Adios My Old Friend

Finally. The day has arrived. I thought it might never come, but to my surprise and much awaited delight, the last days of the dreaded pacifiers have come to it's end. Just over two years ago, little Alex (not really so little as he was born at a whopping 9 pounds) was born and within 24 hours of his birth, I did the ultimate 'no-no'. After 29 hours of labor and hours on end of crying, a very tired mama (that's me), decided to give the little guy his first pacifier. It worked, and I slept. It was wonderful. Over the last two years, the pacifier has been Alex's best friend. In the night, he would happily suck it non-stop for his comfort (and mine). During his many trips to the hospital and doctors, he would calm down quickly with a pacifier to ease his distress. During colds, the pacifier would ward away his tears as he combated his snotty nose. It was his his true blue friend for two whole years. And then the pediatrician said it must go. We opted for the Pacifier Fairy for our battle to rid the house of the sucking monstrosities. It worked...for awhile. For two weeks, we were to say good-bye to one pacifier every third or fourth night. Alex would choose which of the 5 pacifiers he would never see again and place it in a basket. And the next morning, the Pacifier Fairy would leave a nice toy in his basket as a trade. 5, 4, 3, 2,....and then there was one. Upon this last night, utter horror broke loose at bedtime. Alex refused to say goodbye to his last orange pacifier. All hope was lost. I feared that I would infact have a 16 year old still hooked on this devil's chew toy. Then earlier last week, I sat down and had a nice talk with Alex. I explained how he was a big boy and that he wouldn't want to go see his cousins for Thanksgiving with a pacifier. And if he were to get rid of it, that next morning when he woke up, we would celebrate with a candy and ice cream breakfast. I, of course, was just floored when he looked up at me and said, "Okay, mommy. By Paci!" And that, my friends, was the end.
He slept without a pacifier for the first time in 2 years. The first thing he said to me when he woke up was "Ice cream and candy, mommy?" So we celebrated his 'big-boy' day with ice cream shakes (soy ice-cream), candy, and ice-cream cones. Prouder, I could not be. Here is my big boy with his celebration breakfast.

Abby has never really caught on on the pacifier. She is a thumb-sucker all the way. And I couldn't be happier. If a third kid is in the picture, I do believe I will avoid the pacifier. It may have a few pleasant advantages, but the side-effects can be a royal pain in the...um...mouth. And here is a picture of miss Abby. Ain't she just a doll?

Napping Hiatus

It's a phase right? At least that is what I keep telling myself. Alex has decided to give up napping. He's only two, so this has got to be a phase. I was under the impression that children needed naps up until at least the age of four. I have tried everything. He refuses to stay in his bed for even "quiet time". So I've come a a point now where I just don't know if I can keep forcing him to stay in there. It doesn't effect him though, if that is what you are thinking. He can go from morning to night without so much as an ounce of sleep and is just as happy at 10:00 in the morning as he is at 10:00 at night. Actually, he is crankier after a forced nap than he is without one. And to be honest, it's destroying poor Abby's sleep routine. She needs her sleep. And I do mean needs. She is a disaster if she doesn't get her 3 to 4 hours of daytime sleep. And now that they are sharing a bedroom (a joyful experience I hope to rectify one day with separate rooms), Abby just can't get sleep with Alex in there with her. He insists on keeping her awake. And the real trouble is that when she is sleeping soundly in her crib, Alex will go to take his 'nap' and will yell at the top of his lungs to entertain himself. He will then jump on Abby's crib railing and say "Abby, wake up!" This ends in the waking of Abby within moments and only leads to a very unhappy Abby. I'm not sure what has led to Alex's need to stay awake all day, but I'm starting to think he needs to have his brain stimulated more during the day. We already do playdough, markers, crayons, letter of the day, books, and dancing. He knows his alphabet and numbers for the most part, shapes, colors, and has mastered almost every puzzle we have in the house. What the heck else am I supposed to do with him for now? So unless I tie him to the bed kicking and screaming, it's either two frustrated children, or two happy children. I'm opting for the latter.

Thank You....You're Welcome

Manners. Do unto others...yadda yadda yadda. In the end, it really does pay off when it comes to your kids. Ever since Alex was born, i've made it a point to say please, thank you, and you're welcome when ever appropriate. Apparently it has all rubbed off on him. I remember working so hard to get him to attempt to use baby sign language and taught him to sign 'please' whenever he whined to get something. (I say whined, because at that time, he was incable of using speech to articulate his needs and wants). It worked for the most part, because he generally will say please now for whatever he asks for. But up until yesterday, 'Thank you' was not something he said on his own. Oh...he would say it when I asked him to say it, but it just doesn't mean as much when you have to force it out of him. Today when I asked Alex what he wanted to eat for breakfast and I gave him a choice. He asked for pancakes much to my surprise. I asked him if he wanted chocolate chips in him and he said yes. After dishing them out to him, he sat down to eat and before taking a bite, he looked up at me with those adorable eyes and said the magical words to a mother's heart. "Thank you mommy." I instantly melted and said "You're welcome". Well, later in the day I asked him to put his cup in the sink. After saying thank you to him for doing what I said, he looked at me again and said "You welcome mommy." Adorable.

Here is Alex in all his craziness. No, he isn't naked...there is a diaper in there somewhere. And yes...he got in there himself.

And here is Abby showing off her mad new skills. Pulling up before 7 months...I'm in trouble.

On some new notes, the kids have been sick over the last week so things have been kinda crazy around here with all of the lovely snot rockets coming out of everyone's noses. But that hasn't slowed either of the monkeys down at all. Abby is full on crawling now. She crawls pretty fast now and pulls up to almost everything...including my legs. She has also started to climb small obstacles in her way. She tried her hardest to climb the indoor slide we have, but has yet to master that feat...thank goodness. She also uses her ability to crawl, to make her way to any item that is considered a choking hazard. Hence, why we had to call 911 for a choking episode for her this past week. Lovely. Don't worry folks, she got it up before the ambulance arrived, but they checked her out anyways. Alex has continued, in spite of his illness, to learn a few new tricks of his own. Mind you, they are not necessarily good tricks. Apparently he just discovered that he has two holes in his nose and has decided that there are many new things that can fit up there. Great. And he is now learning cause and effect. So I spend the better part of my day explaining to him that just beCAUSE Abby is sitting there happily playing with a toy, does not mean that he can EFFECTively push her over to see what happens. Poor little girl has had more bumps on her head than I can even begin to count. Alex has also decided that whatever he eats, Abby can have too. So to date, miss Abby has had nearly every food that they tell you to NOT have until the age of one year. Milk and nuts excluded of course.

Halloween

I'm a bad blogger. I Don't post daily, but I try to at least post once a week. I have posted this week, as you may have noticed, but I failed to make a Halloween post last week. What kind of blogger am I not, to post on such a fun occasion? Well...at least I'm rectifying my mistake with a nice blog with plenty of photos. So here we go...

Alex was lookin' cool as could be in his costume this year. He picked Superman. And yes...I gave him plenty of costumes to choose from and he went with this. Gotta support our super heroes you know. He was loving it too. I half expected him to want to take it off half way through the night, but he was more than happy to keep it on. The two kiddos with him are my twin niece and nephew, Jamie and Linda. Jamie was a vampire (note the teeth) and Linda was a ghost.

Then we set off for the hunt of candy goodness in my brother Jake's neighborhood. At first, I was worried because so many candies have milk in them. So after much online research, I found a TON of candy options for our little dairy-free toddler. Skittles, Starburst, Dum-Dums, Smarties...the list is surprisingly long. True to Superman form, he was full of energy and speed after the high dosage of candy he ingested throughout the night. And he was more than happy to ask for a piece of candy before we got to the second house. Naturally, half of what was given to him was chocolate. What happened to the good old days when not everything was chocolate? I remember thinking it was a real treat to actually get a piece of chocolate candy. So here is a nice photo of him running with his loot.
He did pretty good. He said "Trick-or-Treat" like a little pro and knocked on doors with the best of them. He even weaseled a couple extra pieces out of a few nice older ladies. I mean, come on...can you blame them? Look how adorable he is!

As for poor miss Abby, she didn't enjoy the evening as much. She just isn't there yet. We didn't even torture her with a costume, but she sill managed to have the same look on her face most of the night. And here she is in all her tortured state. Doesn't she look miserable?

And here is a picture of him proudly displaying his pumpkin find from our little visit to the pumpkin patch. (See earlier blog post of the Pumpkin Patch). It was a bit small to carve, so we just drew a nice classic face on it.

Otherwise, Halloween was a blast. We came back from Uncle Jake's house and needed to wear him out more due to his sugar-high, so we trick-or-treated our neighborhood as well. The highlight of the evening was Alex's trip to the local firehouse. They were giving out all sorts of goodies and let the kids play on the fire trucks. Alex is obsessed...and I do mean obsessed...with fire trucks. Loves them. Talks about them all the time. So he spent about 20 minutes running all over the place with another little boy dressed up as superman. Naturally I was lacking my camera at the time. But let me just say, that we literally had to drag him from there kicking and screaming. Broke my heart to do it, but it was 10:30 after all. They even offered to take him for a ride someday when it is nice out. As we walked home, he called my mom and told her all about the fire-trucks. "Grandma, I ride in fire trucks!" Too cute.

George of the Jungle

I never really knew what to expect when it came to kids. All I knew, was what I had experienced with my many nieces and nephews. And when it came to movies or TV, I knew that eventually, each kid will find their favorite movie and want to watch it until their eyeballs fall out. And in my past experience, the kids I knew fell in love with cartoons. Thanks to Disney and Pixar, we have a plethora of cartoon movies to choose from. From Toy Story to Lion King, we own a good majority of the best ones. We have tried many of these movies on Mr. Alexander to no avail. No, I'm not pushing movies on him, but we got a little sick of watching YouTube videos and decided that there must be more to life than Elmo's World. So movie after movie was plopped in the DVD player and movie after movie was rejected with strong criticism on Alex's part. So we all but gave up until one day. We have quite a few old VHS tapes of movies and one of the ones I liked to randomly watch when there was nothing on (we have no cable now), was "George of the Jungle". Back in 1997, the wonderful world of Disney created a live-action movie of the very old cartoon series. It's a plucky comedy starring the well-toned Brendan Fraser and a various array of funny jungle animals. Of course, the most important animal is a talking gorilla, An Ape Named Ape. I plopped it into the old VHS player and to my surprise, he sat down and watched the entire movie, from start to finish. It didn't stop there though. He was in love. Here he is watching it for, what may be, the 10th time or so.

Then it became his obsession now for going on the last month. He watches it once a day (it's the only TV he watches now seeing as how Sesame Street is no longer available to us). My friends, when I say obsessed, I mean obsessed. George eats bananas in the movie so each time he sees George eating a banana, he runs to the kitchen, gets his stool, climbs up, and gets himself a banana. Which is funny because he had previously grew to dislike bananas for a long time. Now we go through many, many bananas a week. Hey...at least it's not candy or cookies, right? So here he is with his new love for probably the 20th time, if I could estimate.

And sometimes, he doesn't even make it through the movie, but falls asleep near the end. Here we have Alex and Josh having fallen asleep right near the end. Awww...precious.

He repeats lines, has fallen in love with his monkey stuffed animal (who yes...has been named Ape by Alex himself), and reenacts some of the funnier scenes of the movie on his spare time. It's very funny to us that he loves this movie. It's live action. He has been like this from the beginning though. He loves YouTube music videos, Home Improvement (the TV show), and now he is beginning to like two other movies. "Rocketman" and "Galaxy Quest". Both of which are also live action movies. No idea what has sparked this new passion, but we think it's just adorable and hey...it sure beats Elmo. I don't miss that furry red monster at all. So I guess, for now, we will enjoy "George of the Jungle" for a few million times until he moves on to his next obsession. I'm not complaining. It's a great movie and I highly recommend that if you haven't seen it, you should go out and rent it. It's a keeper.