Goal: Raise my children to be intelligent, compassionate, responsible, successful, and unique
This morning, Caleb woke me up at about 7:30. After his feeding, he and I played for a little bit, but I found myself thinking, we’ve done the same thing for five days now! It seemed to me like we’d gotten in a “rut” with our playing, so I decided to do a little Google search for suggestions of what else we could be doing. I came across the website www.babycenter.com, and within the site, I looked at some information about development for six-month old babies. In so doing, I found a blurb about signing with babies, and it said that babies can begin to understand and use sign language right around the age that Caleb is currently. BINGO! Today, we would work on some signs!
After Caleb’s morning nap, I brought him downstairs to his playmat. He and I interacted with various toys, and as we did so, I continuously said the word “play” while signing (I also Googled-it-up to find out the proper signs to use, the others being “eat” and “drink”). After playing, Caleb ate his palate-pleasing breakfast of milk, cereal, and peas while I signed “eat”, and then we did his second bottle feeding while I signed “drink”. Though Caleb did not sign himself (I think that will take us a little while, but I’ll keep you posted!), he did look at me intently with a glint of curiosity in his eyes—in other words, he totally got it (at least that’s what I’m telling myself!). Additionally, I read something else within the website that said babies Caleb’s age tend to understand turn-taking. So, as part of our play routine, he and I shook a block, dropped it, and then gave the block to the other person…over and over and over again. That kept us both entertained for a solid 20 minutes.
Goal: Keep my list alphabetized by category and alphabetized within categories
I took a look back through my goals list today and realized that I had not finished alphabetizing and revising the other day. I then spent some time finishing up this task, and while doing so, I added in a few more goals. For example, I added this goal, which is one that I meant to put on my list last year, but I evidently forgot: “Use the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die in the USA and Canada to help plan trips, and continue marking up the book”. This book is one that my wife and I picked up during the summer of 2010 on our tour around New York State, where we spent time in the Thousand Islands, Lake Placid, Albany and Saratoga Springs, the Hudson River Valley, and New York City, among other locations. The book’s title is pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t describe the contents of the book here. As for “marking up the book”, my wife and I took some time last summer to look through the book and Post-It and highlight all of the places we’ve already been, either together (yellow) or separately (me—blue; wife—pink). For example, one of the sections of the book is “FDR’s Springwood”. My wife and I toured Roosevelt’s lifelong home while on our tour of the state, so after reading this section of the book, we Post-Ited the page and highlighted the section title in yellow. I know this probably sounds pretty cheesy, but we love it and are excited to plan future trips using this book! We’ll end up seeing some awesome places through the years that we probably wouldn’t think of or know about without this book.
Goal: Pay all of my bills on time/Goal: Balance my checkbook at least once a week
I engaged with finances the last couple of days—the holidays are coming up, and ‘tis the season……for budgeting. Caleb and I will probably do some Christmas shopping beginning next week.
