happy anniversary

This week I will celebrate my 4th anniversary. It has been full of ups, downs, happiness, and sadness. We've been through a lot- both good and bad- and I wouldn't change any of it. Thank you Pete for standing by me, loving me, making me laugh, letting me cry, and sharing all the stories that make up my life. You are an even better husband and father than I imagined. I love you.

the misadventures of our son

When dealing with a 2-yr. old you often get a mixed bag. You experience the good, bad, and ugly! The above pictures are of the good. This week we went to a water park for Father's Day, a pool for playgroup, the fountains (just for fun), and we took the Johnny Tractor out for a ride.

The bad list consists of things like: running away from me in a parking lot, bothering our already neuorotic dog, throwing fits, and general two-year-old stuff.

The ugly list this week really only consists of one thing, but I think it should be mentioned. It starts out this way: I went into the bathroom because Jack is whining mommy, mommy,mommy! It doesn't take much time at all to notice the thing I have been telling him for two weeks not to do has been done. He took the small bottle of baby oil I keep on the sink (it removes my eye make-up) and poured it everywhere! Floor, sink, toilet, and himself. I grab a towel and start cleaning it all up. I can't find the bottle. I ask him where it is and he answers- potty. I look in the potty and it isn't there. I look in the garbage can, under the sink, behind the potty, in the shower but there is no bottle. I ask again. Again he says, potty. Ok so I stick my hand in there and I can't feel it. I flush the toilet to see what happens. The water slowly rises all the way to the brim and before it can spill over it slowly recedes back down. Hmm... This doesn't look good. We go to the office and tell them. They send a guy over and he tells us there is nothing in the toilet and instead it was the flapper. I can tell you right now I don't buy this because Jack is sticking to his story. However, for the rest of the night the toilet works fine. The next morning is a different story. I use it, flush it, and water just pours out of the toilet. I plunge and instead of helping it appears I made it worse. Now there is a waterfall coming out of our toilet. I turn the water to the toilet off. Oh my. They send two guys over and after snaking tell me: it appears there is something in there. Nice. Didn't I tell them that very thing yesterday? So they have to remove the toilet but these two guys can't do it. A new pair of men come in and they try what looks like an industrial grade snake first. Then they seem to acquiesce and take the toilet off. They take it outside, and I watch them snake it, flip the thing over, stick their hands in there, shake it, and who knows what else before they carry it away. A few minutes later they come upstairs holding the bottle of baby oil. I should mention that it was just the bottle they carried-not the toilet. Next they say: In order to get this out we had to smash the toilet. Nice.

Life with Jack

You know you live with a 2-yr. old when the following things happen:
-At 6am he stands on your bed and tells you, "I have a big stinky poop. Change me!"
-You go into the kitchen to throw diaper away when you notice the refrigerator is wide open, the crisper doors are on the floor, the veggies are in the sink, and your son is eating tortillas.
-I don't do mornings well, and I especially don't do waking up at 6am well. I laid down on the couch and closed my eyes. I get a wet toy helicopter in my nose as a wake up call.
-I doze again and wake to the microwave timer being set. This means he is standing on the dishwasher.
-When he comes in notice something out of the corner of my eye- the walls are covered in dry erase marker. When I go over to clean it up I notice that the table and the chairs and my son are also covered in dry erase marker.
-When entering the kitchen again I notice that he dumped all of Tigran's water into Tigran's food bowl so we have a very wet kitchen floor and wet dog food floating in the bowl.
- This is all before 8am.

oops!

 

Today Jack was in bed for a nap when I heard a noise. I paused briefly then continued with what I was doing. A minute later I hear crying. Well, of course Jack is just upset because we lock him in his room. He will just have to cry. About 3 minutes pass, I remember I heard a thump before I heard the cry, and I figure I should at least go see what is going on. Jack fell out of his bed, landed face first on his stool, and as of the time of this blog has a black eye and a swollen cheek.

I gave him a popsicle to calm him down. When we picked up daddy he decided what Jack really needed was a frosty. The picture barely shows his battle scar, but trust me it is a real shiner!!

sleep?

I previously mentioned that we were trying to switch Jack to a big boy bed, and we are still TRYING!! It has been such a frustrating time. We started with one of us staying in the room until he was asleep, but that didn't work very well. He noticed when we left so the time spent in his room was much longer than we had anticipated. He never stayed in his room the whole night, and he started waking up for the day much earlier.

After a few nights of this not working at all, we tried a new approach. Pete would read to him in our bed. I would say prayers and sing songs while laying in his bed with him, and then I would camp outside his door. He would cry, peek out the door, stop crying, play, peek some more, all the while never actually leaving his room, but not falling asleep. With this method, it took an hour or so and sometimes two before he would fall asleep. He slept a little longer through the night until he came into our room and he still woke up at 6am.

Last night the staying in the hall approach didn't work at all. He fell asleep for about an hour or two then was awake- this is after my sitting in the hall for two hours already. Being frustrated and not knowing what to do Pete brought Jack's mattress into our room so he could sleep in his own bed while being near us. This seemed to work very well at first, but he still ended up in our bed.

So now we are trying another approach. We are locking him in his room. At nap time this was not too difficult. He did cry and even tried to take the door knob off using his tools, yet after 30 minutes he was asleep and slept for quite awhile. I was so pleased. However, tonight has been much more difficult. He cried and yelled and had a huge fit. He fell asleep and stupid me went in to check on him- he woke up. He fell asleep pretty quickly after that so I was relieved, but then an hour or so later he woke up screaming his head off. He was crying out to me, and I felt torn. What to do? I let him cry it out. So we shall see how this new approach works.

This process has been more difficult than the transition from family bed to play pen to crib. Of course I may have just become spoiled over the last year of having a child fall asleep early and wake up 'late'. I am not used to this whole process of trying to fall asleep and staying asleep.

Who knew Houdini lived here

We have been back in IN for almost a week, but upon arriving home our computer was and well still is behaving erratically. Anyway, we have some more pictures from our KY trip.

While in Morehead Jack learned to climb out of the playpen we use while visiting. Not wanting to train him to sleep alone while we were away from home, but also having to deal with his ability to climb out of bed, led us to fall asleep with him in our bed every night. We went to a wedding in Somerset and there was a crib in our room. Since the crib was higher I thought Jack would be able to sleep in there just fine. I went to take a shower after putting him to bed, and heard a noise that I couldn't place. Upon leaving the bathroom and going back upstairs I saw that Jack climbed out of the crib and brought into the hall all everything we brought with us. Oh my. He ended up sleeping with us the rest of the trip.

I told you of the mayhem he caused in Henderson by flushing soap in the toilet, well trouble is never far when Jack is around. While in Somerset he climbed out of the bed that he was sharing with us, got my lipstick, and colored all over the carpet. Yes oh yes. Lipstick is not something that comes out of the carpet easily. He really is a handful at times.

As is always the case when visiting Granny and Pappy, Jack spent almost every waking hour outside on the lawnmowers. To say he is merely interested would in no way do justice to his obsession.

** As far as Jack's sleeping arrangements now that we are back in IN?? Well that is a story for another day.