Picked up the kids from school at 3pm and took them swimming.  After last week, I made sure to repeatedly talk to the kids about listening to the teacher and the consequence if they didn’t.  They did great.  We then went back to Eton school where the kids went to clubhouse while I sat in on a Q&A with a candidate for the headmaster position.  Everything was still going well on the way out, and I picked up Wendy’s for dinner — chicken nugget and french fry happy meal to go.

Unsurprisingly, Caitlyn fell asleep on the way home, so I took her right to bed – around 7:15pm.  Simeon, not only got some play time, but he chose to watch Monday Night Football as his bedtime show[1].  5 minutes after the game was over, he was asleep on the couch.  Having taken show time as an opportunity to prepare the next day’s lunch, I decided to go to bed early myself.  9:30ish and my light was off.  About 10pm, I hear Caitlyn.  Get her tucked into bed again and try to do the same myself.

By 10:30 I hear a strange sound and crying.  I run over to her room and she tells me she’s sick.  Sure enough, she’s thrown up all over her blanket and shirt.  The next hour and a half is spent changing her sheets, washing her hair, being there and doing what I can as she leans over the porcelain throne a couple more times, starting laundry[2], changing her clothes (twice) and just staying with her as she gets back to sleep.  I kept myself awake for a bit and sure enough around midnight or 1:00am she woke again and asked to sleep in my bed.  I don’t usually allow this, but she needed sleep and comforting, so I helped her into Ari’s spot of the bed.

As I laid back down, I thought about the night’s events and was amazed that it all took place in such a short amount of time.

I realize I have been quite lucky where illness is concerned.  The kids have been sick (and of course generally get physically ill when Ari is not able to help) but it’s not a regular occurrence.  The fact that everybody was again asleep by 1:30am and everybody was just fine this morning…could definitely have been a whole lot worse.

[1] He rooted for the Bears because “Daddy’s in Chicago”.
[2] Managed to get the first set of stuff washed and in the dryer and then start the sheets before going back to bed…not bad, if I do say so myself.

Let’s see how it looks…

This past weekend, while at a picnic, my back decided to rebel.  A muscle spasm had me hurting for the rest of the evening and all next day.  I’m still hurting, but not nearly to the point of wondering if I need to see the doctor.

One of my biggest concerns was Saturday night / Sunday morning.  Generally, I’m the one that deals with kids who wake up at night and I’m the one they wake up first in the morning.  Thankfully, lack of naps and being out in the sun all afternoon was enough to knock them out on the drive home and not wake up until morning.  Come morning, when told my back still hurt and they needed to be gentle, they listened.  Caitlyn even offered me a paper bandaid she cut out for me.  Well, offered doesn’t seem to be quite the right word since she refused to take anything but acceptance and ‘thank you’ for an answer.

Later in the afternoon, I was feeling better and felt well enough to walk across the street and get our mail.  Caitlyn really wanted to come too and quickly grabbed a pair of shoes.  Still finding it difficult to bend over, I asked her to get my shoes then went and sat on the couch.  She not only brought them over, but sat down started to put them on my feet. 

Even Simeon is quite the helper.  I generally enlist his help when I’m busy and Caitlyn needs something – be it closing the screen door to the backyard or reaching a book for her in the backseat of the car.  More often than not, he replies to my request with “sure, sure” and off he goes. 

While it’s ‘easy’[1] to set a list of chores for the kids to do and consider it helping around the house, it’s another to see just how much they help with the little things that are so easy to be taken for granted.

[1] Easy to make the list…following through on that list is another matter.

Me: Did you get a haircut today?
Caitlyn: yes.  Simi too.
Me: Yes, Simeon got a haircut too.  Do you like it?
Caitlyn: yes.  It’s pretty.

Yesterday morning, Simeon came in to my bedroom holding his pirate ship and said he was going to put on a play.  He then asked for $6 and explained the show would be in his room.  Quite amused, I told him he should go talk to Daddy.  As he left our room, he asked me to bring Maggie (our cat) to the show as well, but she didn’t have to pay.  Upon arrival to his room, I was told “bum on the bed, feet on the floor and head up.”  Seems daddy had tried to watch the show laying on Simeon’s bed.

Then there’s Caitlyn.  Last week, I accompanied Caitlyn on a school field trip.  Since her favorite animal is the lion, I thought I should get a picture of her on one of the lion statues.  With the camera up, I asked her, “what do you say?”  Instead of the expected “cheese”,  I got “Roar!”  Definitely turned out to be better picture that way.

When last I posted, we were dealing with bedtime and pacifier issues.  Thankfully, the pacifier removal was pretty quick – less than 2 weeks and it was forgotten.  Unfortunately, bedtime continues to be exhausting.  Finding ways to get her to relax and calm down for bedtime is difficult and I’ve finally resorted to putting the baby gate up to keep her from leaving her room.  I got excited too early when I didn’t need to use it a couple days into the tactic.  *sigh*

The new thing to get excited about though is potty training.  Last week, the teachers at school decided to use my trick of making her count to 10 before getting off the potty.  Sure enough, keeping her on a little longer produced results.  That day she wound up going 3 times on the potty and it’s been constant since then.  Dry or wet, we’re onto day 5 in a row of peeing in the potty.  Last night at dinner, she even told me she needed to go to the potty and when we got there not only did she pee, but she had a dry diaper!  And today she was wet only once.  Next is pooping and then…woot!

Simeon is being a great supporter of Caitlyn’s potty training effort.  Today, when we went into her classroom, he immediatly walked over to the board and was excited for her when he saw she went potty all 3 or 4 times.  On our way out of the parking lot he said “Oh. My. Goodness. You went potty four times today!  I’m so proud of you!”

That being said, I was very thankful that Simeon never wanted one.  He was just fine twirling his hair for self-comfort.  Caitlyn on the other hand - while copying her brother’s hair twisting – needed more.  At some point, I realized that she wasn’t actually using the night feeding for food. All she wanted was something to suck on.  Since I was exhausted and Ari was sleeping through the night, I decided I would give her a pacifier.  Sure enough, it worked.

Unfortunately, I’ve reached the point that had me hoping to never use pacifiers…the stopping point. 

I purposely kept pacifier use to sleeping only.  I gave one to the daycare for naptime and was disappointed when I found they were using it for more than just naps.  However, they apparently lost it on a buggy ride one day and never asked for another.  I actually found out when she moved up to the next class and the teacher said she had no idea Caitlyn used a pacifier – she slept at naps just fine without it.  It figured that she would still get fussy without it at night – arms outstretched reaching for it.  So it became an only-in-the-crib thing.

Then we moved her mattress out of the crib because she was trying to climb out.  I was tempted to take the pacifier at that point, but decided I would just do it when we moved her into a bed or when she could actually use words to say she wanted it.

The word came pretty quickly and the opportunity of quitting time showed itself not long after.

Over memorial day weekend, we stayed at a Lake Chelan lake house (thanks for the invite, C!).  Because my brother didn’t arrive until Saturday afternoon, Ari, his mother and the kids left a day before me.  After picking my brother up at the airport, I called Ari to see if he needed me to bring anything and, with Caitlyn nearby, he whispered ‘Paci’ over the phone.  I grabbed one on the way but decided to leave it in the car.  She managed to get to sleep the night before, so I wanted to see if we could continue while we were away from home.  It turned out relatively easy.

Then we came back home.

It wasn’t like she would go down easily before the trip, but I didn’t want to give her the pacifier just to get her to lay down…she needs to find another means of self-comfort at some point.  The weekend following Memorial Day, Ari turned the crib into a toddler bed, but unfortunately not a change of rooms as we originally were thinking; so more than a week with no pacifier she was still asking for it (though not as much) and still climbing out of bed and running out of her room instead of going down at night.

I’ve been trying the SuperNanny method of simply putting her back in bed without saying anything.  Unfortunately, I’m not as consistent as I need to be and Ari is usually so tired he just brings her into our bed and waits it out.  And while I know it isn’t an immediate cure and it takes more than one night…darn it, the TV show makes it look easy after the first night.

The other night even I had pacifier withdrawal and when Caitlyn said ‘Paci! Paci!’ I actually came to our room and asked Ari if I should just give it to her.  Of course he wasn’t much help…his response was to choose one of the following 1) go ahead and give it to her 2) guard her door 3) bring her in our bed until she calms herself down.

I then went and picked her up and put her back in bed without a word.

Yet one more week later and she’s at least stopped asking for the pacifier. Unfortunately, her body seems to be attached to a 10pm bedtime no matter when I attempt to put her down and she still won’t stay in her room either. 

So, while she seems to be off the pacifier I’m still going through withdrawal..

What it all comes down to is patterns.  He loves patterns.  It’s actually how he reads.  He doesn’t really sound out the word; he remembers the pattern of letters and just knows the word the next time he sees it[2].

The other day I tried using patterns to help him understand the logic of taking an equal number of turns with a toy.  He wanted to not only be the first to play with this toy, but the last one as well.  So I sat down with him, a pen and a piece of paper.

Me: [Write "X Y X" on the  paper] Let’s say the X is you and the Y is Caitlyn. How many Xs are there?
Simeon: Two
Me: How many Ys are there?
Simeon: One
Me: Is that a full pattern of equal Xs and Ys?
Simeon: No
Me: What do we need to complete the pattern?
Simeon: X Y X Y [which I then write down]
Me: So if the Xs are you and the Ys are Caitlyn and you got to play with the toy first, who should get to play last so everybody gets to play the same amount?
Simeon: Caitlyn
Me: Good job.
Simeon: [A couple minutes later] But I want an X Y X X Y X X pattern.

The next day, Simeon grabbed the same toy and said he wanted a Y X Y X pattern and he wanted to be Y this time. 

After our ‘lesson’ I didn’t really know if he understood it.  My mother-in-law has said numerous times that you can’t use logic with a child until at least age 7, but darn it if Simeon doesn’t seem to get it here.  Add that to how he played his teacher’s at school today[3] and I get the feeling he has a good enough grasp of logic I should be worried.

[1] I wonder how much Caitlyn will follow his love for math.  She shows more of an interest in art and writing than math, but she keeps asking for Team Umizoomi – a preschool math show.
[2] It works most of the time, but quite often he does wind up with the wrong guess.  Such as at Passover when he asked ‘Why on this night do we recycle?’ instead of asking why we recline.
[3] Simeon took his baseball bat to school today hoping to play some teeball.  When it was time for afternoon recess, he told Ms. H that Ms. J said it was ok to take his bat outside.  He then told Ms. J that Ms. H said it was ok.  They eventually figured out neither one had actually said it was ok.  Ms. J then asked Simeon ‘Did you ask if you could take out your bat?’ He got a sheepish look on his face and simply put his bat back without another word.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember it word for word, but the gist of it was that there were four letter Us and one-by-one they left.  I remember that the first one went underwater, another one got on a boat, and the last one was eaten by a shark.  He commented that it was a scary story, to which I concurred.

A little later, he changed his mind and decided he was instead going to sing a song.  This one was definitely memorable…enough that I had it stuck in my head all morning…

U is for Unicorn…Unicorn…Unicorn. U is for unicorn, U…U…U.
U is for Umbrella…Umbrellla…Umbrella.  U is for Umbrella. U…U…U.
U is for Up….Up…Up. U is for Up.  Up…Up…Up.
U is for Underground…Underground…Underground.  U is for Underground.  U…U…U.

The rest of the song is just repetition of one of those versus.  Most often unicorn or umbrella.  And I admit I suggested underground, but he definitely kept it going.

Saturday morning, Simeon came to my bedroom door asking if he could watch a movie in bed.  I said sure and snuggled back under the covers.  Sometime later, Caitlyn woke up and came to the doorway.  I said that if she wanted to watch a show with Simeon she had to put her pacifier away.  She took it out of her mouth, ran back to her room and returned without it.  I then told her to go to Simeon’s room and off she went.  Didn’t hear anything so I assumed they were good and snuggled under the covers again.

At some point, it was time to get them dressed.  Ari got Caitlyn dressed, but was having trouble convincing Simeon show time was over.  When I got there, I discovered they were watching a dvd about Sesame Street’s Baby Bear learning to deal with a new baby sister – a movie we were given when I was pregnant with Caitlyn.  Simeon started talking to me about the movie, and explained that there were 3 bears, but then the baby popped out of the mommy and then there were four. He then continued…

“You’re going to have a baby.”
“What?”
“You’re going to have a baby tomorrow.”
“Do I look big enough to have a baby?”
“It takes a couple days.”

A bit later we were getting out of the car to head into the coffee/donut shop.  I asked Simeon if he wanted a donut…

“Yes.”
“Do you know what you want?”
“Yes.  The messy one.”