Toddler Bed

I think Nick is sleeping in his toddler bed tonight. He's been occasionally trying it out and then calling for me to either lay with him on the toddler bed or be moved to his pack 'n play (because I won't lay down with him on his bed more than a few minutes at most). Tonight we had a back-and-forth for a half hour or so, but he ended up in his toddler bed with both pillows, teddy bear, Pooh bear, and his regular blanket, and hasn't called out or knocked since. Exciting stuff.

I just hope it leads to increased confidence in his ability to go on the potty. Accidents (though there aren't that many of them) are getting old.

Our Restaurant Trip

Yesterday the kids and I watched an episode of The Daytripper, which is a great show highlighting day trips that can be taken around Texas. The host went to Galveston this time and showed us skimboarding, as well as a plateful of different types of crabs to eat. Xander's imagination was captured. He really wanted to try crab. Considering that 1) I didn't have all the ingredients for what I had planned to make for last night's dinner, 2) Xander can be a bit pickier about what he eats than Nick and me, and 3) I figured the three of us could eat out almost for the price of one adult, I decided to take us out to dinner. If Xander was going to acquire a new taste, that was okay with me. I knew his dad might like him acquiring this particular taste, too, as he is a man who grew up on seafood.

There's a highly recommended place up the road from us called CR Surf and Turf. We went there at 4:30 in order to disturb as few patrons as possible. The kids behaved wonderfully, in my opinion, but when the waitress placed a burning hot basket of corn dog and french fries in front of Nick, he screamed to eat them (while I tried to keep them from him) and then screamed when he got hold of one of those piping hot suckers. I had to walk him around the (small) restaurant, looking at decor, until it had cooled down a bit. There were only two other people in the restaurant at the time, and I think they said something about it, but I am proud of my children's behavior overall. It's not Nick's fault that food that could burn him was put in front of him. I don't really blame the waitress either, because she warned us as she set it down and it is generally considered a good thing to bring diners hot food instead of lukewarm, but I do appreciate the restaurants that train wait staff to let kids' food cool down before they bring it. Anyway, we almost NEVER go out to eat with the children, so we don't bother many people. Nick is getting to the age when we can go to a whole lot more places without "baby" behavior. Hurray! (Getting there, not all the way there yet.)

Xander had a corn dog basket in front of him, too, but he was interested in the soft shell crab I ordered. He and I each ate half of it. He loved it! I was so proud. When we left, he wanted to call Grandma Lucy right away to tell her that the first time he tried crab, he loved it.

The kids went to bed right around their correct bedtimes and Nick and I woke up at a decent hour. I think we are all catching up on some sleep. Xander is still asleep and it's about 45 minutes past when he would have to get up on a school day. Last night there was, surprisingly, a big thunderstorm with lots of rain. The lightning and thunder woke me up around midnight. I have to confess I get a bit scared when I hear lightning strike very close to us. We made it, and I was able to fall right back asleep when it passed. Amazingly, the boys seem to be able to sleep through that kind of racket, for which I am heartily grateful. This is the second crashing, booming midnight thunderstorm they have slept through in the last few months.

It Was a Tough One

Xander's team played a difficult team today in the noonday Texas heat. "We definitely couldn't win today," said Xander.

This was mainly due to one opposing player who was super fast and handled the ball like a pro. I got some videos even though Nick was running onto all kinds of fields. They repainted the YMCA fields in an EXTREMELY inconvenient way. You can hardly walk from any of the fields to the playground or the bathrooms without being basically on the field while a game is in play.

In the following videos, one of them gives a good sample of Xander's playing, but it does end in the other team scoring. On another occasion (not on video of course), Xander scored. Another of my videos is very short. I captured a few of them but due to the other team being handy with the ball, they aren't interesting for Xander-fans to watch.

Please disregard any inane conversation between me and Nick. I wanted to keep him with me while I took the video and there were piles of pipes, debris, and trees lying on the ground near us. The Y is constructing an indoor pool. Lots of construction activity.

Now the boys are in the back playing in our wading pool. I love that they are spending so much time in it.

Updates All Around

Now an update on Sandy the guinea pig. I'm not sure that any readers will care, but I've decided that the toys I put in his cage really make a difference in his happiness. Either that or he got used to us at the same time that I bought him toys.

He has 1) a small stuffed animal meant for a dog, 2) a small mirror toy meant for a bird, 3) a wooden hut, 4) a hay rack stuffed with hay at almost all times, and 5) a fleecy cuddle cup. I picked up these items on the recommendation of people in the forums at guineapigcages.com. These are the true fanatics of guinea pigs and I take their advice with a grain of salt. If we had a cage that is big enough for one guinea pig according to their standards, we would need an extra bedroom just for the pig. We don't have a true guest room in this house; therefore, we will not have a guinea pig room.

Sandy hanging out near the hay rack, mirror, and stuffed animal, eyeing the camera suspiciously

Sandy says, "Leave me alone."

 Anyway, my point is that I bought these things feeling a little bit silly - and now I've decided that Sandy really loves them. I've come upon him resting with his chin on top of the stuffed animal. Other times he's been hiding out in the wooden hut or (usually) loudly chewing on it. I often take the mirror toy out of the cage at night because it has a bell on it which he likes to ring while Xander is trying to fall asleep. When I put it back in, he runs right to it, rings it once or twice, and looks in the mirror. It's hilarious. It's a given that he loves the hay rack. Whenever I rustle in his hay bin, he wheeks very loudly because he can't wait to start nibbling on it. I have to refill that hay rack at least two times a day. Now the cuddle cup I am not sure of. He loved when I hung a small towel from his ceiling so he had something to hide behind, but I don't catch him sitting in the cuddle cup on its own. It's a good place to have him when we're petting him in our laps, though.

Now, for Erik, an update on Xander's scholastics. Today was their student-led conference showing all their learning journals. Xander showed me his "I Can" Journal, Spring Writing Journal, Science Journal, and Rainforest Art/Writing. There is a marked improvement in his writing between the second nine weeks and the third nine weeks. Mrs. Griffin and her writing practice worked wonders on him. All of his illustrated stories involve knights or Lego knights or ninjas, but the sentences do fit into the guidelines of the assignment. For example, he glued a blue cloud blowing wind onto his paper, drew a bunch of knights with weapons floating in the air above them, and wrote: "The wind blew the wepins of The Laggo Dragin Nits."

Here are pictures of Nick posing. He was loving the Photo Booth camera mode. He gesticulated, sang, and talked to himself for a few minutes. We took a picture of his foot and he said, "Thas so silly (siwwy)!"

As for his update, I will keep it to two things. One is that we brought the little froggy potty with us to the playground yesterday afternoon and just barely managed to use it in time instead of going in underwear. Hurray! It's too bad there were two small accidents after that, but what was I expecting? It's the playground in the afternoon.

The second one is that he and Jill officially play wonderfully together. She's about a year younger than him, so it's a little surprising. They sat next to each other yesterday at the playground, collaborating on finding things in the bark and later, in the wood chips. Jill came over this morning for about an hour and they had the greatest time playing cars, trains, sing-along, pull-out-the-books-and-browse, and doctor kit together. Yes, basically together! They look forward to seeing each other and point at each other saying the other one's name. I hear a lot of enthusiastic renditions of, "Hi, Jell!" (His "l"s are pronounced like "w"s, but if I write it that way, it doesn't look like how he says it.)

I Just Love This

"And best of all, their father always read to them for an hour after dinner, even though they'd been able to read perfectly well to themselves for years now."

~Knight's Castle, by Edward Eager

Morning Read-alouds

I finished reading Charlotte's Web to Xander. We have a little set-up that makes me quite happy. I read aloud to Xander at breakfast time when he is still sleepy, and I get to choose whatever book we read at this time. He chooses what we read at bedtime. This way, with little fuss, I get to expose him to whatever books I think would be a great influence. And he gets to be read whatever bedtime story he wants. (Or he reads it to us.)

Xander was reluctant about Charlotte's Web all along. At first, he didn't like the spider on the cover. I had to invoke the rule a few times: "Well, I get to pick what we read in the morning." Throughout, he listened intently, but every so often he would say, "Ahh, I HATE Charlotte's Web!" As I said, though, he listened intently. It is a wonderfully written book with major themes in it. The specter of death looms over more than one major character; friends make sacrifices to help others. Not everyone has a spectacular worthy disposition. These are normal people and animals with flaws or, at least, traits that are not worthy of high praise. It was probably Xander's first book with a real-seeming death in it. When I was older than Xander is now, maybe ten years old, I remember sobbing over the ending to one of E.B. White's books. He's good. I thought it was worth it to have Xander hear this book. We'll see what he has to say about the book in a year or two.

I have many books in mind that I want to read to Xander. (Nick is starting to listen to them, too.) Some will be met with resistance. For the next book, I decided to go with something he might get excited about. I brought home a couple of books by Edward Eager and one by Roald Dahl. He chose the first one to read, Knight's Castle, about some regular children in the 1950s who stumble into a magic adventure involving - you guessed it - knights and a castle. This is also a well-written book imbued with the childhood promise that anything, just anything, might happen. I thought it might capture Xander's imagination, and it has.

He was happy to start it last night. The chapters are Harry Potter-ish, a little over 15 minutes apiece. This morning, I woke him by saying I would read the next chapter to him while he was waking up. (He had a somewhat late night and I knew he would be groggy.) As we moved into the dining room for breakfast, still reading, he said, "Mom! I am picturing what might happen in the book in my head!"

Yes! I picked well. There are several other similar books, even involving some of the same characters, by this author.

While I did little things to get Nick ready, Xander stood by the book, looking at it, just waiting for me to come back and read a few more sentences. Now that's a good book.

Working Through Fears

Nick loves to draw. Just now he said he was going to draw with crayons and markers and talk about it. That makes me laugh. It's a great activity, to draw a picture and talk about it, but I can't remember saying that to him.

So he tells me he's drawing a slide, and a brown slide, and a long slide, and lions over here. Sometimes he throws in a bird. Mostly slides. He draws strongly, with vibrant colors. I love it. We've hung some of his artwork in a corner of his room and when he sits with me in his room he likes to point them out and tell me how he likes them.

I am so proud of how he is working through his fears - pretty quickly, I think. He goes on playgrounds by himself again now. Slowly, he is working back up to going down any slide that he wants to by himself. I'm sure the picture-drawing is helping. :) With some urging on my part, he is now walking more often instead of being carried everywhere like a giant baby. (I don't mean that as a put-down, I just mean that he is awfully big and long to be on someone's hip.) He walked with me to and from the mailbox, and as we were getting to the sidewalk, a truck went slowly by.

Nick looked at it and said, "It's not scary."

I was so happy to hear that. He had been freaking out about walking to and from the car (after doing it all the time for many months on his own) because if a car went by, he cried and trembled and said it was scary. He is also newly obsessed with how scary garage doors are. We haven't even used ours for months.

But that truck driving by was not scary! Hurray!

Speaking of not carrying Nick anymore, one thing that was becoming really impossible was getting to Xander's soccer games with a chair, bags, activities, maybe a cooler, and two kids, one of whom "needed" to be carried...until he wanted to run away to the middle of a soccer game or the playground, that is. Xander really stepped up and told me he would carry the chair each time. He made me ashamed of my complaining (to Nick) that I couldn't carry everything and him, too. Xander would say, "Mom! I'm going to help you!" What a wonderful helper.

Nick's playing a new game with me. He says, "Ee doing, Nick?" and grins at me. I follow his lead and say, "What are you doing, Nick?" and then he tells me. Today it is "making cheats on my thumb." Which translates to taking off pieces of modeling clay and sticking them on the top of his thumb.

Mere acquaintances can now understand what Nick is talking about, which is nice. I love children's mispronunciations, though. Nick's main one right now is using "ee" to mean "what." So when he wants to do a particular activity, he says, "Ee about drawing?"

Here are some pictures, mostly commissioned by Xander. He really loves for me to take pictures of "beautiful" food.

Clove Cake with butter and sprinkles (requested by Xander)

This was a cute pose of him smiling when I snapped it; the photo I got has him looking very tired.

(Nearly) all of Xander's stuffed animals arranged at the foot of his bed

I cut some banana cookies in half and Xander made hamburgers out of them using raisins.

Also requested: sprinkles on top of a banana cookie

In the last game, Xander scored lots of goals and displayed good sportsmanship. I got a video, but can't show those here for the other kids' privacy.