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?"
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
6/6/6
So this meme has been around for a while (e.g. Molly and DD) - go to your sixth picture folder, pick the sixth picture, and give the story behind it. I have my pics organized by year, then by month, so my sixth folder was 2004, sixth folder in that was December (I didn't take pictures every month back then), and this was the sixth picture:
It's of us dishing up Christmas dinner. What's funny is that when I looked at the thumbnail, I thought to myself, there's my sister and Mark... who on earth is that red-head? I then realized that it was ME, back when I dyed my hair!! And I cannot for the life of me figure out what was on the plate my sister is holding. Any guesses?
I also like Molly's idea of picking a few more sixth pictures.
Here's 1999/June/sixth pic - our wedding day:
2003/Australia-South Africa trip/sixth pic - did you know that the tiles on the Sydney Opera house are not, in fact, white? I didn't 'til we went there:
And finally, out of my Cakes folder, a cake I created in decorating class:
It's of us dishing up Christmas dinner. What's funny is that when I looked at the thumbnail, I thought to myself, there's my sister and Mark... who on earth is that red-head? I then realized that it was ME, back when I dyed my hair!! And I cannot for the life of me figure out what was on the plate my sister is holding. Any guesses?
I also like Molly's idea of picking a few more sixth pictures.
Here's 1999/June/sixth pic - our wedding day:
2003/Australia-South Africa trip/sixth pic - did you know that the tiles on the Sydney Opera house are not, in fact, white? I didn't 'til we went there:
And finally, out of my Cakes folder, a cake I created in decorating class:
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
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?
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?
Saturday, December 13, 2008
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).
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).
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Photobooks
Last year, after a fair bit of looking around, I made a photo book of Ant's first year using Picaboo. It was the only photobook editing tool I found that would allow a reasonable amount of text in addition to pictures, and allow for a larg-ish number of photos on a page.
This year I figured I'd look around again and see if there was anything else that was a bit more flexible - the one drawback of the picaboo software was that although there were quite a lot of page templates to choose from, they didn't necessarily combine the elements I wanted, and there was nothing I could do. I was hoping they'd have more templates by this time, but no dice.
I didn't find any other editing software that I liked better, so I started Ant's two year book in Picaboo again. Somewhere, though, I saw an ad for My Canvas, and thought I'd check it out, as it wasn't one I'd come across in my search.
I have to say that I love, love, love it! It's less expensive than Picaboo, and has complete and total flexibility. It comes with backgrounds with placeholders for text and pictures, but you can add more, edit sizes, duplicate any elements on the page. It's perfect! If anyone else is looking to make a photobook that is a bit more complex than the standard ones lots of places do, I cannot recommend this enough!
Of course, this is with the caveat that I don't know how the printing is going to turn out - we'll have to see on that.
This year I figured I'd look around again and see if there was anything else that was a bit more flexible - the one drawback of the picaboo software was that although there were quite a lot of page templates to choose from, they didn't necessarily combine the elements I wanted, and there was nothing I could do. I was hoping they'd have more templates by this time, but no dice.
I didn't find any other editing software that I liked better, so I started Ant's two year book in Picaboo again. Somewhere, though, I saw an ad for My Canvas, and thought I'd check it out, as it wasn't one I'd come across in my search.
I have to say that I love, love, love it! It's less expensive than Picaboo, and has complete and total flexibility. It comes with backgrounds with placeholders for text and pictures, but you can add more, edit sizes, duplicate any elements on the page. It's perfect! If anyone else is looking to make a photobook that is a bit more complex than the standard ones lots of places do, I cannot recommend this enough!
Of course, this is with the caveat that I don't know how the printing is going to turn out - we'll have to see on that.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
You know you're sleep deprived when...
you're nursing your son and notice a bandaid on your arm. You think to yourself, "I wonder where that came from?"
"Maybe Ant was playing with a bandaid in our bed and it got stuck to me?"
Only to realize about fifteen minutes later, "OH YEAH, I got the flu shot yesterday".
Particularly amusing when you are unable to sleep on that side because the arm is so tender.
"Maybe Ant was playing with a bandaid in our bed and it got stuck to me?"
Only to realize about fifteen minutes later, "OH YEAH, I got the flu shot yesterday".
Particularly amusing when you are unable to sleep on that side because the arm is so tender.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sleep
I just made an Excel macro to graph Timmy's sleep patterns (yes, I am a total nerd). Here are the results for his second month (so far).
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