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| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | Journal Key: Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black 2/28/13 (Thursday) YBR seems to have been celebrating St. Patrick's Day early. Owen had a scribbled-on shamrock picture in his mailbox. On it, it says, in green sharpie, "I love my mommy." He also got a sticker on his hand. In the car on the way home, we had the following conversation. Owen: I have a sticker! Me: What is it? Owen: It's a blutterfly! Me: Are you sure it isn't a clover? A shamrock? Owen: No, it's a blutterfly! Cara: It's a shamrock. Owen: No!! Cara: It is. I'll show you a shamrock. Owen: No! It's a blutterfly! Cara: Butterflies don't have those two humps on their heads. And so on. Eventually . . . Cara: You could call that butterfly a shamrock. Owen: No, I can't! Cara: . . . because butterflies have names. They have proper nouns. Owen: No, they don't!!!! We drove on. Near a house down the street, Cara saw a cat. Cara: Kitty! Owen: No kitty! Cara: Yes, kitty! Owen: I don't see a kitty! Cara: That's because there are different sides of the road. Finally we got into the house. The cats came to see us, and Buster ended up under the dining room table. Cara: Owen, you scared the kitty! Owen: No, I didn't! And so on. They hadn't been together for ten minutes. Now, of course, they are snuggled up happily together, watching Superhero Squad. 3/1-3/3/13 (Friday-Sunday) Our weekends make for long gaps in the journaling, don't they? This week was my first time trying out a new schedule where I work from home on Friday. Cara and Evelyn have already been working on a new morning schedule, where Cara gets herself ready early and the two ladies take off, leaving Owen and I to our own devices. On days other than Friday, this usually doesn't mean that I leave any earlier, but it does mean that I can get to work earlier, since I don't have to swing by Lindeneau. Working from home on Friday meant that I could get Cara from school in the afternoon and take her to dance class. Cara's school is having some kind of school spirit Fridays for several weeks running, and this week was "sports shirt" Friday. Cara doesn't follow any sports and doesn't have any sports T-shirts, so I loaned her my old Nets T-shirt, which commemorates a championship won before she was born and before the team moved to Brooklyn. It was absolutely huge on her, like a tent, so she tried tying it up on one side. By the afternoon, it had unfurled. Also I had to wait for a considerable amount of time to get her in the car, because she was visiting the bathroom. After seeing her off to her class at dance, I departed and picked up Owen. It was, as is often the case, story time, and Owen was very busy listening. About a half dozen of the other children had to yell, "Owen, your daddy is here!" before he turned around and noticed me. Then there was a lot of cheerful screaming. At home, we were mostly satisfied with lying around and watching super heroes until the girls got home with dinner. Saturday ended up being an important milestone. My parents will be moving into a new house in a few months, and we took advantage of this situation to obtain a grown-up bed for Owen! Grandpop nicely drove it up for us and helped assemble it in Owen's room (after I had hastily disassembled his crib and we did some quick rearranging of furniture in his room). You can see the pictures already of Owen happily flopping around on his new bed. He took a nap in it that same day and it seemed to work fine for him. He has requested a couple of times that we read books on his bed, at times when we wouldn't normally read books, so clearly it's a new and exciting thing. In the afternoon, Grandpapa swooped in and whisked the children away for a sleepover! Here is a tidbit from the evening: My new trick for getting Owen into the bath: Late Sunday morning, the kids returned. We've had a rather uneventful day, though Evelyn and Cara went out to the book store for a bit while Owen was enjoying his second nap in his new bed. Right now the kids are playing in Owen's tub--they both like his bathtub crayons. Owen drew a fish! He really is trying lately to draw objects, and is making interesting shapes. He has taken to coloring in coloring books a lot, also--though mainly what he ends up doing is very carefully coloring in someone's eyes, and possibly their teeth, then getting bored and scribbling a lot. Tonight will be his first full night in the bed! 3/4/13 (Monday) Owen really likes his bed. I heard him making noise in there, a little after six, and I went in to find him lying there happily, all snuggled up. He didn't want to get out. For a good fifteen minutes, he just enjoyed being in bed. He loves to get us to sit on it and read to him. He loves to toss himself around with his stuffed animals. He loves his bed. This evening, after dinner, he took my hand and brought me upstairs to see his bed. It was still there! I think we've been fortunate for a few reasons. One is that for a long time, when Owen's woken in the night, we've told him that it's "not wake-up time." He is now very invested in the idea of "wake-up time"; in the morning, when I come into his room, he often asks me whether it is wake-up time. He gets the idea that at night he goes to bed and in the morning he gets up. This doesn't mean, of course, that he doesn't try very hard to milk bedtime for as long as he can! I put his Avengers sheets onto his bed while he was in the bath this evening. When Steve brought him, wrapped into his towel, in to see them, he was delighted. He immediately was able to tell me which one of the many identical prints of Iron Man was the real one. He gazed at his bed: "It's beautiful," he said. When I tucked him in, he objected as hard as he could to having the blanked up over his beautiful sheets. 3/5/13 (Tuesday) When I left this morning, Owen was half dressed but refusing to get out of bed. Sorry, Steve! At YBR, he had a good time playing outside with Miss Nancy. He was wearing his Superman shirt, and they played "kryptonite." The two of them devised a very involved imaginary scenario centered around the kryptonite making Superman weak. As I got the kids into the car outside Lindendau, Owen asked me whether his Avengers were at home. Me: Yes, unless they're out somewhere Avenging. Owen: And my little guys are out little guying? Me: Yes, probably. Poor Owen! Cara: Why "poor Owen"? Me: Because he's three. Owen: No, I'm just happy! I'm happy!! At dinner, Owen asked whether his new bed is still upstairs. I have tried using the threat of taking away his bed to get him to be a good listener. I'm not sure he was listening to the threat, though! 3/6/13 (Wednesday) This morning, I made a huge mistake and actually thought, "since Owen loves his bed so much, he won't be getting up early anymore!" Naturally, he made Steve get up around quarter after five. Owen was very happy, in fact, on the couch while Steve and I both went through our usual morning routines, until it was time for me to get him dressed. He did not like this idea. He became very vocal in his protests. He was also quite physical! Eventually, once I'd wrassled him into a new diaper, I took his pajamas the rest of the way off of him. This served to intensify the screaming. I was able, with effort, to discern that he was now screaming, "I wanted to do it!" He wanted to be the one to take his Batmans off. Things became so desperate that I had him stand up and turn around, and I put his Batman pajamas over his shoulders. Then he could take them off. After that he was still hysterical but at a far lower intensity. I managed to get clothes onto him, and he decided that what he really needed was to go to his bed. Would I cuddle with him? Would I read him a book on his bed? I really had to go. Maybe Daddy could. Fortunately, both Steve and Owen were willing to accept that arrangement. They were headed upstairs when Cara and I went out the door. Steve reports that, once he'd gotten a book on his bed, Owen was much more like a normal human being. | Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | |