He is actually napping!  Faster than one could say SkippyJon Jones, SkippyJon Jones, SkippyJon Jones plus one hour, he fell asleep.  I explained to him what a promise is last night.  I asked him to promise me he’d nap.  Then when naptime rolled around, I promised to read three books, and gave a warning after each one.  Two more books, then it is naptime…one more book, then we go to sleep.  Finally after 45 minutes of wrestling and me struggling to keep calm, we agreed that we would play in the sandbox when he woke up.  And he finally fell asleep.

Did I mention we like SkippyJon Jones over here?  The first book we checked out from the library last summer, I think it took me 40 minutes to read it.  I don’t speak Spanish, and it has a lot of Spanish in it.  A lot of flare if you will.  I felt like a fish out of water trying to read it, but I have honed my Skippito skills and now it is a lot of fun.  Right Mr. Fluffenutter?  Si, my little crumb cake.

Yes, if you can’t tell, today is going much better and things have quieted down.  I am catching up on the piled up laundry.  I’ve vacuumed, the kid is squeaky clean after a 40 minute bath.  Hopefully we will be able to make a decision about the house in question tonight.  I disinfected the bathroom floor at 11:30pm last night.  I was angry at the mess, so I figured I should use that to my advantage and tackle it head on.  Do you get a lot done when you’re mad too?  I know I do.  I become very efficient, and usually feel much better afterward!  I’m weird.

Anyway, this picture flipped by on the screensaver the other day, and I tracked down the file to blog it.  I just cracked up, because he looks like a little alien!  I think this was taken two winters ago in early 2007.

All I can think is Wow Wow Wubbzy…”Just say BEEP.  Beepbeep…beep…”

Leave a Comment

I have read more in the last week than I’ve read in Caleb’s lifetime.  I have a mix of books here, everything from discipline to nutrition, homeschooling to sleep solutions, and vaccines to fussbusters on the go.  Right now I’m in the middle of The No-Cry Discipline Solution and The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers.

Thanks to several points made by the sleep solution book, I’ve moved bedtime around a bit and have been experimenting with moving naptime a bit.  I actually don’t think naptime needs to be moved, but I have discovered that Caleb was staying up past his natural bedtime, thus becoming overtired and getting his second wind.  Of course this makes bedtime a battle of wills, who can outlast the other.  Then when Scott wakes Caleb to tell him bye in the morning on his way out the door, it is like trying to wake the dead.  He is in a very deep sleep.  So I moved “Lights Out” up to 8pm, with our bedtime routine beginning shortly before 7pm, *knock on wood* things are running a bit smoother and he actually woke up about 6:35 this morning.  This tells me he is getting a more appropriate amount of nighttime rest.

I finished up the book I was previously talking about, Kid Cooperation, and I highly recommend it.  It is an easy read with lots of real life examples (exchanges between parent and child), and gives you a bag of tricks to encourage cooperation in a positive way.  So far, the No-Cry Discipline Solution is very similar in content (same author), but it goes more in depth, without as many real life examples (thus far).  It also gives you a few more skills for your bag of tricks.

3 Comments

So I’ve been really bad about blogging this year.  That’s all I got.  Moving along…

My mom is down for the weekend.  Because my parents, yes, my parents went to an Eagles concert.  Yep.  I went to bed last night before my parents even got home.  Anyway, rewind to Friday.  Mom and I met to go to the children’s museum and pick up a few library books for me at the library across the street.  I had an armful of books, Caleb was heading for the door in front of me and Mom was behind me.  Caleb ran right up to the sliding doors, however he went to the one that doesn’t actually slide.  He put his hands on it thinking it was a door that you push open.  About that time, along comes the sliding door and it caught four of his little fingers in between the doors!  The door kept sliding and drug him along.  As you can imagine, the very back corners of the city block sized library probably heard the wail.  I had to pull his fingers out.  It didn’t break the skin or anything, but I’m sure it hurt.  I piled the books into my mom’s arms and picked him up and took him in between the two sets of sliding doors (you know how department stores have an inner and outer set of doors with the in between area ).  My mom was shocked…the only library employee that came to check on him was a security guard.  And he was standing way across the huge entrance area talking with another employee.  In other words the checkout desk and information desk was much closer.  He asked if everything was okay and if he could get any ice or anything.  Another older man (grandpa age) must have been behind us in line checking out asked Caleb if he needed some money for the gumball machine to help him feel better.  He was sweet enough to offer up two quarters.

My mom said she was telling her friend about it over the phone and her friend said employees are trained not to acknowledge things like that to avoid opening themselves up to a lawsuit or having a situation where something happens, they acknowledge the problem, then it happens to someone else because the problem was ignored.  How sad that we live in such a sue happy world that employees cannot acknowledge a child’s fingers getting mashed in the door.  It was just an accident.

Luckily, by the time we crossed the street and dropped the books off at the car, Caleb forgot all about his hand on the way up the steps to the children’s museum.

In other news, we are still house hunting which is very discouraging, as we are under time and money constraints.  I have been reading a lot.  I’ve been trying to take a few minutes every day for myself.  Who would have thought that you could use those few minutes of “mommy time” to read parenting books, yet still feel rewarded and refreshed, and as a bonus, a better, more patient parent, having learned techiniques from the book as well as gained reassurance in seeing many of the techniques are things you already use.  One of the books I ordered with my Target giftcard is Kid Cooperation: How to stop yelling, nagging & pleading and get kids to cooperate by Elizabeth Pantley.  This is not the first book of hers I’ve read, and each subsequent book, I seem to like her more and more.  Two of the books I ordered were written by her actually, and one of the books in above mentioned stack of library books was written by her as well.  I’ve been reading this book like it was a thriller novel every spare moment I have.

With the new year, I have really tried to step back and look at a lot of things.  I have been in a rut, going through every day frustrated and tremendously short on patience.  The stress of the last six months has definitely taken a toll.  Between the job situation, the car blowing up, the house scenario, everything seemed totally out of my control, including my own child.  I didn’t feel like we were on the same page, connecting like we should be.  I don’t know, it is hard to describe.  I just felt like we were in an endless set of days that were going nowhere.

I made a conscious decision last week.  I am taking all of this out on him.  He’s feeding off my stress.  He’s acting out because I’m constantly frustrated with him and I’m constantly frustrated because he’s acting out.  I stopped yelling.  I stopped nagging.  I stopped whining back at him (”Will you pleeeease let me finish doing this <insert selfish task here>”).  I played games with him without thinking about how quickly I could get the game over with.  I read book after book without counting the total.  I snuggled with him, tickled him after naps, took him outside to ride his tractor around the median 72 times, and played trains with him.  He helped me make dinner.  He stayed in his pajamas til lunchtime stepping on fondant (which sticks quite well to the no skid footies on pajamas) and covering himself with powdered sugar while we worked on Herbie.

I’m embarrassed and sad to say it, but I felt like he was so relieved.  Like he was thinking “I have my mom back, she’s not being so mean anymore.”  He has been clingy, lots of hugs and kisses and I love yous (there was no shortage before, but now he is showering me with loveys), he wants to sit closer to me at the table, he wants to hold my hand, as a somewhat negative consequence, he’s waking up every night and getting in bed with me, even though the mattresses are pushed together in one bedroom right now, he still thinks of them as separate beds, thus he must crawl across my ridiculously long hair and get on the other side of me.  But not before giving me kisses on the cheek in the middle of the night.  I’ve seen manners that I’ve been begging and fussing for him to use suddenly become standard in conversation, not only with other adults, but with me also.  If he needs my attention while I’m on the phone, he says “Excuse me.”  Many times I say “Yes what is it?” and he replies “I love you.”  He just wanted to tell me.

So rather than beating myself up over the last several months of building frustration, I’m simply going to blog it and bury it.  And if I begin feeling that way again, I will remind myself to come back and read this blog.  Kids pick up on so much more than we think.  They are so emotional, even if they show it in different ways than we do.  One of the best points I feel the above mentioned book has made for me… Just because kids are just that, a child, a three year old, a ten year old, a seventeen year old, just because they are a child and we are the parents, doesn’t mean they aren’t due a level of common courtesy and respect.  Do you find yourself nearly tripping over your toddler for the 14th time today?  I know I’m guilty of this, I just blurt out “Move!”  But would you do the same thing to a stranger or another adult?  No you’d probably say “Excuse me.”  Little things like that are so easy to forget when you’re going through the motions day after day with those closest to you, not to mention under foot.  But go ahead and say “Excuse me” for the 14th time, and even the 15th, or the 22nd, because you’ll probably hear the same manners in return next time your little person needs to get by you.

2 Comments

Last holiday season I was reading another mom’s blog and she was discussing Christmas traditions.  She mentioned that she wrapped up Christmas books and put them in a basket each year.  Books like the Polar Express, captivating stories that can be enjoyed by a wide age range.  Every day beginning on the 1st of December, and through until Christmas Eve, one of her (seven) children would pick a book out of the basket and unwrap it and they all sat around the fireplace reading.  I thought that was such a wonderful idea and tucked it away in the back of my head for this year.  You’re probably thinking the same thing I was though…”But I don’t have 24 Christmas books!”  Yeah me neither.  The library is your friend. I did purchase several to add to our collection, but I figured I’d drop by the library and try to find a few to fill the remaining days.

I’ve found that Amazon in general seems to have the best prices on books (gotta love that free super saver shipping!).  I didn’t focus so much on finding the stories for a wide age range because I just have Caleb, and he enjoys children’s picture books most.  We still need to be flipping pages every 60-90 seconds.  Which, I think, ain’t half bad for his age.  When I was looking for books to order this year, I mostly stuck to the four and five star amazon reviews.  Ones where the review title had words like “endearing” or heartwarming” or “the true meaning of the season.”

A Wish to be a Christmas Tree

How Murray Saved Christmas: According to the reviews, this one is hilarious, so I’m anxious to read it!

We have the Bad Dog Marley book and just love it.  So I knew a A Very Marley Christmas book should be on the list.

Bear’s First Christmas

This is one of the books I purchased last year.  We have every book in the Bear series (they are all adorable, but especially Bear Snores On).  Bear’s friends wake him up for Christmas and all gather in his warm winter den to celebrate the season.

The Polar Express: You knew that would be on the list

Russell’s Christmas Magic: The reviews may end up being right, the story doesn’t have that classic ring, but we have a different Russell book and the illustrations are precious.  I flipped through this book on the Amazon Reader, and again the pictures are adorable, so I bought it since Russell is a recognized book character already, even if the story isn’t a perfect 10.

Santa Claustrophobia

The Snow Angel: Classic Story combined with beautiful illustrations

Merry Christmas Stinky Face: We have the board book I love you Stinky Face, this Christmas version is on a Christmas book display at our Walmart.

Winter’s Gift: I teared up reading through this one at Lookybook.  This one is a story of a man who lost his wife beginning to heal during his first Christmas without her.

1 Comment

I am here, I’ve just been engrossed in my photography book lately.  I bought it on Wednesday andI’m 3/4ths of the way through it!  And I just usually don’t have or make time to read.  I have picked up a lot of knowledge, so I’m going to recommend this book to anyone who is interested learning more about photographing children.  It spends one chapter on explaining the basics (f-stops, depth of field, ISO, shutter speed, etc).  Even if you already have a feel for all of this (I shoot 99% in manual), you will find a ton of useful information on composition, photographic styles, lighting and several other things.  The book is well organized and has end of chapter assignments.

3 Comments

We went to the library yesterday and checked out several books. This happened to be one of them. I’m now on the search to find it for our personal collection. It is adorable! I giggled through the whole thing. It has a song included, cute illustrations and a sing-songy rhythm to the story. If you get the chance, check it out! We have it on the Shelfari Wishlist now!

Leave a Comment