the kitchen sink

this post will cover a multitude of topics, in no particular order: biting, scratching, hiting, roseola, weddings, ferberization, rain, and career changes, to name a few.

the past few weeks have been insane. starting with: receiving a job offer from a v. cool attorney and giving my notice at my current place of employ. stressful. especially since i will be the third associate to leave in less than a month's time. yep. it's been crazy on the work front. but, i am excited about my new job for the following reasons: (a) no more billing target, yeeeeehaw! (b) a whole new area of law, and much much less litigation work; (c) pete, aubrey and i will all commute to work and daycare together (saving us $ on gas). i will miss the guys here at the office, but i think it's time for me to move on to something different.

and then there's aubrey. my little toddling terror. so during the last post i was complaining about brattiness, etc. well, it turns out that the brattiness was at least partly due to the fact that miss a was SICK. with roseola, it turns out. high fever for several days, followed by a pimply rash. of course, this all coincided with our traveling plans, as we were scheduled to attend a wedding in maine and an anniversary cruise for my grandparents in boston this past weekend. we got the ok to travel from aubrey's doc, so we ended up going to the wedding, but now i'm wondering if we should have. it rained and rained and rained the entire weekend, which made traveling a bit more challenging and less enjoyable.

on top of being a sicky, aubrey has been terrorizing her fellow classmates (and US) with biting and scratching. she seems to want to bite/scratch the most when she is overtired. sigh. so embarassing to sign a form at the end of the day acknowledging that your child hit/bit/scratched another child. our current strategy: if missy bites or scratches or hits, we put her down on the ground, tell her firmly, "NO [insert inappropriate behavior here]" and ignore her for one minute. hopefully, after a few dozen episodes, she'll eventually get the message.

and...as with all transitions that we go through, miss a is putting up a horrendous struggle at bedtime. we have finally resorted to "ferberization," which i don't like at all, but we've tried everything else with no success. it is maddening because for the longest time she would put herself to sleep with nary a peep, so this feels like a huge step backwards. however, i realize that she is going through a lot right now, with learning to walk and all, and that these milestones can cause bumps in the road in terms of sleep habits.

last night she cried for an HOUR before she fell asleep. (and predictably, every time we went in to "reassure her" she would just get more pissed off.) i hope i hope i HOPE that tonite goes more smoothly.

i just keep telling myself that this is one of MANY parenting challenges i will face over the coming years, and to be thankful that aubrey is, on the whole, a happy and healthy little gal. oh, and she's cute, too.