Proud parent moment!

Rock on, dudes! Our amazing little guy was so moved during the Canucks’ run for the Stanley Cup that he composed his own Fan Song. We posted it up to YouTube for friends and family to see.

Lo and behold, it attracted a bit more attention than we ever expected and is now a featured video on the Twisted Sister official website!  Does it get any better than this?!?

Kidisms – age 4

Update at age 4:

– Luzz Bightyear
– My boogie hurts! (When we asked him to explain, he stood up, started dancing, and pointed to his waist/abdomen area.)
– Ohhhhhhhhh, shutternuts! (Used in place of “darn” or “bummer”.)
– I’m NOT four, I’m four and three quarters!
– My body sent an email to my brain to make the house (into) a swimming pool! (His explanation for why he made the bad choice to flood the bathroom.)

Previous kidisms: Kidisms

N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S

He can spell his name! I had no idea! They must have been practising at daycare, but today is the first time I’ve ever heard him even try and he spelled it all, perfectly! I was pretty flabbergasted and so proud of him!

Potty trained!

Just wanted to share our exciting news that so many of you have already experienced! Nicholas has been wearing underwear for 2 weeks! And he’s so happy about it!

Truth be told, I decided to put him back in diapers (they’re much cheaper than pull-ups) and he really did not like that, so after about a week, he announced he wanted to wear underwear and has been dry every day since (with only one accident).

Yippee for me! But he also thinks it’s pretty cool.

2010 Olympics volunteer

I was pretty torn about applying to volunteer because I wasn’t sure how I could juggle work, Nicholas, and whatever position they may assign to me, but I applied at the end of March (when my Mum was invited to a group interview), attended a group interview in early May, and by September came to the conclusion that my assistance was not required as I hadn’t heard anything. Right about that time, I received a volunteer update newsletter that said, “In this exciting time, some of you may still be waiting for your volunteer offer. Not to worry, there are still plenty of Games-time roles to be filled.” Hmmm, I thought to myself, perhaps there is still a position for me …

… and one week I letter I received this message: “We would love to offer you a role as a Vancouver 2010 Volunteer!” Here it is … Supervisor: Venue Protocol & Language Services at the Vancouver Olympic Centre! Wow! Way worth the wait!

3 training sessions in the next couple of weeks and only 106 days to go! How exciting! At the moment, my shifts are mostly 7am – 4pm, which means this night owl will be waking up at 4am to be out of the house by 5am … seriuosly!!! Anyone who knows me well, knows I’m usually going to bed between 2am and 3am … this should be interesting. Stay tuned for more as the Games get closer!

Dry day

Nicholas has been in potty-training mode for 14 months now! I really thought it would go faster than this, especially because we were using cloth diapers. I’m trying to encourage and support and hope he’s ready to move to underpants soon. We have a picture on the mirror and each time he tells me has to use the toilet (successfully), he gets a sticker. No reward necessary … just the sticker makes him happy enough! Usually, though, it’s me telling him to go every couple of hours or so and he doesn’t collect stickers very quickly.

On occasion when I’ve tried to push for “the change”, it hasn’t done any good and I just ended up being the one who was frustrated and had to clean up all the mess. I imagine it would be more stressful if you have a specific time-line for the change. We’re lucky that we can just let him decide when he’s ready. I’ve been really amazed at the back-and-forth of it all … just when you think he’s well on his way, he suddenly says, “Mummy, I want to be a baby!” and proceeds to poop in his pull-up. Ugh!

Today was a very exciting day – completely dry from sunrise to bedtime!!! That’s a first! With any luck, it may continue!

Kidisms

Kids say the darndest things! Our little guy has some great lines:

– Are you require assistance?
– Stop tickling – you are annoying me!
– Roarrrr! I am scaring the poop right out of me!
– Awwwwww, my body is tired but my brain is NOT tired!!!
– Mummy, I am a little bit upset with you.
– Something in Daddy’s bathroom is dis-GUS-ting!

Back and forth

Three separate issues that fall in the “one step forward, one step back” category:

Toilet training really is ridiculously frustrating for those that have it dragged out. We’ve been at it for a year! I followed all the advice of “don’t push it” and yet it is terribly annoying to take a step forward and a step back with such inconsistent consistency! Big moment today … Patrick thought he heard water running in the bathroom, so went to investigate and there was Nicholas on the throne, saying, “I don’t need help, Daddy, I can do it all by myself!” What a proud moment! On the flip side, though, two hours later his pull-up was wet – arrrgh!

Sleep – going well. Although he often fights it, we haven’t experienced anything as horrendous as we did in September. Almost every night he comes out at least once for either a drink of water or a visit to the bathroom. He’s taken to saying, “I come out of my room for only ONE reason!” What a little negotiator he is already! Every night he falls asleep reading a book, which is exactly how I still fall asleep, too.

It’s interesting to see how independent he can be one minute (going toilet by himself) and reverting to infancy in the next. There have been a few times over the last couple of weeks where he has commented that he wants to be a baby. I suppose he recognizes that babies don’t have many responsibilities. Today he even asked me if he could please drink “lechita” again (our word for breastfeeding). Well, it’s been 9 months since he weaned off, so this came as a bit of a shock!. When I explained the lechita is all gone, he was adamant that he could still smell it! Fascinating! I wonder if it is a memory or a real smell for him.

Sign language – something we haven’t done for ages, with any consistency. There are certain signs we still use regularly … out of habit and because I like being able to communicate across a room without yelling, especially when he needs to be disciplined. “Sit down” and “stop” are very effective tools in certain situations! Today he asked me to show him how to sign “OK” – he could do the K all by himself (what a shock!) but needed help understanding how to make the O. I thought it would have been the other way around – go figure! Always surprising us!

My brain is not tired!

We’ve always had this fantastic sleeper on our hands. All we had to do was put him in bed, kisses and cuddles, and leave the room. No long drawn-out process and no bed-sharing. Not that I’m totally against it … we just didn’t have to use this method.

Until 2 weeks ago, when all hell broke loose and it took 1.5 hours of him coming out with a variety of reasons: to pee, to have a drink, that he wasn’t tired, that he didn’t want to sleep. He’s very verbal so I immediately started asking questions to find out why he didn’t want to sleep, but couldn’t come up with anything that was a clear reason (I expected him to say “bad dreams” or something like that). The worst night was 2.5 hours! Second worst was 1.5 hours at bedtime and then another 1.5 hours at 2am (until 3:30)!

Many people have advised me that this means he is “done” with naps, but my gut just doesn’t agree. There are some days that he does miss the nap, but I still insist on some quiet time. Most days, though, he naps for 1 – 1.5 hours. Not enough to interfere with bedtime, in my opinion, but crucial to his physical and mental development.

So, here’s what we tried … to no avail: gently return him to bed, stand at the door and count to 3 while he puts himself back to bed, explain that he is NOT to get up again until morning, give him a flashlight (which he handed to us the next time he walked out, knowing that was the consequence), put up baby gate (which he just stands at and yells), install a self-controlled light so he can read himself to sleep, play lullaby music, give him a stuffed bear to cuddle, and when I reached my wits end ..pretend to lock his door (not a real lock – I held the knob – he yelled and knocked loudly on the door, so not helpful for my sleeping hubby).

Was I jumping the gun at only just over a week of this? I might have agreed, except that it was SO completely out of character and SO opposite to life as we knew it only a week ago.

A few days into this behaviour, I was trying to explain to him that sleep was very important for his tired body. He replied, “Yes, my body is tired, but my brain is not tired, Mummy!” How great that he could verbalize exactly what he was feeling, but that didn’t help things any.

Then, a few nights ago, we seem to have hit on the magic process. The first time he came out of his room, we took away his music (with no words), second time he lost his light (again, no words), and third time his door was “locked” (us holding the door knob). He HATED this consequence and eventually tired himself out from screaming and crying and I was finally able to (without words) walk him to bed and he was asleep in moments. This whole process took about 1.5 hours.

The next night, he told us in advance exactly what would happen (so sweet!) and the same process occurred but only took half an hour … and the third night was PERFECT!!! He did not get out of bed once! I checked on him after an hour, assuming I would just turn off his light, but he was just-awake, quietly reading his books and said, “I’m not asleep yet, Mummy.” I said, “OK, one more book and then turn off your light,” and closed the door. No screams, no cries – it was wonderful The next time I checked, half an hour later, he was fast asleep (with the light still on).

That was 4 nights ago, so I feel fairly confident we’ve made it through this phase! Yay!! He still might get up in the night to ask to pee, but goes straight back to bed afterwards – it’s wonderful! So, to anyone else suffering through this phase … hang in there, it does eventually end. We’re just blessed that it didn’t last very long.

Update 2 weeks later: bedtime has remained “normal”, with only the occasional very small issue, but nothing like what we were dealing with during that horrible 2-week period. And just for the record, he has definitely NOT dropped his nap, so I’m afraid all the advice I received about that was wrong. Interesting that so many people were so adamant that would be the “fix” and it had nothing at all to do with naps.

Alice.com

I entered a story-writing contest on the Everything Mom website and one of the sponsors chose MY story to win their prize! How exciting! The sponsor … Alice.com – a site that caters to mums who don’t have time (or energy) to go out shopping for their everyday supplies. Check out their website!

The story that I entered? That call …, with some minor editorial changes. It’s been a lucky month!