Dear Blog, I'm sorry for neglecting you.

I'm ashamed to say it has been 2.5 months since I have contributed to this blog. And, my last post from Nov. 13 was also an apologetic one since I had briefly blocked the blog from being viewed by nearly everyone out of paranoia. Hopefully I can turn things around and contribute more often. I'm sitting at the kitchen table watching Bryan discipline Dylan. We are working hard to teach him what "No" means (as Bryan mentioned in the previous post). Some days it works better than others. Today is not Dylan's best day and he's gone into time-out in his crib 4 times in the past hour. He is up there right now screaming his head off for pulling up on the TV table and banging on the TV screen. We sternly tell him "no", set him on the ground and he literally immediately turns around and does it again - looking at us the whole time, no less. After the third time, it was up in his crib. Bryan calls an offense like that a "major" and calls for 5 minutes in the crib. I know that he understands what "No" means - he has learned not to pull up on the table chairs or try to pry the outlet covers off the outlets because that has resulted in a lot of time-outs. He is testing us and testing his boundaries. Not sure where that character trait comes from - Bryan and I were never like that! Teaching him how to say "Please" in sign language has also proved challenging. He is a strong baby - both physically and strong-willed. We try to make him do the sign and say "please pick me up" or "please feed me" and his little arms resist our direction and he totally freaks out. We will persevere and sooner or later he will say please. But, from the looks of how its going with sign language, by that time he might actually speak the word before he succumbs to signing it. Discipline and sign language aside, Dylan is an excellent baby. He still smiles all the time and laughs more than any other baby I've seen. Often he will just sit and giggle while playing with his toys. I think he tells himself jokes because he will say something and then crack up laughing. He is truly enjoyable to be around (most of the time) because he is a very joyful kid. Here are some recent photos of him from January.