"Wud" is great :)

Josey is having trouble with saying his Ls, and also his Vs (if they're not at the beginning of the word) so now that he tells us he loves us it comes out as "I wud you". It sounds really cute, especially when he says it spontaneously. A couple of days ago I put my hair into braids and when he finally noticed he was absolutely delighted and said "Oh Mommy! I wud you! I wud your hair like that!"

Rude Boy!

We've been having some issues with Josey either totally ignoring people when he's spoken to, or else being extremely rude. I first noticed that he was acting funny when we were at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago. Normally he'll say hi and wave to everyone he sees, or else give a big smile, but when someone talked to him, he got a disturbed "Who the heck is this stranger" look and walked away really fast. Not such a big deal, but at Carlingwood last week a lady came up to us and was talking to Roanen (who is now Mr Happy in public), then noticed Josey was behind him in the stroller. When she talked to him, he gave her a really nasty (not even cute nasty) look, disgusted curled lip and all, and snarled at her. Afterwards, when we told him that he should be nice and smile at people, he said "No - I make my angry face!" Later on he said he made his angry face because "People were touching my brother". As if this wasn't bad enough, he was nasty to my grandmother when she came to visit, and slammed the door at her, then refused to talk to her. This happened a couple of times when she came over, including an incident where he told her to go away really rudely. Needless to say she was devastated, and stopped coming over for a couple of days because she was upset about it. (As an aside, Roanen was making up for it by climbing up on her and hugging her really sweetly whenever she came over) We ended up having a big talk with him about how he needed to be nice to people, and especially Mom because she was very sad about how he was treating her, and he went over to her house and hugged her and told her he loved her. Since then, he's been trying really hard to be nice to people, and is even going to meet Daddy at the door, which he hasn't done in a while. When I was talking to him about starting his skating lessons, he asked who was going to help him learn to skate, then said "I not going to be shy with those ladies, and I not going to be angry with them", so maybe he really is learning something.
On the topic of respect, Josey has also surprised us by teaching himself to shake hands when meeting someone. I think he really pays attention to the fact that Russ shakes hands, so he's been doing it too. At Russ' sister's place this weekend, I asked him to say hi to his cousin Ryan and he said hi, then picked up his hand off a chair and shook it. Cute!

For now, anyway...

Josey came up to me last night with a huge grin, gave me a big hug, then said "Mommy, Roanen is my BESTEST friend!" Of course, this morning he was back to shoving Roanen to the ground backwards by the face, but they love each other. Really.

Sign to your Babies!

Roanen has really caught on to the idea of signing lately, which is helping his frustration issues. When he starts screaming in his highchair, I just ask him what he wants and he remembers that he can communicate a little bit now. He knows "all done", "more", and sometimes "hungry". He may also be telling me "sleepy", but I'm not sure. He bangs on his ear around naptime and bedtime, but I didn't put the two together until recently, since I really hadn't shown him the sign much. Maybe he's just a genius child. Probably :) He's also saying a couple of words now. He says "Da" for dance, and does a little baby dance, and when we put the Christmas tree up he was saying "Yai - tee!" for "Lights - tree". Now he'll say "Yai" for any kind of light too. And he sort of says "Kitty" and "Fishy". Won't say mommy or daddy, so we know what his priorities are.

Failed Sleep Training

On Saturday night I decided I would put my plan of just putting Roanen into his crib, and lying him down every time he stood up until he eventually fell asleep. It went way worse than I expected, with him becoming violently upset and I ended up just nursing him to sleep once again, with my nerves completely shot. Other than the fact that he's got a nasty temper, it seemed to be a problem that he sleeps on his tummy. Whenever I'd try to lay him down, he'd just bend his knees and go instantly into a crawling position instead of lying straight. I tried to put him on his back a couple of times, but he kept kicking his legs through the bars of the crib and twisting and I was afraid that he'd break a leg. I think the next step is to just try to give him a bottle at bedtime (maybe get Russ to do it), then give him a bottle when he wakes up in the night. He's getting up about every 1.5 hrs now, and usually comes into bed with us sometime after 1:00, where he either fools around and talks, or wants to nurse constantly, which kills my back. Anyway, it's not fun and I'm hoping he'll grow out of this like Josey did. I'm not counting on it though since he's way more attached to me than Josey was, but I can dream...

The family that gets sick together stays together...

We just had a lovely couple of weeks with e ach of us getting sick in turn. First Roanen got a fever and starting puking and continued doing so for 48 hours. He refused to eat anything and just wanted to cuddle for 2 days straight. This is something I've never had to deal with since Josey has always been such a healthy kid. Then again, I should have expected it with Roanen being our "defective child" as the doctor likes to call him. As soon as he got better Russ started feeling ill and had to stay home from work. Then Josey got a fever and was crying and complaining that something was in his throat and it was hurting him. We couldn't see anything, but he made himself cough so much that he ended up throwing up a little. He also talked loudly in his sleep for 3 nights and during his naps and Russ ended up having to sleep with him. I walked on eggshells for an entire week figuring it was inevitable that I would catch something since I had been puked on 6 times, changed and wiped seemingly endless diarrhea covered bums, and slept in the same bed as Russ, but I never got a stomach bug. On Monday, however, my bones and joints really started to ache and my throat got sore. I figure I ended up with strep throat and am only getting over it now, 4 days later. I'm actually glad that I got this, rather than being stuffed up or having stomach problems because this was a lot easier to deal with.
On the behaviour side, Roanen was an absolute pain in the butt after he started feeling better and screamed bloody murder every time I put him down. Not only that, but he wouldn't just sit on my lap, he wanted to be walked around (and even then he still cried sometimes). Fortunately after his worst weekend ever, on Monday morning he played on his own and with Josey for a couple of hours without whining or needing to be held. I think it was a reward for not killing him when he was being such a brat. This week he's been pretty good, although I'm getting really sick of him taking forever to nurse to sleep, then having short naps and waking up at least 3 or 4 times a night. He's also been trying to wake up REALLY early (yesterday he didn't go back to sleep after 4:15 AM) and fooling around in our bed until Russ gets up with him, cursing him the whole time. I'm working up the nerve to begin using the Baby Whisperer methods again, which involve putting him in his bed at naptime and bedtime, and laying him down every time he stands up until he finally falls asleep. This is also supposed to be done if (ok, who am I kidding here - it's not an if, it's a when) he wakes in the middle of the night as well. This is sure to cause hours of violent screaming for at least a week, which I really don't want to deal with. Of course, I don't want to deal with night wakings, or repeatedly unlatching him just to have him freak at me when I put him down either, and I don't think he'll grow out of night wakings as easily as Josey did. We'll see how it goes...