Sleeping Through the Night

My kids keep me up too late at night, wake me up too early in the morning, and generally prevent me from achieving anything close to a healthy level of rest. And that's perfectly fine, as any parent will tell you. We don't have children in an effort to create more leisure time for ourselves. And besides, what's a lazy Sunday morning compared to that first Father's Day card, replete with finger paint smears, glitter, and multicolored macaroni elbows glued haphazardly to a piece of construction paper? Come on. I dare anyone to show me a greater gift.

So with my wife and 2 youngsters out of town for the week visiting family, I am getting a lot more sleep. And that's good, for reasons anyone can see. But it didn't take long (1 night, in fact) for the novelty to wear off. My 2 year old sleeps through the night (though not without a fight, and nearly a dozen stories from his beloved Thomas and Friends Anthology, and who says the night doesn't end at 5 a.m. anyway? But I digress). My 2 month old is another story (I've never met a 2 month old who did sleep through the night, so I can't expect too much from her). She's still waking up a few times, needing a new diaper, needing a quick trip to the milk bar. And while it's a little irritating to have to drag myself awake and change a diaper at 3 a.m., it's not so bad when I get to roll over the next hour, look across the room, and see the Amby Bed gently swaying to the rhythm of a sleeping baby's breathing.

With nobody else around this week, I'm out of a job in the middle of the night. But I also miss the company. So my daughter can keep waking up at night for a little bit longer, I don't mind. Being alone for a while is a good reminder of what differentiates a home from just a house.

Disneyland and Santa

My son, D, is very creative. And at almost 2.5 years old, he's an amazingly skilled negotiator. No never means no, it just means you didn't ask correctly. So if "I want to go to the playground" gets a no, "please can I go to the playground?" will be tried, followed by "mama, would you like to take me to the playground please?" Similarly, if "Can I have a new train?" gets a no, it will be followed with either "Please can I have 2-3-5 [yup, he adds when I say no to one, instead of starting high and lowering his bid, he starts low and ups his bids] trains?" or "...But Santa will bring you new trains." He has a LOT of unfounded faith in what Santa is going to bring him this Christmas.
D loves Disneyland about as much as he loves trains. We're very lucky in that we not only live close by (about 45 minutes away), but we also have a good friend who works for Disney, so we can get in for free with them, and therefore have been able to go rather frequently.
A few weeks ago, D asked if I would take him to Disneyland, and since it was about a week before my due date, I told him that I, mama, couldn't take him to Disneyland. He responded with: "But Papa can take you to Disneyland." I, knowing that my husband was slammed at work and therefore wouldn't be able to take him anytime soon, had to once again turn D down.
A minute or two of silence passed, and then D popped back up, having clearly hit upon the perfect solution: "SANTA can take you to Disneyland!"

hmmmm. I admit, I was stumped. So I quickly changed the subject.

"Appropriate" is a relative term for dads and their toddler boys

How soon is too soon to teach your son what it means to "go commando?" As a wiser man than myself once said, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Or, sometimes, the father of invention. You have two basic choices when your not-quite-perfectly-potty-trained son has an accident in an away-from-home setting. You can get upset and let it bother you (wrong decision, sends a baaaad message to the child), or, you can turn it into a learning experience. "Next time, you're gonna tell Papa when you have to go potty, right?" The two-year-old answers, "Next time, you will tell Papa you need to go potty." Ok. Cool. That's out of the way. Even if it's an exchange that has to take place a few more times before the potty training is 100% finished. Who's counting? Not me.

The added benefit to keeping a positive mindset in what could be an annoying situation is that it encourages you to think of ways to make lemonade from lemons. Taking stock of the situation, we find ourselves out in the bathroom at the In-N-Out Burger where we've just eaten lunch, with a toddler whose Thomas the Tank Engine underwear are a little bit too wet to wear. Can't exactly take him back out to the restaurant minus pants, so the obvious solution is to teach him the meaning of the term "going commando." On go the Osh Kosh shorts, and as you hold the door for your toddler, he runs back out into the dining room with a gleeful shout of "You're going commando! You're going commando!" much to the amusement/shock/delight of the various patrons who thought they were just coming to get a burger.

Embarassed? No, not me. My smile probably can't match the radiance of my son's, but I'm happy nonetheless. And I wonder whether, someday years from now, riding down I-95 on a spring break road trip to Myrtle Beach with his fraternity brothers, he'll think back to the day he learned what it meant to be a commando. His next move will almost certainly be to moon a passing tour bus filled with senior citizens. But that's another story.

iPhone for iNfants

D has officially earned his technology badge (now we just have to make one!). Its a little scary when your two year old can do things that your parents CAN'T! My son can turn my iPhone on, unlock it, open youtube, and play whatever was last played (usually some Thomas the tank engine or sesame street clip), and then select the next video he wants to watch from the recommended ones.
I worry about his use of technology. I'm not a luddite, but it seems like I can't keep him away from anything with a screen. If I play a song for him on iTunes, he wants to sit in front of the computer and just stare at the album art! I try to explain that it's just a picture, not a video, and it's not going to change (no matter how many times we listen to the same song on repeat!), but he loves looking at the screen. he's even learned how to wiggle the mouse if the screensaver comes on.
We have to have a prominent computer for both my work and my husband, and therefore we only have one TV hidden in the back bedroom, so D doesn't get to watch much TV, but wow, he could spend HOURS watching it if we let him.
I was reading the NYT last night, and there was an article about mistakes parents make with food, and supposedly if you show your kid the food that he can't get, (like if it's up on a high shelf), they want it way more. I wonder if it's the same for TV? Since we don't let him watch TV (he occasionally gets to watch sesame street or something if I HAVE to take a business call, or a shower, but it's about 30 minutes a week, average), am I making him desperate for more so that he can't control his appetite for more?
regardless, he's very technologically aware, to the point that if a train dies, he brings it to me and tells me it needs new batteries, or that I need to change lightbulbs when they die out... crazy how much he's learned in just 27 months of being alive.

Good Boy Mama! potty training fun

D has now been potty trained for a month (YAY!) but I still laugh out loud when I think back to the first few days of using the potty. He's 26 months old, and adorable as all get out. I encouraged him to come in the bathroom with me, and watch me, and to sit on the potty himself. There was a lot of "Mama's going pee pee on the potty, D, wanna watch Mama go pee pee on the potty?" "Did you see Mama go pee pee on the potty?" And when he successfully used the potty, I'd say "You used the potty! Yay! Good Boy!"
In one of those brilliant 2 year-old moments, he then responded with "Good boy, Mama! You used the potty, yay!"
awesome moments of parenting... and achievement of the milestone of potty training!

Sleeping through the Night, and then some!

so its just after 10am, and my 2 year old is still asleep.
I keep going in to his room to make sure he's breathing (he is), and check to see if he's actually awake and just playing quietly or what, but nope, he's still sleeping.
this means that he's been asleep for over 14 hours.
I wish I'd known he would sleep this late, I would have left my husband asleep and gone to the grocery store 3 hours ago!
it's funny how desperately we wait for 6 or 8 hours of uninterupted sleep, but now that he's actually sleeping for this long, I want him to wake up!
I know I really tired him out yesterday, we went for a long walk down the cliffs to the tidepools at the beach, and, being 7 months pregnant with his future little sister, I made him walk the whole way, down and back, but then he took a long nap yesterday after that, so I didn't think it would change his nighttime sleep....
PLEASE let this happen regularly, PLEASE! I've gotten to look at slings online for the new baby, and work on sewing a baby quilt, and read some of a cookbook to plan for the week, and read TIME magazine (for the first time since becoming a mother I think!)...
But now I'm HUNGRY, and I don't want to wake him up if he needs this sleep by making noise in the kitchen (right next to his room), but I'm REALLY REALLY HUNGRY!!!

waiting for santa and christmas... thanks grandma!

Today D finally got the concept of having to wait for something for a long time, not just a few hours or days, but having to wait 4 months until Christmas. He has a pretty bad case of the "gimmes" right now, wanting every single train in the Thomas and Friends series (specifically Henry, James, Bertie the Bus, Jack, Alfie, Emily, Murdock and Donald) despite having over 20 trains already. I guess it's my fault, I used them as incentives and rewards (aka bribes) while we worked on potty training (peeing was easy and totally self motivated by him, but pooping needed some coaxing and coaching), and now he thinks everytime he does something good, he should get a new train. Unfortunately for him, on our current budget, even buying used lots of trains on ebay, he can't have a new train several times a week, let alone several times a day as he'd like it.
So, following my mother's advice, I told D that he had to wait for Santa to come and bring him trains. Major Backfire.
He ran to the window every few minutes to see if Santa was coming yet, and insisted that we call him on the phone to tell him which trains to bring (see above). Luckily my wonderful husband called from his office and disguised his voice enough to fool a 2 year old, so we were able to satisfy that desire.
Amazingly though, after I got out a big book of everything and a few christmas books, D totally got the concept that we had to wait out the end of summer, and then through the autumn with the leaves falling and lots of wind and a new baby sister, and then winter with lots of rain (unfortunately in Los Angeles we won't have snow to mark the season) and fog, and then we'll get a christmas tree and make special cookies, and THEN Santa Claus will come and bring him lots of special trains and other presents.
After that conversation, and after reading the Night Before Christmas about 20 times, he occasionally asked me to sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town, but mostly when he looked at his trains, instead of asking to go to the train store (toy store) to get new trains, he said "Santa bring new James and new Henry and new Bertie the Bus after we are cold and get christmas tree." Followed by a huge smile of understanding that mama wasn't being mean, and it wasn't that he was being bad, but just that santa needed to have time to go to the train store and buy all the trains that all the little boys and girls want for christmas.
So maybe that last little bit about buying the trains at the trainstore was a cop-out on my part. But I figured that its more important to teach him time and patience than to tell him about elves and workshops at the north pole. let's save that for next week?