Fuzzy Love

Home, Home on the Range

Howdy parner.

Mornin' Ma'am.

Like my rope?

I spot some cattle rustlers!

Yee haw!

Cowboy in the Morning

Liam got himself dressed this morning. Try to picture it (Mark took a photo, but he won't let me post it). From top to bottom: cowboy hat, big buckle belt (no pants), Nemo underwear on backwards, white sweat socks, cowboy boots. Excellent.

(Mark gave in. Sorry Liam.)

Halloween Sneak Peak

I've learned from past  years that you can't take your time when it comes to Halloween: if you see something great, grab it. You can always mark it up and sell it on EBay if you change your mind. So yes, it's only August and both kids have workable costumes already. Olivia's came from a regular store - it was so cute we couldn't pass it up. Liam's isn't quite finished yet (it's being pieced together from both second-hand stores and stores where they sell the real thing) but he looks great and is feeling fine. Here are some hints (I'm assuming you can guess who is who).

The Good

As you'll soon see (if you haven't already heard), this has been a uniquely crazy week around here. That's why you are getting the Reader's Digest version of events. Here's the good stuff:

• I met with all of Liam's teachers. I found out just how lucky we are to have him in this program. There are ten kids and three or four teachers at a time. With a ratio like that, they are able to tailor their teaching to each child. And he's doing well. Sure, he's been naughty a few times, but nothing unusual. He's a good listener most of the time and he's made friends. What more could we want?
• Olivia had her nine-month appointment. She's doing well, of course. And she's got some new stats: 29 and 1/4 inches tall, 19 pounds and 10 ounces, 18 inch head. She's quite tall for her weight. One little potential issue is that her eyes still cross once in a blue moon, so her doctor thinks she should see a specialist about it. He's always overly cautious, so I'm not really worried.
• Mark had a birthday! He's forty now, people. I can't resist; here's a shot from ancient history.

If you don't have kids, I'm sorry about this last one.

• Liam used the potty (#2!)! He's been doing pretty well over the past two weeks we've been serious about this, but that robot was still sitting on top of the fridge. Then today, suddenly, he went all by himself. I only noticed because I happened to be walking by the bathroom. Then he went again. So he has the robot. That was really our only strategy, other than ignoring the whole issue. I knew that he knew what we wanted him to do and I've heard enough from other people that pushing them doesn't work. We made a huge fuss and he announced, "I'm proud of myself." Hopefully he'll keep it up.

Nerves

Tonight is the first parent-teacher night at Liam's preschool. I'm nervous. I feel like I should dress up because otherwise they'll be able to tell I'm not really an adult. This is the big time. Liam will be graded/judged and I'm the one accountable (well, Mark is too, of course, but one of us has to stay home with the kids).

In the meantime, the little guy is sleeping on the sofa (he wouldn't nap, but fell asleep anyway).

Nine Months

Olivia's growing up quickly, so here is a list of things she does right now:

• She crawls, she cruises, she pushes a wagon, and she even stands on her own for a few seconds at a time (no slicing or dicing yet).
• Gets into everything, especially the fridge magnets (and the fridge), the washing machine, the bucket o' play dough, the pantry, and pretty much anything Liam is doing. Her favorite thing to do is empty out containers, so if I stick a bucket full of whatevers in front of her, she's pretty happy taking them all out onto the floor.
• Goes to sleep really easily, but still wakes up once a night for a feeding (and, for the last couple of nights, twice). She naps twice a day: at nine and at one.

• Gives raspberries, blows (see picture below), and makes that funny noise you get when you stick your tongue in and out: ale, ale, ale, ale. She gives kisses with her mouth wide open.
• Often looks under things - the bed, a cabinet, her crib - with her butt stuck up in the air.
• Also sleeps with her butt up in the air (that's new).

• Says, "Mamamamamama" quite often and "Dadadada" sometimes too. I swear she uses them in context. She knows the signs for milk and all done and food and waves good bye.
• Eats pretty much anything, and a lot of it. Some days I think she eats more than Liam does. Favorites are graham crackers, green beans, carrots, bread, sticky rice (oh my that's messy), cantaloupe, and mangoes. (No new height and weight stats yet; she sees the doctor on Thursday). And she's a very messy eater. You're looking at outfit number three today.

• Thinks that pretty much everything Liam does is hilarious. She's always straining to watch what he's up to, which results in a lot of falls.
• Is a climber. So far, she's made it on top of the coffee table, her Leapfrog Learning Table, and Liam's ride-on fire truck. This also results in a lot of falls.
• Falls a lot.

• Is very sweet and cuddly and smiley and I can't imagine what we ever did without her.
• Oh, and she doesn't sit still for long.

This Sounds Like an Endorsement for Birth Control, But it Isn't

I really hope I didn't give the impression that the potty training is going very well. I meant it when I said that Liam GETS it; he does not, however, always DO it. After all, little kids are like barometers for stress, and this hasn't been the easiest week. So let me give you a peek into our world yesterday.

Mark gets up at five to go to work. Olivia gets up at five for no reason other than that she can. Liam wakes at six in a good mood and goes to the bathroom all by himself.

After breakfast, Olivia crawls around while Liam and I "make fings." Olivia decides she wants to eat the pom poms on the coffee table and, while cruising around to get to them, falls. She cracks her chin and her forehead, which both turn purple immediately. She spits up some blood, which freaks me out. After she calms down she is ready for a nap, so I put her down, but then worry for the next hour and a half that she has a head injury and won't wake up again. I check on her three times. She wakes up happy.

But happy or not, when Olivia is awake, she wants to be able to see me all the time. This makes things difficult when Liam has to go potty, as she crawls along behind us and tries to climb up Liam's legs while he's...busy. No matter how many times I put her out into the hallway, she keeps on crawling back in. This upsets Liam and by lunchtime he's wailing, "I can't pee!"

I talk to my brother briefly on the phone. Liam is playing nicely by himself, or so I think. He shows up in the kitchen pointing to his pants and says, "Look." Oh no. "Liam, did you pee?" "Yeth, I peed on the sofa!"

After a load of laundry (thank goodness for slipcovers), both kids go down for naps. Olivia first, while Liam watches The Magic School Bus, then Liam and I cuddle in bed and read some books. When I go downstairs, Olivia wakes up. Liam is quiet, so I think he's asleep, but shortly he appears at the top of the stairs complaining of that oh-so-common potty training side effect: constipation (not that he puts it that way, but I'll spare you). Nap doesn't happen, but I think he's giving it up anyway.

I keep Liam in a pull-up for the sake of his comfort, but for the next few hours he is periodically upset about his situation. In the meantime, Olivia crawls over to Liam's easel, finds a rogue black marker, and chows down. (See the big purple mark on her forehead?)

I do another load of laundry. By the time Mark gets home from work, Liam is very uncomfortable and is pretty upset. We make dinner, but present Liam with a half dozen raw carrots (his favorite) so he'll be sure to get some fiber. Two minutes into dinner, Liam starts to cry and insists that he has to go potty, so I take him in. The second I pull down that pull-up he pees. All over me. When I say, "Liam! Stop!" (I know, I wasn't thinking) he becomes almost hysterical.

After a lot of cuddles, I am able to leave the bathroom (soaked and bowlegged) to change my pants. Mark, seeing me, asks, "What happened to you?" I think that it's pretty self-explanatory, really, but Liam announces proudly, "I peed on Mommy!" Liam and Olivia have their bath and I realize later that Liam had only carrots for dinner.

The constipation issue still is not resolved by bedtime, but Liam falls asleep quickly anyway.

Fast forward to the middle of the night. I wake up long enough to notice that the hall light is on and shining in my eyes, but I go back to sleep. Sometime later I open my eyes again, and this time I can hear Liam talking. It's two thirty in the morning. I get up to discover that Liam has been awake for some time. Every light downstairs has been turned on. He had been reading stories to himself on the floor in his bedroom, but was now in his bathroom building a tower out of books on top of the garbage can while Fuzz sat on the counter and watched. Liam wasn't constipated anymore and he was happy.

When I pick Liam up from the bathroom floor and take him back to bed, and Liam announces happily, "I had a big poo, Mommy!" the whole day strikes me as supremely funny and I crack up. Liam does too.

After Liam is cleaned up and back in bed and cuddled and Olivia is fed and Liam is cuddled again, it occurs to me that this is a nutty little family we've got here. And thank god for our nutty little family.

Storm Watching or So Much For Naps

We had another monsoon-like rainstorm this afternoon, punctuated by the startlingly loud Colorado thunder that keeps my kids awake. Olivia had a decent nap before the storm began but Liam was just falling asleep, so you can imagine the mood he's in. So we gave up on naps and watched the storm instead.

Do you see the river of water going down the near side of the street? Now it's about twenty minutes later and the sun is shining again, although the river is still flowing.

Olivia is in that stage when she opens all cupboard doors and takes everything out onto the floor, so she's doing that now, while Liam is being forced to watch Finding Nemo while lying down, in the faintest of hopes that he might drift off.

Peein' Inna Potty

First of all, if you don't have kids, keep surfing. You aren't going to like what you hear today.

There's no diaper in those pants, people.

Here's how it happened: as you may recall, Liam was signed up for preschool back in February. One condition of attending most preschools (but by no means all) is that the children must be toilet trained. Back in February, that seemed very possible. After all, we had seven months to accomplish it. Although we did give it one half-assed attempt in April, for the most part we were sitting around waiting for Liam to be "ready" and for our lives to be stress-free. Well, waiting for stress to go away is a bit like waiting for hell to freeze over, so toilet training fell by the wayside. Then, on one of the last days of July, we got a letter from Liam's school that informed us that his first day was August 8th. That gave us exactly two weeks to get this worked out. And my brother was visiting for most of it.

Now, some people are against bribing their children to use the bathroom. But we didn't have the luxury of time so we started with bribes. Mark and I went to the clearance rack in Target's toy department and bought a bunch of silly, cheap toys of the sort Liam wouldn't normally get. We stuck them all in a box and told Liam each time he used the potty he'd get a toy. Lo and behold, it worked. We also told him that he couldn't use a diaper at school, so that helped too. Then we stayed close to home, dressed him nothing but undies and t-shirts, and asked him every half hour if he had to pee. It really didn't take long for him to get the gist of it (he must have been ready and he certainly was motivated).

But still, even the best-intentioned little boys don't want to stop playing to go pee. So last week, when Mark and I took Liam in to his school for that first meet-and-greet, I was a bit worried. Mark took Liam to the bathroom the second we arrived, then again after thirty minutes, just in case. So when Mark and I took the tour of the school, I was feeling reasonably confident. Silly me; we got back for the end of story time and when Liam stood up he was soaked.

The good news is that, despite all the big talk back in February, the school does "recognize individual differences and will work and support families" around potty training. So Liam's been wearing a pull-up to school. I've asked him to tell his teacher when he needs to go to the bathroom, but so far he's just been holding it until he gets home (I'm not confident enough in that,  however, to send him to school in underwear yet).

As for the other half (good ol' number two), well, that's the holy grail of potty training and we haven't found it yet. Again, we're going the toy route. On top of our fridge, still in the box, is a giant robot with buttons, lights, and moving parts. It is the coolest toy and Liam wants it bad. But not quite badly enough, apparently, as we're still waiting on the poo. It could be a long wait too, as I understand kids often start to withhold it, get constipated, and then experience some pain, which scares them from trying again. Then the whole situation just gets worse. Friends have been going through this for months with their little boy. But about once a day Liam talks about the robot and what he has to do to get it, so I'm still hopeful.

At least I don't have to worry about him getting kicked out of preschool.

Preschool

As I write this, Liam is attending his second day of preschool. (Olivia is also asleep, and the house is very quiet. I'm not used to it yet.) As I'm sure we all remember, he did not make it into church basement, but is attending the preschool program at a local elementary school. Because he's now part of the official school system (as opposed to a church basement-type system), this whole experience has been a bit overwhelming. For me, that is. Liam's having fun.

Last Tuesday morning, Mark stayed home and we all got to troop into the preschool classroom for a meet and greet. Liam was a bit apprehensive; even though he loved the idea of going to school (and he loved his backpack), I'm not sure he really understood what it was all about. I had read him a few books about school, but that didn't seem to do it for him. So when I took some pictures outside, he couldn't really pull off a smile.

Please note the big pen in his hand, a present from Uncle James. Also note the lobster shirt. Somehow, the occasion called for slight dressing-up, so I put him in a button-up shirt. It was only in the car that I thought the teachers might start thinking of Liam as lobster boy.

Anyway, the orientation lasted an hour. For the first half hour, Liam wandered around the classroom checking things out and was introduced to the seven or eight teachers one at a time. Really, there are a lot of teachers and only about eight kids. At least three teachers are in the classroom at a time, while some others aren't really teachers: people like a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, and a DHH teacher - whatever that is - rotate through. But I think Liam touched everything in the room before he finally settled into the teacher's desk and tried to use her computer. I was grateful, however, as a couple of the kids were firmly locked onto their parents' legs.

See the tennis balls on all the chairs?

After thirty minutes, all the kids settled in for a story time while Mark and I got a tour of the school. It was at this time we learned just how serious preschool is when your child is in the public school system. Liam has school pictures next week. He will get those Scholastic book catalogs each month. He will bring cupcakes on his birthday. He will bring no nuts to school, ever. There are Behavior Expectations and Progress Reports. There is a Dress Code. There are Policies and Procedures. There are Telephone Trees. And there are "I'm a Preschool Parent" buttons so we strange adults won't make the other parents nervous when we hang around the school. It's a lot to throw at a mom when she's about to leave her kid with strangers for the first time.

And the next day we did leave him. For two-and-a-half hours.

I cried. Of course I cried. I think I was the only one who did cry, but all the mothers I passed on my way to the parking lot sympathized. Of course I had forgotten my "I'm a Preschool Parent" button, so who knows who they all thought I was.

Well, he did great. Of course. I spoke to two teachers, both of whom said he was a good listener and made friends. He hugged one teacher on the way out, which I take as a good sign.

When I repeatedly asked him about his day he was noncommittal at first, but eventually I got the real story: "I had da chicken and Spencer took da chicken so I hit him in the head." That made me pause. So I asked, with a stern frown, "What did Spencer do when you hit him?" thinking Please don't say cry. He answered, "Spencer hit me in da head right dere [pointing to his face] and the teacher said, 'No fighting!'" So we had a little talk about hitting right then and another talk this morning. It can't be too unusual, or the teachers would have mentioned it to me, right?