Here's an update on each member of the Peterson family. I'm not great at posting things like this little by little, so this is kind of a monster post.
Sally:
She likes to impersonate babies crying. Whenever she sees a baby, she makes a fake crying sound, and then acts like she’s cradling the baby in her arms and says “rock, rock”.
She is suffering from some severe separation anxiety issues. Although she goes to nursery without any problems, whenever I leave her at the house with a babysitter, or even with Neal, she starts screaming and apparently doesn’t stop until she’s asleep. This makes leaving the house very unpleasant for me, as the whole time I’m away I’m in a hurry to get back and I’m worried about how she is doing. While this is very annoying to me, it is also very troubling. It seems like Sally is not just having tantrums because she likes being with mommy—she seems seriously troubled and almost even traumatized.
She is learning to live without the binky. While she still gets it for nap time and at night, she never has it during the day anymore. There have even been several times in the last few weeks that she has handed me the binky and allowed me to hide it.
She is talking more and more all of the time. She can’t put two words together yet, but her vocabulary is quite large and she is getting better at pronouncing things. She has trouble saying the “s” sound (she calls herself “ally”) and the “r” sound, but other than that her words are quite clear.
She loves to push buttons and pull strings. I’ll hold her up high so she can pull the chain on her ceiling fan in her room, and she laughs and smiles—it makes her so happy. She’ll see a button somewhere and will run to it, saying “push, push!”
She identifies animals not by their names, but their sounds. While she used to say “bird”, “cow”, “dog”, etc., she now says “tweet tweet”, “moo”, and “arf arf” whenever she sees the respective animal. One exception is “horsey.” The other day at the grocery store she ran up to push the button on the mechanical horse, and, low and behold, the horse turned on without me inserting the required .25. She got a free ride, and now whenever I say we’re going somewhere fun, she says “horsey?!”
She loves to sing and recognizes many, many songs. She especially loves “Elmo’s Song” (i.e. “This is the song, la la la la, Elmo’s song…”). She likes for me to sing it through several times and she tells me whose name she wants me to insert (e.g. Abby, Big Bird, Ernie, Sally, Daddy, Grandpa, Sister Longmore, etc.). She sings “When We’re Helping We’re Happy” with me (mostly the “tra la la la” part), and runs and gets the broom out of the closet whenever I start to sing it. As a result, I don’t sing that song much anymore—she isn’t very careful with the broom and often bangs it into walls. She really does love to help, though. It indeed makes her happy.
She considers my friend Rosemary her second mom. I can her Sister Longmore when talking to Sally, so Sally always just calls her “Longmore”. Sally doesn’t cry when I leave her with Rosemary, and she likes for Rosemary to hold her on her lap (which she lets almost no one but me do). Rosemary has twin boys whom Sally loves to play with. She used to just call them “boys”, but now calls them both Lanny, the name of one of them. She can’t quite say Spencer yet.
Okay, that’s pretty long. On to the rest of the family:
Neal:
Neal is in his first month of residency, and things are going well so far. Luckily he got started out on a light rotation—renal consults. He’s home around 5:30 (sometimes sooner), and he hasn’t had to be on call yet.
He recently finished up a big shelf project in our house. He created a built in shelving/entertainment center unit from what was once a hollow section of wall. It looks really nice (I’m sure many of you have seen his photos on Facebook), and I think he’s proud of himself (which he should be)!
He signed us up for a co-ed Ultimate Frisbee team. We’ve been playing every Thursday for several weeks now. Neal is definitely one of the best on the team, and I’m just on the team. The fact that Sally goes ballistic every time I set food on the field makes it kind of hard for me, but mostly I’m just not on the same level as the rest of the players. It is fun for me to watch Neal, though, and I know that he’s glad to be playing Frisbee again.
Me:
I’m working once more, at the job I posted about a few months ago. Everything is going fine so far. I work during the afternoon while Sally is sleeping, and occasionally in the evening when I need to finish something up. I’m somewhat surprised and pleased about how easily everything is coming back to me. I was afraid that it would take me a while to get back into the programming mode, but it was like getting back onto a bike.
I’m enjoying being a mom, but realizing how challenging it is to entertain a toddler, especially a really smart toddler. My patience and my creativity are tested almost daily.
One of my daily triumphs is getting showered and ready to go for the day before Sally is awake. If I don’t take care of it before she’s up, it takes great stealth and creativity to get through my morning routine without stress.
I’m trying to read more, which is hard since I now work during Sally’s naps. I love reading and it is a great stress reliever for me. I’m almost done with “The Prince and the Pauper”, and I plan to start “The Count of Monte Cristo” once I’m finished. I’m trying to read classic books that are entertaining yet somewhat enlightening/educational. I hope to get a lot of reading done on my trip to Utah this coming Wednesday (my sister Abby is getting married—I’m really happy for her and excited for the trip).
I miss my family and sometimes get into depressed moods where I just want to spend time with them yet know that I can’t, but for the most part I’m really happy with where I am in life. I have wonderful friends here that I’ve gotten really close to. I’ll have a very hard time leaving them someday.
Sally has really long legs, just like her parents.
She loves to help me on the kitchen. When we made an apple pie for the 4th of July, she "helped" me in the kitchen the whole time and enjoyed it. She mostly enjoyed sampling the pie crust dough. Ever since we made that apple pie, when she plays with her dishes, she tells me that she's making "pie", or "apples".
Just an outfit that I think is really cute. Don't you love the bracelets, too? She has me wear the largest two of her set of rings.
The flags that daddy helped to set up, and Sally's new (immodest) outfit. I think she's so cute in it, though. When it's sweltering hot in the summer, I think I'd rather have her wear something somewhat immodest than have her take off her clothing and go naked to get cool. When does modesty apply to babies/toddlers? Any opinions?
Sally after her first icecream sandwich (which I ate most of). 
Sally with her favorite boots, and, more importantly, her "rat tail," which the mockers liked to call it. Thanks to said mockers, I trimmed her hair and it is of uniform length in the back now. I couldn't handle the teasings! 
Sally likes to help me wash the dishes every day--she pushes up her trusty chair and plays in the water. She's actually washing her binky in this photo--one of the tricks that I use to get the binky out of her mouth. Once it's out, it isn't too hard for me to get it away from her. This was several weeks ago. These days you won't see her with the bink outside of her bed.
