Tales From The Toybox

Our son is eating! It’s as if he woke up one morning and thought to himself, “OK, I’ve tortured my poor parents enough. I’ll try eating today.” Seriously! We are almost at that dreaded 10-month mark where we promised our pediatrician we could call in the OT and “Boom!” he’s eating! I’m really upset with myself that we didn’t get before and after videos. Reed and I kept saying we were going to drag the camera out one feeding time so years from now when he’s eating us out of house and home we’d be able to show him a time when he wouldn’t eat anything at all. I really wanted him to see how traumatic mealtime was for both of us. I mean, how much time would it have taken to pull the camera out for a few short minutes? We are so lazy sometimes.

But what matters most is that as I am typing here at my kitchen table I have to look down at my son who is on the floor and pull little pieces of dried spaghetti from last nights dinner out of his mouth. I’m so happy! Not that we have dried spaghetti from last nights dinner all over the floor, but that my son is putting it in his mouth! You have to understand what a HUGE step this is!! He ate an entire jar of baby oatmeal with apples and banana’s this morning. He even ate half a chicken nugget over the weekend. We just pray that he keeps this up and doesn’t revert back to his old fears, but things are definitely looking up.

Sheasa awarded me with the Thinking Blogger Award. I haven’t won an award since the Good Citizenship award in second grade! This is a way for bloggers to recognize each other and share great blogs and I am thrilled to be a part of it. Now that I have enjoyed this prestigious honor, I get to award it to others.

Here’s my beautiful award:

The participation rules are simple:

1.If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this postso that people can easily find the exact origin of the blog post,
3.Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if golddoesn’t fit your blog).

Here are the top 5 blogs that get me thinking:

1. Chiriqui Chatter - This is my father’s blog. He lives in Panama and blogs about places of interest in the area. His blog is informative and witty and I look forward to each installment.

 2. I Hate My Roommates - I recently found this blog and I think it’s hillarious! I literally laughed out loud reading it. I particularly enjoyed the “Don’t look in my mirror” post on December 17th.  I just wish it was updated more often…hint hint!

3. Bending Branch Nursery - This is one of my sister-in-law’s sites. She has just started out “reborning” beautiful baby dolls and is blogging about her experiences learning this very difficult technique. Check it out and place your orders!!

OK, still looking for blogs 4 and 5! Someday I’ll have enough time to read more!

So, (M-1)(1 over M) + (S-2)(2 over S) = M2 + S3 and ultimately I1!

A real man gets up at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, quietly fixes himself breakfast and coffee and heads to the church in 20 degree weather for the next 2 hours to set up while his sick wife stays home, toasty warm in bed.

A real man stays after church for 2 hours (in now 30 degree weather) breaking down while his wife and family goes home to eat chicken noodle soup and sip hot chocolate.

A real man leaves church, rushes home for all of 5 minutes for a quick bite to eat and then runs his daughter to pick up a friend and drop her off at the movies.

A real man comes home, changes, and heads out for a 2 hour bike ride while his wife naps.

A real man, now exhausted, showers and heads out again to pick up his daughter from the movies and drop her off at volleyball practice.

A real man spends the next two hours getting caught up on work, then sits for 20 extra minutes in the parking lot waiting for an extra-long volleyball practice to end, only to find out that his daughter doesn’t need a ride after all because she’s spending the night with a friend!

Then, after an exhausting, non-stop day, a REAL man, a wonderful husband, and a true friend comes home at 9:00 p.m. after being on the go since 6:00 a.m. and heads out again…this time to the store to buy his wife tampons. And the best part is that not only did he get the RIGHT kind of tampons, he also brought me chocolate chip ice cream.

Wow. Am I lucky, or what?

So I decided to do a little rearranging around here. I still haven’t quite found myself among the land of the bloggers and have no idea what “style” I’m going for here. In my dream world I’d love this blog to be so humorous and informative that WordPress has to purchase new facilities just to house the servers that support all of my reader’s comments. Jay Leno would be having his people call my people for permission to make my daily blogs a nightly bit on his show…preferably read by Ross the Intern. I would have enough sponsors on my site that I could afford a monthly cruise to ensure the proper atmosphere for writing. In my dream world. 

But the reality is that this is just a hobby. A place to escape for a few minutes from the daily clamoring of toys, video games, screaming and yelling. A place to vent, a place to laugh, and a place to dream about becoming the next funny eBay ad-placer turned millionaire blogger (she makes over $4000/month on sponsors JUST from this website AND has two book deals in the works ALL because of a silly eBay ad!!). So until that happens and I can afford the best web-designer money can buy, make yourself comfortable, please excuse the clutter, and try not to trip over anything.

Today my son put a french fry in his mouth!!! Not only that, he choked on it, and put it back in his mouth!!! Why am I so thrilled? I suppose most parents would be horrified to know that I allowed my 9-month old son to go anywhere near a food as un-nutritional as a french fry, but my son is not your ordinary baby. Diagnosed with Oral Aversion, my son does not willingly put anything in his mouth, except for the ‘ol boob. I don’t have to worry about him finding loose buttons, small toys, or coins and putting them in his mouth because just doesn’t do that. He rarely even puts his own fingers in his mouth. Mealtime has become so frustrating that he and I are both usually in tears before it’s over. I’m at a loss as to what to do and we have been advised that if the problem still exists when he is 10-months old we need to see an Occupational Therapist.

Anyway, it’s very late and I’m sick with some sort of virus and am exhausted from lack of sleep (Carson is also sick and not sleeping much at all lately), but I just wanted to post the wonderful news. My son put a french fry in his mouth! He sucked on it, and even broke a big enough piece off that he started choking. The best part is that he put it back in his mouth. Most children with oral aversion are afraid of choking. Hopefully this is the beginning of him getting past this. I’m feeling really guilty now that we didn’t start solids until he was 6-months old. I had read too many things about children with food allergies and how it’s better on their digestive system to wait at least 6 months before starting solids, but in Carson’s case we would have been better off starting him at 4-months. Just add another guilt-link on my parenting chain.

Lately I seem to be beating myself over the head with the expression, “It’s just like riding a bike…” How I wish that applied to child rearing! My gosh, I’ve raised three kids already, you’d think I’d be a pro. But it seems that starting over in my forties I have forgotten how to do it!

Take, for instance, my two and a half year-old. By the time my older two girls were this age they were completely potty-trained and dressing themselves each morning. Even Noah was at least peepee’ing in the potty by now. (you know boys take a little longer) But not Olivia! This child is as stubborn as they get. She is utterly and completely capable of using a toilet, she just simply refuses. Instead, she comes to either Reed or myself and very firmly demands, “I need a fresh diaper, dada!” To which we respond, “Why didn’t you use the potty?” “NO Potty!” is the only response we get. This child must have a bladder the size of the Colorado River because within moments of  changing, she’s once again insisting on a fresh diaper.

A nudist in a previous life, our child rebels against clothing of any kind…except the coveted “fresh diaper.” Apparently she is so smart that she knows the capacity of said diaper and requests a fresh one when the appropriate volume has been achieved. Heaven forbid she have overflow. So Reed and I in all our brilliance decide that we will make her wait for a fresh diaper. She can wallow in her own peepee and certainly that icky wet feeling will be enough to convince her that the potty is the better choice. But Miss Olivia simply shrugs her shoulders and removes her diaper herself, once again demanding a fresh one. So we resort to bribery. “Olivia, do you want chocolate?” “Yes! I DO want chocolate, “she exclaims. “OK,” we tell her, “then you have to peepee on the potty.” She very happily agrees and moments later we arrive at the throne. But it’s no use. After a very lame attempt at fake-grunting followed by an, “I did it!” we are left with no choice but to deny the chocolate. Obviously this is not working.

Finally, after exhausting a 92-pack of Luvs in just under four days we decide that drastic times call for drastic measures. We refuse the fresh diaper that she so loves and force her to walk around completely naked all day…following behind her with a mop and a shovel. She is not the least bit phased. In fact just yesterday she came down the stairs and proudly announced, “I poo poo on the carpet, mom. Come see.” Ugh. We have failed. Our child will be the only senior proudly walking on the stage to accept her high school diploma…in a fresh diaper.

I have to say it’s near impossible to watch Olivia every second of every day. She’s so much wiser than her two and a half years on this earth and a wise two and a half year-old can be equal to an F5 tornado if not closely supervised. Our little Miss Boo is no exception. Overflowing with curiosity and boundless energy, Olivia has been known to deface or destroy entire rooms in the blink of an eye. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t find myself screaming, “What the heck just happened in here?!” I usually get a very matter-of-fact answer to my question such as, “I colored Carson’s feet, mommy.” If our daughter has one thing going for her, it’s honesty! 

Olivia really tries to help and sometimes she actually does! Take, for instance, when I’m unloading the dishes. She loves to hand the dishes to me still warm from the dishwasher. She pulls them out so quickly that I literally unload in ¼ the time I would if it was just me doing it alone. I have to, because if I don’t keep up with her the giant glass baking pan will slip right out of her tiny little fingers and shatter all over our hardwood floors in typical toddler F5 style! Sometimes Olivia’s desire to help is less than helpful. Like when I’m cleaning the bathroom and my ADD kicks in and I get distracted by some other task, but I leave the cleaning supplies there waiting for me…AND I blink a time or two, this is what I find: 

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