Not a post on their own, but if you smoosh them all together? YES!…The sequel

-We found a black widow and her egg nest underneath the seat of The Son’s pedal car today. Needless to say, I spent a good hour tonight googling pictures of black widow bites and their symptoms. Since he is seizure free and no limbs have fallen off, I think we are in the clear.

-Remember that tick I found on my breast? (Breast sounds so clinical, but I really don’t like boob, we usually call them Nur-Nurs around these parts.) I found ANOTHER ONE. I am pretty sure this means either a. My breasts spend to much time outside or b….. actually there is no b, a is the right answer. I have breastfed more than my fair share in the great-outdoors. I think only women who live in mud huts and wear sarongs everyday have me beat at this point.

-Every time I tell The Son that big boys drink from cups, not Nur-Nurs, he grabs my hand and says “Nap-nap, Mama. I sleepy.” Can you tell nap time is one of the three times a day he still gets to nurse?

-We went camping about ten minutes away from our house this weekend. We came home and watched The Incredibles, took Benadryl and had naps yesterday morning, and then resumed our regularly scheduled camping experience. Shoeshe went with us on Friday night, and you know what she negated to tell me before she said she wanted to come? She has NEVER BEEN CAMPING!! (that gets one more exclamation point because we live in a gorgeous state, perfect for doing outside stuff)! She also did not bring a sleeping bag. When I tried to give her one of ours she refused….she slept on the cold, hard ground with a wee little mat and a blanket. I am assuming she will run screaming the next time someone offers to take her camping.

-We sing songs around campfires. I know, I know that sounds corny….and it probably is, but I do not care, I love it. Friday night Shoeshe had her guitar and played, and The Son and my Grandpa sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together, and then my Grandpa sang You are My Sunshine to my Grandma. I hope I never, ever forget those moments. (Remind me to tell you sometime about when my other grandparents renewed their vows on their fiftieth anniversary.) Last night we were roasting marshmallows (smarmallohs to The Son), my mom started singing and The Son said, “No Grammy, onwe ((only)) Swoesee ((Shoeshe)) sing. I want Swoesee.” Aww. He loves her. (could be all the presents)

-Shoeshe left some guitar thingy and a book at the campsite. Whenever she comes to visit, The Husband and I play this little game called, “What will Shoshe leave us this time?” She just got back her camera and a bag of jewelry from the last visit. I am hoping next time she leaves that sweet (insert our Alma mater here) sweatshirt she was wearing.

-The Son has had a black eye this week (it came from an overly enthusiastic hug from a stick wielding, almost two year old buddy). Today before we put him in the tub to wash away the woodsmoke/bug spray/marshmallow odors and the playground dirt held on with pancake syrup and layered over dried leaf bits held on by more marshmallows he looked ready to pose for a neglected child poster. He even had on a droopy pull up and one sock. I did not take a picture, and it was only cute because he has never looked like that before.

-An extremely heavily edited version of this was published here. They left out the parts about The Husband, and I hate that because he should get every accolade possible heaped upon him for his superb daddy skills. It is still super cool to have something I wrote published in a real live magazine. They sent me several copies, so if anyone wants one, let me know and I will mail it to ya…..it is a real magazine, but they don’t exactly sell it at Wal-mart.

-We are going away (I know, are we EVER at home anymore?) at the end of this week with the elder (edited: but not old) Huckablogs, so this and maybe only one or two more posts will be all you get this week. How about you do this to keep yourself occupied, and email the results (heyyou at thehuckablog dot com) for a future post.

The only thing these places have in common is they both empty wallets.

The Son had his two year old well child check up this morning. He is perfectly perfect. His weight is in the 60th percentile and his height is in the 20th, the same percentages as he has had since he was three months old. I expect he will stay around there since he has shortish, chubbyish, parents. He decided to show off his verbal skills for both the nurse and the doctor ( “Pwease nurse? The Son have a Thomas Sticker, Pwease?”, “My ears not hurt. You no look in dem.”), and they told me what I already know, his speech is way ahead of the curve. What did we get a big fat FAIL on? His sleeping habits.

The kid STILL wakes up at least once a night, walks into our room, climbs into our bed, and latches on to the first breast he can find. Sometimes The Husband or I will put him back in his bed when he falls asleep in ours……or not. Often he will just stay in our bed for the rest of the night nursing at the all night Mama buffet. This, according to my pediatrician any way, is completely unacceptable for a two year old. Now I know that I have LLL friends and MDC friends who would say the Pediatrician has been brainwashed by cold science and that children have been co-sleeping and night nursing for millennia…and while I agree it is okay for some families…it is becoming a problem for us. I want to go to sleep and stay asleep. I do not want little fingers poking me in the eye at three AM or little teeth scraping my nipple as he loses his latch in the middle of the night. While I seriously doubt I will go against all of my AP philosphies, we are getting ready to stop night nursing–cold turkey. THERE WILL BE NO NURSING FROM 9 PM TO 6AM. There I proclaimed it to the internet, so now we have to stick with it.

After I got chewed out for my hippie ways, The Son had to get a Hep-A booster. (see? I get him vaccinated! He is circumcised too! And we used Pampers! I am not that crunchy!—Oh wait. Hippie friends? Do you still love me? I still use my sling! I try to avoid all food dyes. We only use positive reinforcement. He is still nursing at two for crying out loud! Obviously I do not fit in with either camp of the mommy wars. Oh, well.) Where was I? Oh yeah. The Son got a shot. He did not want to sit on my lap, so he just sat in a chair and I held his hands while the nurse jabbed him. He was more pissed off and surprised than hurt. He did not cry for more than a second, but when the nurse left and then came back to hand me a packet on “healthy sleep habits” he shouted when she was in the doorway, pointing at her he said. “NO! YOU STAY!” “NOOOO! STAY!”. I asked him if anything would make him feel better (expecting him to want to nurse), and he said, “I need Pancakecakes, Mama. Pwease?” We went to IHOP of course.

After his pancake with yogurt on top (um, ewww.) and a reaaaally long nap, we did what everyone else does on a perfect early fall evening. Another fall night, another county fair. This time it was in our own hometown. I am a member of a philanthropic organization that gets partial proceeds from the paid parking…if I go risk my life by standing amongst all of the compensating for something big trucks and breathing the second hand smoke wafting from open car windows as people hand me their three dollars that have been who knows where. Things I have learned? Teeth are rarer than I once thought in our lovely community, and certain people have different standards of child car seat safety than I do. I do not find letting your toddler balance on your twelve pack of Coors in the front seat of your pickup to be particularly safe, but they pay me three bucks to point to a vacant lot with a flashlight, not gesticulate on the security of their children.

The Son got to have another fabulous fair experience, this time with his other grandparents (his Grammy and Grandpa. Not the ones in their eighties, they only take him on the super fun Buick ride–that is a joke–the Buick ride with Grandma is the scariest one of all ((Lord, please do not let them be reading my blog. Amen.)). This time The Son rode the huge Ferris Wheel (he is definitely NOT afraid of heights), a firetruck, a race car, the dragon coaster, the flying lizards, the wiggle worm, a carousel, and the spin-till-you-regurgitate apples. My mom and I rode that one with him, and it was basically Disney teacups, only enclosed in a fiberglass apple. I guess to keep vomit from hitting other patrons? All of us managed to keep down our meatloaf, but we were pretty wobbly as we stepped onto the rickety stairs.

The last ride of the night was a return trip to the rotating firetrucks, and while all of the seat belts I strapped on The Son seemed to be in pretty good shape, when the overly cheerful Carney handed The Son back to me, I could smell the liquor halo around him. I guess now we know why Mr. Carney was so friendly, Everclear! Is it considered drunk driving if all you have to do is pull a lever? The Son was the one behind the wheel after all.

That pretty much ended our rides for the evening, we sauntered over to the fishing hole (side note: Hey JHJ, were we EVER allowed to play these games? I don’t think so. My theory is because the prizes are so horrific and Mom and Dad only enjoy paying for The Son to play because they know those prizes are coming to my house.), The Son caught a rubber shark that had been dyed blue because of all the food coloring in the water. His prize “catch” earned him (at least I think, the lady carney running the booth spoke zero English, she kinda gestured at us so we grabbed a prize and left. Maybe we stole it?) a plastic trumpet. (HOOOONNKKASQUUUEEEEAK!) Oh let me tell you the joy I felt about that. On the way home, I shoved a piece of cotton candy in the end (google says it is called the bell) to keep it quiet, but all that did was earn me a piece of damp cotton candy in my hair when he blew really hard. (PhffffffftSPLATSQUEEEEEAKAHOONK!)

I guess it was pay back for telling him he can’t nurse at night anymore.

The Baby Question

The Son will be two at the end of August. We are getting a lot of the “So when is The Son going to get a little sister?” questions. What is that all about? Is The Son not as cute as he used to be? I think it is because he is so darling that people want us to produce as many as we can.

Before The Son was born I only wanted one child, The Husband wanted two, four years apart (The same distance in age as his brother and him). He said that as soon as The Son was fully potty trained that he wanted to have another one. Now The Husband is starting to seriously think that The Son is plenty, our family feels great just as it is. He is not so sure that he wants me to make him an appointment for a vasectomy, but he is open to the idea in theory. When I was in the middle of PPD hell, I was confident that I was NEVER doing this again.   But now…..I kinda have baby fever.  I have gotten to hold a few lately, and ooohh the smell!  The Son does not smell like that any more.  Instead of breast milk and lotion, he smells like cheese and dirt.  He is just growing up so fast.   Talking in sentences, eating with utensils (he did pretty well with CHOPSTICKS last night.) peeing in the potty, asking for his cup (rarely) over nursing, and of course there is this.

I hate that he is out of his crib so early.  He still does not sleep through the night, but he will say “Boat bed now,  Mama.”

I would not expect a big announcement from The Huckablogs anytime soon….but we do think about it a lot. We still toss around names (Micah, Elijah, or Simon for a boy, Ruth, Martha, or Elizabeth for a girl), I still tell myself what I would do differently with a second baby (arms reach co-sleeper instead of bassinet, a whole lot more of the sling and a whole lot less, if any, swing and bouncy seat, cloth diapers, ((crunchy AP things I guess)). I guess the answer to the baby question is **shoulder shrug**.   If we did have another kid how could we possibly love them as much as we do our little monkey?

I would hate to have this happen to our second born.

Do you mean that you do not sit on the couch and drool all day?

Pre-school for a one (almost two) year old is a place where you learn….um. Okay, it is where you achieve…riiiiight. It is a place for people who need to work to put their children. Now don’t get me wrong, there is NOTHING wrong with that, hell I was one of those people six months ago. However, I do not appreciate the implication that The Son is not learning anything at home with me. In fact I would challenge anybody to find a more verbal, more kind, more funny, more active, or smarter child than him. (Yeah, Yeah, I know I am biased, but I would welcome the people who know him to give their input)

I can pretty much guarantee that there is not a pre-school teacher in the entire county who has the level of education that I do. I also am confident that The Son gets a lot more interaction with his teacher than he could anywhere else. Can you tell I got my first hate mail because of my blog? Can you tell they insulted my parenting skills? Does this mean I have ARRIVED in the mommy blogosphere?

Not because I have to, or because I think this person deserves any kind of explanation from me, but I will give you a glimpse into what it is that The Son and I do all day, if for no other reason than to show you some cute pictures. I will also promise to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. The Son wakes up at about 7am. The Husband picks him up, takes him potty, and deposits him in our bed. Once there, The Son sleeps and nurses for about 45 min. Many times I will roll over and turn on Little House on the Prairie and all three of us will watch in bed. (What? That show is totally educational, well it could be.) We then get up and I watch exactly five minutes of The Today Show while fixing us breakfast. We all sit at the table and eat together, or if The Husband is working away from home, The Son and I eat together at his little table. We then go to his room where we read a book or two and then get dressed. Four days a week we either go to the library for stories and crafts, or to gym class, or in the summer we go to swim class.

After we get changed we sometimes nurse, sometimes not. Then it is off to the park or to run errands. We either have lunch with someone, pick up something and eat it at the park, or come home and watch a little Elmo and eat sandwiches here. Afterward we will do crafts, or work on one of our projects, like his container garden. He planted them, he waters them, he replanted them when they got blown over in a storm. The bonus science project is the cocoon that popped up on the side. We even saw the day that the moth broke free and was sunning itself on the side. Cool huh! (Take that, you pansy anonymous emailer :P)

We then read another book, are you counting? We are up to four already. Nurse, yes, again. He takes a nap for a couple of hours and then we will read another book as he has a snack. When he is chock full of goldfish, we play cars, or trains, or blocks, or put together puzzles. I do admit to turning on a Mighty Machines or Elmo for him to watch while we play, but never is he just sitting on the couch drooling and staring at the TV.

When The Husband comes home, we figure out dinner together, pray together, eat together. Then we play together, outside or in. We give The Son a bath together, we sit on the futon in his room and all read stories together. The Husband lays next to us as The Son and I nurse, we both give him kisses and put him to bed. Through the whole day we are talking, talking, talking, never using baby talk, or watered down vernacular.

There, for those of you who think I plop him in front of Nick Jr. (we do not even have cable!) and blog all day, you are wrong. I am a Mommy first and a blogger about tenth or eleventh.

“I will tickle you into submission you mean, anonymous emailer! ”

*Blink* Hey, What the hell just happened!?

When The Son was born he was an eight+ pound, wadded up, wriggly, pink blobby.   He flailed about, and mewed when he was hungry.  I could lay him down and he would, you know, lie there.   That was less than two years ago.  Now he is well on his way to being potty-trained. He speaks in sentences. He climbs.  Oh how does he climb.  If it is possible to scale, he is up it.  If it is possible to climb out of, he is free.

This has posed a wee, okay, a major, problem at naptime and at night.  Instead of sleeping, he is out of his crib in two seconds and is playing with his toys.  We thought about just leaving him alone, because he can climb back in, but the child has already had one broken arm, we do not want him to get another when he falls from the high rail of his crib.  The Husband took off the side rail to make it into a day bed.  When The Son saw it he screamed “Broken, bed broken! Broken Mama! Broken Daddy! WAHHHHHHH!”  He was absolutely inconsolable for TWO HOURS.  That may be normal for other kids, but not for him.  He is not a big crier, and his tantrums usually last less than a minute.  We put the rail back on, he calmed down, and he has been napless for the last few days.   THIS. HAS. NOT. BEEN. FUN.  In fact, this SUCKS.

We tossed around the idea of moving him into a full size bed we already own, but it is just so huge to put him in all by himself.  Wah.  Mama no likey.  So we started googling, and we found this.  Granted, we chose it more for how it looks than anything else, but he loves it, and feels like he helped pick it out.   It has been ordered, and will be here in a couple of weeks.  My baby is not going to be sleeping in a crib.  I was sure that I just brought him home yesterday.  The first night he slept in the crib instead of the bassinet next to my bed I lay on the floor by him and sobbed.  He was just so small!  He was dwarfed in that huge crib.  He needed to be by me! Or better yet, in my uterus.  Sigh.  This growing up thing is not cool.

Here he is climbing, of course.  This time it is a tree.

Like Son

Have you ever heard that expression, like father, like son? Well, I certainly hope that it is true.

Happy Father’s day Husband. You have a great dad, you are an amazing father, and I fully expect to have a daughter-in-law say the same thing about The Son someday.

That kind of Mom.

Yeah, I take pictures of pretty much everything The Son does. And then put them on the Internet. I wonder if we can use a 529 to pay for therapy? Here is the evidence of a normal morning at our house.

Parenting for Dummies

Alternate title: In which I clean off my camera, and smoosh the pictures together to make a post.

Now that I am a seasoned and experienced parent of 21 months, I thought it was time that I gave you Hey You’s no fail rules to raising a perfect child. If you follow these rules closely, your child will grow to be healthy, and well developed.

1. Boredom is never acceptable. Every minute should be planned to the fullest for optimal educational value.

2. Keep child away from the filthy aspects of nature. Under no circumstance should your child be allowed to put something they find outside in their mouths.

3. Proper hygiene is essential to good parenting. Make sure your child bathes daily in fresh, clear water.

4. After your child has bathed, make sure that they are fully dried before dressing. If you put clothing on a damp child, chafing may occur.

5. Let your child have plenty of friends their own age. Exposure to adults outside of the family should be kept to a minimum.

6. Rest is a top priority for any child. Make sure their sleep space is free of any objects with no possibility of falling.

If these simple rules are followed then, Voila! You will have raised a successful child.

Bleeding from the ears is normal right?

The Son has gotten so verbal lately, everyday he says something new, or puts together new short sentences. He has a few phrases that he will say over, and over (and over and over and over) and we have no idea what he is saying. He will say them louder and LOUDER because obviously his stupid parents are not bright enough to understand the perfectly clear linguistics of their genius child. The last few days he has been saying gecko? Gecko. GECKO. Mama! Daddy! GECKO! Anybody care to guess what gecko means? We finally figured it out tonight. You guess, and I will tell you if you are right or not later.

With a jump and a roll, off he goes.

The Son has been taking Toddler Gymnastics this Spring and he LOVES it. His favorite parts are the girls, but he loves all of the rolling, jumping, swinging, and balance beaming as well. His last class was this week, swim class starts week after next. If you are wondering if gym for toddlers is a waste of time, and money, I could not disagree more, seriously go check it out for your kids. Or put it in your to-do file right after get married and have children, ya know, whichever.

Here is The Son sitting on his dot watching Miss Trish show him how to do something.

Here is The Son waiting his turn to swing over the foam pit.

Here he goes!

I am ready Miss Trish! (isn’t Miss Trish the perfect name for a gym teacher? Like a piano teacher named Miss Melody.)

WHEEEE!

Climbing out of the pit and on his way to the slide.

That was awesome! What is next!

Vault front rolls!

And back rolls from the vault!

Trampoline time!

Ommf. The mat at the end is his favorite.

Sliding down from the trampoline.

Stretch and rolls on the ramp mat.

Yeah! Best somersault of the year!

We finish with a celebratory ice cream cone, of course.