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.