A general note

Between lots of visitors and the holidays (not to mention the new baby!), I've been too busy to post. In the meantime, what has happened? A Christmas eve service like no other I've been to, a three day trip to Jaipur, showing favorite HYD spots to Greg's family, New Year's brunch with friends (we're not quite up for a big NYE bash these days). And some how I've found myself with only one month of leave left, but still with many things I'd like to know. You would have thought I'd know better than to make a "to do" list while on maternity leave.

Patrick is doing great - last night he actually slept from 9PM to 6:30AM. Needless to say, after about 3AM, I didn't sleep well and kept tip-toeing over to his crib (2 feet away) to check if he was still breathing. Maybe tonight, if I'm lucky enough to have a repeat, I'll sleep, too. He's generally a pretty chill baby, which is good since William still requires a lot of attention. Wm just talks so much and runs so much - it takes a ton of energy to keep up with him! Wm loves "Patch" (an occasional nickname, since he pronounces his little brother's name as "Patch-ick") and, if I'm not watching closely, Wm will hug him a little too vigorously. The little one doesn't have much of a memory yet, so I'm hoping the small bonks from intended hugs aren't damaging their future relationship.

Amongst the various Christmas presents, Wm has latched on most to his new work bench and a Thomas puzzle. He will spend a good hour hammering and screwing; he takes after his great-grandpa. We even had to pack up a subset of the tools to bring to Jaipur, which caused some confusion in the security lane as Wm was adamant they be packed in his carry on. Luckily, engineers are well respected in India, so the security guard took one look at the wooden tools, looked at me and Greg and just said, "Engineer, ahh?" He thought we must be crazy pushy parents, trying to get our son hooked early on studying engineering!

Karen and I have been surprised how quickly Wm picked up on the puzzle. It's a big 24 piece puzzle, and so far Wm has put it together at least five times each day. By now, he really understands how it works and is getting much better at putting the pieces together by himself. I was surprised because we have some of the wooden puzzles where you are supposed to put the animal in the correct hole - but Wm never seemed too interested in them. This "regular" puzzle, though, fascinates him, and he'll continue to play with it until it is complete. Now if we could only find an airplane puzzle ...

That's the general update - Wm is still playing full steam ahead, and Patrick is still growing (13 lbs, last weigh-in). I'm sleeping as well as I could hope, Greg is doing whatever Greg does :) All seems to be starting well for 2010, and I'm trying not to think about the fact that we'll get our "bid list" in mid to late February.