Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Vince's first official boo boo

Someone crashed in the driveway yesterday. The meanie in me wanted to say "that's what you get for running away from Mommy" but the Mommy in me won out and there were tears (from me, not him). He was a tough boy, got up and walked into the house and let me clean it up. Here's a pic of the "wound" for the few who might actually be interested.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Nana's Visit

Nana Sandy came for a short visit this weekend. Right now the guest room is Anthony's room. We will leave the guest bed up until he's a few months old so that visitors have a place to sleep when they come to visit the boys. AJ will sleep in a bassinet or swing in the office (which is attached to the master bedroom) until he's a little older. Anyway, my mom had a great time seeing Vince and he loved seeing her. I have to say, I'm just a little jealous that he says "Nana" so much more readily than he says "mama." Of course the little loverboy melted her heart the first morning by leaning in for an unprompted kiss from nana. He had a runny nose while she was here and she showed me a little trick to squish his nose from the top a few times instead of just wiping it. It seemed to be less irritating for his little nose and he cooperates much better for the squishing than the wiping. Of course, saying "squish squish squish" helps him think it's more fun too. He actually brought me a kleenex this morning and stuck his nose out for me to squish it.
Here's a cute pic of Vince with his Nana.

We miss her already and can't wait to see her again at Thanksgiving when she and papa come to visit! Hope you all had a nice weekend.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Check the Facts

Sometimes it's hard to know whom to believe when two different people are promising to be the best President ever. Neither one of them is above lying; they are politicians, after all. Here's a website Dan found that helps sort out the facts from the fiction: http://www.factcheck.org/

Eeeeewwwwwah!!!!!!!

Yuuuuccckkkkkyyyy!!!!!! Vince just had his first big boy throw up. BLEH!!! Gross! I miss spit up. Why can't we always just have spit up? Spit up I can handle. Pregnant women should not have to clean up big boy stuff. Yuck. Ew.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Testing Has Begun

Oh, my goodness. The testing phase is in full force. Vince has been testing every word I say. Wait a minute: Just at this exact moment (7:45pm on 9/17/08) I realized it's my fault because I let him slide on the potty training thing. I think he realized I would cave if he put up enough of a fight on the potty training, so he wants to see what else I will cave on. Crap. Now I'm the mom who caves. Vince has been incredibly whiny lately and I'm realizing that it's because we allow it. So, we implemented the no-whine rule. That's going great. Now he started refusing to obey direct orders that he has proven himself perfectly capable of obeying. So we have implemented the no-disobeying-perfectly-reasonable-requests rule. That one is a little different. I discovered that Time Out was completely ineffective discipline for this particular child when it comes to that. We went back and forth to Time Out for about 15 minutes earlier today because Vince refused to help put a puzzle away (our favorite puzzle - a 10 foot long alphabet train, which we also use as animal flash cards). After we finally got all the pieces back in the box, one piece and one Time Out at a time, he lost the puzzle. Then tonight, after a short-lived battle of the wills, I remembered that I'm the grown up and have more power than just to put him in Time Out. So I stripped Vincent of all book privileges. That one's really gonna sting for all of us, because lately that's his favorite thing to do. He goes and gets one and brings it to us and sits on our lap and reads and chit chats with us. But tonight he refused to help put them away at bedtime so I let him watch me remove each one of his books from his shelf. Ouch. He'll earn them back one at a time, but it's going to be rough in the meantime, I'm sure.


This is Vince before he forfeited his book privileges:






It's taken a while, but I finally realized nobody is going to come knock on our door and say, "Hi, welcome to town. Wanna be friends?" So I've been getting more proactive about talking to people when I normally would just smile and keep walking. We visited a twice a month mommy group today. It's called MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers) and the moms get together in one room and the kids go to a nursery and everybody gets to have some fun social time with people who communicate on their own developmental level!! I'm so glad Vince is finally getting to hang out with more kids. We had Finn Kunz over for a playdate last week and are hoping to make that a weekly (if not more often) date. The boys had a really good time together. Vince had been so starved for attention from other kids that by the end of the playdate he was chasing poor Finn around trying to hug him. Finn didn't realize what he was doing at first, but after the first couple hugs, he started hugging back. I just about melted. It was so sweet. Then the same thing happened to Vince at the park yesterday. A little girl kept chasing him around wanting to hug him and after about 10 attempts he realized she was being sweet, so he hugged her back. My little loverboy! We have another playdate set up for tomorrow morning with some other folks we've become acquainted with in passing.


Oh, Gabe, this is for you: I had a dr. appointment on Monday and baby AJ is doing just fine. He's been moving around a lot, so next time you see me, you can put your hand on the belly and feel him move around, okay? Here's a picture of the growing belly for you. Love you, bud.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Potty Update

It turns out I don't need a will of my own. Valerie has enough for all of us. After a rough first day of potty training, I turned to my BFF and of course she had the strength I needed to help me keep my resolve. She also had some fantastic pointers since she's potty trained 2 already and will soon be training another. Vince has done pretty well today...by "pretty well" I mean that he hasn't screamed bloody murder when I put him on the potty yet, thanks to the idea Val gave me to blow bubbles while we're waiting for the pee. He finally got to taste an M&M since he successfully pottied in the toilet and begged for more (alas, I'm a meanie and wouldn't relent; he gets one for pee and two for poo when he goes on the toilet). Anyway, we're still plugging away.

Happy Friday to those of you who count the weekdays still.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Here we go!!!

Vincent has been giving us some cues that he's ready for the big boy potty...so, we're starting to potty train! Right now it's more of changing wet underwear and sitting on the potty a million times a day, but he loves sitting on the potty and he definitely loves his step stool. I've been reading more and more about potty training from birth, and there's a family at one of the churches we have visited who has done it, and when you get all the facts it doesn't sound quite as preposterous as most would think. I know Mr. Curtis is probably laughing at us right now, but that's okay. Laugh away, Aaron. We don't mind a bit!
Dan's not 100% percent sold on the training from birth thing yet, and neither am I, but it would be nice to have 2 kids under 2 years old and not have to buy diapers for either one!


UPDATE. 5 HOURS LATER:

Oh. My. Goodness. I haven't been this exhausted since Vince was nursing every two hours. It turns out Vince doesn't like sitting on the potty quite as much any more. I'm seriously debating whether to continue with the training.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Oh, Boy!

We found out the sex of the new baby: BOY! We're very excited and I'm sure Vince will appreciate it some day too...not at first though. ;)

We brought home a little souvenir from Bloomington this weekend, too. See below.