Friday, August 26, 2011

Life is Never Dull.

I take it back. Any time I ever complained about being bored, I deeply regret it now.  Just in this summer alone we have had a broken arm, a knocked out tooth, a hotel lock-out, a play-pen escapee and a tsunami alarm on the beach.  Tonight we add to the list - a destroyed crib! Baby-Bug is definitely more physically adventurous than either of his brothers were at this age.  Big-Bug was the only kiddo when he was going on two, so he was having to figure everything out on his own.  Middle-Bug was (and is) just the type of personality that would rather snuggle and give hugs than run around and climb things - although he has still had more than his share of bumps and bruises! Baby-Bug though, he has TWO big brothers to keep up with and he takes that job very seriously.  He started climbing the ladder on his brothers' bunk bed before his first birthday (which prompted us to un-stack the bunk beds pretty quickly!) He is fearless on a play structure, we have to stack our kitchen chairs when they are not in use to keep him from climbing up onto the table and I routinely find him standing on the back of the sofa (eek!)

Tonight my husband is at a baseball game, so I was looking forward to having the house to myself (a rare occurrence.)  I made homemade pizza for the kiddos, gave them a bath, brushed their teeth, read them each a story and tucked them into bed.  All three boys were being so good and we really had a pleasant night together.  After I had said goodnight, I fixed myself an iced coffee with almond milk, popped in a movie and got ready to settle in and fold some laundry.  I could hear a little giggling coming from the bedroom, but it was pretty quiet.  Then Big-Bug hollered out "Uh oh mom, I have some BAD NEWS!" I hurried down the hall to see what was wrong and found one of the crib bars of Baby-Bug's crib split in two!  According to his brothers he was kicking at his crib with his feet and yanking on the bars with his arms at the same time.  Apparently this is an effective method of escaping!  Obviously I was not about to leave him sleeping next to the crib bar-turned-spear tip so I set about converting his crib into a toddler bed (thankfully he broke a bar on the removable side of the crib!)  Naturally - this transition is not going well.  It has been almost two hours since I put the kids to bed and all three are still awake.  Baby-Bug won't stay in his bed, he is REALLY enjoying his new freedom.  I had to put a baby gate in the bedroom doorway so I can sleep tonight (Baby-Bug also knows how to unlock and open the front door!) and the gate is doing a pretty good job of containing the chaos.  There is however, a small pile of stuffed animals accumulating in the hallway outside their bedroom.  Poor Big-Bug is trying hard to sleep in a room with his mini-tornado baby brother, but I had to pull Middle-Bug out and put him to sleep in our bed because he was encouraging Baby-Bugs antics a little too enthusiastically.

The Carnage

I'm not sure where we are going to go from here now.  Obviously Baby-Bug can not remain un-contained in a bedroom with his big brothers.  So it's either a new crib (which we probably only use for 4-6 months tops) or it's a re-shuffling of bedrooms......we shall see.  We are a family of five in a three bedroom house, so someone has to share no matter what.  Lately I have been extremely tempted to just get a murphy bed for the living room and give up our bedroom to the kids.  We hardly use our room anyway, we only go in there to retrieve clothing or sleep, so it wouldn't make that big of an impact.  The only issue would be storage...oh, and getting my husband on board  haha

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Reading with Baby-Bug

This afternoon Baby-Bug carried a board book out to me and wanted to read together.  This particular book doesn't have any words, it just has a collection of related, brightly-colored photos on each page.  When I "read" this book with one of the boys, I typically just point to each picture and say the name of the object.  Today when Baby-Bug handed the book to me, he pointed to one of the small pictures on the cover and said "shoes!" This is the first time he has ever said the word "shoes" and he definitely knew what he was saying.  I decided to mix things up this time as we read the book, and instead of pointing to the objects and saying their name, I would ask Baby-Bug to point to a particular object on each page.  We made it through the book and by the end I was amazed at his comprehension! He could point out shoes, pants, a shirt, a car, books, teddy bears, a stroller, cup, spoon and fork, an apple, banana, ball, a nose, a mouth, a hand, strawberries, a dog, a fish, a hat, rain boots, a tricycle, a crib (which he called "nigh-night") and a boat.  When he pointed to the boat he even sang "yo-ho yo-ho!" haha. Obviously a lot of these objects are things he interacts with on a daily basis, so it makes sense that he has been exposed to those words, but I was really surprised he knew all the names for those objects because they aren't words he speaks (yet.)  He was pretty pleased with himself!

The other boys enjoyed some reading today as well.  We had a stop at a book store earlier so I could pick up the next four books in a series I am currently reading and I let Big-Bug and Middle-Bug each pick a new book as well.  Instead of books though, the boys decided on comic books!  This is a first for us :)  Big-Bug picked a Star Wars Clone Wars comic (which was pretty neat, even included pages with mechanical specs on some of the fighter planes - Big-Bug was way into that!) and Middle-Bug picked an X-men comic book that also featured a guest appearance from Spiderman! I had to censor out a word a couple of times, but it was a pretty neat story and the kids ate it up!  I have a feeling there will be more comics in our future...