It's summer!

Ben the Manipulator

Scene: It's bedtime. Ben has his binky, we'd read numerous stories and he was clutching his baby Elmo doll to his chest, so I put him into his crib.

Normally he'd just lie down and go to sleep. He's pretty good about going to bed, at least initially. However, instead he said, "Poop! Poop! I poop!" I sniffed and didn't smell anything, but he was pretty insistent. So up on the changing table he went where I discovered that I was right. No poop. He was still saying "poop," though, so I thought maybe he meant he had to poop. He's getting better about recognizing that feeling. I read him another book, thinking maybe we could catch the poop before bed. I didn't want him to sleep in it all night, or worse, wake me up in the middle of the night to change him.

But the poop never appeared, so after his extra book I put him back in his crib. He started saying "poop" again, but I told him it was time to sleep and left the room. He cried for a moment, but then fell asleep.

In the morning I was a little afraid his butt would be screaming red after sleeping in poop all night. Quite the contrary. He was totally clean and it dawned on me. That was Ben's first attempt to manipulate his way out of bedtime.

Music and water

So, because of recent Life Events I've basically been ignoring this blog for a couple months. I kept thinking about posting, but then I'd think that my comeback post should be something really great, but that I didn't have the energy to write something really great, so I'd do it tomorrow. Well, we see how well that worked out, so I decided that I'm going to adopt the National Novel Writing Month philosophy: quantity over quality. I just need to write and hopefully it'll get better someday. With that in mind, I shall start by telling you about the fun day Ben and I had yesterday.

In the morning we went to a free children's concert called "Bring on the Drums." I wasn't sure how well Ben would sit for it, but I figured that if he was too antsy we could just escape to the nearby playground. He really surprised me. He sat on my lap almost the entire 45 minutes and was alternately dancing, clapping or swinging his feet with the music. It was really fun to see him enjoying it. My parents used to take me to the symphony and though I haven't been in a long time, I feel like it did help me gain an appreciation for the music. I hope I can instill the same in Ben.

It was a hot, sunny day, so after Ben's nap we headed to the pool. Our city has a wonderful pool facility. It was the first time we'd gone and it was awesome. There was a regular pool for older kids and adults and then they had three kid areas. One went to three feet deep and had some slides, one just had a bunch of sprinklers spraying water and the baby pool went to 18 inches deep and had a lot of toys. It was perfect for Ben. It came to about his waist and he could get around without me having to hold him the entire time. Plus, we saw several different friends who live in the area. I love the idea of just bumping into people you know around the neighborhood. The longer we live here the more I love it. Heath and I picked the perfect place to buy a house.

Just a typical day at the grocery store

I will admit, I initiated putting the bucket on his head, but he ran with it...

It's all about perspective

This actually happened months ago, but I forgot to post about it until now.

We attended a playgroup birthday party. I don't know if you've ever been to a party with 8-10 toddlers present, but it's chaos. Not even controlled chaos. You were lucky if you didn't have a truck rammed into your ankles. At the party the following happened:

Alyssa, the birthday girl, had a toy which the kids could sit on and spin (called, amazingly enough, a Sit 'n Spin), but it wasn't obvious to them how to work it. Isaac was trying to use it but failing, so his mother grabbed a life size (to a toddler) Elmo doll to demonstrate how it worked. As an aside, Elmo is a beloved character for almost all the kids. Well, Isaac got mad because Elmo was using his toy, so he tackled Elmo and started choking him. Seriously. This caused Lily to start wailing because Isaac was attacking Elmo.

I'm sure it was traumatic for Lily, but to the adults watching it was quite funny.

For Heath

One of Ben's favorite books is The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, so Heath couldn't resist taking this picture on Monday:

The instant I finished, I heard a ga-zump!
I looked, I saw something pop out of the stump
Of the tree I'd chopped down.  It was sort of a man.
Describe him? That's hard, I don't know if I can...

An explanation

Posting has been light the past few weeks because I was in the midst of Health Drama. I had a polyp in my bladder, which was removed on Friday. I'm overjoyed to report the tests came back negative, meaning there were no cancer cells. Which you better believe I made the nurse tell me explicitly. I don't want any of that sitcom confusion in which "negative" really means, "Oh, isn't it negative how you have cancer?" But, I'm positive she said negative, so it's all good. :)

Obviously I had some recovery time, so Heath was on full-time Ben duty all weekend. Then my dad came over on Monday to wrangle the boy. So I really didn't see much of him for three days. It's amazing that even though he's almost two, Ben's still changing everyday. I don't always notice it since I'm with him so much, but this weekend it was really magnified.

He's starting to speak in sentences. His main sentence is, "I see (whatever)." It's going to be totally bizarre when he can have actual conversations. And apparently over the weekend he learned how to go down the porch steps all by himself, without even holding on to anything!

My recovery is going smoothly. I'm still taking it easy this week, which means Ben's been forced to walk a lot more (evil mommy!), but that's definitely for the best. I work out, but the kid is getting heavy to lug around. Hopefully soon I'll be back to normal and this will all just be a memory.

Happiness is...

Taking your son to the zoo and watching him laugh at the penguins with pure, unadulterated joy.

Wow

Though Ben's birthday isn't for a few months I think we just experienced our first terrible two tantrum. It originated because he wanted to play an iPod game and I asked him to say, "Please." Most of his cohorts in playgroup say please and thank you (in some form or another), so it's past time for us to start teaching Ben. However, when I didn't immediately give him the iPod he flipped out. At first I tried getting him to just say please, but he wouldn't stop crying.

Then I went into ignoring mode. I tidied the kitchen and re-stocked his diaper bag all to the tune of screaming. When he started throwing magnets from the refrigerator I intervened, but I ignored him for a good 10 minutes. To no avail. So I tried to calm him down with hugs and singing and soft talking. Also to no avail. Obviously at some point he forgot what the tantrum was originally about and switched to insisting on having his binky. Well, that wasn't happening while he threw a fit so I tried various tactics to get him to calm down. Eventually after about 45 minutes of this he calmed down enough to read The A Book and now he's taking a nap.

Holy crap, people. I'm not even sure what to say. I'm proud that I didn't lose my cool, because I felt like I could've several times during that tirade. Now I just have a headache.

The bye-bye effect

Ben's newest thing is to say "bye" to everything. He says bye to people, to animals, to food when I put it away in the refrigerator, to the TV when we turn it off, to toys, etc.

The ultimate, however, was when I was changing his diaper this week and he said, "Bye-bye, poop!"