Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Strangest Thing in a Sippy Cup

Until today, the strangest beverage I've put in a sippy cup was seltzer. Which, by the way, I don't recommend, as it manages to fizz its way through the airhole. Today, at Xander's insistence, I put in V-8. And boy did he guzzle it down. I even had to refill it.

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Xander continues to develop along the Vinny path. He just discovered he can reach the light switches, so it's been On-Off, On-Off, On-Off. On-Off. You get the idea. He also loves to pull the power cord out of my laptop and put it back in. Finally, this morning I discovered he also knows how to charge up my cell phone.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Xander: 1 ; Daycare: 0

It took only 5 days for Xander's first daycare experience to end in dismal failure.

Day 1: Went well what with the novelty and not realizing Mommy was leaving him there for 5 hours.

Day 2: Realized Mommy was leaving him for 5 hours, cried pitifully but allowed himself to be comforted.

Day 3: Disastrous attempt to leave him there for his nap. Stayed only 2 1/4 hours.

Day 4: Cried for most of 5 hours, except when daycare lady was holding him.

Day 5: After an hour and a half, daycare lady called to say it wasn't going to work and could I come get him.

He was so happy when Hari brought him home, as if to say, "I won. Nyah nyah nyah."

However, what he doesn't know is that I called the YWCA and put him on the wait-list for their daycare program. I'm hoping that with a bunch of kids and very experienced employees, and with a minuscule amount of daycare experience under his belt, that this will work out better.

Now the question is, will I be able to get any work done until a spot opens up for him?

Monday, September 22, 2008

Mr. OCD

I've joked to several people that Xander has OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). He gets upset if a fingernail rips and starts to come off. If he gets a little bit of dirt on his fingers, he holds them up to me to clean off. I made the mistake once of letting him get a stamp on his hand after gymnastics class, and he spent the rest of the day trying to rub it off (I now get the stamps on his feet so he still gets them, but I can cover them up with socks).

Well, today clumsy Mommy knocked over the sand art Jessica made yesterday at KidsArt. We'd had it for less than 24 hours before Mommy broke it (but that's another issue). This was right before we were rushing to get Jessica off to preschool. Now it's afternoon and I haven't cleaned up the sand yet. Xander spied it on the floor, pointed it out to me kind of anxiously, then went to the drawer where we keep the dish rags, brought one over and immediately tried to clean it up with the dishrag. Sadly, it only made a bigger mess but I guess it's the effort that counts.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Chase! It's fun!

Xander likes to play Chase. When I'm the Chaser and he's the Chasee. His favorite time to play it is diaper changing time! It used to be that I could just sit on the floor with a clean diaper, call him over, and he'd come. Then he started getting wise to it, so I would hide the diaper changing paraphernalia behind me, hold open my arms and call "Kisses!" He would come over for kisses and I'd snatch up him and change his diaper.

He's way wise to that now. Now, every time he sees me on the floor with a clean diaper, he looks at me, smiles and runs as fast as he can away from me. It doesn't matter how badly he needs his diaper changed. This is obviously not a kid who's interested in potty training.

The Kevin Look

I'm a bit afraid to say this, but independently, Hari and I both noticed that Xander has what we now call The Kevin Look. When he gets mad about something, he has this way of squinting his eyes and he looks so much like his cousin Kevin. Hopefully, behaviour-wise, this will be the only similarity.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Quick study

Today's is Xander's second day of daycare. He's being watched by a woman who lives about a half mile away. Tuesday was his first day. He did pretty well when I dropped him off. He was looking around the house, taking it all in. I didn't hear any screaming when I left the house. And the report was that he had done well, no crying and had played with Noreen's 2 year old son.

Today he remembered that I left him there for 5 hours on Tuesday. I tried to put him down. He cried. I picked him up for one last hug before leaving. He immediately stopped crying and said "Bye" to Noreen. I had to break the news to him that he wasn't leaving, I was. I handed him off to Noreen and left. I remember how a quick good-bye always worked best with Jessica. I hope it works for him.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Ummm....that doesn't work, Mom

Only 20 months old and the magic of Mommy kisses doesn't work. Xander did something to his arm today, cried a bit and said, "Owieeee," which is one of his new words. Sometimes he seems to say it for no obvious reason. Anyway, he was rubbing his arm, so I kissed it where I thought it hurt.

He looked at me.

I kissed a few more parts of his arm, thinking I had missed the part that hurt.

He looked at me again, as if to say, "That doesn't work, Mom. I need real medicine."

Jazz is overrated

As I've mentioned, Xander loves music. He dances and claps and rocks his head back and forth. It's adorable. Some day I'll download the video I have of him dancing with his little guitar. Until today the little guitar (which has no strings but plays music and animal sounds when you press various buttons) was his favourite toy. Now, it's been replaced.

By what?

Hullabaloo.

Bless you.

No, Hullabaloo.

It's a game for preschoolers made by the makers of Cranium. Very cute, fun. It has a base that shouts out instructions for players to follow (move here, move there, do a silly dance, etc). And it plays this little tune when it starts up and while it's waiting for you to complete whatever task it's told you to do.

That's the music that Xander loves. He took the game out of the box this morning and has turned the thing on and off, oh, about a hundred times, dancing to the startup music.

Now, Hari saw him playing with it, and was probably as sick of the tune as I am, and brought him upstairs to listen to jazz. He did listen, for a while. Then he came back to his old favourite, Hullabaloo.

(Hullabaloo, Hullabaloo, Hullabaloo, Hullabaloo).

This time he really did want more

We went to a barbeque yesterday at Misha's house. I had been wanting brownies and rather than have a whole batch in the house for me to eat, I decided to make some to take to the barbeque. Xander sampled a little after they came out of the oven and decided he liked them.

After eating our grilled meats, we had the brownies. Misha was holding Xander and eating a brownie and graciously shared some with him. She didn't expect to share as much as he wanted to share. Then I took him into my lap, with a brownie for us to share. I held the brownie on my napkin and broke off a small piece to give to him. He promptly helped himself to the entire brownie, minus the little crumb he left for me. His hands were too small to hold it, and he ended up holding a piece in each hand, before stuffing it into his mouth.

After he was done, he got this really happy hopeful expression on his face and signed "more?" He took it pretty well when I told him no more. He was tired and rested his head against me. I was telling someone who hadn't seen his signing about how he had "signed for more brownie." At the words "more brownie" he picked up his head and looked at me hopefully again.

The answer was still no, but I know now how much he likes brownies.