Welcome to our new blog

Friends, Family

We're glad you chose to follow us over here to our new blog. The name obviously refers to the age difference between the kids.

All of the posts from the "old'" blogs are here, and there is still some tweaking to do, but if we wait to be "done", we'll never launch the site. I'll eventually add back the photo albums, and my goal is to introduce "tags" to classify the posts.

What? The editor speaks in first-person on this blog? Yeah, the whole writing as Rachel or Daniel is done for now. That was cute at first, but got kind of strained after a while. Other "new" rules involve not using our last name or those of our friends.

But enough rules. On with the updates.

Daniel is starting playschool these days. It's a drawn out process of getting started. Because he's going on both Fridays and Mondays, there have been two open sessions and two orientation sessions, but this coming Friday we finally start "for real". He seems to really enjoy school so far - with no separation anxiety, and a big smile on his face at the end. We introduced potty training for real in the last couple of weeks, and there have been some victories where he's voluntarily told us in advance, but also a number of missed chances. So it's a work in progress.

Rachel is in the process of realizing the permanence of things - particularly mama. Until recently, she'd get upset if mama left her sight, but she's starting to realize that things that disappear from her vision come back. This has allowed Anida to start going to the gym, because Rachel can now stay in the daycare there. The goal of crawling is tantalizingly close - Rachel will push up on her arms, thereby sliding backwards, but just in the last week or so, she's started pulling her legs under her like she's going to crawl. Right now, nothing makes her happier than pulling up to standing with a little help. She gets this big "look what I can do" grin on her face.

And that'll have to do for an initial post. Please do check back - there will be regular updates here at 21monthsapart.

Love Daniel, Rachel, Anida and Eric.