puzzled

Before Christmas if I had given EM a puzzle to put together he would start whining, "I can't do it."  "Its too hard."  I tried the most basic of puzzles

He'd try and try and wouldn't get any where.  Then Dad comes in and offers simple instructions like "Match the colors," and BAM EM is doing puzzles.  I was telling him to line up the outside, look for things that were similar, but it didn't click until Dad comes along with his grand ol' words of advice.  We moved from the simple puzzles like the Melissa and Doug one above to more complicated one that didn't fit into a board frame.  It had 24 pieces.  I told Dad, "I think it's too much for him at one time."  Dad said, "Watch."  Again simple instructions from Dad, "Fine the picture inside the puzzle and put that together and then work on the rest."  BAM! puzzle success! All this puzzle success was giving EM a great since of confidence.  He gets sooo excited when he learns a new skill.  After he's mastered something then he works on speed.  "Watch me complete this puzzle supa fast!"

He spent a week doing a 24 piece puzzle "supa fast"  before we upped the puzzle game to 48 pieces.
He's now a pro.  Now he's in supa fast mode with the 48.  Moonpie suggests we get a 1000 piece puzzle of the milky way for his next adventure. 

TEETHING

NA is teething.  There are a few milestones in my child's life that fill me with dread.  Sleeping through the night, potty training, teething, puberty ... that's more than a few and not the complete list.  Oh.  Well. We conquered sleeping through the night with little issue, so next up was teething because I don't have time for eliminating communication.  LOL  Why did teething fill me with dread.  Drooly chin rashes, juicy poopy diapers, gnawing on EVERYTHING, fever, irritability and the big one ... I'm breastfeeding (use your imagination).  Soooo, NA was going right along, no excessive drooling, no crazy diapers, no whining, I was starting to think he was going to be a late teether - which is fine by me.  But then he started chewing on stuff - more than normal - the spoon, washcloth, rubber ducky, my b@@b!  DuDE!  I decided to sit him down and have a talk with him.  Let him know what's not the right way to treat his snacks.  Before you start laughing, this technique worked with EM, so I thought I'd try with NA.  He laughed, like, "yeah, yeah, gimme some more of those snacks."   I'm like, "OH no you didn't just chomp on me again after we just discussed this.  I called big brother in thinking he could talk some sense into little man.  They talked for a long time.  I thought OK, good that's settled.  We're good to go.  RIGHT?  Ummm, not exactly, but it's not the same chomp that I was getting before.  We still talk about it.  It is getting better.  Two days ago, Daddy pointed out to me that there's some pearly white sticking up out of his gums.  No!  ReallY?  Sure enough there was one little tooth poking through, the next day there were two.  :)  We really going to have to have a talk when those top two start coming.

Batteries Required

Most of NAs toys were inherited from his oh so generous big brother.  Big Brother was kind enough to leave the batteries in the toys he gave to little bro. These batteries were, in most cases, the original batteries.  When I was kid as the batteries went out in your toys, your toys just stopped working.  Which is what I'm hoping for ...  sneaky mommy.  However, these toys now don't just stop working they just come on whenever they feel like it.  Right now there is a dog that says, "I love you" and a cow that says, "moooooo".  Can I just tell you they are freaky as h-e-double hockey sticks.  Maybe because I grew up with Chucky, but I think these toys are up to something.  I have removed the batteries from the dog, but the cow, I can't get to the batteries, so he just sits over in the corner and lets out a little moo from time to time. NA will just look like it, like "I know I didn't tell you to moo, but I'm going to act like I did so this doesn't get weird."  That freakin cow JUST moo'd at me.  :/

Go to Sleep

As a first time mom, I wanted to cuddle and snuggle my new baby every single chance I got.  Which meant every night I rocked him to sleep and ever so gently laid my sweet sleeping baby down to sleep.  When he would wake, he woke up crying - not all out screaming, but that I'm-awake-come-get-me cry.  Every now and again EM would wake up laughing or giggling.  It was the sweetest thing, but not all the time.  I read all these books that tell you to put the babe in their bed while they were still awake.  Reason being is that when you rock them to sleep that's the last place they remember being.  When they wake up in the morning in bed, they are all confused and a little frightened.  While the babe is in a familiar place, it's not where they last remembered being.  Imagine falling asleep in your hubby's arms on the sofa only to wake up the next day in your old auntie's bed.  How are you going to feel when you wake up?  Dazed and confused?  Babes, I think, feel the same when they wake up in a crib haven fallen asleep in someone's arms. 

Now, baby #2 comes along and I, of course, do not remember all this great wisdom I gleaned from baby #1.  I'm just tired and I have to put this one to bed, go read the other one a story, fix lunch, straighten up a bit.  I don't have time or energy to rock the baby to sleep, if I do I'm going to be asleep too.  So I put #2 in the bed, he's no totally happy, but I tell myself I'll go back in there after I've read the first babe a good night story.  Only when I finish the story #2 is sleep!  Huh!  Ok!  Everyday #2's unhappiness when he's put in the bed is less and less until finally you put him in the bed and he just lays his head down and goes to sleep (we're not to this milestone yet, but I know it's coming - have faith people.)  Now!  Here's the best part, when #2 wakes up in the morning.  He wakes up laughing and "talking" to his little glow in the dark seahorse, Seabert.  It can be 30 minutes before I go in his room.  He and Seabert will just carry on a conversation like that's what folks do at 6:30AM.  :)  It is straight up awesomeness.  This morning NA wakes up, talking about some craziness.  I go in his room to get him up for the day (after about 5 minutes of his talking) only to discover his little legs sticking through the slats in the crib.  He's not crying, not freaking out.  Just talking to Seabert about how he got his legs stuck in the slats.  I'm all panicy like, "NA!  What are your legs doing sticking out the crib."  He's like, "Hmm, dunno.  Good Morning, Mommy!  You bring me a snack?"

Motherhood Karma

You know when you were little your momma used to say, she couldn't wait til you had kids of your own so you'd get a dose of your own medicine.   Well, my turn is now.  All those wonderful things I put my mom through when I was a kid, I am now having the joy of going through on the other side as a mama.  OY!  Craziness is I remember doing all these stuff, so I know it's Karma.  I know it! 

Today, I am feeding NA trying my best to get everyone dressed and out the house so we could go to church.  Em was dressed, we just had to get NA fed and dressed and we'd be on our way.   EM is playing on the floor in front of me while I'm feeding his brother.  He's doing magic.  :)  I won't tell you his magician secrets, but he was making a coin disappear.  All of a sudden he gets real still and starts whimpering.  I'm thinking he's bit his tongue because he was concentrating so hard on his magic trick.  "What's wrong, EM?"  "Did you bite your tongue."  EM shakes his head, then starts crying.  Well what happened?  "I swallowed it."  Ummm, what?  you swallowed what, your tongue?  Please tell me you didn't swallow that coin.  "Did you swallow the coin?"  EM nods his head, then the waterworks really start like in the cartoons with his head tilted back and the tears shooting out the sides.  Oh boy.  Old me would have said "Eh, what goes in comes out. No worries."  But since becoming a mother, other mothers like to tell me about the trauma their kids go though when it's a normally benign situation.  So I've got all these stories from other mamas floating in my head.  I calmly pack up the kid (and the ipad - incase there's  a long wait, mama's gotta be prepared) and head off to the hospital, to "get some pictures made."  I'm a nervous wreck.  EM is just skipping along asking if there is wi-fi so he can watch a movie.  LOL  That should have been my first sign.  We get in, the Dr. "takes the pictures" and we discover that the coin has made it's way to his tummy.  Whoop!  No we just wait for him to make change on the toilet and we're good to go.  Karma is a - - - - -!

Babywise

Finally!  He's sleeping through the night!  Whoop!  I took advantage of the Eid break and put NA on a schedule.  I did the same thing I did with EM many moons ago.  I loosely followed Babywise.  Eat, Wake, Sleep, Repeat.  I still have him on an every 3 hour schedule because I like being able to sneak in an extra feeding (so does NA.) We may move to every 4 hours at 7 months.  We put him down for his naps and bedtime while he is awake.  The first few times he fussed.  Started out with 30 minutes of fussing (and me going in there every 10 minutes to reassure him that he was capable of falling asleep while he wasn't eating.)  Each day the fussing got less and less.  Now he fusses for 1 minute (just one) before he falls off to sleep.  Oh!  and I play a music - I didn't do that with EM.  Its a recording of a rain storm.  Play it every time he gets put in the bed and I play it very loud - like you're sitting on the front porch during a rain storm.  My thought was that it would be like Pavlov and his his doggie.   On top of him sleeping through the night when he wakes up in the morning he rarely cries.  He just chills in his crib talking to Seabert the seahorse until I come in to get him up for the day.  I'm happy that NA responded well to it. 

EM is starting to show signs of being in the middle east too long.  He has a love for fast and/or expensive cars.  I don't know how he knows which ones are the expensive ones and which ones are not, but he knows.  While he was picking out the car that will take him to work - a McLaren mind you - he comments, "I like expensive cars, huh Mommy?"  Well, yes son.  That's affirmative.  Bless his heart.  At least he has a generous heart and won't be all stingy with his expensive cars, because he offers to buy me one of whatever he's getting.  :)  Must get this in writing ... and signed. 

Eating and Sleeping

I few weeks back I posted about NA sleeping through the night and how excited I was.  I know I’m going to come back to this blog when he’s 5 years old and think, oh he slept through the night from 5 months.   Ummmmm, not quite.  He’s not consistently sleeping through the night, but he’s getting there.  Maybe by 7 months?!?  I can hope.  He had a cold for a while that I think was contributing to him waking up.   He wake up sounding like Darth Vader and I’d go in there to help the kids breathe, he smells me when I come in and starts rubbing those eyes.  Next thing I know those beautiful peepers are staring back at me in the moonlite room.  :/  I try to give him my angry face or my I’m-not-in-the- mood-for-this face, he shoots me one of those toothless grins and it’s all over.  Mommy melts.  When he was extra congested I kept him in the room with me, so I could keep an eye on him.  Again, he knew I was there and would just be talking up a storm.  I’m like “Dude!  The lights are off, mommy is snoring, it’s time for you to be sleep.”  He’s all like, “goo goo gagaga gooooooo.” :/

Feeding solid foods in an adventure.  I tried to feed him green beans the other night and he was spitting them back out and me and yelling at me.  Just like those babies you see on TV.  NA will take the spoon and drop it in his seat like, “There!  Spoon is gone.  No more green beans.”  It wasn’t until I added apples to the mix that he took some.  Looks like we’re going to have a food adventure on our hands.  I’m going to have to come up with all sorts of crazy combinations to get NA to eat.  I need to figure out how to break him of this.  I don’t want him to refuse to eat something because it’s not sweet.  Any suggestions?

With this new eating plan, NA seems to have added 5 pounds to his little frame.  I love those chubby thighs and arms.  I hate how I get cramps in my arms from toting him from point A to B.  The only way I can comfortably carry him without a carrier is football and reverse football. LOL