learning to drink from a cup

when he wants to drink - he is very adept at drinking from a regular cup. once he's satisfied his thirst, he likes to test "spilling is bad". he had already soaked his shirt that day, so i stripped that off and just put a bib on him. sidebar: don't you just love their round, little tummies??

i have just reprimanded him and yet, i am still taking photos. i think that confuses him sometimes. but from that little droop in his mouth, he understands that i am not happy.

yet, a second later, he makes sure i see right where the water puddle is. and he doesn't stop pointing until i clean it up.


i have been on craigslist a lot lately. trying to find certain items that i don't want to pay for new. sometimes i get tired of all the effort though, and just buy it. i am ready to buy an elmo doll. i have been having a really hard time finding a small plush elmo, with no electronics. i just want a soft, huggable elmo doll. but the one at nordstrom's is $20 for this little tiny 6" elmo. ridiculous.

i also want a tricycle with pedals... but none of them are small enough for thomas' short little legs. i went to walmart and didn't find anything there either. oh well... just have to wait for him to grow.


on another note, i was talking to my mom today. she reads my blog (hi MOM!) and she said ("don't take this wrong way, but i think you love thomas too much.") that i was fawning over thomas. yes i agree. she said i really shouldn't spoil him. i agree. so i told her it was her fault for not pushing me to have kids earlier. now that i have been deprived for 10 years, i am trying to suck up as much of the experience as i can. and all i can see are his sparkly little eyes. ha ha sorry! she was always saying, oh take your time, don't rush into it. maybe it was reverse psychology, but it failed.

well, i am strict about some things. no sweets other than fruit and toddler alphabet cookies. no chips or other junk food except at special events (baby-showers or other parties). no hitting, bitting, avoiding the toothbrush or disregarding naptime is tolerated and goes strictly punished with 2 min time out in "jail". uh... what else. i guess those are the main ones.
anyways, sorry to our friends if i am tiring you all out with thomas love, "oh sheesh, there she goes again. can't she think of anything better to blog about??" but i can't help it! :)

car seat safety

in case you are interested, car-safety.org has a pretty comprehensive list of resources and FAQS on infant/toddler car seat safety. i learned why it is so important to have both the car seat and thomas strapped down as tight as possible as well as why he should really be rear-facing until he hits 30 lbs. did you know that only 4% of all crashes are rear and rear-offset crashes? interesting read on the mechanics of car crashes esp. as related to little ones.
also, it is a commonly floated myth that the car seat is less safe if the toddler can kick the seat, or has knees bent when they are rear-facing. probably started by parents who want the ease of front-facing. and... i also learned that all current car seats on the market exceed government standards. so the price is more related to the luxuriousness of the seat, not the safety. anyways, good reading!

this summer is getting tough

he demanded to see the lime that i was cutting. after examining, he bit
right in. hrmmm.... kind of funny tasting...
need a second bite to make sure it really tastes as sour as it is.
ok, this time, he really gets it. but after that, he still bit into it two more times. babies are so funny!

he has certainly thrown us a curve ball lately. naps are so hard to predict. sometimes it is 12-2, sometimes 3-4:30, sometimes 3:30 to 6pm... i never know when he is going to go down. i used to insist on a certain time, but then we would just lay there for an hour, sometime more and he would not fall asleep. about 3 weeks ago, i started just waiting until he is ready to plop down and go to sleep. it is much easier and once he was so tired by 2:45, he actually went to his bed, tucked himself in and fell asleep by himself!!! that was so cute - i was almost overwhelmed with the urge to wake him up and hug him.

we have also started bypassing naps when it just isn't convenient. i.e. when we have special events. on sat we had a baby shower right at his nap time. he only slept for 30 minutes on the car ride there, but he was soooo exhausted by 8:30pm that he fell asleep in 10 minutes and didn't wake up until 8am. that was great.... almost like being able to sleep in :)

at least he still sleeps pretty well through the night. avg of 10 hrs a night. BUT he almost always wakes up at some point, storms over to our room (he sleeps in a twin now) and demands daddy. so daddy jumps out of bed and goes to sleep with thomas for the remainder of the night. sometimes as soon as he sees William rolling out of bed, he turns around, runs back and plops into bed. as long as he knows daddy is coming and sees him lay down, he goes right back to sleep. daddy has Sleep SPOILED thomas. yes siree, all of my training has gone right out the door.

one thing i'm not looking forward to that last set of molars coming in. i am sure that it will take at least a few weeks of clingy-ness, as well as one of us sleeping with him at night to get him through. hope we don't have a heat wave when that happens. that will just make it worse.

and he has been on a food strike for the last 3 days as well. he is sooo picky, looking at everything very closely before deciding whether to allow it to go into his mouth or not. and if he doesn't like the way it tastes, it comes right back out. sometimes if he doesn't like the way it smells, he won't even open up. needless to say, he has still been pooping at least once or twice a day, so i figure he is getting enough.

a last word about temper tantrums... how to describe it. hmmmm.... an angry bee? a mad puppy? knashing of teeth and banging of head on the floor? it is all those things rolled in one. and you want to laugh sooooo bad - but at this age, he knows you are laughing at him and it makes him even more mad. so you try to keep a straight face and ask him what is wrong. it is really hard. and he has learned to pout - he does it exquisitely well. i will have to post pics of that. no idea where he got that b/c i don't think either william or i pout... do i? don't think so. maybe from tv. who knows!

hide-a-computer

we moved into our house in 1999. i have always wanted to get a piece to fit into the spot next to our fireplace so that we could better use the space. but custom-built furniture is not cheap and when we moved in, we had to spend money on landscaping, window coverings, etc. last year, we put hardwood flooring in. but this year - it was finally time to get the built-in!!
we found this great guy that builds things in his home workshop. he was the middle of 3 estimates i got. the guy that was cheaper was such a flake, i didn't trust him to do quality work.
i am so glad i went with this guy. he did a beautiful job and i love how the piece matches our dinning set. it is solid wood, walnut, with a maple interior. and when you open it up - voila! a computer desk emerges! :)

we are both really happy with the piece and it is a great place to tuck everything (aka junk) into. plus, Thomas is so facsinated with the computer, it is nice to be able to put it out of sight, so he is not constantly asking for the computer.
of course, he knows it's there, but at least when he doesn't see it, it is easier to distract him with other activities.
if you look closer, he made sure that the wood grain all goes the same way on all the doors in the front. i thought that was a nice touch. plus since we didn't get a true built-in, we get to take it with us, if we ever decide to move.


if anyone needs a built-in custom made, this is the guy to call:
Meadowlark Woodworks
Russell Monroe
(925) 689-4966

some cool artsy pics of thomas that we got on our trip to LA. should have buttoned that middle button on his onesie. oh well...

still organizing bottles :)

order and chaos

it is hard to see exactly what these little people are going to grow up to be, but by this age you definitely start to see some inclinations. we noticed that thomas has a thing for patterns and order. i.e. if there are 3 light switches in a row, he likes them all up or down. if there are 4 shutter panels on a window, he likes them all open, or all closed. if there is any deviation, he exclaims, points anxiously, then goes and makes it all symmetrical. if he can't reach, he will point until you help him make it symmetrical.

we have a costco pack of water bottles in a sideboard by the front door. he loves to take those all out, one by one, and put them in a row or a semi-circle. at the end, he does the olympic layout finale pose to make sure you are clapping for him :)


we also have a bunch of those hotel shampoos and lotions in our lower bathroom drawers - probably from the last 10 years or so. he used to just take them all out, willy nilly. now he takes out only the ones he wants and groups them collectively. a week ago, i was walking into the bathroom and as i rounded the corner, i was stopped in my tracks by this nice little formation, placed squarely in the middle of the entrance to our closet. if you notice, all of the white caps are together, as are the gold caps.


yesterday morning, he decided to stop with the bottles (only black caps) and started lining up O's. they were in the den, so he ran back and forth several times to complete his row. as he was placing the 9th or 10th one down, he bumped some of them and got so mad he was almost ready to cry. so i came over and helped straighten out the strays for him.


here's a winner from just this morning. these are organized on the edge of our bathtub. it is a favorite staging area of his. again, notice similar bottles grouped together. pretty amazing!!


of course he is a little boy and definitely has destruction mode as well. but that is usually once he is bored with an item, or when he is tired/cranky. so maybe we have a budding engineer or architect. or maybe one of those chinese acrobats that can balance 40 plates while riding a unicycle. ha ha...