Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Wet socks!

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but A hates getting splashed with cold water (except for when he's in the pool). He hates it. It's one of the few things I know he hates. If he dribbles water on his shirt when he's taking a drink, he'll fuss until his shirt is a little dried off.

Anyway, yesterday he decided to take some initiative and get the Brita pitcher out of the fridge himself. The Brita is heavy and spilled all over the fridge and the kitchen floor.

A lets out a scream, and I come to see what's happened. He's holding an empty pitcher and yelling, "Wet! Wet! Wet socks!"

"Calm down," I say, and talk some Mommy-talk about how maybe if he asked for help Mommy would get him water. "Take your socks off."

He paced around straight-legged and agitated.

"Sit! Sit down and take your socks off." He sits and discovers that wet socks are hard to take off. When he finally got them off, I made him help me wipe up the gallon of water off the floor.

And he still wanted a drink after all of that.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Baby love

The horde from Portland has left for home (or should have soon), and we had such a good time with them. C and I finally met baby L, who is a smiley little guy. The most amazing thing were how well A and M played together. Oh my gosh, they are so very very cute. E is going to be as tall as C next time.

A and I met up with the fam in Disneyland yesterday, and in due course of taking turns riding the mountains that the little ones can't ride, I found myself with L in a sling, and A and M tasked to hold hands and stick together so we could ride Pooh. I got numerous compliments on my beautiful baby boy (L) and cute and cheerful twins (A and M)--God bless you mothers of twins out there. M herded A like a Border collie; it was funny to watch.

When we got off of Pooh, both M and A saw Tigger and decided we had to meet him. But Tigger was at the end of his visit time. ("Tigger's going to lunch," I told them.) But as we came around the corner, Pooh was there. So they both waited patiently (very patiently, I must say, for two two-and-a-half year olds) and then ran up to Pooh and gave him a big hug. So cute!

The PhotoPass person was prompting, "A, can you take your fingers out of your mouth?" to get a super picture. M looked at A, grabbed his hand, and pulled his fingers out of his mouth. Priceless.

A didn't want to ride the Haunted Mansion, which was a little strange but we didn't push him to go on it. But of course he loved Pooh, Buzz Lightyear, and it's a small world, as always. And I got to ride Splash and Space Mountain, so life's pretty good.

So I'm glad they came, and I miss them terribly, and I'm taking a quick breath before the next horde descends.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

And I'm not shilling myself...

But if you'd like to hear a funny, sweet story about someone else's potty training issues, please go to the Dime Stories site, go to the Dime Stories: SD link on the left, and in the February 2009 page, listen to Henry Pruette's story, "Black Friday." I'd give you a direct link but they don't let me do that, apparently.

Emil Wilson's story is great, but only if you have an extremely twisted sense of humor.

Peel me off the ceiling

Today, A took no nap except for the time spent driving from preschool to home. This matches my mood because I didn't sleep very well last night.

I got him home, thought I could do a swift diaper change while he was sleeping, and put him to bed, but no dice. He stayed woozy but awake for a long time regardless of how much Beatrix Potter I read him.

Argh.

So we ate lunch, played for a bit, went to the library and the store since we were in desperate dire need of milk. He almost fell asleep on the way home, but again, no luck. This is all complicated by the fact that the new car was in the shop (broken strut, under warranty, thank you very much) and so I was in the lovely old Volvo parking on the side of the garage I never park on. Parking in our garage is already graduate level parking, I think, but the whole different car/different side put me in a foul mood.

Which I was already in.

Because the boy had not napped.

C came home and I said, "Hi, here is your son, he's having cereal for dinner, and I am going to go away now." A little Jon Stewart, a little cat vibes, a little embarrassingly obsolete Civ, and I'm almost back to normal.

For general relaxation, I can't say enough about the wonders of a huge hot pad on your back with a couple cats for weight. I'm falling asleep just thinking about it.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Baby junk

Not that kind of junk.

We're trying to convince A that he really wants to be potty-trained. He's not keen on it, but we've got Lightening McQueen pull-ups to try and convince him that the toilet is super cool groovy. He has explained to me that the potty is for mommy and daddy but not him.

Anyway, we finally convinced him to sit on this potty without a diaper. We've had this potty since his birthday. This is the second potty we have, since after I foolishly followed the "let your child pick out a potty to make him feel invested in the process" advice, A picked out an Elmo toilet that talked to him in English and Spanish every time he pushed a button ("Muy bien! High five! Great job!"). After an hour, the bilingual Elmo potty disappeared back to the baby hellhole. I replaced it with a mute potty. The design of the potty included a "splashguard for your little boy," which ostensibly is supposed to route urine into the toilet without the child having to aim.

The stupid mute potty is too small. His baby parts did not natually fall underneath him into the bowl. Cramming his baby junk into the splashguard positioned his penis in a way that would ensure he would piss into his own eyes should the momentous day arrive when he urinated on the potty.

So potty #2 is a bust, headed for AmVets. Maybe someone with a skinny little girl child can use it.

This weekend, we went to IKEA and bought potty #3 for four bucks and everything seems to fit. God bless the Swedes.

I'm still not ready for potty training.

Progress reports

Yes, we get them. It's been about twelve weeks now since A started the extravaganza of classes and speech therapy, so we've got progress reports.

Preschool says he's doing super. He participates in circle time, initiates two-word phrases, and they're pressing him to say, "May I have such-and-such, please?" which means the "More such-and-such, please," requests we've been hyping at home are no longer going to cut it.

His speech therapist is thrilled with him. She's caught him saying three-word sentences, and saying everything from descriptions to commands/requests to narratives, which is fabulous. He has mad play skillz, yo. He's demonstrating new uses for objects and toys every time he sees them, which shows his creativity, problem solving acumen, and general astonishing brilliance. And the speech therapist says his family is super too.

His speech is getting more coherent, but I'm not sure how many other people would be able to tell. The swarms of friends are descending from Portland and Denver in quick succession, so hopefully we'll be able to tell then.

Cross your fingers that when they start turning out lights and closing offices all over California tomorrow due to budget morasses, A's speech therapist and preschools still get paid.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Digging out

We went to Disneyland again. It was my birthday; they offer free admission on your birthday, and if you have a pass, they'll give you something else, like a gift card worth the price of one day's admission. Sweet!

A got to preschool, I got to a bookstore, C played hooky, and we all had a fabulous time together. So I'm digging out now and today, but boy, did I have a great day.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Completely irrelevant

We don't have TV. We don't watch American Idol.

If you do, then you should be voting for Adam Lambert, because he's the son of one of my writer friends and he's supposed to be great.

And tell me if he's any good.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Counting confirmation

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten.

Unbelievable.

Friday, February 06, 2009

First floss

I'm at home trying to write (re-write, but there's a lot of new stuff) and keep A on the floor of our bedroom which means that our bedroom is now a de-facto mess. Every other sentence I stop to ask A to put things back into the bedside tables (we really need those stops installed).

One of the things he's taken out is floss, which A thinks is super: a tiny roll of waxed string that feeds out really, really fast.

Anyway, I am explaining to him what floss is and I hand him a length to play with. He tries to twist it around his fingers and then runs it through his teeth.

"Would you like me to floss you?"

Uh-huh, affirmative.

So I sit him on my lap and make an attempt at flossing a two-and-half-year-old, which I know my dental hygienist is not doing to her own two-and-half-year-old yet. A sits through it very happily, takes the string from me and attempts it again himself when I'm done, and then throws the used string in the trashcan just like Mommy does.

As a child, I had not the best dental care. We didn't floss--it was a stretch to brush twice a day. I had teeth pulled with just laughing gas, which is not enough for me. My subsequent groovy dentists both comment, "Wow, you certainly need a lot of novocaine." My childhood dentist shot himself in his ex-wife's basement before setting the house on fire--true story--and that was the end of regular dentist visits until I was a Grown-Up.

So now I verge on the crazy OCD path of dental hygiene. I brush my teeth after every meal when I'm at home. I try to floss every day and probably manage to do so most of the time. If I skip, it bugs me. If I can't remember flossing on a given day, I'll floss again to make sure that I flossed. (And I've been wearing my retainer pretty regularly.)

Well, apparently, I've set my son on a road to dental OCD. Oh well. There are worse things to pass along, I guess.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Two! Two two two!

We have numbers. We have one and we have two. The number two is our favorite number.

We point out all the twos. So, two panda toys, two tiger toys, two hands, two ears (which makes him laugh although I don't know why), two spoons, two books, two, two, two, two.

We went to the zoo yesterday and (finally) got to see the new tiger cubs (who look more like small cats, but that's okay). There are three cubs and a mom that are put on exhibit at the zoo in rotation with another female and a male. So we go to one of the viewing windows, and there are four tigers right on the other side of the glass--how fabulous. And A is excited and pointing and roaring, and I'm watching him try to explain to everyone else that those are tigers and they roar, when he starts saying to me, "Two, two, two."

"No, honey," I say, "four," and I turn back to count for him and I count, "One, two." Because of course the other tigers have disappeared from the window and we can now only see two.

The preschool reported today that A can count to ten, but I cannot confirm this with home testing.