So, I’m going to interrupt the study-ridden period know as my weekend to talk about the wonderful little toddler we have in our house.   In other words, consider this my warning that there’s a long baby entry ahead.

We’re almost done with October, but I’m going to start with September. Why?  September was a big month for Mathias. For one, we started taking him to a daycare near Lisa’s work, both to add a little more stability to Lisa’s schedule—she now works three afternoons in a row—and to get Mathias into an environment where he can get a lot of interaction with toddlers his age. (The daycare also has a basic curriculum, which is nice.) It may be a bit tough for him as he’s the only one who can’t walk independently—not completely surprising as he is the youngest in his room—but hopefully he’ll get a bit more brave on the walking bit as he sees his cohorts running around.

At home, he’s all over the place. Lisa and him went to Madison last weekend, which gave me some time to finish some babyproofing (but not quite enough time). Most of the items that could be a threat to him have already been taken care of, so at this point it’s more about what we can do to prevent him from destroying the house. While he’s doesn’t have the balance thing completely figured out, he can stand and walk if he has something to hold onto or lean on, which means he can pretty much make his way around the apartment at standing-level. If it’s at table-level or below, he can and will get at it.

On the plus side, he’s kind of lost interest in the litter box, although I’m still going to try to build something around it. The challenge is preventing the baby from accessing the litter box without preventing the cat from doing the same. Untraining a housebroken feline would be a bad thing.

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A challenge for Mathias trying to walk may be his body shape: According to his most recent checkup, his head is in the 90th percentile, and he’s in the 70th percentile for height, but in the weight category he’s only in the 20th percentile. I suspect his center of gravity is probably quite a bit higher than many his age.

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Mathias has been very talkative as of late. Most of it’s still baby babble, but his use of actual words has been increasing. Mama, dada, kitty, are common. “A-da,” Mathias’ rough translation at “all done” is on the books, although we haven’t heard it for a while. His most recent word is “clock,” although it often comes out “cock,” which is a bit unfortunate. The word may be a bit difficult for him, as it’s his first monosyllable word, where everything up to this point has been two-syllable.

Does he actually know what he’s saying when he says “clock?”  His errors in recognition are just as telling as the times he’s correct.  When in Madison, he started saying “clock” when he spotted the round thermometers in the refrigerated cases at the grocery store, and at a recent swimming lesson he “clocked” the pace clock from the middle of the pool.

For a while it seemed his use of “dada” was more about parental units than me in particular, but he seems to have the differentiation down now. One of the most grotesquely heartwarming things I’ve ever had happen came just a few weeks ago while I was carrying Mathias down the hall. He was in one of his quietly contented baby states, fully awake but with two of his fingers in his mouth. (Instead of his thumb, he usually sucks on his left middle and ring fingers.) At one point turned at me and paused, as if to study me. He pulled his fingers out of his mouth, matter-of-factly said “dada,” and put his fingers back in. It wasn’t as much what he said as the look on his face and how he said it—I suddenly had the recognition that, holy shit, he actually knows.

There’s quite a difference between knowing you’re a dad, and knowing your son knows you’re his dad. And, trust me, it’s a big one.  The flips side is, I’ll be holding him, and he’ll be all “mama mama mama.”  So I’ll hand him to his mom, and he’ll reach for me and start dada-ing.

So, he’s definitely developed a preference among his parents: both.

Back to studying. More later.

Well, it has to be said it was a pretty shitty weekend.  Lisa’s had a plan to visit her folks in Madison this weekend for a couple of months now, but the purpose of the visit changed a few weeks ago when some unexpected results were found in her mom’s most recent mamogram, leading to a breast biopsy on Friday.  No results yet, of course, not that not knowing is any comfort.  I tend not to get too stressed out when waiting for news that could be bad, as whatever level of worry I possess usually doesn’t have any impact on the outcome, but knowing Lisa isn’t like that does cause some stress:  I don’t like thinking of what she’s going through while waiting.

So, in other words, it’s kind of like a fake handoff to concern, followed by a completed pass to empathy.

Cancer wouldn’t be anything new to the family.  Lisa’s aunt died of breast cancer, while my mom has a rare (and, thankfully, very slow growing) form of cancer that may or may not prove to be a problem.  It’s not clear if this means anything for Lisa and I, or for Mathias.  Lisa’s aunt was on then-experimental fertility drugs, and my mom’s cancer doesn’t seem to be anything genetic or even environmental.  Hopefully Mathias won’t have to deal with any of this when he’s older, and if he does, hopefully we’ll have take care of the entire cancer issue by that point.

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So, this is kind of trivial after that, but you know what I spent my weekend doing? Cleaning.  Whenever Lisa and the baby are away I try to get industrious and take care of things I either don’t have time to do when they’re around, or won’t do out of some concern of Mathias getting into something.  This has presented a weird chicken/egg problem with babyproofing, especially with the age of our place and all the lead in the walls.  I did get some work done this weekend, but not as much as I’d hoped, as I decided to start by cleaning the office–a baby-trap if there ever was one–the office which had become the dumping ground for anything and everything, especially when the baby was on a tear or guests were expected.  That job ended up taking much longer than planned, and as a result I pretty much got nothing else done.

In the past, Lisa would disappear for a weekend and return to find some major project completed–in one case I painted and generally redecorated our bedroom–and in doing so set a bit of a standard for myself.  Now, when she returns tomorrow, I’ll be able to say, hi sweet pea, I did some laundry and washed the dishes.  Or, I could paraphrase and say, “hello, I maintained the status quo of the household.”

Nothing to see here, move along.

Lisa has a theory that I’ve outgrown my blog, but I don’t really think that’s the case. Instead, there’s the simple fact I’ve been incredibly busy, and much of the time in the past I would’ve spent online I now spend studying or playing with our rambunctious toddler or simply vegging out. The irony is there’s hardly been a time I’ve had so much to write about… And yet so little time to actually write it.

The 800-pound gorilla in my life these days, the gorilla I’m going to try not to write much about as it isn’t really all that interesting, is my Data Analysis and Statistics for Managers course at the U. The professor is solid and I seem to have a good group of folks on my project team, but the subject matter is often just a bit beyond me. The interest (and even excitement) I felt with my strategic management, operations and venturing courses is not in the least bit present here, and, worse, I’ve learned very little that I can apply to my day-to-day work. (That’s a bit odd as I spend much of my regular workday dealing with reports and interpreting data.) My financial accounting class, which was not enjoyable for me at all, at least gave me some knowledge I could do something with.

My stats midterm was last night. I think I did OK, but of course won’t know until next week. My second class of the semester, Information Technology & Solutions, begins in a few weeks, and for what are likely obvious reasons I’m not expecting much of a problem with it. Regardless, I’m looking forward to my current class being over.

You know what I’m looking forward to tonight? Sleep. More later.