Whew

Ant was eating a banana muffin with chocolate frosting (don't ask) today after lunch. He dropped it, and said, "Oh no, stinker!". Glad I watch my language around him!

Surprise!

Ant still quite enjoys 'driving' the car, and as he's a bit older now, I'll leave him in it (in the garage with the parking brake on and in gear so it's not going anywhere) occasionally while I'm taking groceries upstairs or doing something with Timmy. Recently he started asking for the keys, since there's no way he can turn the car on (you have to have the clutch in while pushing the start button), I had been letting him.

Well... one day I came down to find him in the following position:



So of course I had to go and get the video camera!

Skinny Minny

The kids were at my mom's house for a few hours this past weekend as Mark and I had stuff to do.

Ant went in, get this, a long sleeved shirt with a short sleeved shirt on top of it (I had asked him if he wanted to change into the short sleeved shirt - 'no thank you but I'll wear it on top'. So that's what he did), and long pants. On a day when it was 90+ outside!

When I got back to my mom's I had to change his diaper, and figured I'd take advantage and put him in shorts which Mark had packed into their bag. Only when I got home Mark was saying, where did those shorts come from?

Turns out they were actually a pair of *Timmy's* 6/9 month pants!!!!! I couldn't believe it, but they fit Ant perfectly as a pair of shorts (well, maybe more like capris). LOL. He's very skinny, we have to buy the 2T adjustable waist pants and tighten them as much as possible - I wouldn't have thought he could fit into infants clothes still at 2.5 years old though!

Notes from the Crib

Overheard the other night:

"MommyDaddyMommyDaddy
Mommy is a girl, Daddy is a boy, all the kids are boys
Antony Joseph Antony Joseph Antony Joseph
Timofy Timofy Timofy Edward Timofy Edward that’s your name [a song I sing to them]
What a wonderful boy
Can I reach the doorknob? I can’t. Donald Donald Donald Donald can you reach the doorknob so I can open the door? Nope, can't reach.
Mommy Daddy
Cookie Monster
Want my jacket
Sami Sami are you in the cupboard?"

Messes, discipline, and other nasties

Ant is going through a new phase. At least I am praying to the gods every day that it's a phase. He likes to dump things. The drawers full of his kitchen toys and cars and art supplies. The boxes full of blocks. Plastic bags of letters. Pulling everything out of any available cupboard. The refrigerator. Pulling all the toilet paper off the roll, and all the tissues out of the tissue box. Dumping everything on his plate onto the high chair or booster seat tray. Scraping all the letter magnets off the fridge.

I know that this is something that lots of kids do, but what really gets my goat is when I ask / tell him to STOP, he looks right at me, gives off a manic laugh, and keeps on doing it. We have instituted time-outs for this frank disobedience, but the jury is still out on whether they're working or not.

I discussed with a friend of an older generation the other day, and she suggested that perhaps a little smack on the hand might get his attention and stop the behaviour. So I tried it when he took his milk box, said, "SQUIRT", and squirted it all over the kitchen. Well, I said "ANTONY STOP IT" and he did it again, and that's when I gave him a two-fingered smack on his arm. It didn't stop him from anything, if I hadn't been holding his wrists at the time he would absolutely have continued with the squirting, but he did say to me, "Mommy, don't hit me!". So that did nothing except make me feel horrible.

Another thing that is driving me up a wall is that along with this joy in dumping things out comes a serious lack of desire or willingness to clean anything up. I know we should have started having him clean up after himself sooner, but that's not anything I can change right now. So not only is he creating absolute disasters, it's then a 10-15 minute process to get any kind of assistance from him in tidying. Timeouts don't seem to do the trick at all, the only thing that seems to work is the threat of something "going away" - he helped Mark clean up the letters from the fridge in order to get his puppy back (well, really it's Timmy's puppy), and helped me clean up the blocks tonight after I threatened to take them away. But I'm really not sure if that's motivation that we should be using.

Since I seem to be in a complaining mood, I might as well get it all out there! The whining! The whining. Gets old SO quickly. Especially when he whines or cries for things that we A) haven't said no to, and B) wouldn't say no to. We try to say, "Ant, there's no need to whine, just ask!", but that doesn't seem to help much. And I wonder then if he's getting the idea that whining will get him what he wants, because he's using that tone of voice for things that we have no problem giving him.

And the last thing - is there supposed to be a 27 month sleep regression? For ages we were in a lovely pattern of a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon, 7:30 bedtime, with wakeup somewhere between 6:30 to 7. Well, in the last few weeks the afternoon nap has been skipped quite a few times, and at the same time, he's not going to sleep until somewhere between 8:30 and *11*! The late bedtime is also wrapped up with turning on the overhead light in his room. I figured out the other day that I could circumvent that at least by unscrewing the light bulbs. Score 1 for me. Not that that means much. It does seem that he's more likely to go to bed closer to the normal time if the nap is skipped. But boy is it a tough choice to make - do I give up my afternoon time for a free evening, vice versa. We've been congratulating ourselves recently for NOT making the transition to a regular bed yet, as I'm sure that the freedom to get up would have made bedtimes even later. Then, of course, there was the one time he did actually climb/jump/fall out of his crib. That's only happened once, and it probably does mean that we should convert to a bed - but I so don't want to!

Any thoughts or suggestions on how to deal with any of this, books we should read, magic sprays to use, anything?

a two-year-old's intepretations of events and motivations.

Ant and I were reading a book about trucks tonight. On the last page it says, "How many trucks have you seen?" Which I think is a really stupid question because we see trucks ALL the time. So instead, we were talking about all the different trucks on the page, and how Ant had seen them. Garbage trucks, mail trucks, fire engines, ambulances... he's seen them all, except, I thought, an ice cream truck. I asked him, and he said no he hadn't seen one. I told him that we could show him one when it was hot, in the summer time. He replied, "I'm going to make the wind come and blow and blow and blow until it's hot and I can see an ice cream truck."

The second time I put him to bed (Timmy had "woken him up" by crying), we were discussing that, and he told me, "last night Mommy fed Timmy and I helped and then he was quiet". Ant feeding Timmy (with a bottle) was just adorable. He put the boppy on, had Timmy lying on it - everything we normally do.

We subsequently read Curious George and the Firefighters, and were paying attention to the fire dog, which gets left behind by the firefighters, but chases after the truck and makes it to the fire anyway. I was asking where the dog was on one page, and Ant told me, "He's climbing up the fire truck to help George" (who was on top of the fire truck juggling some balls).

Pretend play

I have heard lots of stories of kids pretending to do "mommy" things when a new baby enters the picture. My sister regaled me with a tale of her daughter taking out the breast pump, putting it on her belly button, and saying she was pumping to feed the baby.

Tonight it was our turn. As I was getting Ant ready for bed, he ran into Timmy's room and hopped up on the bed I'm sleeping in for now. Moved over to the side where I nurse Timmy, propped up the cushions, and put the boppy around himself, "wike Mommy!".

Then he grabbed one of the nursing pads, and put it on his belly, saying "put on nursing pad". He hung onto the nursing pad as I changed his diaper, then when I pulled off his shirt, he moved it up to his nipple, "nursing pad on nipple". When I pulled on his pajamas (the sleeper kind with feet), he kept the nursing pad in place - and when it slid down inside the pj's after he was running around a bit, asked me very nicely to put it back.

The kicker was when he walked up to Timmy, who was hanging out in the swing, and said, "Timofy, I have a nursing pad on, so you can't eat!"

Big Brother

Ant has been amazing since Timmy was born. So much better than I was expecting, and honestly, even better than I was hoping for. He has been very gentle with his brother, he’ll often pat him on the head and say, “It’s okay Timofy”. He has never been physically violent in the least. He’s quite solicitous, letting me know, “baby needs to eat”, or "Timofy needs food" when T starts crying.

And when Ant wants some time with either Mark or me, he has been incredibly good about just asking – “Can I have Mommy/Daddy?” or, “Mommy, can you take the baby from Daddy?” or vice versa.

He does like to take things away from Timmy; if I prop up a book for him to look at, or a stuffed animal. “Take aminal from Timofy.” “Take binky from Timofy” (which I’ve said is not okay, and hasn’t actually happened). This is often followed by "No No Timofy!", which I find amusing at the moment although it may not always be so. I had Timmy on the gymini the other day, and Ant said, “Take gymini away from Timofy.” When I said that he couldn’t take it right then because Timmy was using it, but he could take it away when T was done, he didn’t seem to have a problem with that – rather went and lay down on the gymini next to T, which I thought was really sweet. So it seems as long as I provide a reason, or an outlet, that it is okay if T uses things.

We’ve also had some spontaneous hugs / kisses from time to time, also quite sweet. The other thing I find quite endearing is that we're not allowed to call Timmy anything but Timothy - if we say Timmy or Tim, Ant will say quite emphatically, "TIMOFY!"

Ant has quite emphatically said that he doesn’t want to share with Timmy, which I think is only to be expected. The one thing he said he would share was the Elmo car – which happened to be at my in-laws house. They’re convinced that he was saying that just so the car would come to our house. Which it did. I think that as we get Timmy his own toys (which do happen to be ones that Ant used to have, but I don’t think he necessarily remembers them), that sharing won’t be as much of an issue.

The only problem we’ve had, which may or may not be related to the new baby (although I’m guessing it is), is full blown tantrums. I had posted before about the start of tantrums – those were *nothing*. We’ve now had 5 minute plus screaming fits, “I don’t want to go upstairs! Want to wide twicycle! Don’t want to wear hewmet! Go outside! Not upstairs! Wide twicycle!....” and on and on. Or, tonight at bedtime, “It’s not bedtime! Want to stay downstairs! Not time for pajamas! WWWwWWWWAAAAAAHHHHHH! Don’t want to wear pajamas!” It is often quite hard to stop oneself from laughing.

Actually, the other thing that has been a little hard on me is that Ant is definitely a Daddy’s boy at the moment. Two or three days after we got home, he actually called for ME first thing in the morning, and I was quite happy to jump out of bed and go to him. Only to have him scream at me, “NO Mommy. Go away! Want Daddy!!!! Daddyyyyyy!”. He also has been less happy to have Daddy hold the baby than me. It does seem to be getting a little better in recent days though, today in particular he was quite cuddly with me, and kept running up and hugging my legs while I was standing holding Timmy.

All in all, I have been pleasantly surprised and pleased by how all this is gone. And I’m really hoping that it continues in this vein!

Get the baby off Mommy!!!

This weekend, we had some friends with an eight-week old daughter visiting us for an afternoon. Ant was sitting in his high chair (he's taken to eating only in that recently and eschewing his booster seat), eating supper. I thought I would take the opportunity to hold the little girl, who was quietly sleeping on her mom.

(Aside - it was incredibly difficult to find a position that was actually comfortable for me to hold her in - belly very much in the way! Still no signs of that changing anytime soon though).

Just a few minutes after we got settled, Ant looked over, and started getting quite upset. "Get baby off Mommy! Mommy no hold Meghan! Get baby OFF!". He demanded to get out of the high chair, and came running over to me with his arms up for me to pick him up. I offered to let him sit on my other side, while I continued to hold the wee one - NOT acceptable. Daddy took him upstairs to calm down (not really) while I gave her back to her mom, and Ant immediately wanted to be held by me when he came back down.

So despite seeming so accepting of the upcoming reality the other day when he was jumping in the crib, the actuality of my holding another baby did not go over nearly as well.

I'm just hoping that when it's HIS baby, things will be different.

Please?

Whirlwind - and results!

The past 6-8 weeks have been a whirlwind of house work and getting things ready for the changes to come. Our house was built in '99 with three bedrooms upstairs that we were originally using as our bedroom, the guest room, and the office. When Ant arrived, we turned the guest room into his bedroom, leaving the spare bed there so when push comes to shove we still have a place for people to stay. Now that Fwed is on the way, we decided that we hardly use the office anymore as we both have laptops with wireless access and mostly use our computers downstairs - so it made sense to turn that into Fwed's room. We do still need a place to put some office stuff, so decided to finish the basement. It ended up being a much bigger endeavor than I imagined at first.

1. Clean out and organize the garage so we had a place to store all the stuff from the basement while we were working.
2. Install shelves in the garage to accomodate all the extra stuff that now needs to be stored there
3. Move everything from basement to garage (we had a lot more crap than I ever imagined!)
4. Get the basement done - my BIL and his friend did most of the work for us, in terms of putting up a wall between the laundry room and basement, putting up the drywall
5. Get the plasterer in to plaster the drywall
6. Clean up from 5 (LOTS of dust!)
7. Paint the new basement (I love the color blue we chose, definitely makes me happy)
8. Install trim
9. Paint trim
10. Choose carpet, get it installed
11. Move stuff back from garage to basement
12. Clean garage (I swept and MOPPED the basement because of all the dust - I had to laugh at myself while mopping though!)
13. Move office furniture down to basement
14. Move rest of office furniture to attic
15. Put together crib

That's as far as we've gotten - still have a huge amount of junk and paperwork in the office that needs to get filed / sorted through / recycled before we can move the dresser into place and get rid of or move the file cabinet. But we're getting there, at least now Fwed has a place to sleep.

The other nice thing is that it means that the whole idea of a new baby seems to have become more solidified in Ant's mind. He is now calling the ex-office the 'baby's woom'. This morning he wanted to jump in the baby's crib, so I said he could after we changed his diaper. Once I put him in there, he said, "Baby come out of mommy's belly soon. Baby sweep in cwib. Baby dump (jump) in cwib wif Antony!". I had been saying to him in previous days that the baby would be coming out soon, and would eat, sleep and cry a lot - he put together 'baby sweep in cwib' and 'baby dump in cwib wif Antony' all on his own though! I had to explain that the baby wouldn't be doing much jumping to start with - but it makes me feel a lot better about the upcoming changes that Ant seems to be starting to accept and understand what will happen.

Much better than the "no thank you baby" I got when I first told him this weekend that the baby would be coming out soon!

Top of the post has one view of the basement before / after (unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture of the REAL before, that is before we moved all the junk out!)

My pee in the.... bath!

As with many kids his age, Ant has successfully peed on the potty a few times, but no longer seems interested at all. However, he finds peeing in the bath highly amusing.

Last night I got in the bath with him (as I do fairly frequently), and he was saying as he climbed in, "My pee in the bath!". I asked him, "How about if you pee on the potty", and asked Mark to put him on there, however, that was completely unacceptable. So he got in the bath.

Stood there for a couple of seconds, and then sure enough, out came the stream, to peals of laughter. (his, not mine). Came quite close to my leg, so I said, "No peeing on mommy!" and moved him out of the way.

At which point he stopped peeing, walked closer to me, aimed at my leg and started up again.

No more doubt about whether he has bladder control, if he can start and stop at will like that! I guess we have to work on peeing in the potty being more amusing than peeing in the bath or on mommy.

Magical apparating teeth!

We've thought a couple of times over the last few months, "Oh, Ant must be teething, he's drooling / chewing / pulling on his ears...". But haven't noticed anything.

Lo and behold, I happened to get a glimpse at his upper right gum during bathtime on Saturday, and there was a second molar there. And not recently erupted either.

Tipped him upside down at the hockey rink on Sun (the best position I've found for seeing those upper choppers), and look! the two-year molar on the other side is there too!

It's tough getting a look these days - Monday I managed to see the bottom right while he was doing his big open mouthed grin about something I forget now, and the bottom right was in too, and also quite far out.

Finally, playing with our neighbor on her swing set yesterday, another open mouthed squeal of delight that showed me the bottom left, and that tooth is in too (although not quite as far in as the other three.)

So Ant just got all four of his two year molars, without us even noticing. We have definitely been lucky in the teething dept!

Diary of a great evening

I don't know what it was tonight, the three hour nap that Ant took this afternoon, the three combined hours of naps from yesterday (1 hour in the car and then another 2 in the late afternoon, poor guy was zapped), but we had an absolutely fabulous evening.

When I arrived home from work, Ant was running up to me, saying "AAAAAAAH!", sometimes waiting for me to return fire, sometimes not, then doing a lap around the first floor. This lasted for probably about fifteen minutes, and Nana and Papa were included in the fun too.

After they left, we played with the buckles on the booster seat, climbed up and down on "Nana's chair", played with the buckles some more, moved Nana's chair over to the vacuum sealer and played with that and some coins (vacuum sealer was off, but so much fun to open, close and put things into).

Next was supper time - I asked if he wanted tuna or meatballs, and he replied emphatically, "Meatbawws!". Always nice to have direction for meals! I prepared the TJ's meatballs to a little bit of fussing, I can never cook anything quickly enough, but it settled down pretty quickly once the "meatbawws and sauce" were provided. He asked to sit at the table instead of having the booster seat tray on, and was actually a lot less messy than normal with this meal. Ate three whole meatballs, plus dipped half a slice of toast in the leftover sauce and ate that too.

After we were done eating, more playing with the booster seat, including a totally unprompted rendition of "five little monkeys jumping on the bed", complete with finger wagging "NO mowah mon-keys jumpin' on da bed!"

Our next activity was bringing in the packages the UPS man dropped off, and opening said packages. Ant's favorite was the new car seat, which he proceeded to have me put next to the stairs, followed by more playing with buckles, getting in an out of the seat, and more singing. We talked about how this new carseat was for Papa's car, because we already have one in Antony's car and in Mommy's car.

The latter led to asking to "SEE Mommy's CAH!" - which I said we couldn't do because I had ridden my bike home. So he wanted to "see mommy's bike!". Down to the basement we went. And "rode" the bike around the garage, down the driveway, down to the corner and back again. By riding what I really mean is Ant was sitting on the seat and I was pushing the bike.

Upon our return I decided it was bedtime, and actually managed to get Ant upstairs with a minimum of fuss. We had a grand time taking of his socks, and then mine. Apparently I am not allowed to wear socks if he's not! Around then Daddy arrived home, and we had to "go downsairs, see DAddy!". Which entailed more running around in circles. Very exciting.

Preparing for bed was also a very pleasant experience - takes a while these days, but much fun was had by all. Including a phone call to Nana and Papa, where Antony had a five minute phone conversation with them! He was often just repeating what they were saying, but he did say "Hewwo Nana" or "Hewwo Papa" all by himself, as well as answering their questions in the affirmative when appropriate. Papa asked if the new carseat had come, and Ant said "Yaaaah". Papa then queried, "who's car is the car seat going in?", and Ant answered, "Papa's cah!". He asked "Nana doin?" when she got on the phone, she told him she was making supper, and a minute or two further on in the conversation, he said "Nana makin' suppah". He's listened on the phone before, but never come at all close to having an actual conversation like he did tonight.

We then played the monster spray game (I pretend to be a monster, giving very friendly growls from time to time), and he makes a "tsch tsch tsch" noise while pretend spraying me, at which point I run away because the monster spray is very effective. (This game was originated by his ten month older cousin).

After that came "miwk and sorie" time, we read three or four books, had a very nice teethbrushing where he actually made a pretty good effort all on his own, after asking Daddy to come up. A few more "sories" with Daddy, and off to bed he went with minimal complaints.

All in all, an amazingly fun evening!

One tantrum, two tantra?

The last couple of nights, I have had the pleasure of witnessing Ant's first two real tantrums.

#1 started at dinner time. He wanted ketchup for dinner. I started off with a small bit on the tray, then managed to get him to eat some of my mac-n-cheese (which is a good way of disguising broccoli). After he was done with the mnc, he asked for "mowah ketchup!". I gave him a little in a bowl. That was okay. What was not okay was when he asked for more again and I told him there was still some left and he had to finish that first. So so so not okay. Much screaming, screwing up of face, demanding of "MOWAH MOWAH MOWAH" ensued. I tried to get him to calm down by telling him to look at me which usually works. Yeah - not so much. I tried giving him little bits of ketchup on a spoon to show him that yes there really was some left in the bowl. That just seemed to make him madder. I said he couldn't have more until the bowl was empty, so he turned it upside down, I assume to try and get what was in there out so he could have more. Sneaky little guy! At this point it became clear that supper was going nowhere fast, so I cleaned him up (still screaming) and carried him upstairs (still screaming) to change his diaper and put him in his pjs. Finally, after I deposited him on the changing table and provided "Dogald", he regained his composure. Definitely the first time he had been so hard to distract from his desire.

#2 happened the very next day. I figured one of the reasons for the previous day's performance was that he was overly hungry as dinner didn't start until 6 (normally he eats at 5:30). So when we got home from daycare I took him out of the car and upstairs, to start preparing supper. He desperately wanted to stay in the car, and started crying even as we walked into the basement. Once we got upstairs and I put him down, he immediately went for the doorknob, yelling in fine tantrum fashion "go downsairs! go downsairs! go downsairs!". Pulled off the safety knob with no problem and threw the two halves on the floor. With intent. Stomping feet, the whole nine yards. At this point I so couldn't give in to him! So we went upstairs to get Dogald again. Not quite as effective this time, but I brougt him back down to the first floor and just held him on "Papa's chair" for a while. He eventually calmed down - every minute or two he would start crying again and say "go downsairs" a few times, until he gave in to me and let himself be interested in one of the other options I was offering (his photo album of relatives). Whew!

I have to say, after a certain point I had a hard time not laughing. Poor kid.

Aggravation and Amusement

Funny story from Saturday when I had taken Ant to the mall to get him some new shoes. We came out, and I put him in the car and turned his music on while I was putting the bags and stroller in the trunk. When I finally got in to turn the car on, it wouldn't start!!! This little symbol was flashing on the dash, a steering wheel with a lock on it. I pulled out the instruction manual yet again (had a flat tire the week before, which also displayed an icon that meant nothing to me), and it said that it was a jammed steering wheel, to turn it to the side to unlock it, then start the car. I did that to no avail. So then I called the service folks, and the woman I spoke to said to move the wheel from side to side. This was on the bluetooth, so Ant could hear the conversation. I grimaced, "The steering wheel is really hard to turn!", as I kept trying. Ant started chatting away in the back seat "Hahd to tuhn. Hahd to tuhn. Seering wheel is hahd to tuhn!". The lady on the phone thought that was really amusing (and remarked that she was impressed by his enunciation), as did I. That didn't work either, so she had to tell me to call roadside assistance. When we hung up, Ant said with no prompting, "Bye Mary", which was her name, and which I had already forgotten. Before I called the assistance people I decided to try one more thing - it was close to lunch time, and I SO did not want to have to wait for them for an hour! So I put the car in neutral, took off the parking brake, and pushed the car myself using the door jamb. Meanwhile Ant was announcing "Mommy pushing cah! Mommy pushing cah." Fortunately, that seemed to do the trick and I was able to start the silly thing. That's three warning lights in the space of two weeks though, I'm starting to get nervous to drive it!

Oh, BOY!

I went to the loo this morning, and as usual, left the door open. Ant gets *really* mad if I'm in there with the door closed. Privacy, schmivacy!

As I'm doing my business, he opens the bathroom cabinet, and takes out the large box of tampons. He enjoys playing with it, taking them out and putting them back in.

Well, this time he walked out of the bathroom to the living room. Next thing I hear?

"Oh, BOY!"

You can guess what happened. The entire box of tampons got dumped on the living room floor. As I walked out to assess the damage, here comes my little munchkin with two fistfuls of tampons and a grin from ear to ear.

I tried cleaning up, got about half the tampons back in the box when Ant took it again and dumped it in the kitchen this time. I wanted to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and go down to the park, so just decided to leave it for later.

When we returned from our jaunt, it was time to make lunch. I planned to make asparagus pasta. As I was cooking I was keeping an eye on him, but pretty much let him do what he wanted to - which includes going into the pantry cupboard. He does this quite often, likes to take out things like his box of raisins and oatmeal, and putter around with them. Which is what he proceeded to do.

Until I turned my back to pour the boiling water out of the pasta. At which point he said "Cheewios!"... and then "Oh, no!". That is *never* a good thing to hear!

I put the pasta back down on the stove and turned to see the damage. Oh, no indeed. The whole bag of cheerios was also dumped on the floor!

So here are some views of the damage from hurricane Antony. First, the living room. Not so bad.



Next, two views of the kitchen from opposite sides. You can see the tampons, cheerios, and other assorted sundries that came out to play. Including the vacuum cleaner which Ant is totally enamoured of at the moment.




Finally, to be fair, a view of the island when I was done making lunch. Hurricane Mom came to visit too!

Day 2 - daycare

Mark dropped Ant off at daycare again this morning. I think that this transition is probably harder because we're only doing two days a week, T/R, which means it is a long time in between trips! M. said that Ant was again not very pleased to be there, very clingy, espeically after M told the teacher he had to go.

But, when we called later in the day, the teacher said that he was already doing much better than he had last week, at the time they had just gotten in from outside (love the 60 degree day!) and he had played on the slides and in the ride-in car. He also made a collage today, a few pieces of paper and stickers and foam thingies stuck to a piece of construction paper. I do have to wonder how much of that was his effort vs. the teacher's!

When Mark picked him up, they were in the middle of afternoon snack, with Ant sitting down at the little table they use. Although his eyes leaked a couple of tears when he saw his dad he stayed sitting until he was done. Which I think is an excellent sign.

He has taken to sleeping with a largish Donald Duck my MIL got for him a couple of months ago. It took quite a long time for him to be at all interested in a 'lovie', but Donald is definitely it. Very cute when we put him down; he just rolls over onto his side, grabs Donald by the head, and off to la-la land. We figured having Donald at daycare would be a good idea, as well as putting him in a sleepsack for his nap, as that's what we do at home. Apparently he has taken to carrying the sleepsack around with him at daycare, which I think is totally sweet, but also makes my heart hurt a little bit because he doesn't do that at home and I know it's just because he wants that extra security.

Routines

Every now and again, Ant lets us know just how much he follows our daily routines.

My mom will often make a cup of tea with Ant when she's babysitting. He knows the whole process. It goes like this:

Point at cupboard, say "open".

"Tea tea tea". Grab a teabag out of the box.

"Cup" next.

"Hot" water, pointing to the kettle.

The next step is to jiggle the teabag in the hot water, as I like to tell him, "to get the nice antioxidants out". (No, he's not saying 'antioxidants' yet ;-p)

Today, I made myself a nice cuppa (okay not so nice it was Lipton decaf) at work and drank it on my way home. I left the teabag in because it was so weak I wanted to eke out as much as I could.

When I walked in the door and put it down on the counter, Ant picked up the tag, moved it up and down, and said "jiggle jiggle jiggle". Yeah, pay attention much, kiddo?

The other routine he totally has down is making scrambled eggs. When we tell him that's what we're doing, he'll start by saying "eggs". Then last night when Mark was cooking them, Ant talked him through the next few steps.

"cwack" (Still no R's!), followed by

"bweak"

and then, "mix"!

The grasp that these kids have of what's going on around them is mind-boggling!

Things that make me go Awwwww....

When Ant:

Flaps his arms and legs because he's excited (he's done this since he was an infant)

Runs for something with his arms up next to his ears.

Shrugs his little shoulders and opens his mouth wide because he's happy

Squeals in delight

Looks surprised, then smiles, after getting water in his eyes in the bath

Plays 'peek-ee-oh' (peekaboo) with me or daddy

Kisses his Elmo book goodnight

Directs us to make a bed for his 'bea-ah', complete with pillow and blanket

Calls himself 'Antee' ("Mommy home...Antee home" was tonight's refrain)

Says 'oh no!' while reading the Elmo book

'Suggles' (snuggles) with Nana:

Baff time!

Tonight during his bath, Ant knocked the bottle of soap over onto the floor. I said "Soap fell down", which he immediately repeated. Followed very shortly by "Get it!".

Yes sir, anything you say sir!