3 years and 13 months

It's been a ridiculous week, hence the lack of blogging. With work, volunteer work, our anniversary dinner, more volunteer work and Oliver, my head is starting to spin. It's not over yet. I have a volunteer thing early tomorrow morning, someone coming to get acquainted with Clumbers tomorrow evening and a Bar Mitzvah on Saturday. I think my brain is going to explode soon so here's the dump. I will try to spare you the incredibly boring bits, though you may not agree the ones I include are actually "interesting".

First, the anniversary dinner, the night before our third wedding anniversary, was great. I decided to forego the wine and just had a sip of CD's here and there. I didn't need to spend 6 or 8 Weight Watchers points on wine. This saved us taking a cab too. Though it was a seven course Pacific Northwest extravaganza, the portions were small. It was all delicious but the absolute to-die for item was a blue cheese from Rogue River Creamery. Or maybe the amuse bouche of chilled fresh tomato soup with herbed creme fraiche. And the salmon tartar. Oh hell...it was all worth every point.

The actual anniversary was kind of nice too. CD outdid himself by getting the same flowers we had at the wedding. He's brought me flowers exactly twice, on our first anniversary and yesterday, and both times he made it count.

Today Oliver is 13 months old. He's been walking for almost two weeks and seems to think running should be next. The independent streak is starting to become visible. Already he is deciding he doesn't want to hold my hand sometimes. There are new words too. "Bubble" is the latest, following quickly after "ball". No sign of anything resembling "mum" that is associated with me though. Maybe Sunday?

Oliver will be put to bed by someone other than me three times this week. Woo hoo! We had a sitter for the aforementioned anniversary dinner. CD put Oliver to bed tonight when I was volunteering at his school. And Saturday night he will have a different sitter, someone we hope he loves. She's home for the summer and we hope to get out a little bit, for a change. She is also dogs/cat/house sitting when we go away later in the month. I had all but given up on ever finding such a person. Too bad she's only home for the summer.

Getting back to the whole bed-time thing...I really do love that time with Oliver, but it is nice that my presence is no longer required. The routine is as much for me as for him and as soon as we start to read The Going to Bed Book I start feeling a little wistful, wishing he could stay exactly as he is in that moment. He's starting to pay more attention to our nightly Winnie-the-Pooh reading and we haven't met Tigger yet. We just finished the Expotition to the North Pole and Piglet is about to be surrounded by water. Not bad for a month of reading.