Notes from the crib

Today we visited some local haunts that we'd never visited before, along with some old favorites. We had lunch at our favorite local hamburger shack and then hit a costume shop, old time candy store (complete with soda fountain), and an airstream trailer that sells just cupcakes. Thanks to it being 103 degrees today and us walking to each of these places, George was worn out and fell asleep in the car on the way home. Hooray for naps! This is only his second nap of the week.

George has some odd toddler behaviors. One of these is that he likes to gnaw on raw sweet potatoes while sitting in grocery carts. He first exhibited this behavior while I was shopping for Thanksgiving dinner last November. The other day we were shopping in the produce aisle and he started whimpering and lurching out of the cart. Turns out we were near the sweet potato section. I picked one up and he grabbed it out of my hands and commenced chewing. Other kids whine for candy, mine wants a raw tuber.

Sorry for the absence of blogging. I went away to Salt Lake City for a few days for a stamping convention. As a bonus, I have family there and it was wonderful to be able to catch up with them. Since returning home, I've been busy launching my business web site, getting the house back in order, and fixing a lot of broken equipment at work.

Plus, my hard drive crashed about six hours before I was scheduled to fly out. I lost everything! Luckily, we have backups of George's pictures and I was in-between transcribing projects so at least I didn't lose either of those. But so much else is gone. I'm using this as a chance to start fresh and keep my file systems better organized. I'm loving using Lightroom to organize my photos. I'm able to tag and sort them. Hopefully that'll help me when it comes time to make George's end of the year book. I'll just have to re-import all of the first half of 2008 back into my computer as I get time.

DH was so sweet when my hard drive crashed. He ran out to the 24 hour Walmart and bought an external hard drive. Then he took that apart and used the guts to rebuild my laptop so that I'd have it to take with me. He stayed up all night and finished the install at about 5:00 AM, a half hour before I left for the airport. So I was still able to video chat with he and George while I was gone, which really helped me with my anxiety about being away from my baby for so long.

DH and George appeared to have gotten along just swimmingly in my absence. They went to the pool, played video games, and read lots and lots of books. DH would send photos from his phone to mine to show me what they were up to. Here's a shot of George eating a dinner of beans, cheese, and taco sauce.

Last night George and I met some of our friends for dinner and play time. George was happy as could be to eat and play with his little friends. He's learned how to say one of the little girls' names and he says it over and over and over again! This morning, all he wanted to talk about was "Abby! Abby! Abby!" and he kept wanting to look at the picture I'd taken of her yesterday. When her picture would pop up on the camera screen, he'd giggle in delight.

I tried to get a picture of his poor chipped tooth, but turns out he doesn't show his upper teeth very often. So I'll just post this cute shot of him from last night instead.

George had his first trip to the dentist today. Unfortunately, it was an unscheduled visit.

This morning I was going over my annual enrollment documents at work and selecting which dental plan to choose. I was also making sure that George was added to our plan so that he'd be able to go to the dentist once the new year starts in September. For some reason (probably that he was toothless) we forgot to add him to the dental plan this past year. This morning as I was selecting the dental plan I thought to myself, "Please don't let anything happen to his teeth between now and September 1st".

So after work, George and I came home and went to the pool. I was hoping to wear him out so he'd nap - he's only had one nap this week which has made for a long and stressful week. There are two pools that we frequent and the one that we usually hang out in was having tile work done today, so we went over to the other one. George was playing on the steps, but they were much more narrow than the ones in the other pool. He tripped and hit his mouth on the edge of the pool and I heard a horrible "clink" sound. George started screaming and I picked him up and walked with him until I could get him calmed down. There was no blood and he wouldn't let me look at his mouth. He wanted down and ran back into the pool to play. A few minutes later I noticed he kept sucking his lips around his teeth in an odd manner and making a face. I finally managed to get him to open his mouth and I saw that one of his front teeth was all ragged. In a panicked mommy moment, I scooped him up, gathered his toys, and we got in his car to come back to the house. I asked one of the friendly lifeguards to help me look in his mouth to be sure of what I was seeing, and sure enough, it looked like George had chipped his front tooth.

We rushed home and I called the pediatrician to figure out what to do and get some recommendations for dentists. This was lunchtime, and we ended up having to have the pediatrician paged. Luckily he called us right back. I described the problem and he thought that it probably wasn't urgent that George be seen, but to try to get him in to a dentist sooner rather than later. He suggested we call our family dentist, but DH and I are both in between dentists right now and don't have anyone to call.

Luckily, I remembered that I'd seen a sign for a new dentist in town on my way in to work this morning. I called and they said to bring George right over. I got us changed out of our wet swimsuits and away we went. We were whisked into a room right away and the dentist checked George out. I had taken one of George's stuffed animals and they had a dental themed talking stuffed toy at the office. Between the two of those, we were able to have me hold George in my lap while sitting in the chair and distract him enough to get the tooth checked out. George really didn't want to open his mouth but other than just pursing his lips shut he didn't do much protesting. He was pretty shy at the dental office and, really, on pretty good behavior. The dentist said that it was just a 1st degree enamel chip, that it didn't affect the bone and the best course of action was to do nothing at all. He thought the ragged edge would wear itself down, but it if started to cause problems we could come back and have the tooth built up.

I asked whether George could have a binkie and he said yes (I was concerned about the binkie causing problems with his poor little tooth), but then I got the "take the pacifiers away" lecture. I also received the standard dentist to parent lecture on brushing his teeth, not giving him beverages in bed, not giving him juice, brushing after milk, yada yada yada. With all my teeth history, I am pretty good about making sure George's are taken care of - we do allow the binkie but that will be phased out after his birthday. For now he just gets it in bed or in the car (or in public if he needs to be "plugged"). Other than that, we weren't doing anything on the "do not do" dental list.

I didn't get any pictures of George's first dentist visit. I was much too panicked and upset about my baby being hurt to remember to take the camera. See, another reason to get that iPhone I've been wanting.

I've given in to the peer pressure. Everywhere I look, I see people taking their writing and turning it into word clouds. Word clouds are graphical representations of the language used in a piece of writing. In this case, I pointed the tool to this blog and created an image map of the most frequently used words. The larger the font, the more often I use the word. I had no idea I use "put" so much. I must expand my vocabulary. Also amusing to see that I write often about sleep and things associated with sleep (bed, crib, nap ...)

The stamping company I work for has just branched out into vinyl wall decals. I wanted to play with them so I'd have first hand experience to share with customers. I decided that I'd order the letters to spell out George's name. Since this is a new venture, the decals come in limited colors - white and brown. Neither one of those appealed to me. So I took my stamping ink and dyed the white letters to match George's monkey bedding. This was not nearly as easy as it sounds. I had to spray them with several layers of fixative and then say a little prayer as I applied them to the wall. Vinyl is very difficult to color, especially when trying to use only stamping supplies from my craft room. We have textured walls, which made the application process even more challenging.

I think they turned out great though, if I do say so myself. I had to put them pretty high over George's bed as I didn't want him pulling them off the wall. Sure enough, first thing he did was climb on the bed and try to reach the letters!

You'll notice the toddler rail is off George's bed in the picture. It is not bolted on and he is quite adept at removing it. Usually when he gets bored, he'll pull the rail off and either put it in bed with him or throw it on the floor. We've been waiting until George falls asleep and then sneaking in to attach the rail. Last night we decided to not put it on at all to see what happened. This morning I found George curled up asleep on the floor, complete with pillow, blanket, and toys. I have no idea if he fell out of bed in the middle of the night or climbed out and set up camp on the floor. Tonight we put the rail on again, so we'll have to see what happened.

In other sleeping news, this afternoon I had a very difficult time getting George to sleep. I have been wearing him out by running errands and bringing him home asleep in the car. Today we didn't have many errands, so he was still awake. We went swimming for awhile and then I got him ready for nap. He was not at all happy and cried and cried. He finally settled down and I went in to check on him. He was standing up, leaning against the bed, with his head resting on the mattress. And he was completely asleep. I picked him up and put him into the bed, which woke him and he cried and cried some more. Finally, he fell asleep again and stayed out for almost four hours. We finally had to wake him for dinner.

George definitely got the Y chromosome. You know, the one that says "Need something to wear? Just pick a clothing item out of the hamper. If it doesn't smell bad, put it on."

I caught him this evening after he'd taken off his shorts. He was wearing one onesie on top, but he decided to put another onesie on from the bottom up (one that he'd found in his hamper). After getting that onesie over his legs, he then tried to pull on his shorts to complete the ensemble. It made for a difficult time walking.

George is growing too fast. In the last week, he's outgrown his shoes, he's had two more teeth start to come in, he mastered undressing himself (diaper included), and he figured out how to get out of his crib. For a few days we've noticed him trying to put his feet up on the crib rail. Yesterday I walked in on George jumping up and down in his crib (instead of napping) and he had braced his arms on the crib rail and had his legs parallel to the mattress and even with the top of the crib rail. If he'd only perfected forward motion, he'd have propelled himself straight out of the crib. I settled him back down and told him to stop growing up so fast. He grinned at me and said, "No!".

A few minutes later I checked back on him and he had his leg, hip, and arm up over over the crib rail and was yelling what sounded a lot like "Fly! Fly!" I immediately scooped him up and plopped him in the living room with his toys while I tried to remember where the toddler bed conversion parts were stored. I finally found them after climbing into the attic and I proceeded to dismantle the crib and build the toddler bed. After that was done, I had to clear out George's room of anything he might get in to - toys that need supervision, the rocking chair, the garbage can and diaper pail. As I was doing that, George came back in to the room and immediately started checking out his new bed. He gathered up a bunch of his favorite toys and started throwing them in, and made a stash of pacifiers in the corner. He seemed to enjoy playing in it, but he wanted nothing at all to do with napping - in the bed or out of it. So by the time DH got home from work, George and I were both exhausted. We ate dinner and George just about fell asleep at the table, so we quickly got him ready for bed and put him down. And he climbed out. We put him back in, and he climbed out again. It took about two hours for him to finally give up and go to sleep. Many tears were shed. The good news is that he seemed to sleep well in the bed and didn't fall out. Today he's down for a nap in the crib, but I did cheat and wear him out first so he was already sleeping when I put him down.

We bought the Wii Fit game and board the day it came out, but I'm sad to say that I haven't used it much. For fun over the three day weekend, I decided to pull it out and see if I'd enjoy it. It's so much fun I don't know why I didn't play with it before now! In the game, you stand on a Wii Fit board that uses your weight and balance distribution to control things on the TV screen. So you can watch a computerized version of yourself (a Mii) with hula hoops as you twist your hips to keep the hoops spinning. Or swing your arms and move your feet for synchronized boxing, another favorite of mine. George wanted to play, too, so I gave him the box that the Wii Fit game came in. George stands on his Wii box while I stand on the real playing board. And we both giggle with delight!

George has been napping so well lately that I decided I was in the clear to go ahead and take on a work from home job that I could focus on during naptime. So, of course, George went on a nap strike. For four days he didn't nap. Not at all. And he didn't want to go to bed at night either. One night I had to resort to putting him in the car at 9:30 PM, running an errand, and then driving around until he finally conked out an hour later.

It wasn't that George didn't need the sleep. He really needed him naps and was a full Mr. Cranky Pants without them. He just didn't want to go to sleep. He did doze off for a minute during dinner on one of those nights. DH caught it on camera.

On Sunday, in the middle of Nap Strike '08, we had to go to our church's patriotic celebration. George should have been ecstatic - they had lots of children's events including a Thomas the Tank engine that he could ride. But he was not enthused.

This week I've been making a concerted effort to do lots of strenuous activities as soon as I get him in the mornings. So we've been going to the gym and to the swimming pools. And it's worked - he's napping again!

I'm afraid we are giving George a false sense of what is real and what isn't. We do video chatting with our distant relatives, and I wonder if he thinks that people inside TV screens and computer monitors can see him, since his grandparents interact with him via web cam. George went to DH's office yesterday and immediately climbed up on a chair at a computer terminal and started banging away. It wasn't long before he started looking for his "Pa-Pop" in the computer screen.

The Vacation Bible School theme for this year was Beach Party: Surfing through the Scriptures. One of the ladies made a surf board photo shoot area and I set up my tripod and camera and took pictures of all the kids. I gave a picture in a little card to each child on the last night, and I also took headshots that we are going to put into a surfboard photo puzzle frame thing that I ordered. It was difficult to get a picture of George in the photo spot as he kept running away, so I had to enlist the help of another mommy. I had her just keep catching him when he'd run and plop him back on the surfboard while I snapped pictures. I finally got one where he wasn't a giant blur.

George has hit some dressing milestones this week.

He adores the red Crocs shoes that I bought him for our walks to the swimming pool. He'd wear them all the time if we'd let him, and he's even figured out how to put them on all by himself.

A few days ago, George and I were in the living room and he kept tugging at his shorts. He tugged and tugged until he figured out how to pull them down and step out of them. Then he ran around the room in just his onesie, giggling up a storm. I had to put him in overalls when we left for Vacation Bible School as I was afraid he'd disrobe at church.

Tonight, DH put George to bed. About an hour later, I went in to check on George. He was awake but laying down and he peeked his head over the crib bumper at me. I was just about to close his door when I realized that something didn't seem right. I could see George's bare shoulders! It turns out George wasn't wearing any clothes and his diaper was half off. I asked DH if he'd put George in jammies and he said that he had. Apparently, George had managed to remove his jammies all by himself and hid them under his stuffed animals. I'm so glad we discovered this while the diaper (and bedding) was still dry! We redressed him in a smaller, hopefully wiggle-proof, onesie and I'm about to go check on him to make sure he's still clothed. I hear horror stories about how babies will remove their diapers and smear the contents on their cribs and walls - I sure hope George doesn't do that!

George's favorite saying these days is "What's that?" Sometimes he'll repeat what we tell him, sometimes he just nods and moves on to something else. Here he's asking the question at Vacation Bible School. The answer "People dancing and singing on TV."

Yesterday we went shopping for some scoops for a vacation bible school craft. George decided he liked the word scoop and would
yell it out as we went down the aisles. "Scoop! Scoop!" But I don't think he associate the word with the actual object
as kept getting mad at me when I'd hand him the scoops that we found. He didn't want those - he wanted whatever it was he
thought a scoop was (and I don't know what it was he was imagining a scoop to be). However, today he did better with the words and association. We were in another store running errands and he saw the kitchen aisle. He immediately started yelling "Scoop!" I said, "Yes, there are scoops here" and showed him one and he was much happier. At church we pulled out the ones that we'd purchased yesterday and I asked him what they were. He immediately smiled and said "Scoop!" before toddling off.

Apparently our house has been invaded by the rarely seen, ever elusive blanket monster. I believe the monster is best identified by its outer covering and bare toes. Blanket monsters have been known to make noises similar to both giggling and growling. With great luck and skill, DH was able to capture one on film this morning.