Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Toothbrush attacks!

Based on the comments on my last blog, I'm going to assume that's it ok for me to post another video. This is something I've been wanting to post for a while-- mainly for Andrew and Andrea, who are well acquainted (or at least Andrew is) with the song Jack is singing in the video. It's a song we sing to him every night when we brush his teeth, but it's much better when he sings it. I'll post the lyrics at the bottom for those of you who are unfamiliar with it.





"The Toothbrush Tango"
from Blues Clues

The time has come
to make our teeth shine bright
We do it every night
To wash away the apple and the mango
(or whatever else you had to eat)
We do the toothbrush tango

We start with paste,
But just a little
We brush the sides
and then the middles
We clean the backs*
The tops and bottoms
Doin' the toothbrush tango
Brush all around, and round
Don't forget to
RINSE AND SPIT!


(Jeremy has substituted this with "toothbrush attacks" so that's what Jack sings)

Thursday, February 14, 2008

God has papers too.

When I was younger my Mom used to sing a song from Music Machine to me and my siblings to help fight impatience (Who am I kidding, she still does.)

Have patience
Have patience
Don't be in such a hurry
When you get impatient
You only start to worry
Remember, remember
that God is patient too
And think of all the times when others
Have to wait on you


Well, I guess it really carried over to my parenting style, but I sing this to Jack anytime he is having a hard time waiting for me to bring him his food, or his milk, or whatever. Well, this morning I was making Jack some special Valentines Day Malt-O-Meal (pink sprinkles on top in the shape of a heart.) He was impatiently whining so I said "hold on, Jack. It's almost done." To my surprise he started singing the song! Normally he won't perform for me when I try filming him, but he agreed to sing the Patience song for the camera. Then as soon as I finished filming him, he wanted to pray for his food, so I hit record again.

Disclaimer: Many of you may find the following videos boring. I am, more than anything, posting them for family members that do not get to witness the everyday goings on of my children.





In case you can't tell, he mumbles thanks for Daddy, Mommy and Evie and then says "Amen" at the end. It's funny b/c with the rush of trying to get food on the table and Jack and Evie in their highchairs, and appeasing Evie while we eat, we often forget to pray for the food-- but Jack always reminds us. He holds out his hands (to be held) and says "pray."

The hard thing about being a mom is trying to decide between what other people may agree is adorable and what others may find completely boring. I think this next video can go either way, but I'm posting it anyway! Evie just starting eating soft little food, like crackers and fruit and veggie puffs. I think it is so cute when babies eat, just awkwardly smacking their gums. So...like it or don't.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

The sound of silence.

I know that I haven't blogged in a while, but I do have excuses. Good excuses too, I think. Jeremy has been gone a lot for work and Jack has been having some sleeping problems. So I've basically either been busy taking care of the kids by myself, or else extremely exhausted because of my lack of sleep.

Since we got back from our Texas trip at the beginning of January, Jack has been really struggling with going to bed-- for naps and at night time. He switched to a toddler bed a while back and was doing fine, but when we went to Texas he slept in a room with Jeremy. He also had an ear infection around that time, so when we got home, we kind of assumed his sleeping problems were a result of the pain in his ear.

Well, his ear healed and he was giving us just as much trouble, if not more. He started resisting any form of bedtime, and was waking up crying at all hours of the night. He then started becoming very crafty with his methods of getting us to come back to his room. He would either cry out "pray!", making us think he wanted us to pray for him, but when we went back there, he didn't want that at all, he just wanted us to take him out of his room. Then he would say things like "hug", "water", "itch" (he has very dry skin so I'm often relieving the itch with some Aveeno lotion). Well, he then started with a pretty brilliant strategy: turning his light on. The problem with the light is that we would HAVE to go turn it off, b/c we knew he wouldn't go to sleep with it on. We tried hugging him and praying for him and laying him back down-- we then tried speaking harshly to him "don't turn your light on!" and then disciplining him for turning his light on. Any kind of attention we gave only made him cry for us more. Then he started chucking his blanket, pillow, monkey and sippy cup of water over his gate. We didn't know what to do about this either b/c we didn't think he would go to sleep without all of his stuff. Well, he is crafty, but his father is even craftier. Jeremy came up with the idea of unhooking the light switch in his room. We had already thought of taking his light bulbs out, but he has the great big florescent light bulbs in his room and it would be quite a hassle. Then we thought of just turning off the breaker in his room, but that would mean losing access to all electricity in his room, and we need that for his night light and his cd player. So, last night was our first night with this new approach, and Jack got really angry when he realized he couldn't turn his light on-- he chucked all his stuff out of his room and cried for a long time, but eventually he gave up and went to sleep.

Game, set, match.

I later went in his room and put his stuff back in his bed, and put his blanket back on him-- and I also played a white noise CD on repeat (thought it may help him sleep better). He slept until 5:00-- woke up crying and we let him cry for a while without going to him. He fell back asleep and slept until 7:30! When Evie woke up a little after 7, I went to get her and saw that all of Jack's stuff was outside of his room. So I went and put it all back and put his blanket back on him. He woke up happy and much more rested than he has been for a while. Then the greatest part of all... tonight when Jeremy and I laid him down to sleep for the night, he sat with us, let us read books to him, let us pray with him, and he laid down smiling-- and did not cry once. So I think the whole "jack sleeping issue" has been resolved-- and not a minute too soon. I was getting close to my wit's end. It got so difficult that there were nights when I was so exhausted and frustrated that I would just sit and cry.

Jeremy is my hero.



This lack of blogging means that I haven't posted a video that I have been meaning to post for a while. It's of Evie... growling.



It's dangerous waiting to post videos of kids when they're Evie's age b/c they learn things so quickly-- so she's really not even the same as she was in this video. I think she's even moved past her growling phase.

Also, she now has two teeth-- they are kind of growing in unfortunate places -- well, I mean they are in her mouth (Man, that would be very unfortunate if they were growing somewhere else, like on her shoulder). But she has the front lower right tooth, and she's now getting the front upper right tooth. She's going to look like she got into a bar fight if she doesn't hurry up and get the other ones soon. Jack always grew his teeth very evenly. Always two (or more) at a time. He had as many teeth as Evie has the day he turned 3 months old-- and Evie's 7 1/2 months now.

I guess I can add a few pictures. I took these pictures today. Jack refused to take off his ski cap when he went to nursery this morning (I've had to refer to toboggans as "ski caps" here b/c apparently these crazy people refer to sleds as "toboggans." Crazy, I know!) As you can see, Jack's long hair has started producing some pretty impressive hat head.






Ok, so sorry about all the rambling up there. I'm done now, I swear.

Have a good day.