One Happy Boy

Today Doug's birthday gift from his Kansas City grandparents arrived. The company we bought it from delivered and set it up, the whole thing took a little less than two hours. And of course, luckily, the rain held off so it could be installed and so Doug could play on it.



Doug gave it a quick once over, and then ran over to the baby swing, which he very much enjoys. I think Jeff and I are going to have very buff arms after this summer. Or need physical therapy.


He was able to climb the ladder surprisingly well, once he got the hang of it.






The slide is fantastic. It was the one element that I was worried about playing with him on it on my own. It's design allows the child to slow down at the end, so Doug doesn't go shooting off of it. So, once he's sitting down on it, you can just let him go and not worry about catching him.



This child has frightening strength. He needed less help than we thought on the rock wall. Maybe I stood in front of the microwave too much when I was pregnant?



Best of all, half an hour on the swing set = nap time!

May The Fourth Be With You!

Do you ever have those days when you wonder what on earth is wrong with humanity? The other day I had several separate incidents in which I wondered what was wrong with this person!

Yesterday Doug and I met my mother and my grandmother for lunch at Red Lobster. We were seated in a large booth across from the hostess's desk. Before we left, I took Doug to the restroom to change his diaper. On the way back, across from our booth, we crossed paths with this elderly couple. The lady was using a cane to walk and walked several steps out of her way over to me. She looked up at me and said, "Can you do something for me?". I was a bit taken back, so I stumbled, "Uh, sure?". She opened her hand and she had two balled up Kleenexes. She asked me if I could throw them away. Totally taken aback and now shocked, I did. I walked 4 feet (!) to the desk and threw it away in the trashcan there. After I was done, I was a bit confused by the whole encounter. Normally, I wouldn't accept such a thing from a stranger. I understand that she was using a cane, and that walking wasn't easy. Believe me, she couldn't have found some one more empathetic. But she walked out of her way to me, she was closer to the hidden trashcan than to me. Also, why couldn't she have had her HUSBAND do it? Sticking them in her pocket wasn't a bad idea either. Needless to say, I purelled the heck out of my hands and vowed to never do such a thing again.

About an hour later I arrived at the store. Doug was passed out in his car-seat, so instead of carrying him around, I decided I'd get his stroller out. Now, let me tell you, that this week I've been a bit more fatigued and tired than usual. Also, possibly a bit whinier about it too. So, when I saw a spot that wasn't a handicapped spot and was close to the door, I nabbed it. It was actually the last regular spot and was next to a handicapped spot (on the driver's and car-seat side). I went and opened the trunk and began to unfold the stroller. Then I went and put my bag underneath the stroller, and lastly I got Doug out. His stroller straps are numerous. I'm not sure why, perhaps the makers thought the stroller would be involved in some sort of stroller demolition derby. I'm surprised it doesn't have a roll bar. But anyway, it takes a moment to get him all in, and during this point, I vaguely heard a car honk and I ignored it. After I was done, I noticed a van parking in a handicapped spot across from my car. As we came even with the first car in the handicapped spots, I saw a woman sitting in it with her window rolled down. She leaned out of it and said something along the lines of "the nerve of them honking at you when there are plenty of spaces!". So, basically, I got honked at because I was putting my BABY in his stroller and it wasn't happening fast enough for these people. I won't say that I didn't send a glare their direction.

Last night we were having a plumbing emergency*. At about ten thirty the plumber arrived and was getting his tools out of his truck when we got a phone call on our house line. Jeff answered it and said,"No, no, she doesn't live here. No, you have the wrong number." He then proceeded to give the caller the number she called (she asked) and then hung up. The plumber came in and Jeff followed him downstairs. I decided to try to start to get Doug ready for bed, as it was waaaay past bed time, when the phone rang AGAIN. Now, I think just about everyone agrees that past 10:30 it too late to call people. It's just rude and annoying. Also, it gets your adrenaline going, because you wonder, "Oh my gosh, what's wrong?", because decent people only call after then for emergencies. I answer the phone. The caller ID tells me that this is the SAME number that called five minutes ago. Sure enough, the caller asks for the SAME PERSON. Now, normally, I'm not rude to callers. I can and will be curt, but generally polite. But this person was clearly not getting that Annie did NOT live here! So I told her off (long day, plumbing emergency). I won't swear I didn't use obscenities, but I think I avoided it. It must have worked, because she didn't call back for Annie anymore.

This last incident happened today when I took Doug to the doctor's. It's more humorous and exasperating than the other incidents. Today we saw the nurse practitioner because Doug has a rash that I thought was eczema. The rash was apparently something seasonal and common that toddlers get, it goes away on its own, basically no big deal. So after she gave me this info, she proceeded to ask how things were at home. You know, who's at home with us, any more kids? Anything else going on..... (looking intently at me)? I was a bit flustered, about this and had no idea what she was getting at. I said no, just Doug and I, Daddy works.... Then it dawned on me that I must actually look how I feel for once (very sore and very fatigued). The undertone I was getting from her was like, "Well, does your husband throw you down the stairs every night?". I was amused that I must have looked how I felt, but I was too tired to get into the whole "Well, I'm a hypothyroid person with fibromyalgia, and if you could not use big words today, that would be great. Also, don't call CPS on us, because we're totally cool.". Maybe I should print up some handouts for next time? Too exhausting to go through it each time I see them!



*Very long, uninteresting, expensive story.

Down On The Farm

Saturday we took Doug to a petting farm about 20 minutes from our house. It was the first time he'd seen animals other than household pets. At first he was fairly cautious, but as the animals ran over to greet him, he became increasingly more comfortable with them.



Baby goats! So cute!





Doug was so delighted by this little guy that he plopped down to watch him. I'm fairly sure Doug would have been content to just hang with the goats all afternoon. We walked him away from the enclosure to show him some other parts of the farm, but he just kept running back to the baby goats.



He also fell in love with this little lamb. We were initially a little nervous about him petting an animal that was obviously a newb, but both he and the lamb did well.


Doug is fascinated by birds and was excited by the ducks.


At one point, Jeff put Doug on the ground near the pony's fence. Doug realized that he could crawl under the fence to see the pony and was thrilled, until we stopped him, that is.

The other part of this property is called 'The Enchanted Forest', and they have some fairy tale themed play ground equipment and some other things, like this pirate ship and wooden train.






The farm is called Clark's farm and it's out in Columbia. It costs about $5 to get in. There is a gravel/dirt path so you could bring a stroller or wagon* if you wanted. The area where the animals are is on a field, so if it's been raining that might not work out so well. It was quite a lovely afternoon, and I encourage all of you with small ones to visit the farm.



*That was my biggest question- was the place stroller or wagon friendly, and the website did not tell me! So, now you know.

Spring Shearing

We both knew that a haircut was coming soon. Doug was getting rather shaggy on the back and sides. Jeff declared that Doug was getting a mullet. It was time to act. We'd been debating about how to best go about separating Doug from his hair. A barber shop would probably do the best job, but it would probably be a blood bath for all involved. Doug doesn't like loud noises and we thought the shaver near his ears would be a little too traumatic for him. And us. We thought that having him watch Jeff get his cut first would be a good idea. Unfortunately, being a toddler, Doug's attention span is only so long, so I wasn't sure how effective that would be.

Last night though, Doug presented us with the opportunity to do it. He'd just finished his bath and I was putting lotion on him (he has patchy dry skin again) and he was sitting quite still and quiet. So I called for Jeff to bring the scissors. Doug held still for the front of his hair being trimmed. I died a slow death watching the pointy, sharp scissors so close to his eyes (totally buying blunted scissors TODAY), but he did well. It wasn't until Jeff started cutting the hair over his ear that Doug started to get upset. I'm pretty sure it's about only 1/3 of the amount of meltdown we would have seen at a barber shop though.






The haircut is a little rough in some places. But we all survived, and hair does grow back.

Second Verse, Not The Same As The First

Doug is now into his second year of life. The good news is that we pretty much got the hang of parenting an infant. The bad news is, Doug is now a toddler. So, we begin learning all over again!

Our pediatrician warned us that tantrums are now on the horizon. I remember laughing at that, because earlier that day we'd had our first toy store melt down. We'd been checking out wagons, and Jeff took Doug out of one, after taking him up and down a few aisles. Well, Doug wasn't ready to get out, and promptly sat on the floor and screamed. It was kind of funny. We were glad to see that he liked the wagon and we decided to get it. The tantrums are interesting. Sometimes they're due to the communication barrier. Doug only says 'hi!', and I've been very lax on signing. He does know 'all done' and 'bird'. He also invented one for lotion -rubbing his hands together, like I do when I put lotion on my hands. Other tantrums I think are due to simple crankiness or just toddler stubbornness (he gets that from his father). It's been a rather interesting experience navigating tantrums, and I think my work experience has been useful. I sometimes see parents bombard their child with language during a tantrum, and I've learned that sometimes the best thing to do is to just step back and give him some space and some simple language. I stumbled onto this series of books at the library, one is called 'Teeth Are Not For Biting', there's also another one called 'Hands Are Not For Hitting'. I think they're great and I like the use of a simple easy to remember phrase. I think simple language and repetition are key. I wish I'd seen these books when I was working!

Doug constantly surprises us. He's very bright and doesn't seem to miss a thing. Every night before we read Doug a story, Jeff puts our bird up for the night. He changes his water and food and then puts two towels over his cage. Well, for the past week, Doug has been jumping up and bring Jeff a towel at a time to help put Hermes away! After he did so last night, Doug was flipping his hands over. Jeff noticed that and asked me what that meant. I told him that's how Doug signs 'all done'. So, I guess the bird was all done for the night!

The other day we took Doug to the Play Ground Super Store* in Columbia. We put Doug down a couple of slides and then we let him down. He walked around and then ran over to a baby swing and then proceeded to put his arms up. I was struck by the very purposeful way he communicated that he wanted to swing. Now! I ended up pushing him on the swing most of the time we were there and totally missed the salesman's pitch. Doug highly recommends the swings though!

I'm sure I could blather on and on about Doug, so I'll stop here :)






*On Mondays and Thursdays they have open play on all their equipment from 10-1, I think. If you're in the Columbia area, it looks awesome!

Fizzle

That was the theme sound of our weekend. Things just fizzled out.

Friday night was the birthday dinner of one of my grade school girl friends. She planned a nice evening at a restaurant in Glen Burnie, the Bone Fish Grill. Jeff and I had actually been there recently and had a very nice time, so I was excited to go again. The catch was that the place doesn't take reservations for prime time dining on Friday, and there were twelve people in the party. So, my friend got there an hour before hand to get us on the list with the hopes that we'd be seated by about 7, 7:30, that is about what the hostess said, so we had high hopes.

Now, Glen Burnie is about 40ish minutes from my house and I'd only been there a couple of times with Jeff. Since I'd never driven there myself, I didn't feel too comfortable doing it by myself. Then you add to the fact that the fibro screws with my night vision and it was raining and then suddenly I'm your 65 year old relative who has to leave your house before dark. My parents weren't available to watch Doug, and we didn't have another sitter lined up. I really wanted to go, and Jeff very generously offered to drive me. We need a new washer and dryer, so he planned to have dinner with Doug in the area and then do some comparison shopping at the stores in the area while I had dinner with the girls.

This plan sounded good. When I got to the restaurant, my friends were in the bar, so I joined them. We chatted and had drinks and caught up on life. At about 8 or so (half an hour to an hour after we expected to be seated) the bar tender (who totally looked like Frodo Baggins, and oddly had a black eye) closed out our tabs saying that our table was going to be ready soon. We waited and waited and were starting to get restless. At about 8:45 we went to stand in the front of the restaurant, hoping to be seated soon. It was almost 9, and this meant that we'd probably eat dinner closer to 10. It was just too late. I couldn't let Jeff and Doug wait out all night for me. I decided I needed to leave, so Jeff and Doug came and picked me up. I was very disappointed, but it was really going to be a much later evening that I'd planned. For what it's worth, Doug had a very nice time at Chik-fila. He had a yummy dinner and a lot of fun in the play area. The Glen Burnie Chik-Fila has a much more awesome play place than ours. When we got home, the power was out. I wondered if we'd suddenly been relocated into Montgomery County. According to BG&E, one of the arms of a pole had to be replaced and our power would be on by 11:30, 1, then 3. Luckily it came back by 2, or else Jeff would have been sleeping in the basement*. And that was Friday.

I decided that Saturday we'd do something as a family. We decided on Thai for lunch and a movie, Hop. I didn't want to see Hop in particular, I just wanted to see a movie. We had a very nice lunch, the waitresses at the Tara Thai in Rio hadn't seen Doug since he was about 6 months old, so they made a big fuss over him, which he loved. We got to the movie, got some soda for us, chocolate milk for Doug and some snow caps and Reece's pieces. We decided to try Doug in his own seat in the theater and got a booster for his chair. We settled him between us and gave him some of the candy and milk. He was happy during the previews, he occasionally had to get up and stand on his chair and see all the people sitting behind us. When the movie started, he began to get restless. He wanted to walk around in front of us and say 'hi' to the people sitting near us. We tried to get him to sit in our laps, but he would have none of it and screamed each time. Jeff had finally had enough and took Doug to the entrance way and let Doug run around there. Every so often he'd try to sit down with Doug, but he'd scream again. This went on for at least 40 minutes and was miserable for all three of us. I decided that it was time to go. It wasn't Doug's fault. I think the problem was that he was too tired and our environment was too interesting for him to settle down and take a nap. Lesson learned, no more movies for a while.

Sunday was kind of a wash. I was too tired, drained and sore to get up in the morning, so we missed out on church. Most of the day was spent around the house. I watched a Hallmark movie I'd dvr'd a few weeks ago, 'Time After Time'. It was about a 55 year old man who accidentally went back in time and went to save his 30 year old self and marry his high school sweet heart. At one point, the events of the man's life had changed because of a choice he'd made with his second chance. The older version of the man had no memory of the events and they'd had no idea why. I felt they needed the Doc there with a chalk board showing the diverging time lines. It was a cute movie as long as you didn't think about it. Sunday was a very lazy day.

This weekend has made it painfully obvious that we need to think about an alternate baby-sitter. It's kind of a difficult time for Doug now because he has separation anxiety. I also don't want to subject anyone to a screaming toddler for a few hours.



*No electricity means that Jeff's CPAP machine doesn't work, which means that I don't sleep due to the monstrous snoring.

Wednesday's Misadventures

Wednesday is story time day, so to ensure that we make it on time, we start the day a little earlier. It was about 9:30 when I got out of shower when I heard the door bell ring. I knew that it must be FexEx delivering my new Vera Bradley diaper bag/purse hybrid. I was so excited about it that I nearly ran to the door in my towel! It was very difficult to take the time to get dressed because I was so excited and relieved it came. Anyway, so I got dressed and got Doug dressed and situated with breakfast and I began to load up my new bag. I love it! It's perfect for us, all my stuff fits on the outside and all Doug's paraphernalia fits on the inside. I'd been looking for something like it for a while and hadn't found anything satisfactory and this bag came rather highly recommended. I wasn't pleased with the price tag, but it is both a purse AND a diaper bag (also, I opted for, gasp! last season's colors, which are decently discounted). Best of all, I only needed to take one trip to the car when we left for story time.

It is a bit of a behemoth of a bag. My mother told Doug that it looked like I had a suitcase. I don't disagree.

Unlike previous weeks, this week story time was rather uneventful. I brought my bag in with us and had everything with us except Doug's sippy cup. I don't know, maybe I'm old school, but I don't think drinking in the library is really appropriate, even if it's in a separate room. Because I left Doug's juice in the car, every other child of course had a sippy cup. Naturally, Doug wanted one too. He tried to deprive several children of theirs. So, lesson learned, no more story time without a sippy cup.

After story time, he was totally exhausted. I waited, with him asleep in the backseat of my car, for my mom to come over so we could go shopping. My favorite pair of sandals died an untimely death the other day when I tripped and ripped the thong out of the sole. I also had a gift card to use at the Croc store, and wanted to check Old Navy out for more jackets in the next size up for Doug. So to Arundel Mills we went! I was out of luck at Old Navy for the jacket, but scored big with a Star Wars onesie for ten bucks! Next we went to to Off Broadway shoes where I got a new pair of Sketcher's Tone Ups* for $10 less than the Sketcher store halfway up the mall. Doug was a bit finicky at the Croc store, and I was glad I had my mom there to help out. He didn't like the price tags attached to the shoes and was so distracted by them that all he did was squat down and pull on them. My mom finally found a pair in his size (the sizes are vague) and we got him to walk by chasing her around the store. I decided to get them and rather than take them off, put his socks and shoes back on, we just ripped off the tag and let him wear them home. I'm lazy and it was easy. I did see some some adorable Star Wars charms for the shoes, but I thought there was a strong likelihood of Doug pulling them off and popping them in his mouth. So maybe next summer.

Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of toddler feet? They're constantly moving!

My mom and I expected Doug to pass out in the car, but he was awake the whole way home, and awake when Jeff got home half an hour later. Since it was still light out and warm, the three of us set out for the park. We had a nice time there, but left after a while when some older, rowdier kids showed up (Doug is easily mowed over, being short and all). We decided on Chipotle for dinner and by the time we got home from dinner, Doug had finally passed out. We put him down in his crib for a late nap and settled on the couch with The Empire Strikes Back. All in all, not a bad Wednesday.


*I don't think the shoes tone at all. But they're very comfy on my knees and feet and I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of running this Summer....