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...

Signing

After about 5 or 6 months of signing "all done" to Roanen when he's done eating or finished his bath, he is catching on a little bit. Yesterday he looked intently at me when I did it, then raised his hands and opened and closed them like a wave. Once he really starts doing it I'll probably add in more signs like hungry, more, and again. Just the basics, like we did with Josey and maybe it will take some frustration out of Roanen's apparently awful world.
I may be on to something with Roanen sleeping too. When he naps later in the afternoon he goes to bed about an hour or so later at night (around 8 PM) and he ends up only getting up about 3 times a night and seems to sleep more deeply and go down easier too. Might be just a coincidence, but we'll see. I do like when he goes down at 7 PM though, because it gives me so much free time in the evening since I'm generally exhausted by 9 every night...
Josey has now asked for puppies at our new house. I just toilet trained a 2 year old, I don't need pee and poop all over my house again.

The Move Issue

I think I may have figured out Josey's problem with moving. We forgot to mention to him that we're not just leaving everything behind and moving into another house with different stuff. I noticed that when we talked about moving he would grab at something - his bed, the chair, a stuffed animal - so I finally clued in that he was scared of losing all his stuff. Now that I reassured him that he can bring anything he wants (within reason - he informed me that he wanted to bring the basement and that we would have to dig it out) he seems happier and says "Yay! We got the house!" a lot. Today he's been carrying around a printout of the house listing, so maybe that's a good sign.

Our Budding Realtor

Since we've had a market analysis done on our house, as well as shown it to a few people, Josey has picked up all the skills needed to show a house. This afternoon he insisted on carrying a stool around, dropping it in the middle of every room, climbing up, then pointing to the ceiling and saying "This ceiling new".
We've also broached the subject of moving to him a few times, and surprisingly enough he's not very happy about it. He gets grouchy and says "I want stay here in our house", or "I not want to get new house". I really wasn't expecting this, since he's usually so adaptable and easy, so I hope it doesn't last because God knows I don't want this process to be any harder than it has to be. Not even the promise of a sandbox and weekly visits to Toybus seem to make a difference, although he did ask Russ for a pony at the new house today. He might settle for a goat though, because Daddy said absolutely not. We've got time to get him used to the idea, so hopefully there won't be any problems by moving day.

They'll hear about this when they're teenagers...

As we were driving this afternoon I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the boys smiling at each other and holding hands across the middle seat. Now I can tell them when they're 16 and 14 that they really did love each other once.

My Genius Child

Ok, so kids in general have amazing brain power and he's probably not a genius, but this was pretty cool anyway. On Sunday morning while I made breakfast I put on a CD I got a few weeks ago. It's part of a kit called "Learn Italian with your Children" and consists of 3 CDs with word repetition and songs, and some activity books. It was pretty cheap at Costco and I thought it would be a good idea to expose the kids to some basic Italian before we take them to Italy so I got it. We listened to it a few times, but Josey pretty much balked at repeating anything and didn't really want to pay attention (which I expected - he's 2). We hadn't listened to it in a couple of weeks, but when I suggested putting it on, Josey agreed and said "They gonna start with "Bondonno"? (Buongiorno, or hello) So my mom was right when she said he would absorb it with it just playing in the background when he didn't seem to be paying attention. Kids are neato :)
On another note, last night around 12:30 Josey came into our bedroom and said he had to go pee, which is a first. He's fully toilet trained during the day, but still wears a diaper at night and it usually gets pretty wet by the morning. I've heard that most kids take until they're almost 4 to be night trained, but maybe it's happening early. It's good that he's recognizing it, anyway. It may have something to do with the fact that he's been questioning why he has to wear a diaper at night and commenting that babies wear diapers.
And finally, the boys seem to be getting along much better. There's not nearly as much pushing and knocking down, so Roanen is enjoying playing near Josey much more. However, Roanen has developed quite a temper, and will shove or try to bite Josey if they try to play with something at the same time. He's also having mini freakouts when I take him away from something, particularly the dishwasher, which he has an obsession with. Gee, I don't know where he'd get that temper and single-mindedness...

New stuff - yay!

Ok, now I can record stuff as it happens in something better than point form :)
Roanen may have turned a corner in his seemingly unhappy existence and has been quite content to play on his own and around Josey for the last couple of days. He still gets fussy once in a while, but I can actually get stuff done without him crawling after me and clinging to my leg, crying constantly. Knock on wood, but I finally feel like things are a little more normal. I can't wait for him to start walking so I don't have to lug him around everywhere, especially outside.
Josey's behaviour is also better, which I've decided is a reward for not killing him last week when he was a complete demon for 7 days straight. I had a horrible guilty mom moment at my mom's, though. Josey hit me, so he got a timeout on the landing going down to the basement (he won't stay in the corner so I have to put him down there and close the door. It's glass so he can see out - I'm not mean enough to just toss him somewhere where he can't see anything...) I waited an appropriate amount of time, then opened the door and asked him why he got a timeout (our usual ritual to make sure he understands why he's being punished) and he refused to answer me and screamed wildly for me to let him out. I told him he could come out when he calmed down and told me why he was having timeout, then closed the door again. This repeated itself several times, until he finally calmed down and told me why, then got a big hug. As usual when he gets really upset, he said he wanted to go to sleep and snuggle with me, so I took him up to our bed and lay down with him. After a couple of sniffles and sighs, he turned to me and said "Mommy, I sorry" and gave me a hug, then proceeded to say "My don't like myself". How's that for awful self-esteem in a 2 year old. Of course, he was his happy old self again in about 3 minutes so hopefully he doesn't have any serious issues, particularly none that were caused by me ;)