The Big Bed

Sunday night, Nicky wanted to sleep in the big bed. He'd tried just a few times before, but always got up immediately and ended up being put back into his crib.

Well, we expected he would probably be getting up soon, but thought we'd give him one chance to try.

At 11pm when we were getting ready to go to bed, Tom and I realized that we hadn't heard a peep out of him since he went to bed at 9pm. (That was a late night for him. Usually he's in bed by 8.) So we went to check on him, expecting him to be curled up on the floor somewhere with his toys, but this is what we found:


He was sound asleep. He did wake up fussing at about 2am, but he was only looking for his binky and then laid right back down. Then at about 5am Tom woke to a little hand on him and a voice saying "Come up?" It was so cute! Tom picked him up and Nicky snuggled on me for a little while. He fell asleep on me and Tom carried him back to bed and put him in his crib to sleep till we got up.

He totally slept a night in the big bed!

We've tried it Monday night, and he ended up wandering out after about 30 minutes or so and was put back in his crib. Tonight he wandered out again, so went back in the crib. But I'm sure it won't be long before he spends every night in the big bed.

Oddly enough, that first night in the big bed came after another first. His first time watching a full length movie. Nicky and I had watched Disney's Monsters Inc. movie. In one part the little girl slept in the monster's big bed, and in her own room at the end she was in her own big bed in her room too. If you've seen that movie, you'll know that the little girl also babbles incessantly. And we've definitely noticed that Nicky's started babbling a LOT more since that. It's like he realized it's ok to say stuff that doesn't "make sense" or something. Very interesting.

One more thing. Tonight we had another peepee in the potty! It was right before his bath and I sat him there for a sec while I was running the water. He missed at first, but then we moved him a little and he totally went in his little potty. Hopefully we'll have more and more of that soon!

The Ultimate PJ Plan

Ok, so the 4 diaper pin method of attaching Nicky's shirt to his pj pants doesn't work. I don't know how he does it, but he can take off the whole ensemble while leaving all four pins in.

BUT tonight a sheer genius idea struck! And darn it! This better work!

I put him in long PJ pants, and then put a button crotch romper (couldn't find a clean onesie, but that was the original idea) on over the pants. I used 2 diaper pins to keep the crotch of the romper shut. I could also end up adding one pin to pin the outside of the romper to the waist of the pants under it if needed, but I really think this will work!

We'll keep you posted.

Ok, so the real news of the week

I promise this is a much shorter post!

The big news from the last few days is that both Tom and I were accepted into the MLIS Graduate program at Florida State University. We're starting in the Fall.

So now, we're applying for financial aid and hoping for some grants. We already have enough loans to last our entire lives, so free money would really be nice. (When isn't it though)

So it's a two year program and when we're done we hope to find positions as librarians in the same library somewhere. We love working with each other, so it would be nice to work in the same place. (Hmm, kind of like how we started out: working together at the movie theater where we met.)

Oh, and by the way, last week when Nicky was at the library picnic they snapped a photo of him:

The last week

Lots has been going on... where to start.

Well let's start with about a week ago. Tom's mom was here for the week for her spring break. She and Tom went crazy on the front yard and then I helped on the weekend. I'll have some photos for you soon, but basically they have transformed the front yard (in a good way). My main contribution was in planting two packets of sunflower seeds in a my own peculiar planting style.

What? you didn't know I had a planting style? Well let me just tell you! I've invented this style I'm pretty sure, because I've certainly not read of it anywhere else. I call it Darwinist Gardening. The basic premise is that the strongest seeds/plants will survive. So to plant a packet of wildflower seeds beneath our newly planted pink dogwood, I pretty much just sprinkled them around it and then rubbed my hand around on them and watered them. We'll see what happens.

I also found two packets of sunflower seeds that I'm pretty sure are at least 4 years old. They were in my kitchen drawer and have move with us at least twice and probably were stored in our old laundry room in the Micanopy shack. I found a bare spot in the front yard, raked at the soil a little with Nicky's plastic digging tool, sprinkled them in the dirt, pushed on them a bit with my hand and watered them. We'll see what happens. They're supposed to be planted 10 inches apart 1/4 inches deep, but meh, the strong ones will make it. Right? I mean, they grow in the wild, and nobody spaces them out and pushes them in there.

I planted a bunch more along the east side of the house under our bedroom windows using the rake and sprinkle method, and then still had a whole nother packet left. So I actually raked out along the fence line and really spaced those guys pretty good, and pushed them in too. Then I still had more, so i sprinkle them on top for good measure and watered the whole lot of them in. Surely I'll get at least one sunflower out of all that. And if I don't, well they were old seeds and probably just all dried out.

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The good thing about all this gardening going on is that Nicky actually has been spending time outside. I know it's shocking, but he's really not been out all that much so far.

It's very sunny here in Florida, and babies crisp up pretty quick. And that's just one of our many reasons we've mostly kept him in the house. The other many reasons are these tiny little demons that are all over the freaking place here. Fire ants.

I hate these things with a passion normally reserved for much more important things. I can't think of anything in particular right now, but regardless, it's really unnatural how much I loathe these creatures. I might feel particularly vehement towards them now since I stood in a pile of them while bent over scratching the dirt to plant my little sunflower seeds and therefore had multiple stings all over my feet and ankles.

Oh, and if you've never had the joy of a fire ant bite, let me just tell you, these don't just hurt for a little while, these bastards boil up and create a pus filled blister that itches and burns (hence the "fire" part of their name) for days! I ended up wearing flip flops to church and work for a few days since those were the only shoes that didn't touch the blisters.

So anyway, these are all over the yard, so we try to keep Nicky safely inside away from the beasts of hell, I mean Fire Ants. But Tom and his mom picked up some ant killer and hopefully they'll soon die horrible painful little deaths. The ants, I'm talking about the ants!

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So we've had Nicky outside lately to play with his water table and other things while we work in the front yard and water the plants. Nicky now knows how to use the hose to spray water into his table, and on himself, and on us. And he also knows the pain of scraped knees, elbows and palms. See, he's fallen a lot inside on the carpet and the linoleum, but that's a LOT different than falling on concrete.

Yesterday he wiped out once before dinner, scraping a knee and his hand a bit. A little blood came out, so we took him in and cleaned him up, put on medicine and a bandaid, kissed the "boo boo" and made his "owie" all better. Then we went out more and played till Tom's dad and JM came for dinner.

After dinner when they left we worked in the yard more. Nicky was running around and fell again on the driveway, this time he was running and fell with more force. He scraped both knees, ripping off the old bandaid, and his palms and elbow. His elbow was pretty raw. I took him in and got him right into the tub to clean him up. We cleaned up his boo boos and put medicine on his elbow with a bandaid. More kisses for his owie and he went to bed.

Poor fella, he was bound to start getting scrapes at some point. Heck he has brusies all over his legs from climbing on things and falling inside, but it's a much rougher, harder world outside.

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He's a tough little boy though. He was crying pretty hard after that second fall when I took him inside. I took him straight into the bathroom and the first thing he did was reach for the binky that was on the edge of the sink. He popped it in and it helped him calm right down.

He finds those binkies to be a real comfort to him and reaches for them when he's upset. I'm not sure how to handle that. I mean he will need to give them up at some point. Here's the thing though, by allowing him to gain comfort orally am I encouraging him to later have an eating for comfort kind of mentality? Or if I take away the binky before he's really ready to give it up, will I be pushing him to have an oral fixation later in life? See it could really go both ways.

Speaking of binkies, Nicky's always called his a Ginky. He knew what we meant when we said Binky, but I guess the B was harder for him to say. Well Sunday he started saying Binky out of the blue. And now I'm the one saying Ginky and he's saying Binky. I already kind of miss him calling it a Ginky. He's growing up so fast.

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What else? Well, tonight Nicky watched most of a real movie. It was the movie Curious George. I borrowed it from our public library Saturday, and have had a heck of a time with it. At first it wouldn't play at all, then Tom finally got it to play, but it's really damaged and skips in places.

I tried to get it as streaming video (you can check out the movies from my library this way too) but then I was driven mad by the technical stuff required to make the streaming video work (error message after error message, I was ready to blow up my laptop).

We were able to watch the first little bit on Saturday night, and we watched the rest tonight, some before dinner and then the end after dinner. And he did a pretty good job watching it. Usually he's not that interested in what's on the TV. Which is a good thing I think. But we do have a lot of the great Disney movies that I look forward to watching with him.

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Nicky's vocabulary is blossoming every day. The latest is "funny." He uses it appropriately too. He'll do something silly and say "funny!" I'll have to see if we can catch it on video.

Speaking of videos, I'll try to upload a few that I took last week soon.

The Poop Saga Continues

When we last left our heroes, they were optimistic in their hopes of having successfully contained Nicky, (aka the Poop Monster) by using a button down sewn up sleeper.

Well since then there was one episode last week when Nicky went down for a nap and was put down in his regular clothes. Of course we ended up with a poopie situation after that, but that was our own fault.

But then there came a day when both his sleepers were dirty. So we improvised by pinning his pj bottoms to his pj top. It worked! We used two diaper pins, one on each side. Ah ha! Now, this gives us options! We have tons of two-piece pj sets! So we used a combination of zip up sleeper with one pin holding the zipper up and two piece pjs pinned at the sides.

Until last night. When Tom called urgently for me from Nicky's room.

I went in and Nicky was sleeping on his tummy, with his top still on, still pinned to his pants, but his pants and diaper were off to the side with a poopie. He'd not even played around. He'd just slipped out of his pants while they were still attached on two sides with diaper pins, taken off his diaper and fell asleep.

ARGHHHH!

So we cleaned him up, cleaned and stripped the bed (that had JUST been washed that day) and put him back in a zippered sleeper pinned at the top.

Our heroes don't even have the energy to be mildly optimistic at this point. We're just hoping that the pins will stay safely shut. The doctor seemed to think that would be fine. Poop we can handle if we must. Poop and blood, well that's just too gruesome to contemplate.

Maybe we'll try the zippered sleeper backwards next time. Right now he's in his button down sleeper.

Five Things: A Meme

I’m very anti-chainmail, in fact I'm so bad I turned this into a blog meme instead of forwarding the email! But this sounded fun, and I promise nothing bad will happen to you if you don’t want to play!

Things about me that you may or may not have known, in no particular order.
The directions are at the end.

Odd Jobs I have had:
1. Telemarketer
2. Nail product demonstrator/seller at a mall kiosk
3. Data entry clerk at our very own UF PPD in their payroll department
4. Concession staff at the AMC movie theatre in the Oaks Mall
5. Gift wrapper at the Belk Lindsey customer service office in the Oaks Mall for a Christmas season

Movies I've watched more than once:
1. Labyrinth
2. Star Wars (the original 3; can anyone watch just one?)
3. Princess Bride
4. Mary Poppins (and pretty much every Disney movie actually)
5. Matrix

Places I have lived:
1. North Georgia
2. South Florida
3. Memphis, TN
4. Upstate NY
5. Micanopy, FL

My favorite TV shows: (I don't really watch TV, so these are shows I've taken time to watch a few times)
1. Monk
2. Ghost Whisperer
3. Trading Spaces (the old one, looks like it's changed)
4. Sesame Street (what? I have a 2 year old!)
5. Crocodile Hunter

Places I have been:
1. New Orleans (2001)
2. Memphis (1998)
3. D.C. (1992)
4. FL Keys (1990)
5. Denver (1987)

People who e-mail me:
1. Lots and lots of work colleagues
2. Tom
3. My family
4. A variety of bloggers/blog readers
5. Spammers!

My favorite foods:
1. Sushi
2. Tom's cooking
3. Pizza
4. Life cereal
5. Macaroni & Cheese

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Hawaii
2. New Orleans
3. The Grand Canyon
4. The N. GA woods
5. On vacation anywhere!

Things I am looking forward to this year:
1. Finding out what my new job will be.
2. Starting Grad School (again)
3. Taking Nicky on his first big road trip up to GA
4. Taking Nicky to the beach
5. Getting the house fixed up and painted

DIRECTIONS:
Now, here's what you're supposed to do if you want to play.
Copy this post, delete my answers and type in your answers.
Post it on your blog know and let me know in the comments that you did it so I can check it out too!

Checkup

So far so good. The stitches are holding and we've not had another naked episode. Whew. (I think he is watching closely to figure out how the buttons work though.)

We had Nicky's 2 year pediatric appointment yesterday. He's in perfect shape and growing fine. He actually didn't have to have any shots either. Apparently he's done with shots until he's five! I charted his new weight and height on his chart. He now weighs 27lbs 8oz and 34.5 inches tall. So he hasn't grown as much as we'd thought, but he's still in good shape growth-wise.

We asked the doctor about his escapist poop-art, and she's said it's normal, but very frustrating. She approved of our sleeper methods and suggested pinning the zippers of the ones he's figured out how to unzip. We'd thought of that before, using diaper pins, but we're worried that he'd open them or pull them open with his stitch-ripping super strength. So we'll try turning them backwards first.

She did say specifically that he's really young for serious potty training and we don't want to push him at all at this age. Just to keep it fun and keep following his lead. It's a slow process, but he did peepee in the potty again tonight, the first time with Tom home! He'd been in the tub with Tom, blowing bubbles, and said "potty!" while grabbing himself. We asked him if he needed to go potty and wanted to sit on the potty and he said "okay." I set him on his potty, and he peed! We made a big to-do about it and praised him. Then he went back in the tub with Tom to play more bubbles. I think he probably liked that even more than M&Ms.

I asked about giving him a multivitamin, but she said that as long as he's eating a good variety that he doesn't need a daily vitamin. She approved of his diet and really didn't have any directives for us. She said we could take him to a pediatric dentist at any time since he's already on our policy, but it's not necessary unless we notice a problem. She did say hold off on fluoridated toothpaste until he can spit it out.

We talked about his binkies too. We're limiting them to naptime, bedtime and when he's stressed/tired. They're still his primary means of self-comfort. She suggested phasing them out, but no hard and fast age limit was given or implied. I'd like to have him off them by age three I think, but we need to help him transfer his self-soothing from the binkies to something else. Not food or drinks, nothing oral. But a stuffed animal, or hugs, or cuddling the dogs, or something. He's never developed an attachment to any stuffed animal, toy or blanket, so we're not sure what to try. (I'll have to do some research!)

So basically, he's doing great, we're doing great, and we just need to keep on doing what we're doing.