Background:
I am currently co-sleeping with my son, Stephen, in my bed (due to him waking frequently in the night), and my husband is currently co-sleeping with our daughter, Alex, due to lack of room in our bed.

4am - I am awoken by the sound of Alex screaming. It seems she has puked. Jason is taking care of this (seeing as how he was puked on), so I go back to sleep.

5am - Alex puking again.

6am - Alex puking again.

10am - Alex puking again.

I'm meeting a friend for brunch, so I get to escape the insanity.

12pm - I get a call from Jason. It seemed that Alex has somehow armed our security system which was a part of our house when we bought it (which we never use) and alarms are going off, and do I know where we may have put the manual? Of course I don't. That would require a level of organization in my house, that just doesn't exist. Yet :)

12:30pm - I get a call from Jason tell me that he's ripped wires out of the walls in efforts to get it to stop, but was unsuccessful, and that he doesn't know where the baby has wandered off to, and that somehow Alex has sprinkled pancake mix everywhere upstairs. I suggest that maybe he should find the baby, and try calling the alarm system people.

1:30pm - I get home. There is chaos. Alarms are going off. Children are running wild. There is the faint odor of puke and poop permeating through-out the house. First thing's first... I get the baby to sleep and Jason continues to fuck with the alarm (Jason had ripped the wailing siren wire out of the wall, however we still had all the door alarms going off). Next thing is to get Alex to bed. We side-step the pile of pancake mix on the rug, because frankly, that does not even register on my priority list at the moment.

2pm - Alex falls asleep. Jason gives up, and lets me try to deal with it. I call the security company. Of course it's Sunday and they're closed, but there's the 24-hour monitoring number. I call and get directed to an after-hours residencial number. The nice gentleman on the phone calmly explains how to remove the back-up battery, and specifically which wire needs to be ripped out in order to shut the system down.

The whole thing takes about 10 minutes. Jason's been struggling with this for 2 hours.

I really don't understand why he didn't just call the security company and ask for help.

I really think his problem solving skills need a bit of work.

In other news the phantom pisser has struck again.

Next on my list - clean up the pancake mix once Alex wakes up; see if I can't remove the puke/poop/cat-piss smell; and take a nap myself.

It's hard to believe the day is really only half done!

Ok, so this week hasn't sucked. I actually really like my job; I forgot just how much I like it. I also like getting a break from the kids. I don't like being away from them quite as much as I am though.

My ideal situation, would be as follows:
Work 3 days a week.
On one of the other days, take the kids to daycare late, have the day to myself to get things done/do errands/have "me" time, and pick them up from daycare early.
On the other day, keep the kids home with me, and schedule one fun outing with me and the kids.

That would be my ideal situation. Hands down.

To accomplish this, I need the University to give me a 25-50% raise.

I can dream, can't I?

Jason and I were sick all week. The kids were vastly improved. Today was my last day as tomorrow is an EDO. We pick up Stephen from daycare and he's got a fever. He's pretty much been crying non-stop since we got home, except for the nap. It's 10:45 and I just found Alex in her room in the dark putting on her summer sandles and playing on the floor. I'm so pissed that she won't just go to sleep. She's making my life a living hell in the mornings... will not get up, but she will not fall asleep at night.

I'm completely exhausted. I'm sick of hearing screaming. I hate that it seems we're starting another round of sick, and that my day off tomorrow is apparently going to be to parent a sick child, rather than get some much needed things done around the house.

And for those of you that pray, pray for my friend. She was 15 weeks pregnant and just found out the baby died. I believe this will be her fourth loss in 2-3 years.

Surprisingly, it's not Stephen who's having a tough time with me going back to work... it's Alex. She's acting up unbelievably. Very surprising since she's been attending daycare part-time almost my entire mat leave... I haven't been back to work long enough for her to notice a difference in terms of time.

The only thing that is different though, is the sense of urgency in the morning. It used to be much more relaxed... we got up when we got up. Now it's more like, "Ok, you've got to get up now!"

I suspect that may be what she's reacting to.

Well... it didn't exactly go how I imagined it. I figured she'd either be totally into it, or totally not. It turned out she was sort of into it, but felt really antsy in her chair.

We went and saw Bolt. It was a great movie, by the way... I completely recommend it. The first 10-15 minutes had her captivated, and that was good. (Fast-paced action), but then when it slowed down, she wasn't so interested anymore, and she wanted to get up. When she realized she wasn't going to be allowed to get up and move around, she decided to ask for a sure-fire winner.

"Mommy, I have to pee."

Keep in mind my toddler is not toilet-trained, nor has she EVER used a big-people's potty in her life. I knew it was an escape from the theatre tactic... but what could I do? Say pee in your diaper? Not bloody likely. So we went.

We got there, and she surprised me by sitting quite well on the big potty. She farted and then was "all done". Still though, I was impressed she'd been willing to try the big potty... previous requests on my part had always resulted in screaming refusals. We washed our hands and got back to our seat.

15 minutes later she had to go again. I had a glimpse of the future for the rest of the movie. We went again, and this time she surprised me by peeing a tiny amount. Then she was "all done". We washed up and went back to our seat. Her diaper was still dry, and I was thrilled.

5 minutes later, she had to go again. We got there, and this time I knew better. We stayed quite a while until I was pretty sure she had voided her entire bladder, then we washed up and went back to the seat. By now, we'd missed an awful lot of the movie.

15 minutes later, she had to go again. I wasn't really sure at this point if she really had to go, or if she was just thrilled with the new discovery of being able to pee on the potty, or if she was still seeing it as an excuse to escape from having to sit in one place for very long. Maybe all three? Anyway, this time we got back to the potty, and nothing came out. We washed up and got back to our seats.

By that time, she'd drank all of her water and wanted more... so I went and got her a refill. She stayed there and watched while I got the drink. When I got back, she told me she had to go use the potty again, but I suggested that we wait until we got home.

Fortunately, that was the point at which the movie's climax had begun, and the action captivated her. She was happy to watch the rest of the movie.

Was it a success? The outing was a success... I don't think she saw much of the movie. The potty-training was a fantastic success. I'm glad I took her... it wasn't horrible. I don't think she's really ready to go the movies yet though. Maybe give it another 6 months or so. It wasn't a failure, but I think it would be better to wait longer.

What I learned: I think my toddler likes action movies :)

This afternoon, I'm taking my spirited little toddler to her first big screen movie.

This could either go very very well, or very very badly... stay tuned!

Yesterday morning, Alex was eating her cereal downstairs with Jason, while Stephen and I were upstairs. Jason forgot something upstairs, so he left the Alex and briefly came upstairs. While he was momentarily gone, Tigger jumped up on the table (something she knows she isn't supposed to do, and very rarely does it), pushed Alex out of the way, and started drinking the milk from her cereal. Alex started calling for help, because Tigger was eating her breakfast.

The family heirarchy in our minds:
Adults
Children
Cats

The family heirarchy in Tigger's mind:
Adults
Tigger
Kitty
Ziggy
Children

Interestingly enough, if Tigger is on the stairs, she won't let Alex go up or down.

The same day of Alex's incident with the Peneten cream, she went "tinkle, tinkle" in the potty. It's the only way we can get her on the potty, is the excitement of possibly hearing the "tinkle tinkle". She was very proud of herself, and I started to have hope that she won't go through life in diapers.

So a few days ago, I went and purchased a four-pack of "big girl" panties. Several of my friends have not had success at potty-training until they went straight into regular underwear, so I thought it might be worth a try. Today after nap, we gave it a shot.

She woke up at 3:30 and we put on the panties. She was very pleased. I kept asking her if she had to go "tinkle tinkle" but she kept saying no.

5:00 - I was downstairs getting dinner ready, and I heard a thump, pitter-patter, pitter-patter... THUMP, pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Knowing something was up, I went upstairs to find her on her hands and knees, frantically rubbing the carpet with a kleenex. "Hi Mommy, it's all wet." Concealing a smile, I explained that when we don't pee on the potty, the new panties, and our pants, and the carpet get all wet. She seemed to get it. We changed into a new set of panties, and new pants.

6:00 - She was downstairs and came running upstairs... "I all wet again Mommy." I went through the explanation again, was careful not to smile, and we changed into the third pair of panties.

6:30 - We were sitting at the dinner table eating, when she cheerfully announced that she'd just pooped. We're now in the last pair of panties.

Please, please, PLEASE let her have one success tonight in her new panties!

***ETA: Nope. 7:40 - jumped up from the potty to run behind the cat tree and pee.

My daughter, the lovely little cherub that she is, decided she was going to secretly steal the Peneten cream and smear it all over herself. In particular, she was going to target those areas where we usually have to smear her eczema cream (ankle, arm, face). After she'd thoroughly Peneten'd herself (it was a full container), she decided she really needed to top it off with vaseline.





So much for the carpet. In the end a degreaser worked, although it still feels a bit slimey to me.


She knew she was in trouble as soon as she saw us. Immediately burst into tears. We tried to wash her off in the shower, but it took a long time because she was so waterproof.

Last night, for the first time since Stephen was born, Jason and I went out for dinner without any children!

It was fantastic... we went to this place called Taverna Italiano, and had a delicious meal and adult conversation (it was Jason's workplace Christmas party)!

We got home, and the house wasn't completely destroyed either! My mother had been the babysitter, and all went fairly well. She couldn't get either child in bed, but meh, who cares? I mean, it was nice just to get away for three hours! With Stephen refusing a bottle and being a frequent feeder, it hasn't been until recently that we've felt comfortable going anywhere without him, but now that he's starting to eat more regular foods, life is starting to get a bit less complicated :)

This Sunday we have another evening planned as we're doing an adult dinner out with some of our friends. It should be good!

We just have to get some cupcakes to bribe Alex into not screaming the whole time that we're gone...

Alex is obsessed with washing her hands these days. It takes her a good 10-15 minutes per hand-washing.

I'm curious... when you have a sick kid, how do you treat your suffering two year old? I'm asking because, up until now, I've never really had to come up with a parenting strategy for when my kids are "sick", and up until this week, I didn't know I would need to come up with one either.

Here's my situation:

Alex, my 2.5 year old daughter, caught the virus-du-jour, which was actually pretty nasty. It starts off with a 3-5 day very high fever, accompanied with any or all of congestion, headache, sore throat, and upset stomach. Hers presented as a 4.5-day high fever and serious congestion.

I know when kids are sick, their ability to cope goes down the tube, so I've been pretty lenient with her. Partly because I feel sorry for her and I want her to feel better, and if she gets some solace out of watching Baby Einstein on repeat 5 times in a row cuddled up next to me on the couch, then why not, and part of it is because it keeps the whining at bay and it makes it easier for me to cope with having a sick 2-year old while caring for my newborn. Consequently, soo-soo (her soother) has been present during the day (it's normally only allowed at night); she's been allowed to eat whatever she wants whenever she wants (because she just wasn't eating, so if she ate anything at all I was happy); and basically she's been allowed to do things she's not normally allowed to do, because she's sick.

Well guess what, today she was feeling better... finally! And surprise surprise, when she was denied some of the previous "special treats" she'd been getting on a regular basis this last week, she had huge temper-tantrums and melt-downs. It's going to take me days to get her retrained, and until then, she's going to act like an awful spoiled brat.

So I'm wondering where did I go wrong exactly? (Rhetorical question for those of you about to list off the ways.) I've employed this technique before with no harmful reaction - no retraining required... but this illness lasted longer than most, and I think that's the problem. But either way, I'm wondering if I was way too lenient with her while she was sick.

So my question to you guys... what do you let your children do/get away with when they're sick? Everything? Nothing? And have you ever had behavioural challenges post-sickness?

Alex was observing Jason mop the floor.

"Daddy! Slippy!"

She then ran over and put on her rubber boots.

I love that kid :)

This weekend, we went to a wedding where Alex was asked to be a replacement flower girl. She's two and a half. I had some pretty serious doubts about getting through the wedding without the bride and groom cursing our names, but I let her do it anyway.

It went... ok. Fairly well actually, considering the amazingly large potential for disaster there.

I think Jason's description of the event, while totally geeky, is the best one:

"She was like a little metallic valence electron."

I'm sure only a handful of people on my list are going to get that.

Alex just got into one of my bags, took out a pen, and wrote all over Stephen's baby book.

It's been a crazy week.

We didn't end up going to the lake as planned... Jason felt like crap, and the weather was supposed to suck, so we stayed home.

I almost wish we would have gone, because then Alexandra wouldn't have stolen my scrapbooking pens and used them on my 320 threadcount, Egyptian Cotton sheets. We are all seriously lucky that she wasn't home when I found the sheets. It took quite a while for me to calm down. It took over three hours of scrubbing to get the ink "somewhat" out. "Shout" works wonders, but even it failed where she had held the pens down and let the colour bleed onto the sheets.

Monday was a gong show, where Alex decided to skip her afternoon nap completely. She's never done that before at all. Although apparently she just saved it up for today, because today her afternoon nap was 4 hours! Now if only Stephen could fall asleep at the same time, it would be lovely! You would think the day would have gone well with her taking a four hour nap, but truth is that she was an absolute bear all morning, and Stephen refused to take his morning nap until just before lunch, so he was a little bear too. I haven't actually had this bad a day since before he was born.

Stephen is doing really well at sitting up, although he's still pretty wobbly. We put him in the jolly jumper yesterday... so cute! It took him a while to get going, but once he figured it out he was full of smiles and giggles. He's also been enjoying the exersaucer lately... really started playing with the toys. He's started to get to that age where he definitely needs some stimulation... not just content to watch the world around him anymore, now he's going to take a bit of work.

It's been a while since I did a decent post, and this one my not be decent, but it's going to be all about Stephen.

This last weekend, and the first part of this week we went to the lake. I was afraid at how the kids would do at the lake, but it turned out great. While we were there, Stephen started to do the cute scratching thing... the thing where he's feeling different textures with his hands, and checking out the sounds he can make when scratching different fabrics. Totally cool.

He's been grabbing at toys for a while now, but he's really starting to grab specific items. Like my nose if I don't notice he's going for it, or my cheeks. We have this little baby swing that has a fish mobile on top, and he's been going crazy over the fish. I finally took one dow today and gave it to him, and he thought it was just the best thing ever! He's getting cuter by the day, and I can't believe he's 5 months now.

The downside to the whole "taking him to the lake" thing, is that he got used to sleeping in a real bed next to me. We got back, and he doesn't want to sleep in the Moses basket anymore. Now granted, he's been too big for it for a while now, he was happy in there until he got spoiled in a big bed. Unfortunately, things aren't quite ready to move his crib into the office and move the office downstairs yet.

Tonight, in desperation of trying to get everyone some sleep, I put him in his crib which is still in Alex's room. This means that both he and Alex are asleep in the same room. He is an insanely light sleeper, and she is an amazingly heavy sleeper. It might work. Maybe. If I'm really really lucky.

Keep the fingers crossed for me!

Nothing like waking up to a kid with a temperature of 39, projectile vomit, and a news story of a practically local decapitation with human flesh consumption to really kick the weekend off.

Today for the first time, Alex went pee in the potty!

I'm so excited! She's been showing some interest for a while, but would refuse to sit on the potty when offered, but today, she told me four times she had to pee and went to sit on the potty!

Ok, so maybe she had actually peed (pee'd?) in her diaper before each of those times and was really only identifying that the diaper was wet, but the one time she sat on the potty (for like 40 minutes because I read her stories and we played with toys while she was on there), she got up and there were a few drops in it!

I was really hoping she'd have a lightbulb moment when she first went pee in the potty, because she'd associate the trickle sound with it, and then it would be fun... but unfortunately a few drops didn't produce the trickle sound, so I'm hoping that the next time will go better.

If I can only get her trained before the end of the summer, it will cost me $100/month less for daycare!

There are two parts for this post.

First of all, Alex's speech. Alex has been pretty slow for her speech to develop. Initially I was worried about how slow it seemed to be going, but her Godmother (who happens to be a speech language pathologist) assured me that she's within normal ranges, and as well, she seems to be developing in spurts and that her physical development seems to be the main focus right now.

Having said that, in the last couple of weeks, her language has really taken off to the point where I can now almost say that I can understand her more often than not. She's speaking in sentences even if I can't always understand what those sentences are. It's becoming a lot less frustrating for both her and I now that I'm starting to understand her.

Secondly, she has a soother. We missed the golden opportunity to wean her of the soother a few months before the baby was born, and now I think it would be cruel to do it. She won't understand why she can't have a soother and the baby can, so I'm going to wait a bit longer. I'm actually debating on taking it away at all to be honest... I'm an advocate of child-led weaning regarding breast-feeding, so I'm not sure why a soother ought to be any different... but I digress.

Alex is allowed to suck her soother at night times and nap times. During the day, she has to "put the soo-soo to bed". This means the soother goes under her pillow until nap time. Every once in a while, I catch her sneaking a suck in the middle of the day, but for the most part if it's not in sight, she doesn't think about it and doesn't want it.

Today I found her in the living room with the "soo-soo".

"Alex! What's soo-soo doing out of bed? You know it's time for soo-soo's to be in bed! Soo-soo is tired and needs to sleep."

"Mummy, soo-soo's cold. BRRRR!"

I just thought that was so awesome :)