Even when they sleep, Mama doesn't...

Moms expect to be up all night the first few months after baby is born. For those of us who have trouble with the cry-it-out thing, we start thinking, "He'll have to sleep all night/by himself eventually."

And then they start doing a great job. Tyler still needs help getting to sleep, but for a whole week, he's slept by himself all night in the crib.

And then, he climbed out of the crib, so we had to change to a toddler bed. Another sleepless night for this mom.


Tyler actually did great. He woke up once last night. He was screaming — he sounded terrified. I don't know if it was a bad dream or if he was upset that the rail was missing. I just climbed into the toddler bed with him. He wrapped those little arms tightly around my neck and fell back to sleep within minutes. I trekked back to my bed.

But the rest of the night, I heard every bump. (I had the monitor turned up so I could hear if he fell out of the bed!) Once, I was sure he'd fallen onto the pillow we placed by the bed, so I went to check on him. He was sound asleep in the bed.

Now that he's sleeping so well, I just need to learn to sleep through the night again!

We knew it was coming...

Brian found an empty crib when he went it to get Tyler this morning.

I heard Tyler start moving around, but he didn't call me this morning like he has been doing. We thought maybe he was taking care of business when we heard him grunting, so we gave him just a minute. Seriously — no more than 60 seconds.

Brian said he opened the door, saw the empty crib and Tyler bolted out the door before he realized what was going on!

Who has the energy to scale something three-fourths their height at 6:30 in the morning?!

Luckily the rail has arrived to convert the crib to a toddler bed. I will be picking that up asap. (But if we can't even keep him in the crib, I'm concerned about how the toddler bed is going to go!)

First Swim of the Summer

For more of our Memorial Day pictures, click here.

Three Days, Several Showers, Two Baths, and a Clothes Hanger...

Friday morning I sent the following e-mail to Tyler's grandparents, his great-grandparents and my sister:

Subject: looking for a giggle?

I'm pretty sure Tyler flushed the top to his Daddy's shaving cream down the toilet this morning.

He was playing with the lid. He flushed the toilet and said "bye-bye." Now I can't find the lid.

And the toilet isn't flushing quite right.

Wish us luck.

Three days — and two trips to Home Depot — later, it isn't so funny.

We had our toilet in the front yard, y'all! We were trying to flush the lid out with a garden hose. And two neighbors drove by! Humiliating.

I almost got my hand stuck inside a toilet. More than once! Mortifying.

We tried everything from a wet vac (hoping to suck the lid out) to a garden hose (hoping to flush it out with some water pressure). And yes, we tried the more obvious plunger and plumber's snake early in the process. Nothing worked. If I'd realized what a tight fit it was for the lid to flush down in there, I wouldn't have joked about the situation in the first place.



Finally, a clothes hanger did the trick. Brian ceremoniously stomped the offending object in our yard. I suggested we immediately buy toilet locks. Brian's reply? "No s***."

Two hours later, Brian finally had our bathroom back in order and we have a toilet that flushes. My hero.

And now, we're off to buy some toilet lid locks and an industrial size can of shaving cream with a lid so large it won't even fit in the toilet bowl.

I'll probably need several more showers before I feel clean.

First Band-aid

I'm not really sure how, but Tyler took a chunk of skin off his toe yesterday. He took a tumble as I was getting him dressed. He may have dropped a toy on his foot. Or maybe he had a blister that I hadn't noticed and the skin came off.

Either way, he doesn't normally cry, even when he skins his knees, so when he started howling, I started looking for a reason. It didn't take me long to find it. There was blood all over his little foot. I cleaned him up and went looking for the Band-aids. I'd stocked up on Snoopy and Nemo Band-aids at the grocery store after he came home from the lake all scraped up.

So I wrapped Snoopy around his toe. He wasn't happy about it, so I put another Band-aid around the same toe on the other foot. I figured if he tried to take one off, he would focus on the one that didn't hurt.

And I turned on Clifford, the Big Red Dog to distract him. It worked. But as soon as Clifford was over, he was pulling at the band-aids, so I took them off.

I thought Snoopy was supposed to make it feel better! At what age do they start coveting band-aids for imagined boo-boos? My son won't even tolerate them to keep the blood off my carpet and sofa!

Punishment Before the Crime

Tyler has taken to spanking himself.

At first, it was just after I popped his leg. For example:

Tyler opens cabinet under sink at my grandparents’ house.

ME: Tyler, don’t touch. Close it. No! (I help him close the cabinet door.)

Tyler opens the cabinet door again.

ME: NO! Don’t touch. Close it. (I help him close the cabinet door.)

Tyler opens the cabinet door again.

ME: NO! Mama said, ‘don’t touch.’ (I pull his jeans off and swat his little leg a few times.)

Tyler stares at the closed door and slaps his own leg. He runs into the other room, still slapping his leg.

Second example: The other day, he threw something down the stairs and spanked himself when I scolded him.

Last night, he randomly slapped his while standing in the living room. I laughed and told Brian, “He’s been doing that — spanking himself right after I’ve spanked him.” Tyler then went over to the chair, grabbed a pillow and threw it over the baby gate: something he KNOWS he isn’t supposed to do.

Pop Quiz

Question: How much water can a whole roll of toilet paper hold?

Hint: When you pull it out of the toilet bowl, there isn't much water left in the toilet.

Learning English

I've always heard English is the hardest language to learn.

I had a friend who taught English as a second language through the Berlitz school. In a conversation meant to teach our language, he asked one pupil, "What would you do if your boss fired you?" His student was confused as to why his employer would light him on fire.

We also have "lead" (as in "lead the horse to water"), "lead" (as in "sharpen the lead in your pencil") and "led" (as in "he led the team to victory"). And then there is "affect" and "effect"; "complimentary" and "complementary"; as well as "to," "two," and "too."

I am an English major and these things have always been fairly easy for me, but now that Tyler is starting to talk, I'm seeing how confusing things can be.

For example, we have "anah" (which means "another") and "unuh" (which means "hungry"). They are pronounced exactly the same. Usually Tyler will scratch his chest along with "unuh" -- he was supposed to rub his tummy for "hungry," but whatever works, right?

We also have varying forms of raspberries. There is a very distinct slobbery raspberry that means "squirrel." He will occasionally pronounce "girl" with the same raspberry. A significantly different raspberry means, "I spilled water." [This started because he pushed the water button on the fridge and drenched himself. I did that mean little 'I'm-not-laughing-at-you-but-I-am' raspberry noise that I didn't know anyone did after high school. And he adopted it as a word. He "pwshhh"es when he pushes the button on the fridge, when he knocks over my cup of water, or when his water or juice leaks out the straw of his cup.]

Here are the other 'words' Tyler knows at 20 months (though I doubt many people would recognize them as words):
• Roomba (our robot vacuum) - mmmmmba
• duck - duh
• blue or blueberry - bbbb (with a slight raspberry motion of the lips)
• drink - dddd (with a slight roll of the tongue)
• shoe - dddd or duh (but different from 'drink'. there is no tongue rolling. and different from 'duck.' 'shoe' is more emphatic.)
• sock - sssssss
• water - wawa
• watermelon - wama
• hot - pants like a dog
• up - uh
• down - dn
• upstairs - uhhstahs
• downstairs - dnstahs
• outside - ahtside
• potty - puhpuh
• puppy - dtdt or mffmfff (woof, woof) (he will occasionally roar at a picture of a lion or bear)
• moon -mn
• purple - ppl
• TV - t--d-- (- indicates a rolling of the tongue)
• more - bah (with clapping of the hands)
• all done - ahh don (along with emphatic waving of the hand)
• no, no, no, no, no - nananananana
• don't touch - dah tah
• apple - ah-TAH
• banana - nana
• bye-bye - bye-bye
• cracker - caca, maybe?
• and he still pushes on his nose for "pig"

And here are the names, though the pronunciations may be a little iffy:
• Mama - he manages to pronounce this with a b or two. But if you ask him to say "m&m," he very clearly says "mama"
• Dada
• Paw-Paw
• Nanny
• Pa
• Grandma - again, i think there is a b or two. maybe "baampa"
• Grandpa - or "baapa"