored shopping carts. I asked Sean which color he wanted to sit in. He didn’t say anything, so I just put him in the nearest cart, which happened to by red. At this point, Sean pitched a fit, saying he wanted the blue cart. So I grabbed a blue cart, lifted Sean out of the red cart, and put him into the blue cart. Sean was now perfectly happy. I didn’t realize he had such a strong preference for a color.

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We were tired after our trip to the zoo. We stayed longer than we normally do, and didn’t get home until 2:30. Sean and Ethan both had an afternoon nap, but they were both a little on the cranky side this evening. I just relaxed and watched a little football.

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Since the weather has been nice this week, we decided to go to the zoo today. We arrived early, and beat the crowd. Most of the animals were out and about when we arrived. We also had a special treat. We were allowed to see a feeding and training session of the zoo’s mountain lion. I’ve never seen the mountain lion at the zoo, since the lion lives in one of those natural exhibits that give too much opportunity for the animal to hide. The mountian lion gobbled down balls of meat just smaller than my fist. I’d hate to meet one of these in the wild. Sean’s favorite animals were the giraffes and the tiger. He really wanted to see the giraffes, but he was more excited when he saw the tiger. As the tiger walked by us in the cage, Sean waved and said “Hi, tiger!”. Here’s a picture of Sean sitting in the lap of a gorilla statue (click to enlarge):

You can also see where Sean scraped his knee after he tripped on the pavement. We put Ethan in the carrier, and so he slept most of the time. He did perk up around lunch time. Here’s a picture:

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Sean had a cute moment this evening. We put his evening milk, with a pack of instant breakfast mixed in, into a sippy cup. Sean can use a normal cup without any problems, but we haven’t graduated to the idea of him carrying a sugary milk around the house in an open cup. Lately, when he gets down to the bottom of the cup, he asks for us to take the top off so that he can drink all of it. I typically say to him “be careful, don’t spill it”. Tonight, as Sean handed me the cup, he looked at me and said “I be careful”. I think he is starting to grasp the first person pronoun.

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Sean seemed sleepy after lunch, so I decided to try having him take a nap in his own bed. We had been using the crib for Sean’s afternoon nap. Sean didn’t have any problem at all with the bed. That allowed me to put Ethan down in the crib for his afternoon nap. They both slept for three hours straight, giving Cortney and me some time on our own.

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I had to weed the yard today. Rain + one week sunny weather = weeds. Sean helped me when I was in the back yard. He was only pulling off one leaf at a time. I tried to explain the concept of pulling the plant up by its root, but he was having more fun pulling the leaves. At least he was putting the leaves in the bag.

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I think I jinxed Ethan yesterday. Last night, he broke the streak of sleeping through the night after taking a bath. Ethan ended up getting up in the middle of the night. He has some diarrhea, so maybe his stomach was bothering him.

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This afternoon, we went to what I call the “birthday” park. This is the park where Sean celebrated his two year birthday. Sean was starting to get bored with our local park, and so I wanted him to go to a different park. The “birthday” park has more swings and slides than our local park, and Sean took advantage of it. It was a nice warm afternoon, so Cortney, Ethan and I had a good time as well.