He's 10 Months Old!

Every night when I put Peter to bed I silently congratulate myself that I made it through another day with him and I steel myself for the night to come.  Today I gave myself a special pat on the back because I've made it through 10 whole months of sleep deprivation, one sided lugging of 20lbs. of squirming baby, endless dirty diapers and vomited food, and so much crying!  On the other hand, to be fair, I have to say, I've now also gotten to enjoy 10 months of baby cuddles, sweet little smiles, excited laughing, and, of course, so much learning.  So often during these months he's made me nervous about certain things because he seems to be refusing to learn basic skills such as crawling, rolling, and eating solids. However, he always gets them eventually....just on his own schedule,  Now he's a champ at all of those, so the concern had been unwarranted.  He's been a lot of fun, but honestly, babies are hard!  I don't enjoy them very much.  Every day that he shows more of his kid side and less of his baby side is encouraging and exciting.  He's going to be a fun kid.  We just have to get there.

Every month I take a picture of Peter on this blanket, with this cloud on it showing his age.  However, the last few months, he hasn't allowed the cloud to simply lie there.  He's grabbed at it every time.  So, I just go with it and try to get a picture where it can be seen properly.  Today the other kids thought the picture idea was cute and wanted their picture taken too!  So Bella made them their own clouds and I obliged.  

Today was fast and testimony meeting over Zoom.  Kelly was so nervous that it would be a technological disaster or that people would have too much trouble making it work.  We definitely had our share of technical difficulties, but in the end it was mostly positive and an overall good experience.  I congratulate Kelly on handling the whole thing so well given so many variables.  I'm really going to miss Zoom church.  I sat on the floor in my sweatpants and stacked blocks with Peter while I listened.  So awesome.  When I'm completely honest with myself, though, I know that many of these meetings have been far less spiritual for me because I'm doing other things simultaneously.  However, church with kids, whether in person or online, is a crazy mess most of the time, so if it's going to be either way, I'd really rather it be at home.

Benjamin had auditions for drumline within the Churchill marching band today.  I hated that it was on a Sunday and it caused him to miss our church meeting, but I guess it's a lot better than if he'd missed actual church.  They made him wait for 3 hours in their online waiting room before they came on and asked him to play.  He says he felt good about his performance and they gave him his second choice of instrument - the cymbals.  His first was bass drum, but no freshman got that.  He's happy.  I'm not sure.  The idea of spending so much time with the marching band makes me a bit nervous.  He's really going to have his plate full next year with AP classes, accelerated classes, marching band, online German, piano, and scouts.  He will definitely need to learn how to manage his time better.  Definitely going to be like getting thrown in the deep end to learn how to swim.  The good thing is that kids in band are usually good kids and it will be a good way to immediately make some friends because he doesn't want to do cross country next year.  Being so busy will hopefully keep him out of trouble too.

Our new passion around here is bocce ball.  It's something new every couple weeks.  We've really liked it and it's someting the younger kids can actaully do better than Benjamin, which makes them very happy.  I didn't get a single good photo.  This is as good as it gets.  Playing bocce ball, I felt like we were old Italian men in the plaza in the evenings.  We had a lot of fun together.  It was such great weather again today.  I loved it.