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.

January Photos

Here is what we've been up to so far this year:

Coloring with crayons and painting with cotton balls

Family movie time: Turtle The Incredible Journey

Xander loved this breakfast so much he wanted me to take a picture of it

Traffic jam

A hawk on our back fence, with prey!

Another breakfast made by me and Xander that he wanted memorialized in photo

And above is a little video of Nick's reaction to the keyboard I just picked up from Goodwill.

Nicky-pooh!

I was in tears yesterday, embarrassed by Nick's behavior at Toddler Storytime at the library. That shows my weakness of character...but I do have another point here. I want to focus on how adorable Nick continues to be because if I stay mad, embarrassed, exhausted, or feeling like a failure through this stage, I will miss out on some awesome things.

Like just now, I got out some of Xander's cars for Nick (ssshhhhh, don't tell) and said, "Wow! All these cars!" He followed me as I brought them to the living room, saying, "Waw, waw, waw, cars!" Adorable.

Last night as I took a much-needed nap, Erik got Nick on video sitting in his rocking chair reading a tractor book to himself. Adorable.

Nick is showing me each car as he takes it out of the bag. He's trying to say their colors, too. When he got to the dump truck, he told me, "Tyuck, tyuck, tyuck." Now he is looking at his lineup saying, "A-car, tyuck, car, tyuck, car." Adorable.

He has learned to say all-done or down when he wants to get out of his booster seat. It has turned into "All-down, all-down." Adorable.

This morning he picked up some little sea creatures (a sea turtle and a tiny walrus) and said, "Huggie-pooh," and put them up to his shoulder so he could love on them. Adorable.

This morning when I tried to take a video of him, he looked at the video camera for a moment and then said, "Hah?" (His word for hi.) Adorable.

If I don't focus on these things, I will focus on his car-screaming, his laid-out-flat-on-the-floor defiance, and his yelling early in the morning when he wants to get up.

Erik assured me last night that Xander was just like this at this age and no, he doesn't think Nick can be taught library storytime skills. He reminded me Xander did that, too, and it's just part of their personalities. Well, I look forward to library storytimes with Nick when he is three years old. :)

I'll leave you with the video Erik took.