August 2005
08/31/05
Tommy has a cold. He hasn't had one since early April. Four and a half months is a long time when you're only 19 months old, so it's a whole new experience for him. He wasn't really talking in early April, so having a toddler who can tell me he feels bad is a whole new experience for me. He doesn't seem to feel too bad yet, he's just snotty and coughing in the night. Hopefully it will be a short illness. I felt just a little bit bad for about 24 hours but am fine now so it's possible my immune system fought it off. If that's the case then the antibodies I'm giving Tommy through nursing should help him get over his cold faster. Let's hope! David's parents arrive Friday and I really want Tommy to be healthy and happy by then. He was so miserable and cranky from teething the last time they saw him. I really want the visit to go well, especially since he's been so fun the last couple of months. We spent time around a bunch of other kids last weekend, so I guess it's not surprising he caught a cold. Bad timing!
Oh, and if you've been trying to call us, our phones haven't been working since Monday afternoon. They're supposed to be fixed by tonight. Just send me an e-mail if you need to contact us.
08/29/05
Tommy is 19 months old today!
Yes, I've
already bought his Halloween costume. It's Nemo of course. I think
he likes it. We'll see if he'll wear it two months from now. I'm
hoping he'll get used to it if I keep it out where he can play with it.
Tommy helped David trim his homemade banzai bushes yesterday. He stood next the the garbage can waiting for David to hand him a branch. Then he'd put it in the trash. I think Tommy thought it was a fun game. He said "Ank Tu!" every time David handed him a branch. That boy is a thank you saying machine. I'm totally sold on letting him pick up manners on his own from now on. We taught him to say please and he never says it unless prompted. He picked up thank you on his own and he says it all the time without prompting. Anyway, Tommy spent about an hour putting branches in the trash. If David didn't hand him branches fast enough he'd jump down and try to pull off some by himself.
Just say
no to the Paparazzi.
08/27/05
Today was the first day of my Baby-Free Breakfast Club. I invited ten other mommies to have breakfast with me two Saturdays a month. I thought it was a good idea, but I guess it wasn't. No one showed up for the first hour. Thank goodness for my friend Ruth! She arrived at around 9:15, just when I was starting to feel really sorry for myself. We had a really nice chat and are going to continue to meet, but at 9 am instead of 8 am. Her lovely baby sleeps much later than Tommy in the morning. Now I have to figure out what when wrong with the plan as a whole. Is it too early? Is Saturday a bad day? Is no one interested? Eh, at least somebody showed up. David would not have enjoyed listening to me mope if I'd ended up sitting there for two hours by myself. If anyone reading this lives in Albuquerque and is interested in participating, give me a call.
We went to the zoo again yesterday. Our yearly passes sure do see a lot of use. Here are some pictures.
Waiting for the gorillas.
Sometimes the animals are still behind the scenes if you get to the zoo right as
it opens.
More duck feeding pictures. David
has decided his new mission on life is to teach Tommy how to hold bird pellets
in his open palm so the ducks will eat from his hand. Tommy was not
interested, but wanted to watch David do it. Tommy's preferred
feeding method still involves throwing pellets at the ducks.
David pulled a Michael Jackson on me at
the elephant look out. We discussed it and he won't let Tommy sit like
this again.
One benefit of going to the zoo early is
that all the animals are eating breakfast.
08/26/05 - later
After dinner, Tommy went outside to play. When I checked on him he was sitting by one stretch of decorative rocks, picking up one rock at a time, looking carefully at it, saying "no" to himself, and then discarding it. After about 15 rocks he jumped up with a rock in hand, yelled "chi ang ul!" and ran over to show it to me. The rock looked like a perfect triangle. I guess he'd been looking for one.
08/26/05
What I did yesterday...By Tommy
Hair! Spay water shhck, shhck, shhck. Hair snip snip snip hair. All done! Miwrrowr. Pretty.
This morning, while eating breakfast
Tommy let his cheerios play for a while before eating them. His spoon was
resting in his bowl so that there was a nice slope down the handle. He
picked up the spilled cheerios off the table, one by one, and made them slide
down the spoon into the bowl. "Wheee! Wheee! Spash!"
More imaginative play! Of course, he stopped doing it by the time I got
the camera. (By the way, it wasn't actually dark outside. Captain Pajamas
has been sleeping until 6 most mornings this week. Mommy says, "Wheee!")
08/25/05
Here are a few translations, in case you get into a conversation with Tommy and can't figure out what he's saying.
I guess these will only help if you get into a conversation with Tommy about a pickle and tomato eating frog. I just wanted to write these down so I'll remember them when he has perfect diction.
08/24/05
When I am very frustrated with him, Tommy responds with loud repetitions of "Tommy! Tommy! Tommy!" or, better yet, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" Little mimic. I try to get his attention so he'll stop writhing around during a diaper change, and he continues flailing about saying the same thing I'm saying. My only possible response is, "Are you mocking me?"
That nursing decline of a couple days ago? It was a fluke.
Time for a drink from the pond little
dinosaur.
08/23/05
Here are the promised pictures of our guest room redecorating project. It all started with the installation of a ceiling fan. There wasn't wiring for a ceiling fixture in that room, so we had to have an electrician come out. We have a flat roof so he had to punch holes in the wall and ceiling to do the job. Since we had to patch the holes and re-paint anyway, I thought it was a good chance to choose a color instead of just painting the room white. (I still am a color-loving Cartwright at heart.) It all snowballed from there. I couldn't choose a wall color without new bedding, then we had to get better furniture since the room was starting to look nice, etc.
Before
After
The walls are a creamy brown, kind of like strong tea with milk. The light kind of makes the brown look pinkish in these photos, but this is not the case in real life. We spent way too much time painting out pink walls in this house when we moved in to go down that path again. We still need to buy a new cellular shade to block the light from the street at night, but the curtains will work for privacy for now.
08/22/05
Tommy didn't ask to nurse at all today from the time he woke up at 6 (later than usual...yay!) until he was ready for his nap at 11:20. I don't ever offer to nurse him. I just comply when he asks if he won't be distracted by a snack, hugs or playtime. He didn't ask at all this morning, not even when he first woke up and the house was still dark and quiet. I don't know what this means. Is this a fluke? Is it the first stage of child-led weaning? Is it a sign that he'll accept mommy-led weaning without too much of a fuss? Why is he doing this right after I decided to let him nurse until he outgrows the need on his own? I like the idea of having a toddler who no longer nurses, but I don't think I'm willing to take nursing away from him abruptly or even with a gradual but firm weaning plan. Tommy's really happy right now, especially since he's not teething at the moment and weaning him would just make life really hard again. I deserve a few months of happy, peaceful life with a contented little boy, and I seem to be getting my wish right now! I've had so few stretches of time like this. Tommy has always been super intense and bothered by disruptions such as illness, teething, company, travel, daylight savings, seasonal changes, weather changes, and the phases of the moon (just kidding about that last one). So here I am, ready to nurse him until he's 2 because I hate confrontation and would rather deal with a happy Tommy than a grumpy Tommy, and he doesn't nurse for a whole half a day. I guess I have to start thinking about this all over again. I'd hate to miss out on an easy-to-wean window of opportunity.
Taking a ride in Daddy's
satchel.
08/20/05
Tommy started saying thank you all on his own yesterday! It sounds like "ank tue", so he may have been saying it for some time now without me noticing. I've never tried to work on getting him to say this because I couldn't figure out how to positively reinforce it. Please was easy because he'd ask for something he really wanted, we'd prompt him to say please, and then he'd get what he asked for as a reward for saying it. I like to think that we're relatively polite people. I know we say thank you to Tommy and to each other and to other people all the time. We just haven't coached him to say it. So last night he was playing with his favorite hard plastic basketball while we were both doing our own things. At some point he ran up to me saying "help...Mommy up...help." He pulled me into the bathroom and I saw that his ball had gone into the tub and he couldn't reach it. I got it out and handed it to him and as he ran off he said "ank tue!" I put 2 and 2 together and realized he meant thank you. I was so suprised! David heard it too and agreed that it really did sound like he was saying thank you. He's done it multiple times today, in very obvious situations that confirm he understands what he's saying.
08/19/05
This morning, Tommy, David and I were playing on our bed. Tommy decided he wanted to settle down for some serious snuggling. As he lay down he said, "Happy!"
He's very intrigued with the mirror again. If he has an image on his shirt he likes to stand in front of the mirror to see what it is. "Dino! Meatball!" (translation: meatball = basketball).
David taught Tommy that you're supposed to say "Bowmp" when Jimi Hendrix is playing.
Tommy has been playing around with his ears lately. He puts his fingers in them and listens to things that way. He asks us to talk so he can listen with his ears plugged and with them clear, comparing the difference.
We saw bunnies at the park twice this week. Tommy tells anyone who will listen about it, "park...bunny!...hop, hop, hop...bush." The bunnies don't like to be chased and always run into the bushes to hide.
Yesterday I was cooking some pasta and Tommy was insistent that he should be lifted up to stir the boiling water. His mean mommy wouldn't comply. Thus began my slow descent into madness. He ran into the pantry and started tugging at the baby-proofed doors. I opened them because I was curious to see what he was looking for. He dug through the things on the bottom shelf, tossing paper products hither and yon, until he found the stash of plastic spoons. You see, he couldn't reach the stirring spoons so he went for some he could reach. I still wouldn't let him stir the boiling water. He ran around with a handful of plastic spoons until I got out a bowl in which he could pretend to stir. He was not interested because the bowl was empty. So I put some sugar and cinnamon into the bowl for him to stir together. That wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done. He got out a second bowl and spent the next 15 minutes stirring the cinnamon sugar and moving it from one bowl to the other with his spoon. I was lulled into thinking he was safely distracted. Next thing I knew he was calling for help. His face was covered with sugar and he was trying to get it out of his eyes. There was also sugar all over the coffee table. I set him on the bathroom counter so that he could rinse his hands and got out a washcloth to wipe his face and eyelids. Once he was clean, he wanted to continue playing in the sink. He mimicked the way I used the washcloth by soaking the washcloth and then slapping it on the counter, walls and mirrors. Then I remembered the pasta was still boiling, and was probably quite overdone by this point. I set Tommy on the ground, warned him that the tile would be slippery from all the water. David came home a few minutes later, and by that time the pantry stuff was strewn all over the place, there was cinnamon sugar all over the kitchen floor and the coffee table (and still crusting around Tommy's eyes), there was water all over the bathroom and Tommy was naked and wet. At least the pasta had cooked!
08/18/05
Here are some random pictures of Tommy using the computer. He uses the mouse wheel to scroll down to things he wants to look at on the screen. Note his nifty new Pooh shoes. Size 8! He picked them out himself.
One of my favorite neighbors and their 21 month old son moved to Hawaii this month. They're in the military, and this is only a three year transfer, so they've rented their house out to another military family with kids. Yesterday, I walked over to introduce myself to them. On the way, Tommy was "discovered" by some other neighbor kids who thought he was soooo cute. They immediately mobbed him, holding his hand, picking him up, and plastering him with kisses. His reaction to all this was pretty funny. At first he just stood there with a perplexed look on his face. Then he started grinning. Finally he started running away and then running back towards them trying to get them to chase him, cackling loudly. When their grandmother finally herded them all into the car, Tommy and I continued down the sidewalk to meet the new neighbors. They have a six year old and a three year old and a dog, so Tommy received even more hugs, kisses and in-your-face attention. I was very proud that he didn't freak out. I guess he assumes everything is OK as long as I'm there. He was a bit afraid of the dog at first, but wanted to pet it by the end of the visit.
08/17/05
I totally wimped out on the jury duty thing. It was supposed to start today and I decided at the last minute yesterday that my reasons for wanting to do it were kind of silly. The negatives far outweighed the potential positives, and I could easily get out of it just by faxing them a letter from Tommy's doctor stating that I am still breastfeeding. David faxed the letter for me late last night and now I'm sipping a cup of tea in front of the computer while Tommy takes his nap. If I'd stubbornly tried to make jury duty work David would be here right now with an over-tired, not-napping, mommy-missing little boy, and I'd be at the courthouse bored out of my skull.
I think I had jury duty tied up with some romantic ideal of getting out and doing something that's not Tommy related. There's nothing stopping me from doing something new. I just have to decide what I want to do and make the arrangements. Jury duty probably wasn't it! David gives me lots of free time on the weekends already. I've started having breakfast by myself one day a week, and that's been just heavenly. I get to eat at a leisurely pace and I take a book along and read for a while before heading home. There is a good mother's day out program near here. Their sessions are 9-12 or 12-3 and it's not too expensive. The problem I have right now is that Tommy has finally settled into a consistent nap time from 11-1. He has two mini-lunches, one around 10 and one around 2. Pushing this nap later always backfires disastrously. Getting him to nap has always been a struggle, so I don't want to mess with this really good, consistent schedule. Maybe he'll start napping later on his own in a few months. Then I can enroll him in the mother's day out program once a week. It will give him a chance to interact with more kids, and will give me a chance to take up something new like volunteer work...or maybe just more personal reading time. (Yes, I realize his early nap time is directly related to his extremely early morning wake up time, but I've never been able to dictate that either.)
But enough about me! I'm sure you all read this more for the cute Tommy stories than for continuous complaints from me. I'll have to think of something good to write about tomorrow. Since I don't have jury duty I should be able to take some good pictures right? We'll see.
08/15/05
A few of Tommy's favorite things -- anything orange, pickles, bunnies, dinosaurs, hopping, blueberries, brooms, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, the sheep in his toy farm set, running around, "Go!", when David snaps the tape measure and says ouch, pushing his umbrella stroller around the house
Two of Tommy's favorite things -- a
pickle and an orange shirt.
Have I mentioned before that orange is his favorite color? He likes to choose my shirt for me in the morning and will always choose one of my two orange shirts if I let him. If he sees one in the laundry basket he'll try to get me to wear it even if it's dirty. He has one orange shirt that Uncle Benny bought him last October. It's been too small/short for months, but I've kept it in the closet because it's the only thing he'll wear without a fight when he's having a grumpy day. I finally bought a new orange shirt and he seems to like it just as much as the old one. Oops. While I was writing that he decided he wanted it OFF. Oh well. We'll tackle the clothing is necessary battle when the weather turns colder.
08/14/05
It's been nice and rainy every night this
weekend. As you would expect, we forgot to put the lid on the
sandbox. Tommy had lots of fun playing in the wet sand yesterday morning!
I've been taking a bit of a break from the computer this weekend. I'll probably start posting more frequently again this week, although jury duty starts Wednesday so that might affect my free time.
08/12/05
Tommy Tidbits...
08/10/05
My brother sent me this picture...
Hee!
In other news, Tommy has started consistently calling me Mommy and calling David Daddy. I kind of miss the constant "Mama!", but his "Mommy!" is sweet in a different way. Sometimes he'll even call us Sally and David, but not often. He is, however, convinced that the David in the book No, David! is Daddy as a baby. He also frequently reminds himself of everyone's names, "Mommy! Daddy! Tommy!"
08/09/05
Captain Pajamas has finally conquered his
life-long aversion to sippy cups. All it took was letting him have
"Two! Oinge! Geen! Two!" This is the age when
most parents are trying to wean their kiddos off of sippy cups, but I'm happy to
finally have the option. He probably thinks they're new toys and will
become bored with them soon. I'll continue to just carry bottled water for
both of us in the diaper bag instead of investing in a drawer full of this types
of sippy cup.
08/08/05 -- later
We just got back from Tommy's 18 month well-baby checkup. He weighs 27 lbs 14 oz and is 35 3/4 inches tall (almost 3 feet!). He's still about 65th percentile in weight, but is off the charts in height. I knew he'd been growing! He was last weighed and measured 7 weeks ago, and in that time he's gained almost a pound and a half and grown more than 3 inches. It's always possible the nurse messed up the height measurement -- Tommy was pretty squirrelly -- but I would bet she's not off by much.
08/08/05
The sink is the perfect spot for eating
popsicles.
"The hat is the ultimum moriens of
respectability." -Oliver Wendell Holmes
08/07/05
I think Tommy has hit a growth spurt. He woke up around 4:30 most mornings this week, and he seems to be waking up really hungry. Between 4:30 and his 11:00 nap yesterday, he ate one plum, a big bunch of grapes, one apple, 1/2 a bell pepper, one thick slice of turkey, 2 oz of cheese, a toddler-sized bowl of cheerios with milk, a whole bagel, and a 1/4 loaf of carrot bread. He nursed a lot too. I'm hoping he'll start sleeping later in the morning again once this growth spurt is over. He's still taking a 2+ hour nap in the middle of the day and I really don't want to start cutting his nap short. We occasionally consider moving his bedtime later, but he's so ready to sleep at his regular bedtime and really responds poorly to a later bedtime. Staying up later just makes him cranky. He's sleeping about 9 hours a night these days, and I'm afraid that just might be normal for him since he wakes up really happy and seems well rested.
Helping Daddy put together new furniture for the guest room.
08/05/05
David came home from work early today, so I had the afternoon to myself. I randomly decided to get my hair cut, but had to go someplace that would take walk ins. No, it wasn't someplace cheap. I seem to have the worst luck with hair cuts here, or maybe it's just impossible to get a stylist who listens to you in Albuquerque. I specifically said, "I've been growing out the layers, so just shape the top and sides and cut most of the length off the back." I'm not sure what part of that he didn't understand, because my hair is now REALLY short. Again. And it's crooked. And bits of it stick up. And there are wispy bits in the back that aren't any shorter than my original hair. And the top and sides are a good 2 inches shorter. And my hair still smells like Dial soap even though I've washed all the gunk out of it.
I knew I was in trouble when the stylist washed my hair. He started by draping a plastic garbage bag over my shoulders. Next came cape number one. Then he carefully arranged a bath-sized towel around my neck, up to my chin. Finally, he covered me with cape number two. He used a gigantic handful of shampoo. It was at least four times as much shampoo as you would normally use on short hair. He seemed to think my ears and any of my neck not covered by towel needed just as much shampoo as my hair. I swear, the suds must have been an inch thick. Then he put on the conditioner...before he rinsed off the shampoo. He finally rinsed, and it took at least 5 minutes to get all that shampoo down the drain. Then he repeated the process! I know you're supposed to lather, rinse, repeat, but this was ridiculous. I am not exaggerating any of this. My instincts were telling me to run. I came so close to saying I'd just pay for the shampoo and leave without a cut, but I was too chicken. I almost said something while he was wiping up the shampoo he'd splashed onto the two adjacent chairs and the counter. But, of course, I didn't say anything. It all went down hill from there, but in such a gradual way that I didn't realize how short my hair was until it was too late. The good thing is that this is my 3rd or 4th horrible haircut since we moved here, so I'm not even that upset about it. It will grow.
I know. This picture doesn't look
too bad. I'd just washed it so it hadn't had a chance to dry into spikes
of crookedness yet.
An extra cute picture of Tommy
08/04/05
We bought Tommy a stool to use as a naughty spot. He's not purposefully defiant very often, and we can usually just remove whatever it is that's tempting him to do something he knows he's not supposed to do. However, we should starting thinking about a game plan for those occasional times we need negative consequences. Unfortunately, he loves the new stool, so David and I will have to go back to the thinking chair for a new plan. He carried it over to the fish tank so that he could see the fish better. He likes searching for particular fish hiding in the plants, and the higher vantage point helps.
08/03/05 -- later
My brother Ben and his wife Erin came up with some reasons why Tommy might think that Bert is Ernie's daddy. I thought they were funny, so here they are...
Bert and Ernie are just one example of his desire to figure out generic group labels. In any given group of animals, people, etc in books, on TV, or in real life, he always decides that one is the daddy, one is the mommy and one is the baby. His Tommy logic usually makes sense. The tallest is usually the daddy. The smallest is usually the baby. Anyone with glasses who isn't obviously male is a mommy. Aladdin is the daddy and Jasmine is the mommy. The teenager who takes our money at the McDonald's drive thru is a daddy. When I tell him he probably isn't a daddy, then he'll grudgingly ask if he's a man. Yes! Interestingly, he clearly says "Daddy" and "Mommy" when figuring out things like this, although he still says "Dada" and "Mama" for David and I.
The boy eats apples. Whole
apples. Core and all if I can't convince him to let me cut it
out.
08/03/05
If you don't want to read a poop story, don't read today's post.
Milestone! Tommy pooped in the toilet yesterday. For the last week, he's been pooping in the bathtub almost every evening. He's never really done this before, and it's probably a lingering effect of the stomach bug he has last week. This has been very upsetting to him because it totally messes up his bedtime routine. He knows what's supposed to happen. He's supposed to call for me, wait for me to arrive, unplug the drain, get lifted up by David, kick madly until all the water is off his feet, reach up to touch the shower curtain bar, then lie calmly on his towel for drying and tooth brushing. If he poops, he immediately gets lifted out of the tub without warning. "No! Bath! Drain! Mama! Ahhh!" Anyway, we needed to figure out some way to deal with this without traumatizing the boy and giving him poop issues. Plus, David was getting really tired of scrubbing and bleaching the tub and tub toys every night. David mentioned that Tommy always says "uh oh" first and then stands up before starting to poop. So we thought we'd try sitting him on the toilet. It worked! I bought him one of those soft-seat toilet inserts that makes the hole small enough for little bottoms. As soon as he said "uh oh!" David asked him if he needed to poop, picked him up, and placed him on the toilet. Viola! We praised him and then he got to get back in the bathtub and finish playing. Bedtime progressed so happily after that. We're not anywhere near ready to toilet train him yet, but this can only be a positive step in that direction. He's big enough that we might even skip buying a stand-alone potty and just use the toilet insert and a step-stool. Unless he shows some really early signs of complete readiness, we'll probably wait until next spring when it gets warm again so he can run around naked during the process.
08/02/05
Fun fact of the day: Tommy believes that Bert is Ernie's Daddy.
08/01/05
We've been re-doing the guest room and master bath this summer, so Tommy's watched David do a lot of measuring. Here he is measuring the new bedding. I'll post pictures of the rooms once we've finished everything.
Just
two wild and crazy guys.
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