I know I'm more in love with my son than any of you, and these “Day in the Life” blogs may not be interesting to anyone except me, but I'm going to keep writing them anyway! I love looking back at his little quirks, especially because his obsessions change so quickly. He's a very intense, very unique little man and I'm lucky to be his mom.
Our day usually starts around 6:30 when, as far as I can tell, he gets out of his toddler bed, sits in his room, and asks for one or both of us. He hasn't tried to leave his room by himself yet, and I'm kind of dreading the day he realizes he's fully capable of walking over to the door and letting himself out anytime he feels like it. We snuggle on the couch for a few minutes while he wakes up and then the fun begins!
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| Making french toast |
Most days, the first thing he asks for is milk, and a close second is “Shark book?” (sounds like shaa boo or boo shaaa? He hasn't quite gotten the syntax yet). This boy LOVES sharks. We regularly clean out the shark reference section at the library to satisfy his obsession. After that, we usually move on to breakfast, which he prefers consist of pancakes or muffins (cake, as I call them), or a new favorite – cinnamon toast. He recently discovered cinnamon sugar and nutella as condiment options, both of which he thoroughly enjoys. He gets a kick out of helping me make the cinnamon toast (bread with butter and cinnamon sugar put under the broiler until the sugar melts), especially because he gets to eat the leftover cinnamon sugar while the bread is toasting. He also loves to use the microwave. I make
big batches of pancakes when I have an appropriate vegetable laying around that would be good in pancakes, like squash or carrots or something, and then keep them in the freezer. Josh loves to be in charge of opening and closing the microwave door and pushing all the buttons we need. One morning he ate 6 pancakes (silver-dollar-sized, but still!), and I'm pretty sure he kept going just because he wanted to keep nuking them!
Since most child-centered businesses don't open until 10, we usually have a whole chunk of time to enjoy at home in the morning. Josh splits his time fairly evenly between finger painting and playing with homemade playdough. His finger painting pretty much consists of him choosing a color and telling me where on the paper he would like it. I pour a dollop down and he smears it around. The three colors he seems to request most are purple, brown, and blue. Maybe someday we'll get to the point where he actually wants to paint things instead of just make streaks of color. His most favorite thing to do with the playdough is make sculptures with the pieces from a Mr. Potatohead set, especially the eyes.
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| Seriously? The kid won't eat a KitKat but he'll eat salt playdough! |
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| My little Picasso |
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| He asked to go out - it was about -20 |
When we lived in Boston, we played outside every day, snow, rain or shine, and Josh loved it. Here, though, he's not so excited to go out. He LOVED playing in the snow here when it was still warm enough and humid enough that we could make snowballs. Since the cold has really set in (it was -27 this morning), the snow is too dry to pack and he is no longer interested enough to endure the uncomfortable clothes and extensive preparation time, not to mention the cold. Although he doesn't particularly want to play in the snow, he does enjoy going for walks as long as he's bundled up in his stroller.
Because he doesn't usually want to play outside, we have found some fun things to do around town. The public library here has a wonderful children's room with a small aquarium, a whole closet full of puzzles (a HUGE favorite – Josh will play with “puppies” for as long as I'll let him), a Lego table, and computers with kids' games. We spend at least one morning a week at our local PetCo wandering around the aquarium section watching the fish swim. Barnes and Noble is also one of our regular spots, not only because of the books but they also have a pretty cool train table in the kid area.
When we're not finger painting or making sculptures with playdough, Josh has also become quite an accomplished train track-builder. He doesn't usually drive a train on his creations, he just builds for the sake of building. He also loves to read his books, preferably without me present. He doesn't like me to read to him or with him, but he’ll easily spend 20 minutes sitting on the floor looking at his books by himself.
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| Opening the cupboards |
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| Making no-bake cookies, which he wouldn't eat when finished |
In an effort to get him more interested in food, Josh and I cook together often. His favorite part is to pour
ingredients into the mixing bowl. He is terrified of all of my appliances, though, so when mixing time comes around (unless it’s something we can mix with a spoon, which he enjoys) he makes himself scarce. For some reason, his food aversions don’t always extend to food that we’re preparing. If it’s something we’re in the middle of making, he’ll put almost anything in his mouth, including homemade playdough consisting of cornstarch, baking soda, and water! As soon as it’s finished and an official food and no longer “dough” (which he calls anything we make together), he won’t touch it anymore. Although getting sticky doesn’t seem to bother him while we’re cooking, when he’s done he must wash his hands immediately. Usually when he’s done helping me, and often throughout the day, he likes to go through the kitchen and open every drawer and cupboard he can reach and then close them all.
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| Making cinnamon rolls |
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| He was a great helper until we got out the brown sugar - then he just ate sugar the rest of the time! |
Josh’s current favorite movies are Toy Story, Madgascar, and most recently Happy Feet. He doesn’t get to watch movies very often, but he asks all the time. He knows it’s kind of a special thing, so when he’s going to ask, he puts on his very best little smile, clasps his hands, and asks “Woody?” or “Fish Nemo?” or just “Watch? Please?” It gets hard to say no sometimes because he asks so very adorably, and because I know I’ll get to hear his quite rare little giggle while he’s watching. His favorite part of Toy Story, strangely, is when Buzz and Woody argue. It makes him crack right up and it’s one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. He also loves, of course, when the shark pops out of the toy box with Woody’s hat on and says “Hi, I’m Woody! Howdy howdy howdy howdy.” He has also recently become fascinated with seeing pictures of himself. Anytime I get out the laptop when he’s awake, he comes running over and asks to see pictures of “Josh?” Until last week, anytime he saw the computer he asked to see “shark movie,” by which he means National Geographic videos of sharks on YouTube. When he’s having a particularly hard day or there’s something I absolutely need to get done while he’s awake, watching shark videos on YouTube will keep him occupied indefinitely. I find it interesting that although watching Marlin and Dory argue on Finding Nemo scares him, watching videos of real sharks attacking things doesn’t faze him in the least.
When Mario gets home from work shortly after 5, we eat dinner. This is a very fluid concept for Josh and we’re still working on finding a good system to help him expand his extremely limited food repertoire.
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| Drawing - another favorite. It's actually not unusual for him to wear the Mr. Potatohead glasses for a while. Funny kid! |
In the evening, sometimes Josh and I bake something, or we’ll resort to finger painting or playdough for a while, but one of our favorite activities is to play with glow sticks. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of our glow stick parties, but we all have a great time playing with the lights off. We also play with flash lights and get out all of his toys that have lights. Sometimes we even play with glow sticks on weekend mornings since the sun doesn’t come up until well after 9am these days. We’ve also had glow stick baths, which is a lot of fun too.
After we’ve done all we can to wear the little guy out, we tuck him into bed and hope we don’t see him until the next morning. We’ve had a lot of sleeping issues lately where he’ll wake up anytime between midnight and 2 am and not go back to sleep for 3-5 hours. He usually just lies in his bed and cries for us every 15-20 minutes. I would actually prefer it if he would just yell and wear himself out so he could go back to sleep, but it seems he’s just genuinely not tired. And the times that we have let him “cry it out” after he’s been asking for us for an hour or so, he’s cried so hard he throws up. We’ve started giving him a bedtime snack and fortified milk right before bed thinking that maybe he was waking up because he was hungry, but
even with a good dinner and his milk he has still been up all night a few times. Hopefully we can get this figured out by the time this baby gets here, because I don’t think any of us will survive more than a couple nights like that! One particular morning after he woke up at 2 am and never went back to sleep, he was so tired by 9 am that he fell stone cold asleep in the middle of getting his diaper changed.
Speaking of a baby arriving, I’ve been having contractions . . . lots and lots of contractions. Last weekend I had regular ones between 5 and 15 minutes apart for eight hours, and the same but for less time a couple nights before and since then. It’s a little nerve-wracking to wonder pretty much every night if I’m actually going in to labor, but it’s also nice that these seem to be just false labor since Mom doesn’t get here for a week and a half and this little girl needs to hold her little horses until then! I finally got around to taking a belly picture – this is at 38 weeks. It’s so different than with the first one. With Josh, we had everything we needed weeks in advance and took belly pictures every month, and then I was induced a week after his due date. This time, I feel like we’re not ready for her at all and she may come any day! I guess that’s why I’ve been trying to get all these posts done, because I feel like if I don’t do it now it will get lost in the mayhem of a new baby and I’ll never get around to it.
Hopefully the next blog will be about our new arrival!
