Tantrums and the Terrible Threes!

It sounds like it should be a children's book - Tantrum and the Terrible Threes!: Can the world as we know it survive when faced with the ultimate evil?- but no, it is what goes on in our house about 20 times a day. I have always felt that the so called "terrible twos" were a joke. Two year olds (in my experience) are pretty easy to deal with compared to the wrath that is a 3 year old scorned. Evan is in this lovely phase right now. He screeches a blood curdling scream that is followed by sobbing and falling to the floor in grief. His fits are usually due to something that Spencer has taken from him, won't let him have or the fact that Spence has not kept his hands to himself. Poor kid - it is tough being three!

Fallen to the floor in a fit of tears!

Scency won't let me have that block!

It's hard to fake it when the camera comes out!

3 a.m.

Is the time that Hailey woke up in the night - 3 a.m.! I can't remember the last time she did that. I guess I should be thankful. The couple mornings before she was getting up at 5 a.m. to be fed and I thought that was bad. I hope the early trend does not continue. I just try to remind myself that it is temporary. In the middle of the night though, it is hard to think straight.

I think that lately she has realized that when we leave the room to put her down we just don't magically disappear. I think she knows now that we are actually leaving her. Object permanence I think they call it. She used to go into her crib with hardly a peep and lately it is a screamfest until she wears herself out. It breaks my heart.

I don't know what to do with her. I know that sounds weird, but I feel like I really don't. She is almost 8 months old and she has things she likes to do: the Excersaucer, rolling around on her play mat, the doorway jumper, sitting in the Bumbo and gnawing on stuff... I feel like I just move her from station to station. I do PLAY with her. We pat-a-cake and "how big is Hailey" and I move toys in front of her and show her how to push buttons. I just can't remember what I used to do with the boys. I guess the same stuff. I just hope she is getting enough attention and stimulation that is not Baby Mozart provided.

I had to put the bumper back up on her crib today since she is the worst of our kids for getting stuck in the bars. Last night her chunky little thigh was wedged in there so tight- and when you are trying to get her unstuck the way she is screaming makes you want to go get the sawzall to cut the whole crib apart rather than cause her anymore grief. I hope the bumper helps. With Spence ( and he was much older before he started to get "guck") we had to rig up some hideous door screening with cable ties. It did the trick but looked horrendous. So I am hoping the bumper is a deterrent. Her soothing technique seems to be to get those fingers in her mouth, roll to the side and put her feet up on the crib bars. Most of the time she winds up getting herself stuck somehow. Crazy girl!

To bus or not to bus...

...that is the question. In my opinion, this is where parenting becomes hard. People can complain about the baby days all they want, but babies are easy for me. They just need to eat, sleep, be changed, have some undivided attention or a stroller ride and they are good. Unless the baby continues to cry it's little head off, you can be relatively sure that you made the right choice. Where you have to make decisions that you have no idea if the outcome of that decision is what benefits your child the most, that to me is what is hard. The latest for me is whether or not Spence should ride the bus to school this year.

I am mainly worried about the 8:20 am drop off. If it is anything like the afterschool pick-up was last year, I don't stand a chance. Having to park a half mile away lugging three kids to the Kindergarten door at the crack of dawn is really not my idea of easy or fun. The bus will pick him up at the corner of the next street over - which is pretty ideal. But there are big kids on the bus. Big kids that can be cruel and tell him naughty words and jokes and the truth about certain people that come to visit at certain times of year ( ie: Christmas). Oh and then there is me being paranoid demented like I am envisioning horrific bus crashes with small children running out in flames. I seriously need help.

My gut tells me that he would like riding on the bus. I think he would feel pretty grown up and cool. That should be the clincher then - let him ride the bus. BUT... I worry that I would feel detached from the school, like I wouldn't be an involved parent. I loved watching him at drop off last year interacting with the other kids. I liked seeing the parents of the other kids to kind of get a sense of who the kids were and what their parents were like. I liked being able to ask or tell his teacher something face to face. I don't know what to do...

Picnics and other random things...

I scrapbooked yesterday. I am up to Christmas of 2004. Yikes! Seriously, I don't think at this point it is humanly possible to get caught up. It has become a source of stress for me - the behindness not the scrapbooking. I love scrapbooking, I really do - I just wonder if it is really worth it? Are my kids going to look back at their dozens ( I am not kidding) of albums and think "this is really cool that Mom did this" or "what a colossal waste of time and what I am supposed to do with these albums chronicling my every second as a child". I wonder this because my Mom was a picture taker - more so than anyone else in her family - but not compared to me, she's got nothing on the amount of pictures I take. I look back at the albums she has and I don't feel slighted, and don't think to myself "I wish she had taken one more picture of me blowing out the candles on my third birthday or I wish she had a picture of my first time eating rice krispies trying so hard to master the pincer grasp". I know I am excessive, I really do - but it is my thing. I LOVE taking pictures of my kids. I LOVE trying to capture their sweet baby faces and chubby little legs so that when they are grown I can look back and remember. I guess it is my own way of trying to freeze time. So I keep scrappin' along. My goal at this point is to get up to January of 2005 in each album and then to Evan's first birthday in his and then maybe start current and work backwards - even though that is SO against what my brain tells me to do. We will see what happens. I actually got all the stuff back out today to make a birthday card. Saved myself two bucks and it is super cute!

The boys wanted to have a picnic at lunch today. They had the iceberg tent outside and wanted to eat in it. I made them their lunches and took it out to them. They were so happy. Evan sat on the little checkered tablecloth munching away while Spence decided to stay inside the tent. It was SO cute! I was tempted to get the camera out and start snapping away but my head says " just more pictures to scrap" so I didn't. Then the bees started coming around. They seem to be all over at this time of year. Especially around our Sedums. Which is where the picnic was taking place. So they came in and ate at the dining room table. It was cute while it lasted.

I am back on the weight loss track. I am determined to try to start eating better and exercising more. I am not going to dwell on it here but by writing it down it seems more "official" I guess. Ok - off to a birthday party where there will be cake and my kids won't finish theirs and as a Mom it is my duty to make sure that cake does not go to waste..... that is my dilemma.

The lists are up!

A sure sign that "back to school" is just around the corner....the lists are up. I can remember coming home from the beach or wherever driving down Leon Street and seeing the white papers posted in the window of the school. It was both exciting and sad because it signified that summer was almost over yet I was filled with wonder about who my teacher was this year and who would be in my class. We would get home and ride our bikes or walk to the school to find out what the coming year had in store for us. It all seems like... not really yesterday to me but not 30 years later either.

So here it is in fact 30 years later and the lists are up again at the same school and I am looking at them with the same excitment, only for my son. Reading off names from Spencer's new Kindergarten class, when I read a familiar one he says "Yes!". He is excited to hear that he has his teacher from last year. He really liked her and I could tell that she really liked him as well. He doesn't really have any kids that he is super attached to, so we don't have that issue to deal with this year. I remember that not being in class with your best friend was pretty devastating in grade school - but maybe that is just true for girls - I still have much to learn on raising boys.

Binky is lost...

Binky is lost. And not in a "wink wink" kind of way. Really lost. Though we haven't tried super hard to look for it.

Binky is lost. A tragedy and a blessing - depending on who you ask.

Surprisingly, Evan has done well without it. He took a nap yesterday and woke up and got his reward of not napping with Binky - MOONSAND! He seemed ready to get on with his life post-binky. He was jazzed about a reward chart with the promise of a trophy at the end. He was all for finding Binky and sending it to the babies who need it. Even at bedtime he asked about Binky and was missing it but just sniffed some fake sobs back and went to bed (after playing in his room for an hour or so). Today at nap time when he heard the news that Binky was still lost he was a little more sad. He cried real tears and told me that he really wanted Binky. The tears stopped as I started reading to him and after more playing in his room he slept again.

I wonder what will happen when Binky is found? I guess that depends on who finds it. It does break my heart to see him missing it so much, but he is over three and has such an overbite that I blame on Binky. What will I do if I find it? Will Binky continue to be "lost" for two weeks or so - the time "they" say it takes to form a habit? I know if Ev finds Binky it will go right back into his mouth at this point. Who knows though - the kid surprises me on daily basis and maybe he has a few more up his sleeve.