Thursday, January 14th

Another Thursday, another trip to the city centre.

Samuel gets very excited when he realizes that we are leaving the house.  He says "go, go".  He runs to the front door and points to his shoes on the desk and his jacket hanging on the coat rack.  I have learned that it is best to get dresssed for the outside first as once Samuel is dressed he is very impatient and not willing to wait for others to get ready.

On our return trip from the city centre, Samuel was riding in his jogging stroller and I noticed hat his mittens had come off. I asked him to put them back on and much to my surprise he was able to use his right hand to put his left mitten back on.  He then immediately took it of and turned his head to look at me as if to say "You did not tell me to keep it on."  He is already smarter than either of us.  We are doomed.

Samuel has a very funny routine when we return home.  When we walk in the door the first thing we do is unfasten the strap of his wool cap.  He then reaches up and pulls the cap off and places it on the desk.  He then tries to unzip his jacket, he often needs help, but as soon as the jacket is unzipped he will take it off himself.  He then drops it on the floor but a very stern look forces Samuel to pick up the jacket and hand it to us so that we can hang it on the coat rack. He then proceeds to sit on the bottom step and try to take off his shoes.  For this he needs help.  This morning was particularly funny as Samuel missed the step for the first time and fell on his behind.  He had a tremendous grin when he did this.

There are many positives in having Julia work from home.  One of them is that we are able to have regular evening meals.  When Julia was working she would often not arrive home until 2000.  With Samuel beginning his bedtime routine at 2030 it made it difficult to have a "normal" meal prepared.  We had become accustomed to having Picard frozen meals, especially soups, which are very, very good(for frozen meals).  Now we have established a routine where Julia will begin feeding Samuel his dinner at 1900 and I begin to fix dinner at the same time.  Fifteen or twenty minutes after Samuel is finished with his meal we all sit around the table and eat a delicious(most of the time) home cooked meal. Samuel will then share part of our meal as we give him vegetables and potatoes from our plates.

-Dave