You're Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

I often send Sam in to wake Julie up in the mornings. I figure he's harder to ignore than I am.

This morning, Julie asked him how he was doing. "Good," he answered. "How are you doing?"

"Tired," replied mama.

"No," said Sam. "How are you doing?"

"Tired."

"No, how are you doing?"

"Tired."

"No, how are you doing?" (getting frustrated)

"Sleepy. I'm doing sleepy."

"NO, HOW ARE YOU DOING???"

"*sigh* ...good."

From The Mouth Of Babe

I came into the bedroom one morning to find a very chastened looking little boy. "It's because I barked at him," Julie said. Sam, very seriously, looked up and said, "People don't bark, mama. Dogs bark."

__________________

I'm not a morning person - never have been.  I don't do well with children wanting to wake up at ridiculous hours.  So when Sam woke up at 5:40am and told me he wanted to get up, I did everything I could to convince him to go back to sleep.  It worked - at least long enough for me to walk down the hall to our room, at which point he called me back, saying "I did sleep!"

After fighting with him for about half an hour, I finally said that he could get up.  "But I'm not happy about it, little man," I said.

"Here's Mister Monkey to make you feel better," he replied, passing me his stuffed animal.

"It's going to take more than Mister Monkey to make me happy," said Too-Early-In-The-Morning Daddy.

He flashed me an angelic smile and said, "A little bit happy?"

_____________  

Sam, while Julie was rocking him just before bedtime: "I don't even want to talk, mama.  I just want to breathe."

First Blood

We had our first bleedout today. Julie kept Sam home to go to a party with Joey and all the other compound kids. Sam, unsurprisingly, can be a handful, even when he's being helpful.

Joey was in the crib while Julie went to get diaper changing supplies. She came back in the room just in time to see Sam offering Joey a big plastic toy -- by more-or-less hucking it over the side of the crib. Needless to say it landed square on Joey's nose.

So the baby is howling and bleeding, Sam is abjectly apologizing, and Julie is encountering (as it turns out) her first bloody nose. Luckily, Joey had pitched his forehead onto the crib rail 5 minutes earlier -- yes, it bruised -- and they were all going out in public. *sigh*

There are times when I'm glad that I work.

I Knew He Had To...

"Do you need to go pee?"

"Nope."

"Yes you do. You're grabbing yourself. Let's go."

"I don't have to!"

"Come on..."

"NO! I don't have to!! No! NO!!! N-"

*lands on toilet; a flood of pee immediately*

"I told you so."

*sullen glare*

Joey's Latest Exploits

It sneaks up on you, you know? It wasn't until I saw something new at supper that I realized exactly how many new things Joey is doing these days. It's remarkable, now that I stop to think about it, but they happen in such small steps that it's sometimes hard to see that long view. After all, nobody wants to read that he's rolling slightly better today than he was last week. Funny how enough baby steps gets you somewhere new...

Let's see - what hasn't been recorded for posterity (and the grandparents)?

Joey is now mobile. He's not quite crawling -- though he is starting to bring his knees up under his body and push with them a little bit -- but he's carpet swimming like nobody's business. His typical targets are: random toy; whatever Sam is holding; mama's lap. (The best part about the way he goes for mama's lap is that he can't really push himself up yet, so he just kinda aims his face for her knees and keeps pushing until something ends up in her lap.)

Joey is back to sleeping decently well. He seems to do best when I put him on his side; we've heard him wake up a number of times lately and then go back to sleep, so he's pretty much on par with Sam on that front. I can handle being up once or twice a night. Now, if only he'd realize that the day doesn't really start until at least 6:30...

Dude is a tiny eating machine. I haven't yet figured out its nefarious purpose, but whatever it is, it sure needs a lot of fuel. He eats as much as, if not more than, Sam at a lot of suppertimes, and it almost doesn't matter what. Cereals, vegetables, fruit, meat, whatever we're having all blended up, Cheerios, anything else he can fit in his mouth... I know that he takes little bites and all, but he's almost always the last one done - and he never stops.

On the eating front, he's also getting really good at feeding himself. I can put a bowl of Cheerios in front of him and they slowly disappear. Granted, the bowl normally gets upended, but then he eats them all off of the floor/table/lap. It's like he's turning into a real person.

As of this evening, two more exciting things have happened. First, he has his third tooth! It's one of his front top teeth, and as of about 7 o'clock, it's finally peeking through the gum. About time! We've known it's been on its way for a week or two, so it's nice to finally see it.

Secondly, at dinner tonight, while waving his little arms ferociously waiting for his next bite, I hear, "Mamamamamamama!" It was the first time I'd heard it, and -- according to Julie -- the first time he's said it. It was very cool. I know that it's not with actual understanding of who mama is, but it was a start!

I think that's everything. As I said, it's harder to notice sometimes than I would have expected, especially after already going through this once. Sometimes that forest is just sorta there, and you don't realize it until you look at all the new trees.

I Knew He Was Clever...

Sometimes, if he's had a particularly good night, Sam gets a treat first thing in the morning. Typically these days, it's a gummy something-or-other. His favourites are the sharks; personally, I don't like them, so when he asks what I want, I normally choose something else.

These days are the "me too" days, so invariably, when I choose something else, he suddenly wants that other thing, too. Very endearing, let me tell you. :)

So the other morning, right after our shower, he looks up at me with the most mournful expression on his face. He tells me, with tears practically falling from his eyes, that the bear misses the mama shark.

I was, understandably, baffled.

"The bear," he tells me, "misses his mama shark."

Hmm, think I. "You mean the gummy bear you ate?" "Yup." "Misses a gummy shark?" "Yup." I asked him what we should do.

"I should take a gummy shark, and eat it all up, and it will go 'splash' in my belly and the bear will have his friend!"

...Indeed.

Hindenberg

Sam and I went out yesterday to run a bunch of errands. "After we go to all the places I need to go, we should go somewhere you want to go," I told him. I was expecting something like the park, or maybe Chapters or the grocery store.

"Hindenberg," he said.

"Hindenberg?" I asked. "Yup," he replied. I had no idea where he'd gotten the name, but thought I'd see what I could find out. After a bit of quizzing, I found out that Hindenberg was very far away and that we'd need to fly a plane there.

Turns out there was more to the story. Julie mentioned Hindenberg at dinner tonight, so I restarted the questions. He never stopped to think about his answers, and I didn't lead him at all.

• he wants to go to Hindenberg to visit his friends
• his friends' names are (I think) "Uffie Nuffie"
• Uffie Nuffie is two people. No, five. No, men and girls and boys. No, a man and lots of girls and lots of boys.
• there are no stores in Hindenberg
• it's possible that Uffie Nuffie is not only the sole reason to visit Hindenberg, but may in fact be the only thing in Hindenberg at all

I can't wait to see where this kid's imagination goes. I'm terrified, but I think if I start now, I can mold him to use his powers for good.

Soothers

Sam slept with a soother for a long time. A long time. Not there's necessarily anything wrong with that -- unless, say, he would, I don't know, wake up and wake ME up because he'd lost it. Or, even better, because he'd lost the extra one that he liked to have in his hand. Oy.

Julie and I decided that 3 years old was old enough to lose the soother. We talked about it for a long time beforehand, trying to figure out how to take them away without causing a serious meltdown. We'd planned on sabotaging them (cutting holes in them) until they were no longer comfortable to have in, and we started telling Sam that soothers stopped working when you turned 3.

In the days leading up to his birthday, there was some trepidation. Ok, replace "some" with "mountains" and "trepidation" with "abject terror".

We'd told Brad about the plan, such as it was. When I picked up Sam from daycare on his birthday, Brad tells me that Sam napped -- for 2 1/2 hours, no less -- with no soother (and virtually no complaint). "It was the Three-Year-Old Fairy," Brad tells me. "Good enough!", says I.

As soon as we got home, I raced upstairs and stole the soothers out of Sam's room. Now we had a story; now we were ready.

That night, when Sam asked for his soothers, I told him that they were gone. The Three-Year-Old Fairy had taken them; he was a big boy now, and didn't need them. Sam slept.

Now, it wasn't quite that easy; he did ask for them a lot for the first couple of days, but we held the line and eventually stopped even answering him when he asked for them. We fleshed out our story, and it turned out that the Three-Year-Old Fairy took them to give to another little kid that didn't have any. (For two days, the big complaint wasn't that they were gone - it was that the fairy hadn't said please. There were emails to and from the fairy about that one.)

But he continued to go without, and he now sleeps better than he has in months. Life is better.

Apologies

*sigh* Real life. Sorry. We now (hopefully) return to our regularly scheduled programming.

(On the bright side, "real life" has mostly consisted of actually getting bits of a real life back. Stay tuned. :) )