late night practice

People keep asking about Lydia crawling.  She must hear me talking about her.  Saying things like "she's not crawling yet, but she pushes herself backwards to get what she needs." Or "she scoots around while seated to get Oliver's trains."

Well, I think she is starting to feel the pressure.  She has ramped up her crawling practice.  Normally she was practicing at church, in the toy room, the living room, other normal crawling practice locations at normal practice times.  Until last night, last night Lydia decided that 3am would be an awesome time to give it a go. 

It went like this....

Wake up, roll to over to belly, get on all fours, realize I can't actually crawl, cry, mom or dad come in, flip me over, shush me, I fall back asleep pretend to sleep until they think they have victoriously put me back to bed. Then I flip back over and try it again, and again, and again, until realizing I can't crawl, and it's 4:15am, I'm defeated and I'm actually sleepy.  I wake a few hours later all smiley and cheerful. 

sleep, food, snuggles

Before school started I made a morning routine schedule, in preparation for the start of pre-k.  Pre-k seems to revolve around the concept of gaining independence and becoming more and more self guided, so we better practice at home.  I found this schedule online, and for simplicity sake I copied it, printed it, and took it straight of Office Max Depot for some heavy duty lamination. (I never know if it's an office max or an office depot, so yeah, I call it office max depot)


 





 How we use the chart..
I set aside an hour from wake up until we need to leave for school. So wake up time for him is around 7:30-7:40
I wake up before him and nurse Lydia, occasionally when feeling ambitious I also shower. 
Then I go to Oliver's room and open his curtain, say good morning, hug, tell him it's a school day or a home day, tell him something exciting about the day (we are going to the zoo, it's sharing letter /m/ day at school, etc), then hand him his schedule and ask him what's up first.
I go set up his tooth brush then dress myself and Lydia.  While getting Lydia and myself ready I remind him to do his jobs, and occasionally he does them on his own. 
We make it downstairs for breakfast
#7 says gather stuff, we have substituted that for "do a school job" We do a workbook page, or color, or handwriting practice or something to get his brain going.
If there is time between 8-9 he gets to use the ipad until we have to leave.

Also, I set up an area in the laundry room, right by the garage door for his coat, and back pack to hang, and for his shoes to be lined up and ready to go. 

In my mind this is perfection.  In Oliver's mind it something else, something that just induces SCREAMING.

So much screaming

Screaming when he can't get his shirt on, screaming about having to put his pjs in the laundry basket, screaming about his oatmeal not being cooked to his perfect liking, screaming about his shoes, needing to get in the car, having to be in a car seat.  And I don't mean like little fussy noises, I mean his throat is getting horse from screaming so much.  Then at school he is fine, happy, bye bye mom, I'm going to have a great day! Teacher reports he does in fact have great days. 

Back home, back to yelling about everything. 

So, like any good mother in this modern social networked life we live in, I turn to facebook.  I'm part of a group that's all moms, and I know someone there will have an idea, or a 100 ideas.  I'm not left disappointed, they come through.  I decide to go with, what I think are, the three easiest changes. 

1. more sleep
2. more food
3. more snuggles

 ::Slams hand on face:: for not being able to think of such things myself.

Moved getting ready for bed from 8 to 7, so his lights are usually off by 7:30
Every time he starts to even seem fussy I offer him a glass of smoothie, cheese, crackers, grapes, something
A few moms mentioned something about a 10:20:10 method.  Snuggle for 10 minutes in the morning, 20 sometime in the day, and 10 more around bed time.  I hop in bed with him for a few minutes in the morning and chat with him, make sure we read for 20-30 minutes together on the couch while Lydia naps, and I re took over bed time from Jim.

we've done more sleep, more food, more snuggles since Tuesday and it really has made a big difference

Perfection, no.  Screaming, way less.  I'll ride the wave.  

When Oliver came home from the orphanage I swore his "issues" could be fixed with hugs and food, and for the most part, they were....we're lucky like that.  He's going through something now, growing up a little, spending more time at school (7.5 hours a week), sharing his mama with his sister, and trying to figure out how to use his words.  It's back to basics, sleep, food and hugs.  I'll hug the funk right out of him!














 

9 months

Sweet Lydia turned nine months today.  She gets smarter and sweeter and juicer and more wonderful with each passing day.

 

Lydia...
-cut two top teeth
-loves to stand, isn't cruising and can't let got, but she loves standing around
-can pull up from sitting to her knees
-is finding her voice, she loves to make the /b/ noise and some general yelling noise, she likes trying to mimic Oliver...which is pretty hilarious 
-went on her second plane ride, back to Massachusetts
-continues to consider crawling, but actually just wiggles around to get what she wants  

Official doctor stuff will be added Monday after her appointment.  I guess she weighs around 20lbs.  

first day of pre-k

Oliver went back to school today.  We dropped in for a open house last week and were able to meet his teacher and see his classroom.  He has a different teacher from last year, and we were excited about the change.  Hopefully it will be another awesome year!  Unlike preschool, he now gets to go 3 mornings a week vs. 2.

Today was the fist day, but we are taking it easy, we don't want to jump right in.  He went today and now we are going on a trip back to Massachusetts/NH for a week for a wedding.

a few photos in the front yard

a few photos with unimpressed Lydia

walking in

8 months

Lydia wasn't really feeling this 8 month photo-op.

stink face

 

 

unimpressed

new favorite lunging forward move
this move is followed by a belly flop and usually some whining

Lydia...
-cut her bottom two teeth
-lunges forward from a seated position to her belly, she wants to crawl, but just flops
-pushes herself backwards or in circles, on her belly to get places
-enjoys eating baby yogurt
-homemade fish sticks might be her favorite solid food
-unofficially weighs 19.5lbs, according to our bathroom scale

 

driveway art

I've had this pinned for a long time. 





How messy and fun!  However, I wanted maybe a slightly less messy version.  So, instead of using paper and doing the work inside we made some sidewalk paint and decorated our driveway.

I didn't make a special pendulum, we just used our PVC sprinkler. 



Here are the details on our fun.

for the sidewalk paint we used
-4 TBS cornstarch
-4 TBS washable paint
-6 TBS water

We measured for the first round, after that I put Oliver in charge.

for the paint dropper we
-cut the bottom off a condiment bottle
-attached some string using duct tape (super classy)

our contraption ready to go

Oliver getting the paint ready

"look it's making a spider web"

"I'm gonna catch you in that spider web!"

we mixed up six colors all together

"this is my airplane"

"this one is for daddy to park on"

you can see some of the spots in the driveway

We enjoyed the activity.  It was super easy, and we already had everything we needed around the house.  Also, I've used a sidewalk paint recipe that uses food coloring, lame, so lame, compared to the brightness of actual paint.  We shall see how it washes off....

vine, soap, casa, afterschool, bookworm, etc

Do you shop at vine.com or soap.com or any of their familyhood sites?  Oh my stars I adore them.  They have everything I need, insanely fast shipping (I ordered something Tuesday night and it was here Wednesday afternoon!), and you can usually find some sort of coupon code to save you some cash or get free shipping, or both.  They let you enter multiple codes.  Like that one ----->

It started out that I ordered cloth diapering detergent and Bac-Out from them, now I order coffee and toilet paper and a bunch of other household goods.  Let's face it, any LESS time I can spend at the actual grocery store with my two children is a good thing.

If you're are a first time customer you can enter that special code and score 20% off, I get a credit, AND they donate some money to my charity of choice.  I picked FEED, because I'm pro food for all. 

So go shop!



Cloth diaper mamas,

Bac-Out is currently 20% off if you enter the code BACOUT.  I had enough of the spray I use for the diapers so I ordered some other items, a fabric refresher (yum) and some lavender scented bathroom cleaner, it almost makes me want to go scrub the shower....almost.