Happy New Years

Well, it's New Years Eve and there is a magic Blue Moon out tonight. I wonder what it 2010 will bring us?

M is now in bed. I had hoped to let him stay up late enough to celebrate a Newfoundland New Years but he had no nap today so I sent him to bed. Since he went to sleep immediately I don't think he had any complaints.

M spent his last day of 2009 showing off some new skills. He has figured out how to get one of the cupboard doors open (so much for the child proof latch) While I was baking he was showing me all the things from the cupboard that I should use. Obviously my pumpkin squares needed a carrot cake mix and some raisins.
After exploring the cupboards he decided to show off his skills at the window. He can open and close the blinds which I was not aware of until today. After a big disagreement over the blinds and how he was not supposed to climb up on top of the couch, he finally left them alone and curled up on his little couch for some Sesame Street. I had hoped he would fall asleep but instead he just grabbed his big bear and snuggled up for the show. At least he was quiet so I managed to get dinner prepared and my pumpkin squares in the oven.

We had a little toast with our special New Years drinks. Everybody had Bellinis although M's had 7 up instead of champagne. The drink was a hit and I'll be sure to make him another the next time we have a special night. Now we are relaxing and will likely have an early night. I'm guessing that's pretty typical for a lot of parents. New Years Eve is lovely but sleep is lovelier.

My Blue Moon wish for M is that he has a happy year. I think we're on a pretty good track for that. Micah does manage to smile through just about everything and I hope his sunny disposition continues.

My Blue Moon wish for all of you is that the New Year brings contentment, happy memories and smiling moments to outweigh the stress or hurt that we are all bound to experience at some point.

Christmas Presents

M was spoiled this Christmas. Big surprise :-) The picture above is M playing in his new ball tent today. I might regret putting the tent up as I suspect the balls will not stay inside it but he's having so much fun it doesn't matter.

I'll give a brief synopsis of M's Christmas Eve and Christmas Day:

Christmas Eve was spent with my family, mom, Grandma, my sister and her husband. There was a lovely table with munchies that was the perfect height for M. Apparently there was some trouble getting the table higher so they gave up and my optimistic sister said "M won't try and take the food". M took the food. He tried to snatch food and put his half eaten food back most of the evening.  Bet the table won't be that low ever again. Mreceived some great presents that he adored. They all make noise and he had great fun ripping off the wrapping paper. His auntie did a wonderful job of helping him and he enjoyed the whole process.

Christmas Day was spent with Glenn's family at his sister's house. With 3 children, one who was just learning about presents and two who were really hyped up about presents, it was wrapping paper mayhem. Again M got great presents and most of them make noise. My favorite present was his bear from Grandpa. All the kids received one in a different colour. It's a forever kind of bear and when he's older I hope he'll understand the significance behind that teddy bear. For now, he just likes to hug and kiss it, so maybe, somehow, he does understand what his bear really means.

Today M spent the day helping me sort his bags of toys. He was a lot of help. He dragged his Elmo doll all over the house. Elmo spent most of the day saying "Elmo fell down, can you help Elmo stand up?" Once Elmo was standing he would say "Thank you, you're Elmo's best friend" Then Mwould climb on his fire truck and roll around the living room. He had to have his fire hat on though and if he didn't he would run around until he found it and then climb back on the truck. He then proceeded to press every button, making it sing while the horn and siren were going off. After the fire truck he would run to his couch with his bears and sit for a few minutes, then he was off and running again to the stool and desk that I spent half the morning putting together. In my wisdom I had put his crayons and singing sketch pad on the desk so he sat and drew on it. Did I mention it was a singing sketch pad? When he was finished there, he grabbed his drumsticks and banged on his electronic drums. The drums have buttons to push which make different kinds of music and it has five drum pads for different types of drum set sounds. Is anyone seeing a pattern to these toys? I think we must have unknowingly bought a lot of noisy toys for people over the years and this is just a little karma payback.

In order to end the noise I set up the ball tent. It was really desperation on my part. I was hoping he would have so much fun playing in it that he would temporarily forget about all the noisy toys. It worked pretty darn well and he played in the tent for over half an hour which means I had half an hour of no noisy toys. I have now turned all the toys off except for his fire truck so that we may enjoy our evening and hear the hockey game. M has not noticed yet and since it's almost bedtime I think I'm safe until morning.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know ours was full of laughter, tears, hugs and kisses. That's just the way I like it.

Christmas Eve

The presents are wrapped, the bags are packed and we are ready for Nanaimo whenever Glenn gets home from work. M and I are spending the day watching Elmo's Christmas Countdown for what feels like the millionth time. Over and over again. He's lucky that it's not too annoying and it has good music. I mean really, who doesn't want a Snuffleupagus for Christmas? That's way better than a hippopotamus. And the Count is right.... why does it have to be Three Ships sailing in? Why can't it be eight or ten?

Tonight and tomorrow M will discover the joy of Christmas which at his age will be all about ripping the paper off the present and he might care what's inside for about 2 seconds. I happen to know a couple of the things he's getting and one of them is a new ride on toy. He has recently started to appreciate ride on toys. His latest favorite is the dog. He likes to climb on her back while she's napping and bounce up and down while hanging on to her fur or her ears depending on what he can reach. He proceeds to yell "Whee!!" as loud as possible until Mokey finally decides she's had enough of being bounced on and she sits up. Naturally this causes M to slide to the floor and does not please him. After being dumped on the floor he always tries at least once more to get her to lie down so he can ride her again. Sometimes she complies but usually she just walks into another room. I am so glad we have a dog with such a good nature.

Here's hoping Mokey gets a break tomorrow. I'm sure that will be a nice Christmas present for her. Let's also hope that M doesn't open too many presents that don't belong to him.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all have lovely dreams filled with Christmas Eve magic.

Shopping with Micah

M started his day unwrapping a present. He was not supposed to start his day like that. In all my wisdom last night I decided to put a couple of his presents under the tree rather than leave them cluttering the table. M saw a nice big one and before I knew it there was no more paper left. He didn't care what was in the box, he just wanted to rip the paper off.

After the present incident I packed him up and headed off to Nanaimo for a little last minute shopping. This is something I dread since he's not the best shopper however we started the day at Costco with my sister in law who he adores. It was the best Costco trip I've ever had with M. After Costco we were off to my mom's for a little visit and then to the mall to finish our shopping. M did pretty well for the first hour. After that I had to bribe him with Purdy's peanut butter fingers to keep him quiet. After a couple of hours the last stop was Toys R Us. This went pretty well until M saw the Elmo Live doll. When we walked away from this doll he had a very loud, very angry outburst. I hightailed it out and started to head home. This was the point when I talked to my mother about the toy and suggested it would be a good present for him. She agreed so I turned around and went back to the store. Once we got to the aisle with the toy M grabbed it and wouldn't let go. I actually had to hold the box while he held on with both hands, never letting go of the box, constantly pressing Elmo's tummy to make him talk with a look of absolute rapture. When we reached the cashier and she took the toy, M was really unhappy with her. When she dared to put the toy in a bag he was quite vocal about his displeasure.

Thankfully M had a good sleep on the way home and had forgotten about the toy. Hopefully he loves it as much when he opens it Christmas Eve. I am ending the day with a hot buttered rum. It's a good way to end a long day. Tomorrow will be a day to wrap presents and maybe I'll end the day with another Hot buttered Rum.

Precious Sleep

As always sleep is a precious commodity around here. Between the holidays, M, stress and the unfortunate events of the past couple of weeks, there is not a lot of sleep to be had.

The last couple of days we were in Nanaimo. We went down Friday after work to stay with Glenn's mom. Saturday was the Remembrance for his dad and was a lovely, long, sad, exhausting day. One of those days that no one really wants to have because it means you're saying goodbye but at the same time there were beautiful, funny and touching moments that you're so grateful to have experienced. By the time the day was done it was about 9:30pm and we were on the road home with a napless child who was well past his bed time. Which means he promptly fell asleep in the car for the ride home. It was a white knuckled drive home for me though. It had started raining at some point in the evening and on the highway it was coming down pretty hard. I hydroplaned a few times and there was a gigantic puddle that I really thought was going to send us off the road. However, since I was going pretty slow to start we were okay. Definitely one of the more nerve racking drives I've had though.

We got home about 11:30 pm and naturally M woke up as soon as we pulled in to the driveway. This meant that I spent another hour and a bit convincing him to go back to sleep in his own bed. Another long night for me but he did sleep solidly until 7:30 am so that was a plus. Sunday he spent the day a bit on the cranky side and had a long nap. I actually had to wake him up from his nap so that he wouldn't sleep all day.

Imagine my surprise last night when he went to bed late but fairly painlessly and slept through the whole night. Not only did he sleep all night but when I ignored his crying at 6 am he went back to sleep until 8. This makes me wonder if maybe he is starting to catch up on all that missed sleep and we are ready to go back to some sort of normalcy. At least until the end of this week when we muck him up again with a trip to Nanaimo for Christmas. I figure I'll take what solid sleep days I can and deal with the rest later.

All things can be toys

Yesterday I took out the Christmas tree. This was not the easiest of tasks as it's a big tree in a fairly awkward box on the top shelf in the garage. I did manage to get it down and into the living room upstairs with a few choice words along the way. It was M's nap time so I was allowed a few choice words. The box stayed unopened for a bit and M discovered that it made a great seat/table. I think the picture shows how he felt about it. Note that I have him in a zip up sleeper so he can not pull his diaper off.

After I took the tree out and started putting it together M discovered that he fit in the box as did all his toys. He spent another hour or so climbing in and out of the box and placing his toys very precisely in the corners. I love that he is at this stage. The time when a big empty box can be anything he wants it to be and is the best toy in the whole world in that moment.

Today M discovered the fun of the tree. He has been playing with the branches and exploring the lights. This afternoon he realized that he could hide under the branches. I think he was watching the cats and decided he could crawl under with them. I tried to get a picture but he managed to crawl out before I could get the shot. I will describe his process instead (at least until I manage to snap that picture) M gets down on his hands and knees, peeks under the tree, turns himself around and starts to inch his way under backwards. I'm not sure why he has to go backwards but he must go feet first. Once he is under the tree he can then peek under a branch and giggle. Or he grabs a cat and tries to kiss them. The latter led to one good scratch and a crying boy. He did this throughout the day whenever he thought I wasn't looking.

I'm glad he's getting enjoyment out of the tree however I think that I will not bother decorating it. It looks pretty with just the lights and it's safer than a tree with ornaments.  Last night I found one of our cats hanging sideways about half way up the tree. I think ornaments would turn that into a very bad scenario. I also think my stress level would go up significantly having to teach M to leave it alone. So this year we will have a lovely tree with pretty lights. There's no rule that says you have to put the ornaments up and if there is I'm going to break it. I've never been very good with rules.

Bathrooms

Today has been an adventure of sorts. M had a day of discovery and exploration while I had a day of clean ups and chasing after M. I'm pretty sure he thought it was a great day, at least until bed time.

M is learning how to help with various things and one of his favorite things to help with is getting dressed. He likes to point to his arm or leg and say "there" so that you know which sleeve or pant leg to do first. The other side of this is ..... all the moms know what's coming.... he likes to take his clothes off all by himself too. Usually when I'm not looking. Which often leads to the obvious accidents since he isn't too proficient with the top so he tends to take of his pants. This obviously leads to his diaper coming off with the pants or pretty quickly after them. We've only had some minor accidents until today. Today he was playing in our room when he got very quiet. Lately this means he's busy going to the bathroom. He's taken to going in to a corner or another room when he has to go. I went to check on him figuring it was time for a diaper change. Boy was I surprised to find him with his pants down trying to wipe things up with his sleeve. It was very messy and took a whole lot of wipes to clean up.

The frustrating thing about all of this, he is starting to understand how to use the potty. Tonight, as I was drying him off after bath time, he grabbed a piece of toilet paper, wiped his nose and then wiped his bottom. He then lifted the toilet lid, dropped the paper in and flushed. He gets it! I was thrilled and frustrated all at the same time. If he gets it, why did I have to clean up the big yucky mess earlier. I suppose I already know the answer. Hopefully lots of practice over the next few days will work some potty training miracles or at the very least avoid any future yucky mess to clean.

Wish me lots of potty training luck and no more messy mistakes. Hey, a mom can dream can't she?

Loss

We had a major loss in our family this past weekend so we have spent a large portion of our days in Nanaimo staying with family. We spent the weekend in hotels and then Glenn stayed with his mom while I came home with Micah. Tuesday night I headed back to Nanaimo where M and I stayed with my mom because his other Grandma needed a bit of peace and a toddler (no matter how funny and distracting) is anything but peaceful and quiet . Glenn stayed with his mom because that's where he needed to be this week and sometimes in life you have to choose between two places you want to be. He made the right choice.

I have to wonder how much of it M truly understands. He knows that things aren't quite right in his world and his routine has pretty well been thrown out the window. He knows that people who are really important to him are sad. Little fellows pick up on how everyone around them is feeling.

I hope he knows that he is now missing a truly wonderful person in his life but I think this is the part he won't grasp and I'm a bit sad for that. As he grows older he will know his grandpa through the stories people tell him and the pictures he is shown. This is not the same as having those memories which are just his own. I hope his cousins tell him stories of what his grandpa was like as they knew him because what they will remember will be dramatically different than what the adults will remember. Their memories will be similar to what M would have known.

During all this sadness there have been lovely moments too, as there always is. Life manages to give us some balance with a little good to make up for the bad/sad. M has started calling our dog Mokey "Mo Mo" which I think is too cute. Grandma taught him to say Ho Ho Ho when we were going to see Santa since he was having such a hard time saying Santa. We managed to get a pretty decent Santa picture taken seconds before he started to cry and holler.

The ultimate moment this week though was that M learned "Cheers" This means that if he has his bottle and you have a drink in your hand, he is going to come up and tap his bottle to your glass, wait for you to say cheers and then take a big swig. His daddy is teaching him how to give a big "Ahhhh" after the swig. It's one of the funniest things I've seen him do in a while. We may regret this little trick later on but for right now it's a great distraction and pretty darn funny to see.

So, my wish today is that all the broken hearts in the family will slowly heal. That all the people I love get at least one bright spot in every day and that M never truly understands the sadness that those around him are feeling right now.

I will choose my daycare

Today M and I went to look at two possible day care options for M. Glenn and I went and looked at a day care a few weeks ago that appeared to fit our needs. M was okay being there but there was something that we weren't totally comfortable with. Nothing specific but we walked away feeling like it would do but it wasn't great. It was also stupidly expensive for the service you got compared to other centers in town. We did book him in as I start work Monday and we have to have him placed somewhere but I kept looking for a better solution.

I found two more family run day cares who also had space available for Micah but trying to get in to see them had turned out to be difficult. Today we were able to see both of them however Glenn couldn't come along so M and I went. I figure M is the best judge. The first one was a place that I had found on my own. She has space, she is really close by and we had a great phone conversation. I liked it better than our first option and M seemed to be ok but he wasn't thrilled.

The second home I heard about from a mom who owns a consignment store M and I go to occasionally. She and I started talking the last time I was in and she suggested I give this place a call and check them out. This afternoon, M and I did just that. We arrived and the woman (we'll call her S) answered the door and showed us into the main play room. There were 6 kids, all of whom are older than M, most are about 3 years old. M was a bit overwhelmed but he let me put him down right away and stood watching the other children. S and I started to talk and she suggested we go look at the garage which was converted into another play area. Suddenly there was a little boy and a little girl trying to hold M's hands and lead him into the garage. M still wasn't so sure about them so he grabbed my leg and followed along. This garage is a child's fantasy. It has a play mat over the floor, a big jungle gym, a play house and ride on cars and bicycles. M stood and watched the other children play until he couldn't resist any longer and he had to check out the slides himself. S's husband was home so he stayed in the garage while S and I went off and chatted about the policies etc of the day care. M didn't even notice.

The day care is not even close to what we had in Whitehorse but it is still a good place. A place where the kids are obviously happy and seem really well adjusted. They have rules and a schedule which a lot of places here seem to lack. When we arrived S had asked one of the little boys to tell M what the rules were. Here's what he told us " play room toys stay in the play room, we have to share, no pushing is allowed, always use your manners and always wash your hands" These are pretty great rules to live by and I would be happy if my child lived by these rules. It was a successful visit. M did not want to leave. He was happy playing with the kids and running around. I had to pick him up and drag him out. I have to say I sort of didn't want to leave either. There was a part of me that just wanted to sit with this woman and thank her for doing such a great job. I wanted to watch my little fellow run around with other kids happy as he could be.

Tomorrow we take Glenn to visit this day care. I am hoping he loves it as much as M and I did but if he doesn't, that's ok. We will keep searching until we find one that all three of us like. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the one we all like. It would make life so much easier.

So, M has chosen his favorite of the day care centres and I have to say I concur. Here's hoping his daddy feels the same way.