wordless | independence day

Garage sale days for the garage sale impaired.

So, there is a garage sale surrounding us this weekend. Our entire neighborhood, today and tomorrow, is pulling out all the old junk from the back and trying to make a little spending money. We are not particpating (or rather we are not selling) this year because watching a table of nickknacks on the front lawn is something my mom probably would loathe to do on her vacation but I did take a quick stroll down the cul-de-sac with Tobo today and found:

$0.50 - 4T left handeded(?) catchers glove

$1 - leap frog letter tracing thing in good shape.

$10 - big honking pot (18" at mouth)

$2 - Candy Land

$2 - Hungry Hippos

$1 - 3 cute pottery barn coffee mugs

$0 - 8 free toddler books on telling time, bible stores and the like.

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$16.50 = High amount of entertainment on a rainy day in Denver. Overall, a good haul.

Though we have not made it through a complete game of Candyland, Hungry Hippos is a huge hit. (also a very loud hit). The leap frog thing is really at a good learning level for Tobo. Letters and shapes to trace -- though he also likes using it as a big "smart phone". He very proudly tries to throw with his catcher mit instead of catching with it. Won't hear it done in any other way.

I will probably take another stroll at some free moment (you know since we are enclosed) in hopes to find the elusive blue 12" bike and maybe tables and chairs for the porch. This stuff is actually in pretty good condition. I keep hoping these will be easy to find.

That is pretty silly thing to hear me say, considering how much I hate garage sales.

sleep journal

So the sleep front is getting a little more systematic for Tobo, if not acutally better. We have tweaked a number of things about his schedule and eating opportunities such as:

• shorten nap to 1.5 hours on busy days, even at daycare.
  
• skip nap all together on stuck-in-the-house snow days.
  
• only water and goldfish (next to his bed) after lights out.
• milk and cheese right before bed are fine.
• later dinner (6p) that runs right into bath or run around fun time.
• running around time segues into floor play (puzzles or trains, etc.)
  
• which segues into bedtime story time around 8:30p.
• Lights out by 9p
  
• Door stopper put on door. new rule, door closing stops at bed time.
  

And it is here that I still ended up negotiating for half an hour with the boy about going to bed. I actually had to do a threat. Threats are things we try not to use as a rule. Do not threaten, do. Threat is now. (I totally got that from a science fiction book, btw) But tonight I basically used it as a summary tool: "Remember all the bad stuff that happened the last time you did this? I can do that again OR you can quit the silliness and not suffer the penalty...but you have to comply right now." It turned into some kind of hard sell. And it worked! Like for more than 30 minutes.

The good news is we are no longer having the door-slamming, yelling, feet-dragging, runner bed time routine. I am really thankful for that because I found that really infuriating. He was still up a couple of times last night (the first night we really tried the new stuff all together) but he didn't get up, he just cried in bed. (At one point he was too a sleep to find his stuffed animal who had fallen out of the bed.) So it was still a lot of awake-ness during a time when were suppose to be asleep...but better than the alternative.

Because of Tobo was rested, he was really able to get with the program in the morning. We were still late getting going, mainly because we all overslept by an hour due to being up 3 times during the night. I just figure we were on a Hoemke 30 minute snow delay. These are the days were I think if it takes this much effort for one, what ever would we do with two?

Weathering Pink Eye

Un [insert expletive] believable! Because we just didn't have enough going on right now! Not only am I leaving for Florida tomorrow to visit my folks, somehow after being isolated for 2 snow days from all other children or people, Tobo has contracted pink eye. From the air apparently. Honestly, it really could be worse and he perked up almost immediately after his first dose of eye drops (you know, torture) so he is definitely on the mend. Still got no nap today, but on these inside days, I think it is really ok to shorten or skip the nap if it helps him sleep through the night. And I didn't feel like such an ogre last night since I let him up into our bedroom for a bit. Now I can pretend that my 6th mommy sense was able to tell he was sick. In reality it was because it had been 3 hours of up and down with him and I was just worn out. What was funny was that after being upstairs for a few minutes he decided our bed was too boring and had no goldfish so he bailed. It feels like the judo version of parenting.

A lot of the advice I got was really helpful. I don't know if it will work with our kid but at least we have options. The main theme I heard though was, "yeah, this is what happens now." That in itself was a relief. Making it feel like his behavior was a tisunami or flood. Act of Nature. I'm not causing it, nor am I able to prevent it from happening. All I can do is hunker down and weather it out. Kind of like our weather in Denver, come to think of it.

2/1

So we are about to enter the terrible 3's at our house. We are about 1 month out from all out war with our toddler. Bedtime has become a nightmare. And we struggle to find our footing in the shifting sands of discipline. Too young to ground, too old to distract, we are always finding what worked last week, now is obsolete.

Take bedtime. We use to be able to thwart the last ditch attempt to avoid bed by letting Tobo have one more slurp of milk be fore we take the cup upstairs. Now it has turned into a epic length game of door-slamming. I asked Tobo at dinner what he disliked about going to bed. His answer: going to sleep. Then I asked what's your favorite part about getting up at night? His answer: the door slamming part. "I love that part!" Oh dear.

If it was just at bed time that would be one thing, but Tobo "does a runner" about ever other night. He pops up at our bed side around midnight with a "It's morning time". We've taken to times outs and confiscating bedtime items (stuffed animals, pillows, music thing, nightlights, etc.) We're about to start taking out toys next. But its just doesn't seem to get us anywhere.