October 2006

10/31/06 - later

A night time pumpkin picture

Tommy requested that I take this picture and post it.  He made this Halloween snowman out of playdo.

The costume.  Tommy says "Arggg!"

Tommy & Claudia trick or treating.

10/31/06

Happy Halloween!  I'll post Halloween pictures late tonight.  I hate to have October pictures on the November page in the archives because it makes organizing the files for this website confusing.  (That's why some of the pictures from last year are missing.  I just haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.)  So check this space late tonight or any time tomorrow for Halloween cuteness!  Tommy's friend Claudia will be Trick-or-Treating with him tonight so there will be double cuteness this year.

10/30/06

Here are a few things Tommy's done lately that have surprised us.  He keeps acting older and more mature than we think he is.

• For a couple of months now we've been avoiding power struggles over toys he sees and wants by telling him "No we can't buy it, but we'll put it on your Christmas list.  Maybe you'll get it for Christmas."  This weekend he asked to see said Christmas list.  I think he was worried that it didn't actually exist.  Um...it kind of didn't.  I quickly added the things I could remember to his Amazon wish list and let him see it.  He was thrilled.  He then proceeded to tell me which things were wrong ("not that Mommy!") and which things I'd forgotten ("you forgot the Crazy Crocodile Mommy!").  I didn't think kids did this until they were a bit older.  I guess this is my punishment for letting him watch TV that has toy commercial breaks.  I don't think he really understands that he's not  going to get everything on his wish list.  We'll keep telling him, but he's going to have to figure it out himself.   
• I stood firm on not adding new versions of toys he already has to the wish list, and he didn't really like that.  He thinks we should "take that Dragon Castle back to the toy store so we can buy the new one."  Sorry kid.  Not happening.  Materialistic little bugger.
• We've been working on getting Tommy to transition from one thing to another without whining and crying.  He doesn't do it very often, but often enough to be annoying.  I think the message has finally sunk in.  Sunday morning I told him that it was almost time to come to the table for pancakes.  I was just about to start reminding him that he needed to cooperate happily when he cut me off and said, "I can do that Mommy!  And no whining or crying!  I promise to cooperate."  I was very impressed.
• One of our efforts to stop the transitional whining and crying focused on his bath/bed routine.  We made a chart with six books on it and a set of six black circles.  At every step of the evening, we remind him that he has to cooperate with no whining or crying or we'd cover one book with a black circle.  That would mean one less book that night.  It totally worked!  All of a sudden he's perfectly happy to get in the bathtub.  Wish I'd thought to make a chart sooner.  Now if only I could figure out a similar chart to make him give up his precious diapers.

10/29/06

Pumpkin Carving!

10/26/06

Still sick.  It's not too bad though.  I just thought I'd let you know that my next OB appointment is November 30th at 8:15 am.  I'll have an ultrasound then, and hopefully we'll find out if The Niblet is a boy or a girl.  Tommy and David will come to the appointment with me.  My doctor guesses (based on fetal heart rates) that it's a boy.  He guessed that Tommy would be a girl though, so maybe his guesses for me are reverse predictors.  Five weeks to wait!   

10/25/06

I have a cold, so I might not be posting much this week.  Here's a little Tommy conversation from yesterday to tide you over.

Tommy:  I miss my friends. 

Me:  I'm sorry you're lonely.  Who are your friends?

Tommy:  (silent thinking) I don't know.

Me:  Is Claudia your friend?

Tommy:  No.  She my birthday sister.

Me:  You're birthdays are very close together, but she can be your friend too. 

Tommy:  Ok.

Me:  Maybe you can play with her sometime soon.

Tommy:  I'm going to be sooooo happy!

10/23/06

Our annual pilgrimage to the Pumpkin Patch was kind of a bust this year.  I thought I'd read all the information about hours very carefully, but I must have missed something.  They only allow individuals to come in Monday through Friday if they can be added onto a scheduled school group.  We went Friday and it would have been fine if we'd gone in the morning, but we didn't get there until about 2 pm.  All the school groups were leaving around then.  We couldn't find anyone to take our money, so we just walked in looking for people to ask.  Since all the school groups were leaving, we couldn't go out to the actual pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins like we did last year.  They'd finished making hayride runs out to the patch for the day.  Tommy still had fun running around and doing all the non-pumpkin-gathering activities, but I was pretty bummed.  Those pictures I took last year of Tommy in the pumpkin patch are some of my favorites.  Oh well.  We'll know to go on the weekend next year.

10/20/06

Tommy's new obsession is The Upside Down Show on Noggin.  It's a new TV show that just premiered this week, and we've watched every airing of every episode.  He LOVES it.  It's two goofy Australian "brothers" modeling lots of pretend play and using big words and making funny sound effects.  I think he's going to pick up on lots of good concepts from it.  He's already going around announcing "Stupendous!" whenever he likes something.  Everything funny is "just like Shane and David." 

On the show, Shane and David have an imaginary remote that they use to make each other do goofy things.  Tommy has decided this is the coolest game ever.  Our David played along so enthusiastically last night that Tommy is now addicted to the game.  Tommy's remote has buttons for Stand, Sit, Fast, Slow, Run, Loud, Quiet, Sleep and Stumble.  The Stumble button is his favorite because when he presses it and yells "Stumble!" David does this gigantic, goofy pratfall that Tommy finds absolutely hilarious.

(In case you can't read it, Tommy's shirt says "I do all my own stunts.")

10/19/06

Tommy Tidbits...

• He's feeling 100% better today.  I guess it was just a random 24 hour fever.
• This morning, Tommy told me "You make pancakes.  I set table.  Then we tell Daddy 'Breakfast time!'  You help me?"  Sure!  He got the silverware out by himself and took small plates out of the clean dishwasher.  He asked me to give him some paper towels and put one on each plate.  He ran to get David out of the shower and asked him to help get drinks.  I guess we're doing something right in our lackadaisical, on-and-off attempts to teach social niceties.
• Tommy's most commonly uttered phrase these days is "Oh, right!"  He doesn't say "r" quite clearly, so people who don't know him think he's saying "Oh night!" all the time.  To me, that just doesn't make sense in the context, so I always forget to translate.  He makes perfect sense to me!
• We had house cleaners come for the first time in months yesterday.  Tommy helped me answer the door and immediately said, "Hello!  My name is Tommy.  What's your name?"  He listened very carefully to their answers.  Then he told them, "Our house is very dirty.  See!  You help us clean it?"  He pulled out his feather duster so he could help them.  He cried when they left and told them "I going to miss you."  They seemed pleasantly surprised by how friendly he was.
• He's getting really good at the computer.  I put some icons for kiddie links on my desktop.  He'll climb into the computer chair himself, pound on the space bar to get the screen saver to turn off, click on my logon profile to get into windows, double click on the icon he wants, maximize the window when it comes up and turn on the speakers.  Once all that is done he navigates to whatever game or video clip he wants.  (It's all very limited to big kid-friendly sites like Noggin and PBS Kids and Playhouse Disney.)  He has very firm ideas about what he wants to do, so it doesn't really work to try to navigate him from a hard game to an easier one.  At the end of some games they give you an option to print the picture you made or something similar.  Tommy knows the right boxes to click on when the print dialogue comes up even though he can't read yet.  I'll finish cleaning up the kitchen and come in to find him looking through a stack of papers that he printed himself.  When he's done he'll click on the Xs to close the windows before wandering off.

10/18/06

Tommy's sick. I suspected he wasn't feeling well mid-afternoon yesterday because he was acting kind of loopy and lethargic.  After lunch, he asked to watch TV in our room.  I settled him into our big bed to watch TV, hoping that he'd accidentally fall asleep there.  He didn't, but seemed really tired.  At about 2:30 I decided it was getting too late for a nap, so I turned off the TV and we went to play in his room. 

His current favorite game is "disappeared" and involves a laundry basket and fleece blanket.  We played that for a while, but he stayed in the basked covered by the blanket longer and long.  At one point, he popped up and asked me "what wrong with me Mommy?"  I asked him if his throat, tummy, head, etc hurt.  He said "no" to each question.  Eventually he said, "All my parts is fine.  Never mind."  After about half an hour he just looked so pitiful and groggy sitting in the laundry basket with the blanket wrapped around him that I scooped him up for some snuggles in the rocking chair.  He was asleep within three minutes.  That's when I was sure he was sick.  He never falls asleep in my lap without some sort of droning distraction like the TV to keep him still long enough to doze off.

He slept for about an hour, and David convinced me to try waking him up so he wouldn't be impossible to get to bed later.  He was kind of thrashing about anyway, so he woke up easily.  Fifteen minutes later he started crying and whimpering.  He said his stomach hurt, and it looked like he was having some intestinal cramping or something. He curled his legs up tight and did that "uh-uh-uh" whimper with his eyes closed while I rubbed his back.  He was asleep again in less than five minutes.  I covered him up and let him sleep.

He woke up again around 5:30 and we had some dinner - plain pasta and yogurt and lots of water for Tommy.  I finally took his temperature and it was just a bit high.  He seemed to be feeling better, but not great.  He never did have any more stomach pains.  It ended up taking an extra hour to get him to go to sleep at night, but that's not bad considering he took two naps after 3 pm.  Then he woke up with a 102.4 degree fever at 1 am and it took us until 3 am to get him to go back to sleep.  Poor little guy.  He seems to be feeling better this morning.  He's not really eating much, and seems a bit feverish on and off, but is full of energy.  I'll keep you posted.     

10/17/06

I've put the Week 20 pregnancy picture up on a page just for Pregnancy Photos.  I've added the page to the archives over on the left.  I'll remind you here when I update it.

10/16/06

I know.  I know.  I said I'd post a belly pic yesterday.  I didn't like any of the ones we took yesterday, so we'll try again tonight.  I remember the Week 20 picture giving me fits when I was pregnant with Tommy too.  I'm showing enough that people who know I'm pregnant can tell, but people who don't know I'm pregnant wouldn't want to ask about it in case I'm just large.  I have to find the right clothes for the picture so that I look obviously pregnant.  Not that I'm worried about it or anything.  It's just pictures last forever...especially when you post them on the Internet.

Anyway, we had a good weekend.  I forgot to mention that Tommy started asking for his twin bed back about a week ago.  I guess he thought having the queen-sized bed in his room was just a temporary lark like sleeping in a tent or at a hotel.  He started getting upset that we were giving his bed to the baby.  His whining exactly coincided with my realization that I will get way less sleep in the next 4.5 months if there's no comfortable bed in the guest room for David to use on bad nights.  David's cold last weekend had him coughing and snoring up a storm.  Combine that with pregnancy insomnia and I was going a bit bonkers from sleep deprivation.  I tried sleeping in the twin bed, but it was murder on my loosening hip joints.  (David absolutely won't fit in that bed.)  I tried sleeping with Tommy, but he kept wrapping himself around my face in his sleep so he could hold onto my hair.  We moved the beds back to their original locations Saturday.  Tommy's happy to have his small bed back.  I slept like a log all alone in our big bed.  David snored and coughed peacefully in the guest bed, enjoying not being woken up by me every 10 minutes with requests to roll over or drink some water.  Experiment over.  We'll just fit the baby stuff in around the guest bed, and consider either getting rid of it or replacing it with a sleeper-sofa when the baby's old enough to feel crowded in there.  Maybe we'll just buy a four bedroom house then.  Probably not, but I can dream.

Tommy makes Halloween cards.  Wearing a ghost sticker on your nose is required for this sort of activity.  

10/13/06

No big boy underwear at all since the last post.  Sigh.  I guess we'll keep asking/offering and eventually he'll be ready to try again.

Sorry I've been MIA for the last few days.  Nothing bad has kept me from posting.  I just didn't get around to it.  I'm spending WAY less time on the computer these days now that Tommy wants to use it too.  Whenever I sit down he decides that he wants to "help me" or "take a turn."  We end up each taking a reasonable length turn and then I turn the computer off for a few hours.  I never realized how often I would sit down for 5 minutes here and there throughout the day. 

Anyway, David's still hacking up a lung from the cold he had last weekend.  Thankfully, both Tommy and I managed to dodge this one.  It's always possible David has something bacterial or allergy related instead of a virus.  He doesn't seem to feel that bad, but has to really take it easy or he starts coughing.

Silliest remedy for a chest cough?  Standing around for hours in the chilly early morning watching balloons!  Just kidding.  We went to the Balloon Fiesta this morning.  It wasn't actually a very good choice for sick David.  He was pretty miserable.  For some reason the Park & Ride was ridiculously mismanaged this year.  The hour we spent waiting for a bus kind of started us out with a fun deficit.  David and Tommy were both pretty cold and miserable and tired of standing around by the time we got to the Balloon Park.  They both rallied at various times and enjoyed themselves occasionally, but I was really the only one who felt comfortable and happy the whole time.  It's pretty sad when the pregnant woman has the most energy.

(Speaking of being pregnant, I will hit the 20 week mark on Sunday.  Halfway there!  Still feeling very good!  Actually, I'm more than halfway there if you consider that I'll probably have a C-Section before my due date.  I'll post a belly picture on Sunday.  Um, just to clarify, it will just be a tasteful, clothed picture of me, not an actual picture of my belly.)

So here are a bunch of Balloon Fiesta pictures.  I made them a bit bigger than usual so you can see the balloons better.  Hopefully they won't take too long to load.  I always take tons of pictures even though it's kind of the same year to year.  I probably won't caption them or anything since I only have 15 minutes left on the computer until my "turn" is over.  Tommy's watching the microwave timer, so I can't sneak in there and cheat by resetting it.  Curses!

10/10/06

This morning at around 11:00 Tommy told me, "I old enough now!  You help me find underwear please?  Then I go to school!"  This was completely out of the blue.  For months he's been saying he didn't want to try to use the toilet or try wearing underwear because "I not big enough yet.  I still a little boy."  I immediately changed him out of his diaper and put him into underwear.  He stayed that way the entire rest of the day.  He didn't ask for a diaper once, even after accidents.  I'm so proud of him!  I kind of expected that things would work this way with him.  We'll see how he feels about underwear tomorrow.  We may be back to square one, but at least now we know that he really believes we'll help him do it when he's ready.

10/08/06

snuggle time

10/07/06

David's sick with a cold.  I've successfully fought off the cold so far, but still have all the tiredness and achy complaints that come with being pregnant.  Tommy woke up four times between 4:30 and 6:00 this morning, then was full of energy all morning.  Luckily for us, Tommy fell asleep on David's lap this afternoon.  Glorious silence!  (Except for David's hackings and snortings of course.)

10/05/06

Tommy says, "Now we have all things we need for Halloween."

10/04/06

No pictures in over a week!  Sorry about that.  I'll take some soon.

Now that I have a more noticeably pregnant belly, Tommy is starting to do some of those cute things big-brothers-to-be do.  He will run up and kiss my belly or give me a hug.  If I say thank you, he'll respond "That kiss not for you!  It for baby!"  Whenever he talks to the baby, he eventually remembers that babies can't talk back.  Somehow that makes him think that he shouldn't be talking either.  He'll go silent all of a sudden and make exaggerated facial expressions in the general direction of my tummy.  When asked if he wants a brother or a sister he just says "It just a baby, not a brother or a sister!"  He understands babies; he's just not too sure of the whole boy/girl thing.

10/03/06

Just for fun, here are the most common Google/Yahoo/etc. search strings that bring people to this website...

• "screaming and teething" - It happens.  Hope your child stops soon.
• "6 month old waking up in the night" - It happens.  Hope your child stops soon. Variations of this search include all ages from 4 months to 18 months.
• "pictures roseola rash" - Now I regret not actually posting a picture. 
• "Gulf Coast vacation photos" - Too bad it rained for our entire vacation.  I'm sure our pictures disappoint.
• "Sally and David" - This search is almost exclusively made by people from Scandinavian countries.  I wonder what that means?
• "down the slide static electricity" - This one leads to a pair of pictures on the March 2005 page.  I'll let you figure out which two.
• "Bongo Bong Song" - In case I didn't actually give the answer, the song is by Manu Chao and it's on World Playground, a CD from Putumayo.
• "how to use scissors" - Hope you figure it out!
• "naked toddler" - Luckily people who have found the site using that search have never returned.
• Almost every title on the list of books in Tommy's library have come up in searches.  Too bad I didn't write helpful reviews.

Unfortunately, I've never had someone find this website by searching for the "smartest cutest kid in the world."

10/02/06

Tommy:  I want to measure you with this measure tape.

Mommy:  OK. Am I big or small?

Tommy:  Big!

Mommy:  Am I tall or short?

Tommy: Short!

Mommy:  Am I skinny or fat?

Tommy:  Skinny!

It's never too early to teach them the correct answer to this question.

See the archives for earlier entries.