Fun with Sun

Can't decide if this was cruel or genius?  

At least it was a way to direct him away from potential hazards without having to get up and follow him around.

Costume

8:02PM on October 30 and I just finished Daniel's Halloween costume.  I'd be willing to bet this is the earliest I'll ever finish a costume...

Pictures coming tomorrow!

Fall Artwork

Here is the artwork from daycare from the end of September through now.  The week themes were apples, trees, leaves, pumpkins, and "spooky."

As you can probably tell, Danny just always has some sort of paint on his toe nails.  No point it trying to wash it all off.  

Fun!

Pictures from Tom's phone

I've been in rehearsal/meetings of some kind until 4:30 or 5 every day and then I head back to school for musical rehearsal by 5:30.  Needless to say, I've been missing the boy quite a bit.  I get to see him for about an hour only each day...awful.  BUT, Tom usually sends me some pictures of their evening shenanigans.  

The first to are when it was suggested to Danny that he eat some peas.

Tom captioned this one "I surrender...I hate peas!"

This picture was from bath time last night.  Apparently he has now got the hang of splashing and there was water everywhere!  I missed out on the fun, but after the dance tonight until 10, I'm off until Sunday morning!

Maestro Daniel

Start 'em young!

Morning stroll

Thanks for the nice blanket with lots of toys to play with.  I think I'll go play with the cabinets instead.

Yeehaw!

Oh my goodness.  Someone put this too big cowboy hat on the boy.  It was nearly impossible to get a picture since he just wanted to grab it and eat it.  But...it was amazing.

On the Move

This little toot has been on the move for a couple weeks now.  He hasn't fully figured out how to crawl, but he can get where ever he needs to go.  He can scoot off the carpet and into the hallway.  His parents better pay close attention now!

What you see in the video is pretty much our entire living room, so he can't go too far, but he always manages to find our computer cords.

He is also starting to put more weight on his legs.  The pediatrician says she thinks he'll be pulling to stand any day now.

I stood him up and put him in this position, but he stayed there for awhile.  Now all he has to do is figure out how to climb into that position.  He was practicing yesterday.

How did this happen so fast?

6 month stats

Daniel had his 6 month check up (and shots) yesterday.  Here are the stats...

Weight: 21 lbs, 2oz.  93%
Height: 27 in. 67%
Head: 17.75 in.  82%

So after being born average, in the 50-60th percentiles, and then jumping up to the high 90 percentiles, he seems to be becoming a bit more normal sized.  That said, he's still a big kiddo!

Little Pumpkin

Obligatory pumpkin patch photo overload ahead!

This is a much happier activity than watching a presidential debate anyway.

And Danny is ready to change the world!

And if you think this is bad, just wait until Christmas!

Random Photos

Here are a few random photos from yesterday and today...

Investigating the grass at the park.

Eating a piece of frozen banana from this mesh feeder thing.  It looks like a giant pacifier, but it's a mesh basket that you fill with food.  A friend from school got it for us.  It's messy but keeps him occupied and happy.  He had just finished a serving of peas but was still hungry.  Enter banana.

And finally, when Dad was about to scoop him up as a little burrito in a blanket last night.

Costco Trip

It's no secret that Daniel is heavy.  Quite heavy.  Since he's a master sitter upper these days, we decided to try out sitting in the shopping cart.

At first he seemed to say, "Uh, did you guys mean to put me in here?"

"Dad, are you sure this is safe?"

"I hope you aren't planning to just leave me here!"

Never really managed to get a picture of a smile, but he was pretty happy/amazed at this new method of transportation.

He's such a big kid!

Also, we bought size 4 diapers...

Breakfast

Scrambled eggs are delicious, nutritious, fun, and (best of all) messy!

Work Day Naps

No daycare today and Dad is in New Mexico again = take your baby to work day.

Can I please just do this every day?  I know I won't get a lot done, but I don't care :-).

Hide and Seek

This little toot was playing with the clean sheets before we put them on the bed. 

Photoshoot

Tom had a photoshoot with a boy and his rabbit.

They are just too much :-).

Early Morning Playtime

Well Daniel read my last blog post and agreed that we didn't spend enough time together.  He came up with a solution...wake up at 4:30!  Lots of quality time together.  Kicking in bed, practicing making loud noises, and finally getting up around 5:30 and playing in the living room!

There are worse ways to enjoy my coffee..

Of course after being awake at 4:30, he fell asleep in the car on the way to daycare at 7 but woke up as soon as the car stopped.  So he had a 5 minute power nap.  Hopefully Liana can convince him to take a nice morning nap.

Gotta thank this little critter for coming up with a solution for our lack of playtime recently.

Annoying Mom Vent

This isn't really a Daniel post.  This is more of a Molly venting post because oh my gosh, I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed at work.  I'll try to interject old pictures of Daniel throughout to keep it interesting.  However, please feel free to not read this because it's mostly going to be me complaining.

I can't figure out if I'm feeling so overwhelmed because my job is crazy AND I have a baby or if I've just never had this much going on at my job before.  It might be a combination of the two.  All I want to do is make music with kids and spend time with Daniel.  I never knew how complicated that would be...

I have six different ensembles that I'm prepping for concerts.  Of those six, three meet after school.  That's a lot...I'm fairly certain more than I've had before.  I think at Palo Verde the most I had was five.  Six ensembles is a lot to plan for, manage, and rehearse.  It's a lot of practice tracks to make, music to teach, and people to manage.  My ensembles range in age from 5 years old in Maui Youth Choir to 65 years old in Seabury Faculty Choir.  I couldn't love what I do with these choirs more, but I worry six ensembles is a bit much for one person to handle.

Then on top of that, I have the musical.  So far this week I've been in rehearsal every night, which means three nights in a row of not being home for dinner and bedtime.  It sucks, to put it lightly.  We're 6 weeks in and only 4 weeks to go on the musical.  Sometimes that 4 weeks seems really daunting, but if I go one week at a time, I can do it.  When I'm at musical rehearsal, I LOVE it..the kids are incredible.  But leaving home, only getting to spend an hour with my kid each day, and putting a lot of work on Tom is rough.  Plus Tom is traveling to the mainland once a month so I have weeks where poor Danny has to come with me to rehearsal and miss his bedtime.

Then there's putting together and rehearsing the band for the musical.  Ugh.  I don't feel qualified to do it, so I don't want to do it, so I put it off.  Logical, right?  Blah.  It weighs on my shoulders.

Another thing I've been putting off is organizing my choir trip to Oahu in the spring.  I should have already had a parent meeting and have had money due, but I don't even have a firm itinerary or cost yet.  Because when am I supposed to plan?  I'm teaching two new piano classes at school too, which require planning, grading, etc.  I feel like I can't even schedule time to pump, let alone plan a trip.

And then there's student council...that's all I'm going to say about that.

It's just super daunting to look at my calendar and see EVERY weekend from now until Christmas taken up with something school related.  It's scary to see my to do list remain long as time slips by and deadlines pass.  And most importantly, it's NO FUN to only see my kid for an hour or two each day.  It's not right.

The good news in all of this is that my program is growing and my kids are absolutely ridiculous this year.  Teaching them is the easiest and best part of my day.  I can't believe how much I get to laugh, sing, and grow with these students.  Sure, they still can't handle difficult music and their tone isn't where I want it, but they are growing and learning.  My upper schoolers are going to tackle an SATB piece for the first time!  Progress.

When I found out we were going to have little Daniel, I said "I'm going to try teaching full time for a year.  If it doesn't work, I'm going to ask to be part time."  I'm curious if how I'll feel about all this after the musical, because right now I'm very tempted to go ask to be part time.  I would only teach US Chorus, MS Chorus, and 6th grade.  No advisement, no two piano classes.  That sounds great, except then I realize that I'd still want to do my after school acapella group and faculty choir.  And I'd still do Maui Youth Choir.  So I'd still be at 6 ensembles but with less pay.  It wouldn't make sense.

The other good news is that we LOVE our daycare.  Daniel squeals, smiles, and laughs every time we drop him off.  Liana is 100% incredible with the kids.  She even filed his nails yesterday because in all my busy-ness I didn't notice that his nails were sharp and he scratched his face pretty nicely in two different spots.  Ugh.  But seriously, she's amazing, easy going, and so so happy all the time. 

Ugh anyway, I could go on and on, but this has already been too long.  I just need to get through November 13.  At that point, the musical will be over and my evenings will open up A LOT.  In fact, I won't have any commitments past 5pm since I'm not singing with any choirs right now.  I think that will make me feel like an entirely different person.

Okay, sorry about the annoying venting post.  Needed to just get that all out.

Festival Weekend

So many photos and videos from the weekend!

Our first trip down the slide!

Not quite phased by it at this point.

We were at a fall festival in Kula, laying on our blanket, listening to some Hawaiian music and watching hula.  Daniel couldn't seem to understand why we put a blanket down when there was such great grass to feel!

Once home from an exhausting morning of playing outside, Dad, Danny, and Milton the moose needed a nap.

Couldn't ya just die from the cuteness?  They napped like that for about an hour while I gave the bathroom a LONG overdue cleaning.

This afternoon/evening we went to the Maui Ukulele festival.  Thanks to some cloud cover and breeze, we sat outside for about 2 hours listening to more Hawaiian and ukulele music.  You'd think that it would get repetitive but there was a lot of great variety.

This little bean loves to dance!

When it was time to go, Tom just scooped Danny up, blanket and all.  Danny, along with the people sitting around us, thought it was pretty funny.

Daniel has definitely started interacting with strangers.  He loves to smile at people who make faces at him.  He's also getting really close to being able to push up to all fours.  Pretty soon he'll be crawling.  He already can scoot where ever he wants to go, but soon it'll be a legitimate crawl.  

Watch out world!