"Last Weekend"

Well, lots of things have happened since the last post. If you ask Dylan about any of them, he will tell you they were all "last weekend" since that's what he calls anything that isn't happening right now.

Last weekend, (Mid-March), I took and passed my PhD Qualifying exams that I have been studying for for over one year. The process took almost 3 weeks and it's quite a relief to have that behind me.

In the middle of my exams, we celebrated Dylan's birthday. When we asked him what he wanted to eat on the night of his birthday, he said "steak." So, obviously we celebrated his 3rd birthday at a steakhouse. The following weekend, we had a little party for him at my parents' house and that was a fun time.

Also last weekend (early April), right after my exams, I had three back to back trials and immediately after that chaos, we flew to San Francisco for our friends Michael and Emily's wedding. The wedding was beautiful and super fun. The photo above is Dylan at the wedding with his favorite little stuffed animal...I call the picture "Reservoir Doggie." We had a great time in S.F. and in Carmel where the wedding was. The first night we were in Carmel and had a babysitter, I told the babysitter that Dylan would let her know when he was ready for bed (because he often does). When we got home at around 11:30 they were still up playing. Also, we were lucky to stay at our friend's Jane's dad's place in Berkeley (which I absolutely fell in love with). One night we put in a dvd (Cars) and Keith and I both fell asleep while Dylan stayed up watching his movie. There's no doubt that this trip to SF was different for us: our 3 year old stayed up later than us! We're passing on the torch and apparantly raising a little party animal who can stay up late and then sleep-in the following morning as if he was a carefree 20-something year old (I remember that feeling). One morning, while he was just waking up and laying on his air mattress on the floor next to us, I asked him if he wanted to get into bed with us and hang out and he said no, he wanted to stay in his own bed because "waking up is hard."

The trip was also great because we got to see lots of friends who we miss so much, and meet so many new little ones. It was beautiful to meet our friends' new babies and see Dylan playing with other toddlers -- he's still talking about Sammy and all the babies he met.

Now that we're back, I've moved offices and am working mostly out of Rahway, which is just minutes from our house. I've been looking up classes for Dylan -- sports, art, music and hopefully he'll have a fun summer now that I can take him to all these new places.

Also, since returning from SF, we focused on potty training and while it wasn't so easy in the beginning, he's been doing really well without a diaper all day. He was in diapers when we went to SF last month and just last week he was in underwear all week with just a couple of accidents. This last weekend (actual last weekend) we went all over the place and Dylan asked to go potty, went in different bathrooms and had no accidents at all. It was a great mother's day gift. We're keeping our fingers crossed that potty training continues like this.