Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Silly baby!

Several times a week Xander closes himself into a room by pushing the door shut and being unable to open it back up. He did it just now and immediately started saying "Mommy! Mommy!"

Now he's walking around wearing one mitten and one Croc, having requested I put them on him. Why just one? Good question.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

I hope I don't regret this

Xander loves Goodnight Moon. I was never a big fan of it and Jessica liked it okay. But Xander will often bring it to me to have me read it and then I have to read it several times. He doesn't do that with any other book.

When Jessica was his age, I found another book written by the same author, My World. I hated it. She loved it. I had gotten it from the library and boy was I glad when it was due and I could get rid of it.

I was on Amazon last week, looking for a few books for Xander, and I found My World. Since he *loves* Goodnight Moon so much, I decided to buy it. thinking if Jessica loved it and wasn't even that fond of Goodnight Moon then Xander would be (pardon the pun) over the moon about it.

It arrived yesterday. We read it today. He's not over the moon about it--yet--but he did really like it. It didn't seem as bad as it did when I read it to Jessica. Maybe after a hundred readings, I'll change my mind. But I'll still read it to him.

What we won't do for our children.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

B words

Xander's vocabulary continues to grow but he seems to specialize in words beginning with the letter B. Recent acquisitions include bubbles and bug. We've had a fly in the house the last couple of days. For some reason, he seems convinced that he can capture it with a dish towel. Both yesterday and today, when he's spotted the fly, he'll say "bug," go and get a dish towel and try to give it to me, as if I'm going to use it to kill the fly. He's starting to get pretty upset about it, too.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

I'm watching you

When we had the DiPerna family beach trip in August, Uncle Danny taught Xander the "I'm watching you" baby sign from the Meet the Fockers. I had never seen the movie, but we spent all week trying to teach it to Xander, just because it was funny. He sort of did it a few times. Then we got home and we both kind of forgot about it.

Yesterday we were waiting for Jessica to finish her martial arts class. He put his finger on his cheek, below his eye, and started pulling down. He did it a couple of times before I remembered this was what we had taught him. Then he started saying "waaa, waaaa" and I realized he was saying "Watch, watch." (You know, "I'm watching you.")

He's such a smart little fellow!

All jammies all the time

Another DiPerna trait has emerged in Xander: the jammy trait. He wants to wear his pajamas all the time. He cries when I change his clothes in the morning. When he spies his pajamas in the evening, he brings them over to me to get changed. I was doing laundry the other day and was putting a pair of dirty pajamas into the washing machine and he started screaming because he wanted me to put them on him.

He wasn't feeling well last week, and after a day of fussing, when he "asked" to wear his pajamas before dinnertime, I put them on him. It only worked for a little while before he started fussing again but it was good while it lasted.

Other times, I have put his pajamas on over his day clothes, just the arms, and then snap them shut at the top. This is sometimes an acceptable compromise for both of us.

To be honest, I wouldn't care if he wore his pajamas all day (sometimes) except it's really hard to get his shoes on!

Monday, October 6, 2008

If adults behaved like toddlers.....

We'd cry and yell about anything and everything:
-being hungry
-being tired
-being cranky
-just for the heck of it
-to see how loud we could yell

Can you imagine a group of adults sitting in their office at the end of a long day crying because they're tired and cranky? Hmm...it might be therapeutic.

Also, if we behaved like toddlers, if we were eating something we didn't like (or did like but then decided we didn't want to eat anymore), we'd just open our mouths and let whatever's in our mouth fall out. Or is that just my toddler?

For example, today Xander was eating an apple in the back seat of the car. He doesn't like to eat the skin, so when we arrived home, I found lots of bits of spit-out apple skin.

Ca

Xander has a name for his sister. "Ca." At first I thought he was saying car, but after he kept saying it a lot when there were no cars around but there was a Jessica, I realized what he meant. Earlier, he was pointing at a picture on the wall of him and his sister and saying "Ca, ca."

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Don't stop now!

I've been struggling a bit with Xander at bedtime. He just doesn't want to go to sleep. The bedtime routine that works with Jessica just doesn't work with him. For example, tonight Jessica had a bath. Baths are supposed to be relaxing, good for inducing relaxation and sleep. Except when a certain little someone screams bloody murder in the bath, and has for the past SIX MONTHS. So, no bath for him. He gets the rest of the routine, diaper change (or potty for Jessica, of course), pajamas, toothbrushing, a short video, a couple of books, and then lights out.

Then, in his baby mind, the party begins. He won't settle. In the last week, I've started giving him back massages, hoping this will relax him. I limit them to before naptime and before bedtime, hoping he'll associate it with sleep. He LOVES massages. He giggles, especially when I get to the shoulder blades. But then when my hand and arm gets tired, I stop. He might start crying, or sometimes he pulls at my hand in an effort to get me started again. I'm not sure yet it's working but it's kind of funny to watch his reactions.