The Halloween Parade

My son had his first ever big Halloween parade at his school on Friday. He has been in daycare since he was 3 months old but this school he's at now has 4 classrooms and way more people than before. So this was big for him.

The costume? I'm not sure if I've mentioned in on here before but he wanted to be Lizard Man from the Spiderman TV show. He watches Spiderman with his Mom (the Ex) and this is one of the bad guys. Basically it is some scientist named Dr. Connors that is working in the lab and he drinks some potion and becomes a lizard. And thus Lizard Man is born. I did a quick google search and found this image of a Lizard Man bobblehead for your reference:

So that is Lizard Man. But back to his costume, I put The Ex entirely in charge of his costume this year. I reminded her that back before he was born she talked about how she was going to whip out her sewing machine and make him the best costume in the world every year and he was going to be the envy of every kid. Well...this would be our 4th Halloween and I have seen no home-made costumes. So she took my challenge and said she would be completely in charge of his costume this year.

So this has been their thing. They planned it all together, they picked it out, they went to the fabric store and, true to her word, she sat down at her sewing machine and made our boy Lizard Man. She bought a lizard base (which was a dinosaur but she had to take all the "spikes" off the back and tail) and the bought a lab coat and some fabric and sewed purple pants and made the tail fit through it all... It is pretty good. I have to say she totally stepped up to the plate. He loves it. And I give credit where credit is due. She did really good.

It's hard to see in this picture but she made him happy and that's all that matters.

So here's the funny part. He has talked about this all week. Every day he has asked me how many days until his parade. He tried on the costume; he checked it hanging in his closet every night. He was stoked about this parade, I'm telling you. So we get there and get out of the car and I put his costume on and all of a sudden he has the face like he's going to cry. What the hell? So I kneel down and ask him what's going on and he says he just doesn't want to scare people. Huh? What? But for some reason he seemed to have a case of performance anxiety or something. Or that this big parade was all of a sudden a little bit scary, or whatever it was. But he got shy and weepy but braved through.

My gay boyfriend came with me because The Ex had to work and my mom couldn't come. It was sorta funny showing up with this hot guy after pretty much all of them had figured out that I was gay. Made them turn their heads a bit. And my son's favorite aide asked me if he was my brother (she and I have talked openly lots of times) because The Boy kept referring to him as Uncle B. I told him that he was my gay boyfriend and that he was a big part of The Boy's life etc... But we laughed about what everyone else was thinking.

The Boy got into it once we got inside his classroom and he did some crafts and stuff. And he marched the parade like a big boy. My little Lizard Man.

Oh and of course his sister was there too...

Let Me Count the Ways

A moment with my son:

It's nap time and he is in his room laying on his bed playing and talking to a plastic lizard. I call at his door, "Go to sleep buddy." I hear giggling. I open the door and say, "Time to go to sleep buddy; it's getting late."

He responds, "But Mommy I am so very busy talking about this lizard."

Me: "You can talk all about the lizard when you wake up so sleep now and talk later."

Him: "But are you sure? But can we talk about how lizards are reptiles and not amphibians?"

Me: "Sure."

Him: "But they're reptiles because they have claws and scales, right?"

Me: "Sure."

Him: "And they're cool-blooded."

Me: "Right. Goodnight. Have a good nap."

Him: (As I'm closing his bedroom door he snuggles under his quilt while saying): "And they need to lay out in the sun to stay warm because if they don't stay warm..."

You gotta love a kid that begs you to talk about lizard facts. And you gotta love the fact that I have heard these facts so many times that I now feel far superior in my knowledge of all things creepy and crawly than I ever did when I was studying them back in grade school. I love my little nerd. :)

[This Moment]

Is This Week Over Yet?

I have been so busy this week I literally have had no time for myself, for my beloved TV shows, or for much sleep. It is the last week to file and pay payroll and sales taxes for the 3rd quarter and it seems every single client decided to wait until the last minute to call me and franticly beg for me to try and fit them into my schedule. So I have been a bit nuts. Hopefully we will resume our regular sparse postings next week. :)

{This Moment}

A Friday ritual that I am copying from Finding Chaos, who got it from SouleMama.

A single photo (video this week)– no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Happy 18 Months Peanut!

My "baby" girl is 18 months old today. It's so cheesy to say but it really does go so fast. She is this whole little person and is no longer any part "baby." But what a wonderful little girl she is growing into. I wish I could somehow save every moment of every day with her so that when she is a horrific teenager (and I have NO doubt that she will be every ounce horrific) I can look back on this time and remind myself why I decided to keep her. But for now, I will just try and capture of few things that she's doing and some of her favorite things.

First the stats: She is 22 lbs and 8 oz. She is 31.75 inches tall and that puts her in the 25th percentile for weight and the 50th percentile (!!!) for height. She remains true to her nickname; she is a little peanut. She was charming as all getup for all the ladies in the office and even for the doctor as long as he wasn't trying to, you know, examine her or anything. She screamed bloody murder while she was being weighed and measured and then during her exam, but as soon as those things were over and I was chatting with the doctor she ran around the office and counted to 10 and sang her ABC's and just when he was asking me if she was using two word phrases she marched over to me and said, "Mommy, no want it. I want to go bye bye." He smiled and looked at me and said, "Umm...yeah, I think she's good on the speech front."

Wow. Never heard THOSE words spoken to me before.

She wants so bad to be a big girl. She eats whatever we are eating for dinner every night and she insists on using a fork and spoon (even though half the time she is making more of a mess than not). She constantly asks me to "brush her teeth," but I put that in quotes because what that really means is she wants to stand on the stool big brother uses when he brushes his teeth and she wants me to put water on the tooth brush so she can suck it off and hand it back to me and say, "Again? Busha da teef again?" She wants to try and put her own shoes and clothes on. She wants to brush her own hair. If I give her my hand to try and help her up or down some stairs she knocks my hand away and finds a wall or something to hang onto and makes do herself. Very independent she is.

She has found her voice in more ways than one. She can certainly communicate with you but she can also DEMAND. She announces in the morning that she wants to watch a certain TV show and then 10 minutes later has melt down when she has decided that she no longer wants THAT particular TV show and would prefer another. For the record, she is finally into TV and her favorite shows right now are Cat in the Hat, Caillou, and Super Why. She also enjoys Curious George, but I think that is mostly because it's her brother's favorite show. But the other three are the ones she asks for.

As I have blogged about before, she not only wants music on in the car, but it has to be her choice of music and she wants the song changed as soon as she deems it over even if that happens to be 15 seconds after she initially cheered "Hooray!" for the song that came on. She has learned to ask her brother for help on things. She walks up to him and hands him something and says, "Bruh-der help?" And if he ignores her (which he quite often does), she follows him around going, "Bruh-der...bruh-der...bruh-der?" until he finally gives in. She has figured out how to use him to her advantage.

Last weekend she came up to me and said, "[her name] take baby for walk?" I looked at her a little confused because she has never asked that before and I repeated, "You want to take your baby for a walk?" She nodded and said, "Yeah." And then she walked over to her stroller and put her baby inside it and said, "Let's go!" I was completely amused by this whole concept and got her brother and we went outside and she proceeded to walk down the street pushing her baby in the stroller all the way around our entire block. When she gets an idea in her head she goes ALL for it.

She is also a little obsessed with books and those wooden puzzles. She loves them. And I don't know if she has just memorized them all at this point or if she is just damn good at puzzles. Her brother was never really into them but she LOVES them. She has about 10 of them and she picks them up and dumps them onto the floor and then sits down and picks up each piece and knows exactly where it goes and puts it right into the correct spot and moves on. She can complete an entire puzzle in about 20 seconds. It's a little bit insane.

As I have blogged about ad nauseum on here, when my marriage broke up when the boy was little I was devastated for many reasons. But the one that stuck after all the therapy and after a good portion of the healing was that I didn't feel like my family was complete. I was scared to death to do it on my own, but I just didn't feel like The Boy and I were all that was needed to make our little family. And I couldn't have been more right. About two and a half years after I started this blog saying, "I am single and I think I need to have another child" I was right to trust my gut. I needed this child. She is such a huge part of this family and I can't even imagine life without her. She really has completed us. And not only that she has brought such joy and happiness into both of our lives that I simply can't express it properly.

And I will end on what happened in my living room tonight. You know when you have one of those magic moments where the sun and the moon and the stars all line up and you have one of those glorious moments as a parent where you think to yourself, "THIS. This right here is why I did it. This is why I do it. For moments like these..." Well I had one of those tonight. Peanut got three vaccinations today and a flu shot. So by about 7:00 this evening she was a mess. She had a fever and she was shaking from being cold (just out of the bath) and she had spent the past 20 minutes sitting on my lap under her blanket rocking on the rocking chair and warming up (unheard of for her). I put her down because she had finally agreed to have her night time milk so she was sitting in her chair and I went into the kitchen to make her milk. Her brother went over to her and squatted down next to her and said very softly, "I'm sorry you're not feeling well. Shots are a bummer, but you'll feel better soon..." and then he bent down and kissed her on her hand. She smiled at him and he sat next to her and patted her leg. Then after I had given her her milk and she was drinking it he went back into his room and got out his coveted blocks (that are only shared with her when he is feeling VERY generous) and brought them out and made a tower right in front of where she was sitting. Then he said, "Here you go Peanut, I made you a tower...go ahead and knock it over..." She didn't cause she felt so crummy and he said, "You want me to knock it over for you?" She nodded and he crashed it down in front of her." She smiled and sat up. He built it again for her and said, "How about now?" She grinned, threw off the blanket and stood up and knocked it over. He clapped for her and said, "See? That's what I wanted for you to do. I knew my blocks could make you feel better..."

Could you just freaking die?

Sweats and Slippers

It was cold and rainy for the very first time this season today. We had no plans. So I declared today a "Sweats and Slippers Day" which means we wear "comfy" clothes all day long and never leave the house. We watched three movies and snacked on healthy little snacks all day long with no huge meals and took naps and played and relaxed. It was lovely.

Peanut is fighting a bit of a cold so she was a little bit feisty this morning. Like when she wanted me to stop taking pictures of her and give her the damn camera already!

Before nap time she gets her "Kitty" (her lovey blanket that is the kitty version) and her Binky. She likes to feel her Kitty up against her face so she tucks it in her neck and uses her other arm to hold it up so it stays against her face. She has done this forever and it cracks me up...
It's like she's walking around with a perpetual question...but nope...just keeping the Kitty against the face...
After naps, each played with some blocks...
...and then they got into their (matching; I couldn't resist...) jammies and played and played on brother's bed...
...and then when it was time to go to bed they each had a cup of warm milk...

And then they went to bed. I have to admit that I NEVER do this but it was the best decision I could have made for our Sunday. There is always so much to do that I never intentionally give away and entire weekend day for relaxation, but today needed to happen. And I'm so glad it did.

{This Moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual that I am copying from Finding Chaos, who got it from SouleMama.

A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

I Know It's Just A Fluke But...

The Girl has always been very vocal about when she is going "poop poop." Well at least since she started talking. She used to inform me when she had a dirty diaper but lately she's been telling me before she goes and then squatting down and going. I encourage her every time she tells me but don't make much more of it than that.

Today she was in the bath and kept saying, "Uh oh, poop poop..." and then "tooting." I was doing dinner in the kitchen but could hear what was going on and said to my mom (who was sitting in there next to her in the bath tub), "If she's told you she's going to go and has tooted several times, I would get her out. Otherwise we are going to have a mess on our hands..." So my mom told her the bath was all done and time to get out. She got out but started screaming when my mom put the towel around her. She yelled, "Potty! Potty!" and pointed to the baby potty. (I have her brother's old training potty in the bathroom and she sits on it before the bath everyday and we talk about it but I am not in any way trying to potty train her at this point). So my mom unwrapped her from the towel and she sat down on the potty and said "poop poop" again and started pushing. She didn't poop, but when she started pushing she peed. She looked down all surprised and said, "Pee Pee! I go pee pee!" We all ran in and made a big deal of it and told her what a big girl she was etc... then we went about dinner.

She was running around naked (didn't want to get dressed; was still a bit obsessed about sitting on the potty) and then said, "uh oh, potty..." and went into the bathroom by herself, sat down and peed again. The problem was she attempted to carry the potty out of the bathroom to show us what she'd done, but she actually peed on the potty twice today. She's not even 18 months old yet. My baby is growing up so fast. One of these days she is actually going to be ready for potty training...and I'm just not sure I am there yet... :)

Photo Wednesday

I'm not calling it "Wordless Wednesday" because I seem to be physically incapable of putting photos with no captions..

We had some family in town so we got our entire extended family together to try and take the group Christmas card this weekend. The kids got all fancy in their Thanksgiving outfits so I thought I would try and grab a family photo while we were all semi-decent looking. Of course we couldn't all manage to look good at the same time so here are a few different shots. This was the best of the three of us.

This was the best one of The Boy...
And I LOVE the mischievous look on The Girl's face here (The Boy was complaining that his cheeks hurt from "all the smiling...")
And finally...my favorite. It's a bit of an "artsy" shot but I LOVE The Boy's eyelashes and I love The Girl's natural look.

A Moment

This will be quick because I am working, but I had to record this for my own memory.

I knew that having two children, a boy and a girl no less, would most definitely result in the two of them fighting over various different topics and toys in their world together. So it isn't surprising to me that this happens as a rather regular occurrence. Usually they are fighting over some toy or a book that The Girl snatched away from The Boy and ran in the other direction laughing hysterically at her hijinks. Then The Boy starts whining and crying and tries to get it back from her and she proves her strength (and smarts!) by winging her body in the opposite direction of him while simultaneously shrieking at a pitch so high that it could shatter glass. The Boy then lets go of said object to put his hands over his ears and The Girl runs off again, delighted by what she deems their "current game." This happens approximately 47 times a day. So I am used to it. I even sort of laugh at it when The Boy can't see me.

But I wasn't prepared for the verbal wars to start this early. I mean, I know The Boy has some speech delays, but he should still be able to win a linguistic sparring match with his 17 month old sister. And for the most part he does. But then this morning, on the way to both of their respective schools the following happened.

Before we have even left the driveway The Boy starts dictating which music he would like to hear off the iPod. There are basically three genres right now: Spiderman (which is the Spiderman theme song five times in a row--God help me!), Disney (which consists of the songs he likes from The Little Mermaid, Jungle Book and the most recently added Aladdin), and then "his other music" which is the standard several CD's of kids songs like Wheels on the Bus and Little Bunny Foo Foo etc... You get the drift.

This morning he started off with Spiderman and surprisingly The Girl really dug it. As soon as the song ended she would screech "More Piderman!" And then she would squeal with delight when the song came on again. After the 5 songs I can handle no more so I asked The Boy what he wanted next. He wanted Disney, but specifically he wanted his Aladdin songs. So I put those on. Then I started hearing, "nudder song....nudder SONG!...NUDDER SONG!!!" from the back (her very polite way of asking for another/different song). Apparently The Girl wasn't so keen on the Aladdin thing. But her brother was happily singing away. So I looked back at her and told her that brother liked these songs and we were going to listen to his first and then she could have one. (She is a fan of the "other" genre cause she hears those at daycare and can sing along to quite a few of them). She looked right at me and said, "No. No want it. Want nudder song!" I repeated to her what I had just told her and she still wasn't happy so she proceeded to just start yelling, "NO WANT IT...NO WANT IT...NO WANT IT..." I tried to turn up the music to drown out her loud voice, but wasn't completely successful. About 3/4 of the way through the song The Boy looks up at me and says, "Mommy, just change the song. Put on her music. This isn't worth it..." My poor sweetie.

I told him that no, his sister didn't get to get what she wanted by being loud and obnoxious and that he could finish his song. He said she was ruining it for him (shocker!) and wanted her to stop. So I said (to The Girl), if you can't agree on what we listen to in the car then we don't listen to anything. So I turned the whole thing off. It was quiet for a minute while she adjusted to what I had just said. Then in a very quiet voice I heard, "nudder song?" and The Boy saying "How about London Bridges?" and The Girl broke into her very own rendition of London Bridges and they sang it together until I found it on the iPod and put it on.

The amount of talking this child does at 17 months old is just wrong. Not only does she talk, but she knows what she's saying and also knows how to use her words to get what she wants. It amazes me. Her poor brother. He is so sweet and quiet. He doesn't stand a chance!

Lost In A Land Filled With Poop

My cousin (and regular reader of my blog) sent me an email today saying, "Man, you must have had a busy weekend; you didn't even update your blog!" It wasn't so much busy as much as messy! Starting last Monday (which makes today 8 days...not that I'm counting...) my daughter started having runny poops. I know, right? Great conversation...but this is life people. She was perfectly fine except for the runny poops. No fever, still had an appetite, was acting fine, she was just crapping up a storm. It started as we were running out the door of speech therapy last week trying to make it to The Boy's school on time when I noticed that my arm that was holding her felt wet. Ummm...yeah.

I don't need to go into more detail but I will share with you that her sheets were washed 5 times (thank GOD for those fantastic zip off sheets...), her mattress pad was washed 3 times and her bumper pad was washed once. There were more than 10 pairs of pants that I physically stood holding under the sink while scraping off parts of poop with my bare hands and wrung out to be hung to dry or thrown directly into the washer depending on what type of load I was doing. There has been lots and lots of poop in my life over the past week.

I called the pediatrician on day 4 and asked what I was doing wrong, if anything. Nope. Keep doing what you're doing. B.R.A.T. diet (bananas, rice, applesauce and toast), no milk, no juice and no fruit. That last one was a killer. My daughter eats her weight in fruit each day. She was NOT happy about not being able to enjoy her tasty fruit. Hell, after about the 6th day even I was done with that damn BRAT diet. One can only serve so many bananas and crackers and rice... The doctor said sometimes this stuff lasts up to 2 weeks! And as long as I was keeping her hydrated (she was drinking water; she officially hates Pedia.lite and watered down Gator.ade), then there wasn't much to do.

I think the worst part of it all was the diaper rash. Poor sweetie. That was really bad last week when she was in daycare. Once I got her back on Friday I was able to stay on top of it and it cleared up by the end of the weekend. And guess what? She officially just had her very first formed poop in 8 days. I did a happy dance. And now I will go hide my head in shame that I just did an entire blog on my daughter's poop. Jesus...I have GOT to get out more!

As a prize for sticking through this disgusting post, I give you two pictures of my children enjoying their newest toy. I bought them a bouncy house. And before you go thinking I won the lottery, I was told by my pediatrician that The Boy needed to get some OT. Since OT is about $75 for a half an hour, he suggested that I might buy something like this to encourage his activity level. I found this on sale at Amazon for $200. Can't beat that. And it was SO worth it. They LOVE it and now get outside everyday after school for a while getting some exercise. And I can even set it up and break it down rather easily all by myself. A win for everyone.

Now that I think about it...maybe I should have done a post on the bouncy house instead of poop... Oh well, my life has been all about the poop lately so that's what you get!