Early Riser April 30, 2013

We are really pretty lucky when it comes to our kids and sleep, but lately Layla has been getting up a bit too early and refusing to go back to bed.

She has been in a big girl bed for 4 months or so, so we are really at her mercy to stay in bed.  We never had any trouble whatsoever with Hayden when he went in his big boy bed all those years ago.  We told him he couldn’t get out of it, and he listened.  Layla on the other hand has no trouble making her own rules and coming into our room an hour or more before wake up time.  Last night, in fact, in the middle of the night I woke to her climbing into bed in between me and John.  I had to physically pick her up and carry her back to her bed.

So my friend Anita has lent me this clock that is supposed to show her when it is ok to get up.  You set it to a specific time, and once that time comes it lights up and has a picture of the sun on it.  All through the night it stays dark and has a picture of a star on it, to show it’s time for sleep.  Last night was the first night we tried it.  She was really excited about it at first (as was Hayden, who wanted one in his room), then as it got closer to bedtime she started to act a little scared of it.  She asked me to take it out of the room, but I was able to talk her out of that.  We tried to set it to an early enough time that she wouldn’t have to wait too long before she saw the sun light up.  We figured we’d get her used to it and as she got the hang of it we’d start setting the time a little later each day.  She woke up before it lit up though.  John took her back into her room and stayed with her until it lit up.  So, hopefully she will know for tomorrow what will happen.  It would be good to be able to get an extra 30 minutes or so in the morning – particularly on the weekend!

Singin’ and Addin’

Hayden loves to “put on a song” or “put on a CD”, which means he is going to start singing.  He’ll take a book and “sing” the story that he is seeing, with a lot of musical sounds in accompaniment (almost like “doo-doo-doo” but more of an unspellable sound).  Yesterday he had been looking at a train book, and he started singing a song that said “train” over and over with various humming/instrumental sounds in between.  It’s fun to see such a creative side coming out in him.

He also spends a lot of his energy on adding.  Specifically, he likes to think of things that add up to 12.  He could easily pass and hour or two asking, “Does 6 plus 6 equal 12?” “Does 9 plus 3 equal 12?” or “what does 7 plus 5 equal?” If I give the right answer, he’ll tell me Yes, good job!  But if I tease him and give him a different number he’ll laugh and tell me no.  I try to get him to branch out a bit since he clearly has 12 down really well and I’ll try with another number like 15, but he is not too receptive about other numbers. 

It’s also worth noting that he has mentioned several times lately that his favorite number is 7.  He had several favorite numbers before, but 7 seems to be holding the top spot currently.

Easter April 15, 2013

Again, not really sure where to start since we haven’t written in so long.  So Easter it is!  We went to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt, as we like to do each year.  Thought we would miss it this year as we were scheduled to be out of town, but had to cancel that trip at the last minute due to predicted snow.  So had to quickly go get Layla an Easter dress for the occasion to peak out from under her coat (since it has taken FOREVER for spring to get here!).  Layla was scared of the Easter bunny and wouldn’t sit on his lap, so bit of a bummer that we couldn’t get a photo of the kids together with him.

Easter weekend we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s on Saturday.  Normally we have a big Easter brunch with the whole family, but everyone was out of town except us and Grandma and Grandpa, so we had a little get together with Chinese food.  We were able to

throw together a post-Easter brunch with the rest of the gang the following weekend though (by now it might be apparent that the kids had PLENTY of Easter time this year).  They also had an Easter egg hunt at their day care center.  Then Sunday we went to Grandpaman’s and Grandma G’s.  Our friends the Carter’s joined us – they are here from the UK for 3 years, much to our delight.  My dad and Gretchen were kind enough to invite them over, and we had some wonderful food and play time there.

Teeth!

I’m really sad that it has been so long since either of us posted.  I got a new position and went up to full time in March.  It’s been good and luckily it’s mostly manageable, but so far it hasn’t left enough free time to keep up with blogging (and then the longer you go without blogging, the more there is to write about, and the more daunting it seems to start posting!).  So I don’t really know where to begin, so I’ll start with the face that our (5 year old) baby boy has started to lose his teeth!  He lost the first, heart breakingly, when John and I were in Cozumel on vacation and the kids were with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days.  It wasn’t really even that loose, but it decided to pop out while we were gone.  I remember when I lost my first tooth, and the second one fell out the day after the first, so I thought Hayden’s second would come out quickly, but it took until 2 days ago which was 5 or 6 weeks later.  It was pretty loose for a while, but he doesn’t really seem to bother with his teeth when they are loose (I remember I was a big time tooth wiggler when mine were loose) so it took a long time to come out.  I picked him up from a birthday party on Saturday, and it was gone!  He didn’t seem to realize, nor did anyone else who had been at the party.  So with both of the teeth it seems like they must have come out when he was eating and he swallowed them or something because we’ve never seen them once they’ve come out!