And yet, he still wakes up in the middle of the night to eat…

  • Posted on February 5, 2009 at 02:29

…sometimes.

My night last night:

[I am sitting in the kitchen, with Stewie. It is after bath, but before bed. Dinner was finished a mere hour ago.]

Stewie (sitting on the counter, eating peas). Finishes bowl of peas, and announces, “Want more peas.”

Naomi gets more peas. (YES, he is eating PEAS. As a snack. Before bed. By choice. And I did make him say please) “It’s time for bed, Stewie, eat your peas.”

S: Eats peas. Stops. “I have to pee & poo.” (stall tactic).

N: Takes Stewie off the counter, and watches as he RUNS up the stairs (yelling that he’s “gonna beat me up”).

Stewie Gets to bathroom, takes off pants and I sit him on the toilet. Meanwhile, I put a load of laundry in the machine. Just as I’m finishing, I hear clamoring from the bathroom…

S: “I want to push the button!!” (on the washing machine). I pick him up, and he pushes the button. “I want to put the soap!!” (I’d already put the soap, but to avoid a tantrum – yes, a tantrum, tears and all – I gave him a cup of water to pour in.)

Stewie then runs back to the kitchen (he is naked from the waist down at this point) and demands that he get to finish his peas.  Back on the counter he goes, and continues to eat the peas.  Finishes them, and asks for more.  I try to convince him that there are no more, but he starts to cry, so I give him some more, but tell him that that’s it.

He eats the peas.  As he’s about to eat the last handful, he announces that he has to pee again.

Down off the counter he goes.  Runs to the bathroom again, this time on the same floor as the kitchen.  Pees.  Then pees again.  And again.  Puts seat down.  Goes to put the lid down, stops, looks at me, and says, “I watch it go down?”

N: (stifling a giggle) “Yes, Stewie, you can watch it go down.”

Stewie flushes, watching the pee, then closes the lid.  Washes his hands, and heads back to the kitchen.  This time he stands on the stool (that he carried in from the bathroom earlier in the evening) at the counter, and finishes his peas.

“Want grapes,” he announces.  There is a bowl of grapes on the counter waiting for him.  He eats grapes every night before bed.  Every. Single. Night.

Instead of eating the grapes, he takes them all off the stems and moves them to the bowl that held the peas.  We eat them together.

He stops me. “Bite it, mummy,” and he shows me how he bit the grape in half.

Stewie finishes his bowl of grapes (with several pauses for water).

“Want blueberries, mummy.”

At this point, almost 30 minutes after the whole endeavour began, I drag him upstairs to bed.

This scenario, or some reasonable facsimile thereof occurs every night.

Bye Bye Diapers…Oh how I’ll miss you…(NOT)

  • Posted on January 29, 2009 at 14:53

In a few weeks, we are going on a trip.  We’ll take a plane for a few hours, then a bus, and then get on a ship, where we will spend 7 days cruising around the Caribbean.

Not too bad, hey?

Part of this trip includes camp for the boys.  To use this camp, they must be toilet trained.  (You know where this is going, right?)  So I decided that this was as good a time as any, and it was time to toilet train the little man.

Well, my 4 year old is a master of the toilet (and lets the entire world know about it!) so there were no worries there.  But the 2 year old…well, see, therein was the issue.

Back last summer we introduced him to the concept of the toilet.  And yes, he did occasionally sit on it and sometimes even pooed.  But honestly, he was too young.  However, the seed had been sown.

Winter break arrived, and Stewie and I were going to be home for 2 weeks, no school, no programs.  So we started in earnest.

[ Wait, let me back up a bit.  I don't know how to potty train.  At least, I didn't at the time.  Linus simply announced one day he wanted underwear, and a week later we were done.  Easy, peasy, no mess, no fuss.  If you were with my on my last bloggy incarnation, you may have read the story ]

Back to winter break.  The approach we took was that whenever he was home, he was naked (from the waist down).  I have to say, this worked.  Not a lot of accidents after the first few days, and he even managed to pee on the toilet most of the time.  It helped that his brother would also be naked, and they would pee together (it’s a family show around here!).

After a few weeks of this, we pushed for underwear.  Gave him some for Chanukah, and he hated it.  Refused to wear it.  Would have screaming fits (”I DON’T WANT UNDERWEAR, I WANT DIAPER!!!!”).  Oh yes.

But we perservered.  And one day, 2 weeks ago, he put on underwear.  And since he was home all day that day, we left it on.  And you know what?  He stayed dry most of the day.  Of course, we took him to pee many times, and asked him essentially every minute.  But he stayed dry until almost 4 in the afternoon.  Not bad.

The next day, it was a Friday, he wanted to wear the underwear to school.  So we let him.

Let’s just say, it’s now been 2 weeks since that day.  For the first week or so, he had accidents, usually in the afternoon when he was playing.  And then, I think, something clicked.  He went 5 days without an accident (until 2 days ago).  We had a slight setback 2 days ago, but he’s still okay.  And now he goes on his own (and announces it, just like his brother) and has even asked to be taken to the toilet.

So we’ve now cancelled our diaper service (we use cloth diapers.  HIGHLY recommended if you wish to be diaper free before 3!) and we’re well on our way to being ready for camp on our holiday!

(Now to get him to be diaper free at night! Ha ha!)

In which I kvell* about my children (feel free to ignore)

  • Posted on January 23, 2009 at 12:35

Talking about our children is often difficult. Do people think we are one of those “competimommies” if we say things our children do? I don’t want to be thought of that way, because, truly, every child is different, and every child has strengths (and weaknesses) that are all their own.

That being said, last night was Parent-Teacher interview night at my children’s school.  It was a wonderful experience, talking with their teachers.  Let’s start with Stewie.

Stewie is my younger boy.  Just a few months over 2, he’s one of the younger ones in his class.  (Of the 15 children, I think there are 2 or possibly 3 that are younger then he is).  He’s easily one of the tallest (of the 15 children, there might be 2 or possibly 3 that are taller then he is).  His teacher GUSHED about him!  Loves him.  Talked about how he tells stores, easily shares, loves to talk.  He is comfortable talking to adults, and tends to talk to them more then to the other children.  (The reason, of course, is quite simple – adults talk back!)

She mentioned that his favourite places in the classroom are the doll centre, the play dough table and the construction toys.  He does the art now (which he wasn’t doing at the beginning of the year), and, in her words, is a joy to have in the class.  She then said to us that whatever we are doing as parents to keep doing it, as we’re doing a wonderful job.

She did say some other things, and both my husband & I got the same thing out of them – he’s just too smart & too advanced for the class.  Of course, it’s a wonderful opportunity for him to socialize with his peers (which, to be sure, was the one thing she thought he needed work on – he seems to prefer the adults to the kids in the class).  We’ve thought for a while that he was different, and it was interesting to hear it from another adult who knows him well.

Then there was Linus.  He’s in junior kindergarten, and so he actually got a report card.  It was really great – almost everything was rated “well established” (3 on the 1-3 scale).  They talked about how pleasant he was, how he chose a good selection of activities in the day and how he works well on his own.  He chooses activities based on his own interests, not on who was there, which was a worry for us (his closest friend is in the class with him, and we worry that he’s the only child that he plays with, or that he follows him around).  It was nice to hear that he’s somewhat independent.

He’s showing interest in reading, and will probably start with readers soon.  She thinks that he’ll certainly be reading at least a little bit well before first grade, which is great.  She told us that she loves having him in the class, and that his smile brightens her day.

As we were driving home, I commented to The Taxman that we have 16 more years of these nights, in which we come home to our children, after having talked to their teachers.  It’s a bit daunting, but also kind of exciting.  I am sure that there will be issues, but I hope that all of those parent-teacher nights are as pleasant and heartwarming as this one was.

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*kvell – a Yiddish word, meaning, essentially, to gush over