The Small Family   

Theo has been quite the big boy this week! He went in the potty two more times, and once pointed to the potty to let me know he had a messy diaper. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about our son over the past 18 months, it’s that he will do something when he’s darn good and ready, and no amount of coaxing from us can persuade him to do anything he doesn’t want to. So, with that in mind, we’re not pushing potty training. Rather, we have potties available upstairs and downstairs, and whenever he points at it, we tell him what it’s for and ask him whether he wants to sit on it. Sometimes he goes and sometimes he doesn’t, and when he does go, we make a big deal out of it. We haven’t moved to putting him on it at specific times throughout the day yet, because when we have tried that, he acts as if he’s afraid of it or unwilling to do it. So, we’re just letting him tell us when he wants to go...and then giving him lots of positive feedback when he does sit on it, and even more positive response when he goes. So we’ll see how that works. If he gets to be four years old and still not potty trained, I reserve the right to change my methods. :-)

Theo has also been a big help with household chores. He likes to help me unload the dishwasher, which has resulted in a couple broken dishes but much fun for him. He is also a big fan of helping me unpack groceries. He very carefully removes one item at a time from the grocery bag and hands it to me, then carefully goes about selecting the next item for removal. This is serious work, you know!

And, the laundry...oh, the laundry. Theo has always been a big fan of sorting clothes...even before he could crawl, he’d sit up and sort through clothes. Nowadays, he will very helpfully throw clothes into the dryer when I’m loading it. (Alas, they are often dirty clothes he has retrieved from his hamper, but such is life with a tiny, eager helper!)

Big fun was had on Wednesday, when we went over to Grandma Diane’s house for an afternoon visit, and Theo was sorting through the rocks in her side yard and carefully putting various ones into a bucket. He’s been sorting Tupperware in the kitchen, too, so he seems to be all about organization these days...albeit organization in a strange, Theo-like fashion.

One thing that has been really neat to see the past week or two is that Theo is suddenly also playing pretend and using his imagination. Everything is a telephone lately. He tucks objects between his shoulder and ear and walks around talking on the “phone.” And a small (empty) ring box of mine that he found became a vessel for food. He kept opening it, taking out imaginary bits of food, eating them, and saying, “Mmmmm!” It’s really cool to see his imagination developing!

In addition to indoor play, we got plenty of opportunities for outdoor play, now that the weather has cooled down to a lovely range of 70 to 80 degrees. Theo and I went to the park several times this week, and we played in the backyard a few times, too. On Sunday, the three of us even fit in a trip to Fairytale Town in Sacramento. For those of you who haven’t been, it’s a two-acre park for kids with a bunch of different play areas themed around various fairy tales and children’s stories. Theo was enamored of The Little Engine That Could; the Billy Goats Gruff (real goats!); four rabbits named Flopsy, Mopsy, Peter, and Cottontail (which he kept quacking at—were any of you aware that rabbits evidently sound like ducks?!); a nifty teepee; Sherwood Forest; and some chickens. It’s a neat park where we could let Theo run amok for the better part of two hours, and he had a ball! In fact, I’m sure he would’ve liked to stay longer, but he was getting tired, so we intervened and took him home for a nap. But it’s just so nice to be able to go outside without melting or getting a sunburn!

Do you know what else is lovely? Naps. I love naps! Alas, Theo has never loved naps. I recently saw a toddler T-shirt that said “Sleep is for the weak,” and I was SO tempted to get it for Theo, because that seems to be his attitude about naps. Or at least it was until this week, when suddenly an alien being replaced my son. This alien being SLEEPS during the day! And then wakes up very cheery and happy, being a delight to his parents for the rest of the day. Where is the crabby kid who fights naps and then is overtired and cranky in the afternoon? Hmm...not sure, but I like this new alien being inhabiting Theo’s body!

Seriously, though, it is strange. As most of you know, I work at home. And thus, I have been able to create a very consistent napping environment for Theo—darkened room, soft music playing, consistent routine every morning before naptime, full belly...everything “they” say you need to get your child into a healthy nap routine. And did it work? Well, eventually...but it took A YEAR! My gosh...they say most kids adapt to a nap routine within a couple weeks...what’s this 12 months business??

And then, Theo would nap, but only for 45 minutes. So we finally found a book that explained what was going on—45 minutes is a natural sleep-cycle length for a toddler, and although many toddlers will sleep right through to a second (and often a third) cycle, some wake up at the end of the first cycle and don’t go back to sleep without help. So, following the book’s strategies, we were able to coax Theo back to sleep after his 45-minute waking, and he would sleep for another 45 minutes. Ninety minutes of napping a day—bliss! I know a lot of parents have toddlers who regularly sleep for two to three hours a day, but hey...we weren’t complaining about 90 minutes. And the book suggested that MOST toddlers would, after a week or two of being coaxed back to sleep at the 45-minute mark, naturally adjust so that they would sleep through to the second cycle without waking. Nope...not Theo. We’ve been doing this strategy for four months now, and I STILL had to go in to his room at 45 minutes, when he’d be sitting up or standing in his crib and crying, and get him back to sleep. So, we resigned ourselves to this—that we would just have to coax him into that second sleep cycle every day. Okay, no problem. At least we get 90 total minutes of napping each day.

And now it’s four months later...and suddenly, Theo has slept for two hours FOUR times this week! And for two of those two-hour naps, he didn’t even wake up in the middle and require coaxing back to sleep...he just slept for two hours. And so, I ask you, who is this imposter? And what has he done with my son? (Seriously, I’m delighted! The two hours allows me to get a ton of work done, and Theo’s disposition after a nap like that is wonderful—he’s sweet, engaging, and not the crabby monster who appears when he doesn’t get enough sleep. However, I refuse to let myself hope that this is a trend. I’ll just cautiously wait and see what transpires. Fingers crossed...)

Theo also had his 18-month checkup earlier this week...sort of. Long story short, his pediatrician had to attend to a critically ill child, so we saw the nurse, who took Theo’s vital stats, and we’ll be going back for a walk-in clinic visit for vaccines and a flu shot on Monday. But good news on two fronts: First, we got Theo switched back to our original pediatrician, who we really liked. She dropped half her patient roster when she was made Asst. Chief of Pediatrics, but I asked her if she would continue caring for Theo, and she happily agreed to take him back on. Yay! I wasn’t crazy about his replacement pediatrician, who was sort of an “I’m in a hurry; why are you in my office” type.

Second, Theo is growing beautifully. He is 24.8 pounds (probably—he was thrashing so much on the scale that it was tough to get an accurate weight), which puts him in the 31^st percentile. He is in the 70^th percentile for height and the 80^th percentile for head circumference. In other words, he is relatively tall and thin with a large head (full of brains, we like to think!).

We also MAY have finally found a dairy alternative that works for Theo—rice milk. We’ve been mixing it with his formula for a few weeks now, and all seems to be going well. His eczema has flared up a bit over this past week, but my allergies have been bad, so I’m waiting to see whether the eczema might just be a seasonal thing—perhaps the same allergen that’s bugging my eyes this week.

We were slightly concerned about whether rice milk would have enough nutritional value, given that it doesn’t have the fat content of regular milk (or even soy milk), but our pediatrician said it’s fine because Theo has an extremely healthy, complete diet, so he’s getting all the nutrients he needs from the rest of his diet. (Lucky for us, he is a very good eater. He loves fruits and vegetables and proteins and starches, so it’s very easy for us to get him a good, balanced meal at most sittings. The kid actually ASKS for broccoli, if you can believe it!)

But it wasn’t all about Theo this week. Chris and I had some adventures, too. Grandma Diane babysat Theo on Friday (they had a great time building towers of big Legos and knocking them down) so Chris and I could take advantage of a “fine dining” special going on in Roseville. We went to Horseshoe Bar and Grill—a place that is normally a little out of our price range and is certainly not a “Theo-friendly” place—and had a wonderful time. I had escargot (first time since France on our honeymoon!) and chicken stuffed with wild mushrooms and cheese, and Chris had Caesar salad and a fantastic salmon. We both had chocolate mousse for dessert, which was fabulous.

And, our other treat to ourselves this week was...drum roll, please...a beautiful new mattress set that Chris likes to point out cost more than his first two cars combined. This is not to say that the mattress set was incredibly expensive—rather, Chris’s first two cars were both very old and very inexpensive! But, the mattress set was a splurge—we went with Tempur-Pedic mattresses instead of regular mattresses. (Tempur-Pedics are the ones on the advertisements where they set a glass of red wine on the mattress and then drop a bowling ball on it, and the glass of wine stays standing and doesn’t spill because the mattress absorbs the impact and does not transfer motion.) So, why the fancy mattress? Well, because it’s our last-ditch effort to remain a couple who shares a bed. Now, this is not necessary, really—plenty of couples sleep separately. But we actually LIKE sharing a bed—it’s just a nice comfort thing at the end of the day to be able to crawl into bed with your spouse and hold hands when you fall asleep. But the problem is, I’m a horrible sleeper who has suffered from insomnia for more than 20 years, and Chris is a very restless sleeper. So he thrashes and wiggles and twitches, and that wakes me up or keeps me awake, since I’m a very light sleeper who has trouble falling asleep. And so, over the past few months, I’ve had to retreat to the floor to sleep...or Chris has, so that I can get a decent night of sleep in the bed. Either way, one of us is sleeping on the floor every night, which is less than fun.

Enter the new mattress set. It’s actually two twins that we can push together to form a king-size bed...and it’s on two different frames, so Chris’s constant wiggling and twitching shouldn’t transfer to my side of the bed (in theory). And, if worse comes to worst, we can always push the two beds apart and have two twin beds. Which would be kind of sad, but no worse than one of us always having to sleep on the floor. So, our lovely new bed(s) will be delivered Monday, and we have high hopes that we will once again be able to fall asleep together!

Our other great fun for the week was having not one but TWO sets of visitors on Saturday! It just so happened that Bill and Sarah (Chris’s cousin and his wife) were up here visiting a friend of Sarah’s on Saturday, so they stopped by for a few hours Saturday afternoon. And Jason (who has been Chris’s friend since they were kids) and Maria and their daughter, Caitlin, were also up in the area Saturday, so they came over for dinner and spent a few hours with us. Funny twist of fate: Both couples are expecting babies. Both happen to be due on March 5^th (cousin Nik’s birthday!). And, both Bill and Maria have birthdays on March 12^th. So how’s that for coincidence? Jason and Maria are expecting a son, so we’ll see whether Bill and Sarah follow suit there, too. (My money is on a girl for them, but we’ll see—they go for their 20-week ultrasound in another week or so and are hoping their little one will cooperate so they can find out the gender.)

Anyway, Theo enjoyed both sets of visitors very much, since he got lots of attention and playtime. And we enjoyed it, too, since it’s really nice to socialize with other grownups every now and then! (Toddlers are great company, but not such great conversationalists, you know?!) We took a walk to Starbucks with Bill and Sarah (Bill may be even more of a ‘Bucks junkie than I am!), and even Luna got to come along for the stroll. When it came time for Bill and Sarah to leave, Theo burst into tears as they shut the door behind them! But not five minutes later, Jason, Maria, and Caitlin (I really hope I’m spelling that right!) arrived, so Theo was a happy guy once again. Caitlin is almost three, and she enjoyed sharing Theo’s toys and playing. Theo is getting more and more interested in interacting with other kids, so although he mostly stood back and watched Caitlin play (or played alongside her), he did interact with her a few times. It’s really neat to see him reaching the stage where he’ll play with someone, instead of just near them.

I had to laugh—we had Luna on the stairs, behind the baby gate, since she tends to be a bit overly exuberant around guests. And Caitlin kept referring to the “doggie on time-out!” I guess it was sort of a time-out, really...but Luna was well rewarded with a lovely rawhide bone, so she wasn’t too sad, except when we ate dinner, which she desperately wanted.

I made homemade lasagna for dinner. I haven’t made one in years, and I just felt like giving it a shot...and besides, lasagna is one of those universal dishes that almost everyone likes. So I was getting slightly annoyed at my skeptic husband...although Chris said he trusted me, he kept questioning me about the lasagna: Why was I using tomatoes instead of spaghetti sauce? Why would I need cottage cheese for it? We could just order pizza, you know.... So although he swears up and down that he DOES trust my cooking abilities, his reactions while we were grocery shopping for the lasagna makings suggested otherwise. And so it was with much smugness and satisfaction that I watched him have a second helping of said lasagna and suggest that we heat up the leftovers for dinner the next night. Ha—Paula Deen (whose recipe I used) and I apparently can cook a lasagna!

And with that, I bid you all a good week!