The Shmoo has been enrolled in a child development program at our local high school. A friend of ours has a daughter who is a student in the program (a high school student) and she got Shmoo on the coveted list.
It’s a 3 hour session, 3 days per week. The only requirements are that the child is over 3 and is potty trained.
Since it starts in March, Shmoo will be 3. But the potty trained part…
We’ve started a potty training boot camp of sorts.
When we’re in the house, we stick the kid in underwear and pray for the best. We’re having mini-celebrations every time he goes and we’re trying to get him on the potty constantly.
In 3 days, he’s told us almost every time when he needs to go and we’ve only gone through 5 pairs of underwear/pants in that time!
I’m taking the Shmoo skiing in Vermont this weekend, so I know that between the car ride and the skiing, I will probably put him in pullups so we don’t have to worry about accidents in 10 degree weather.
But I have questions for you mommies of boys out there…
- How early did you start with the standing up thing?
- How much do I care about him missing the toilet at first?
- How do I teach him to aim (other than cheerios), in terms of holding his pee-pee?
- Do I push his uncle and pop-pop to really work on bringing him into the bathroom with them when he’s at their house?
- This one is a tough one – poor Shmoo. Should I not be trying to do the stand up and pee thing if he’s doesn’t have much to hold onto or see over his little belly?
Other than that, we’re doing pretty well. I have a feeling I am going to have to let go a little bit on the messiness part and just embrace his small successes.
I will just leave a sponge and some Fantastik in the bathroom to clean up the floor, back of the toilet and wall when he’s done with his little accomplishments! 
Shmoo wasn’t the only one who had a doctor appointment yesterday, little baby boy Dylan did too!
First of all, Shmoo not only was a good listener yesterday but he was also a good big brother!
After Shmoo finished his check up, he was there to hold Dylan’s hand and assure him that everything was going to be okay!
Dylan is a healthy little boy. He’s laughing and smiling. He’s grabbing at objects – he loves his little playmat. He’s a content little baby and is pretty easy going.
We started using the “On Becoming Baby Wise” book to get him on this cycle of sleep-eat-play in about 3 hour cycles and it seems to be really working wonders for his night time sleeping. We’re not following it strictly, but are using our own modified version. But, already he had 2 nights where he slept 8-9 hours without waking! (Okay, the second night he did that was last night and he was pretty much down for the count due to the 4 shots he received at the doc’s office)
I can’t believe we were ever worried about his weight gain too! On Thanksgiving Day, at 3 days old, Dylan weighed 7 lbs 2 oz.
Yesterday, at 10 weeks old, he weighed 11 lbs 4 oz! What a little beefcake!
We are supplementing some formula with breast milk, but not that much. I am still nursing for now but it’s still hard. He’s still not a great sucker and it still takes a super long time to get him full (about 45 – 60 minutes).
From his last appointment, his head went from 36 cm to 40 cm and he’s grown 3 inches in length!
Here is my wonderful little baby boy with his grandpa (my dad)!
And showing us his big smile.
We initiated a new order of discipline in our household. I’m not sure if we weren’t following through before but something might be clicking with the Shmoo already!
One of our problems is my in-laws. I almost want to significantly limit his time with them. They are a little toxic in the aspect of elevating the Shmoo to this level of sainthood. They do everything he wants and provide zero discipline whatsoever.
If they want to spend all day responding to his every wish in their house, I guess I can’t completely control that. But when they are at our house or we’re at their house and we are disciplining, they need to follow suit.
One of the things that is hard is when we try to get the Shmoo to leave their house, he always throws a fit. And they don’t usually help. He starts throwing a tantrum and goes to “mema” for a hug. Last night, before we were preparing to leave their house, I sat down with the Shmoo and said that he was not going to stay at their house but had to come home with us. I told him that if he listened and came nicely, he could watch TV when we got home. If he didn’t listen and wasn’t a good boy, no TV. He agreed.
When it came time to leave, he pitched a total fit and it turned into us needing to physically carry him kicking and screaming out of the house and holding him down while trying to strap him into the car seat (love those moments). In the 12 minutes it took to drive home, he screamed “I want Mema” 29 times. Counting to myself helped me keep my sanity.
When we got home, I stood my ground when he asked to watch Caillou another 25 or so times. Eventually, he just gave up and let me read a few books to him.
This morning, he was a total saint. Well, there were still some bumps in the road, but he was 100 times better.
Even more shocking, we had to take him to the doctor for his 3 year appointment today and he was so good. Shmoo at the doctor’s office is usually like a farmer carrying a terrified pig to slaughter. There is usually some physical restraint and a ton of high volume shrieking.
Today, while he did run out of the door of the room in his pull up and run around the nurses’ desk 4-5 times – he was a great listener the rest of the time and even let the nurse take his blood pressure, check his heart and do all of the weighing/measuring stuff with a big ol’ smile on his face. When the nurse and doctor told us that he did need a shot, we almost put it off because he was being so good.
I think he was very upset that he was such a good boy and we still made him go through something so terrible as a shot, but he survived and even listened to us as we were leaving the doctor office.
To be honest, we did bribe him and tell him he could get a little special present at the toy store for being such a good listener. But sometimes, a little bribery might work, right?
We also talked to the doctor about his tantrums and she recommended the same book that K recommended – 123 Magic. I’m going to speed read it tonight then hand it to Lo to read next.
What was funny is that when they asked us about his coordination and physical stuff, we bragged that he was a superstar (with the car driving and skiing as examples). Then, when the nurse wanted him to cover one eye and read the vision cards, he couldn’t quite figure out how to cover one eye at a time. Lo and I were giggling a little and thinking, maybe he’s not that overly coordinated.
Shmoo is a great kid. I think he’s a wonderful little boy with tons of personality and a great sense of humor. I don’t want him to be that 5 yr old that throws temper tantrums and no one wants to baby sit or play with. I think he’s going to do great with some new course of action! We’ll see how this goes!
As for the appointment, he is now 38 3/4 inches long (90-95 percentile) and weighs 34 lbs and 8 ounces (75th percentile)!
He’s only gained 4 lbs in a year and he’s grown 5 inches! My little boy is getting big!
Here’s the big boy himself in a few pictures taken in the past few days.
New Years Resolution #1: Get back in touch with my blogger friends.
I need to get my online life back together a little bit. Here’s a quick thing – if you are still following us on our little journey, leave a message and reconnect! I know I’ve been bad at this lately, but I’m working on it.
I also restarted the weight loss blog to get control of some other areas of my life too!!
Anyhoo – enough about me and blogging and onto my wonderful boys.
Tomorrow is Shmoo’s 3 yr checkup and Dylan’s 2 month or 3 month visit (I don’t know, he’s 10 weeks tomorrow).
I’m dying to know how much Dylan weighs because according to my scale, he’s 11.5 lbs. That seems remarkable to me since he was 7 lbs 2 ounces on Thanksgiving.
Shmoo is doing well. He’s definitely launched himself into that “terrible 3s” stage. He is such a tester. He is that kid who will look at you and lightly touch something when you’ve just said “don’t touch that!”
We’re working on the discipline and reinstating time outs on the steps. We’ve actually given him a few time outs in his room and that usually results in screams that will probably soon prompt phone calls from our neighbors to DCF!
He is still such a wonderful spirited child though. His physical abilities always amaze me and I even think he’s pretty damn smart. His ingenuity and problem solving skills are pretty impressive. His language is developing but it still seems like there is a lot that we don’t understand.
He is pretty hilarious though and is now responding to us with “Alright, Mom!” when we ask him to do something. Cracks me up.
My camera is MIA right now, so I’m lacking with pictures but I will catch everyone up with photos soon.
It appears that Lo failed poop sifting 101. Either she did or her parents did. We have no other explanation.
The quarter is gone.
After working ourselves up about what the next step would be if the quarter was still stuck in Shmoo’s stomach and after dragging the poor kid back to the hospital for his 3rd xray in 18 days, we discovered that the quarter is gone.
Either this kid has superhero strength stomach acid and he digested it, or we missed it coming out.
We did feel pretty stupid when the ultrasound tech asked if we might have missed it. We did look pretty thoroughly.
While we are happy that this didn’t result in an endoscopic surgery for the little guy and we’re relieved that no damage was caused, I think we (Lo especially) are a little disappointed that after all of that poop searching that there wasn’t a “EUREKA!” moment that we could celebrate and hold onto the quarter forever.
I am not sure how I escaped poop duty but kudos for Lo for taking one for the parenting team and doing her job so seriously. Let’s hope he doesn’t swallow anything again because I do not plan on taking the reigns as the family poop sifter!
Being home on maternity leave is so wonderful. I thought I’d be bored. You can never get bored with 2 little boys.
The days are flying by.
I have 3 weeks left and am already thinking about taking an extra week. Since Lo is not working too much, it’s just awesome to be with my entire family every day. We really have no concept of what day of the week it is or what time of day it is. Life is good.
The one thing that is rough about maternity leave is that it might put us in the poor house. Having us both home all day just makes us want to do things. We get antsy easily. Being stuck in the house makes you look around at your house and think about what you can change.
Since we’ve accepted the fact that the real estate market is just abysmal, we have no plans to relist the condo anytime soon and decided that maybe we should just make some minor upgrades to make us feel better about living here for awhile.
We’ve taken down a ½ wall in the kitchen, moved some things around in the living room and the boys’ playroom and rearranged the bedroom. It was all done pretty cheap but the living room redo including buying a new couch, carpet, some paint and paying movers to relocate a heavy TV and fireplace.
And while we are not overly happy about being stuck in this 2 bedroom condo in the ghetto for quite some time, we’re at least happier about our living room!
This was our living room back in 2008 when it was on the market.
Here is some “after” pictures. I need another coat of paint (Lo and I did it in 2 hours) but we’ll have to wait until the Shmoo is out of the house.
I have been excited about getting the Shmoo on skis. This will be his activity with Mommy while Momma happily stays home in the warm house.
First, we had to rent skis and we got the smallest boots and smallest skis known to man.
We had to get a helmet too and he just had to wear the helmet and boots home from the ski store. He would have worn the skis in the car if I didn’t put my foot down.
Then he proceeded to fall asleep in the car on the way home from the ski store.
Then, we had to try the skis on in the house.
Then, he had to learn to walk in his boots.
I wasn’t sure I could get him in a ski school since he’s under 3 and I didn’t want to spend too much money if he hated it, so we practiced in the backyard.
And sometimes, we get a little distracted.
But I took him to the real mountain today, lied about his age (said he was 3) and got him in the Mommy n’ me ski school. He did awesome.
We did have some toddler moments where he didn’t want the instructor to help him and he wanted to go on the chair lift, not just the little “magic carpet” slope with the conveyor belt. But once I dropped into the background, he started listening to the instructor and did so incredibly well.
The entire time, the instructor was telling me how much balance, strength and coordination the Shmoo had for a 3 year old. I knew that. The kid is physically advanced. And he’s daring. There was a 5 yr old boy that kept crying during his lesson. Shmoo skied past him, fell, laughed, got back up and jumped onto the conveyor belt again saying “No, me do!” when any of the instructors tried to help him.
Awesome. The Shmoo is a skier.
I did have to take him on the chair lift for a big boy run and he was not scared at all. I, on the other hand, was exhausted after one run down the mountain hanging onto his harness and trying to direct him with my skis.
Here is some photographic evidence.
Still no quarter. We went back to the hospital on Wed. for another xray. It has not moved at all from where it was last Friday. Still in the stomach. GI surgeon wants to wait 2 more weeks. So, for now, we continue to sift through poop.
I have other things to write about and post, but for now I’ll just share 2 videos.
First, my big boy…crazy child Shmoo
Then, my little boy D-man at 7 weeks….he was cooing and chatting a little but I think it’s probably to hard to hear over my lovely voice
Isn’t he – aren’t they both – just so damn cute!?!?
So we had our 3rd ER visit of the Shmoo’s short life yesterday.
We’ve been to the hospital 4 times total, but one of the times (when the Shmoo was probably about 18 months old) we didn’t go into the ER but only stood in the parking lot trying to figure out if we were just overreacting and we ended up going home instead of going in.
Yesterday, my child did something I was pretty sure I never had to worry about. He stuck a coin in his mouth. Then proceeded to swallow it.
Shmoo got a few piggy banks for Christmas and I know that his Mema and Pop-Pop play with coins with him (supervised) on occasion and they have names for the coins (a quarter is the “big one”)
segue: My in-laws are so uptight about the Shmoo getting hurt. If he walks into a wall of his own doing, they are both like “ohhh noooo!” run to him, pick him up, check him from head to toe, etc. I’m not trying to sound like we are not worried about him getting hurt, but we are a little more relaxed about it because the Shmoo is just so full of energy, he’s rather inattentive at times and runs into something about 30 times per day. He’s always fine and if he’s not fine, then we always take him seriously if he’s really hurt. The in-laws do these things with him like play with an electric grinder, show him how to turn the car keys in the car, play with coins, etc. but since they are both right there, they think this is ok. But this is a kid who now thinks he can do all of this stuff by himself. I’m sure anytime he gets hurt on our watch, Lo’s father is probably keeping a log to show someone how awful we are at parenting.
Oh yeah, and they are also really pushing us to get a new rug in our living room because ours is not soft enough and even though we have put tons of rug tape down, it occasionally comes up when the Shmoo goes running around the living room and tries to slide into it. sigh.
I’m a little annoyed they let him play with coins but I guess it’s our fault for not realizing he had any in his room.
I digress.
Yesterday afternoon, I’m upstairs in my bedroom taking my first shower in probably 3 days and he is in his room right next to where I was watching Monsters.Inc. His room is really toddler-proofed (so I thought), so I was only checking on him every 5 minutes or so. As I was getting dressed and on the phone with a work friend, I heard a cough.
That cough that you know is a child choking. I ran into the room and he was crying. Crying is good, right?
He kept saying “it hurts!” pointing to his throat. When I asked him what he swallowed, he said “a coin” through the tears.
uh oh.
I ran into my room to find my wallet and poured out some change in my hands. I had him pick out which one he swallowed. He pointed to the quarter.
At the same time, Lo was already on the phone with the pediatrician. They said not to worry unless it was a quarter.
I reshuffled the coins and had him point again to the coin he swallowed. He pointed at the quarter again and said “the big one.”
oh shit.
The pediatrician instructed Lo to take him to the ER immediately. Since I am much better in emergencies, I immediately finished getting dressed and jumped into the car to take this kid to the hospital. The pediatrician said to try to keep him talking in the car and if he stops breathing and turns blue to stop and call 911. Great.
At this point, I’m thinking…
- kids swallow things all the time. I know lots of people who have stories of swallowing items as kids and it never involved ER visits.
- he’s crying. So he’s breathing. This means that the big concern is over, right?
- of all of the coins to swallow, my child swallows “the big one”??
In the car ride and the entire 4 minutes of checking in and waiting in the ER waiting room, he was screaming “I no go to the doctor” at the top of his lungs and playing Mr. Limp Man so I had to carry him. The carrying him part was extra fun when I had to carry him a few hundred yards from the car to the entrance in the snow because the ER parking lot was full.
He refused to put on the hospital bracelet and refused to let the PA listen to his chest. But he was a little angel when it came to getting the Xray and he was perfectly still for that, earning a Mickey.Mouse sticker.
The quarter passed most of the critical places and was already through his stomach and entering his intestine less than 45 minutes after he swallowed it.
There is still a concern that something can happen on the rest of it’s journey but we were given instructions to pay close attention to the Shmoo (and his poop) in the next 2 days. If he doesn’t pass it in 2 days or complains of pain or other issues come up, we go back in.
I think he’s going to be okay, but last night he told me his tummy hurt. I think I had a moment of panic.
“What hurts, buddy?”
He then told me his foot hurt and pointed to his heel.
“Nothing else hurts?”
“No.”
phew.
As we wait for this quarter to reappear in a rather poopy form, I am thinking about how small the Shmoo is. I can’t imagine swallowing a quarter as an adult and then having to poop it out. ouch.
I’m not so sure if he’s learned his lesson. We talked about it several times yesterday. How we don’t put things in our mouth that aren’t supposed to go in there and how we don’t want to have to go to the hospital again. However, I also think he thought it was kinda cool to see the xray picture on the computer with the coin in his little belly.
When Lo met me at the hospital with the baby, she had her parents in tow. awe.some. She had called them to come over and watch the baby but they couldn’t not be at the hospital with their grandson. I think he liked having Mema in the room with him and having them buy him Doritos and soda from the machines once we got the all clear for him to eat something.
We were at the ER earlier in the Shmoo’s life for all of his digestive/reflux/colic issues and based on his personality and bull-like physical attributes, we might be spending more time in the ER in the next several years. But for now, we keep trying to protect him from himself as much as possible.
It’s so hard to sit there and tell a doctor that he did in fact swallow a coin and I don’t know where he got it. You wonder if that doc is making some note in his file about how irresponsible this poor child’s mommmies are. sigh.
Oh well. Never a dull moment here.
By the way, how technological has medical care? Before we even got back into the car, we called the pediatrician’s office. They already had the report from the hospital and his xray in their computer files.
Little D is 6 weeks old. It’s still a little hard to believe he’s here sometimes.
I have no idea how much he weighs right now. Our last doc appointment was at 2 weeks and he was 8 lbs. Not bad considering he was 7 lbs 2 oz at 3 days old.
He’s holding his head really well and he rolls over almost to his belly. I swear. It’s true. He likes being on his side when he’s lying down (kinda like me). And from when he was just days old, you’d place him on his back and he’d roll onto his side. A few times, he almost went completely over to his belly but his legs got in the way. I mean, I know he’s not doing it on purpose, but it cracks me up to see people’s faces when I tell them he’s rolling over.
What’s not funny is that the bassinet tilts a little since it is supposed to be a rocker. The lock isn’t really working right to keep it from rocking. So, I place this little person in the bassinet on his back, he rolls a little to his side and the bassinet rocks a little bit due to the weight shift and this poor baby ends up sliding against the bassinet wall. Not good.
We’ve moved onto the crib for this reason, and various others. While it didn’t last for too long, Lo and I had a little mommy time last night when we got both boys in their respective beds at 10 pm. By midnight, I was up with the baby and by about 5 am, the Shmoo was in bed with us. We still count it as a success.
6 weeks means that I’m only 2 weeks away from the end of my maternity leave. I am going to tack on some vacation time and hopefully have 2-3 more weeks on top of that. We’ll see what the firm lets me do. In the interim, I’m going to keep buying lotto tickets in case I hit the big one and never have to go back to work.
To celebrate D-man’s 6 week birthday, I went to the OB/GYN for my 6 week appointment. I love my OB. While we didn’t get the doc that Lo thinks is totally hot for either boys’ delivery, I am happy about the doctor we did get. She is so cool and pretty cute too.
We were able to laugh about the anesthesiologist and how we may not have believed she truly existed if she hadn’t appeared in the final moments of my delivery. It seems that everything is healing okay and she did reiterate that it must not have been too much fun for me.
Of course, the total experience is fading away a little as I look at this beautiful little baby. I could definitely see how people do it over and over again.
But not me. Not us. We’re good. So good, in fact, about 8 minutes after Dylan was born, Lo was talking about what we are going to do with the extra sperm sitting in storage.
Happy 6 weeks to my littlest man.
