Uninterrupted Sleep, and a Review

A quick update to our sleeping situation:  The last couple nights have been great and we’ve had uninterrupted sleep – yay!  A is still getting up early (6 am) but he’s able to play by himself or watch TV so that hubby and I get in a few extra winks.  Another big development has been that A asked stopped wearing an overnight diaper at night!  He’s officially 100% potty trained.  Woot Woot!!  I thought not wearing the diaper at night would result in more wake ups to use the potty, but it hasn’t.  He’s able to go the whole night without needing the potty.

On a separate note, I bought this magnetic responsibility chart made by Melissa & Doug a few months ago for A when it was on sale at amazon.  I love their toys, so when I saw this I just couldn’t pass it up.

I just recently opened it to start using it with him and I have to say it’s pretty cute.  It includes tasks that are applicable now, ones for the future plus a couple blank ones for us to write our own.  My favorite is the “no whining” one, which I doubt he’ll be earning a smiley for anytime soon. LOL  When he finally does earn a perfect weekly score, he’ll be allowed to pick a prize from the prize bag.  A gets so excited to earn a smiley face and in just the last week has been more interested in dressing himself and doing other things for himself.  So if you’re looking for something to motivate your preschooler I recommend giving this a try.

Thomasville

I should rename our house Thomasville….or better yet just hang a sign outside that says “Welcome to the Island of Sodor”.  To say that my son loves Thomas the Tank Engine is an understatement.  He’s borderline obsessed.  What started with a Thomas train received for his 1^st birthday has grown into this:

That’s just the tracks that fit onto his train table and doesn't include all his other Thomas things.  He also has a blanket, PJs, other Thomas toys, books, a Thomas table & chairs set…..you get the idea. (See A Thomas Christmas)  We rarely leave the house without Thomas, Percy, or one of his other favorites in tow.   I don’t mind all the trains though, because he plays with it constantly and does a lot of role playing with the engines. The conversations he thinks up between his engines keep my husband and I laughing.  

It also keeps him occupied during the (very) early morning hours when he wakes up so that we can sleep in a little bit longer.  We’ve accepted the fact that he’s an early riser but are starting to teach him that just because he likes to get up early doesn’t mean Mommy & Daddy do also.   The other morning he woke up at 5:30 (ugh), came into our room and announced “Mommy, Daddy, I’m awake.  But I’m going to go play with my trains”.  And off to his room he went for another 45 minutes.  Sweet!! 

Bless that little blue engine :)

Wordless Wednesday - Mother's Day

A Nightmare on OUR Street

It all started one night with the pitter patter of feet across the hallway and then the heart wrenching words “Moooommmyyyy, I had a bad dream.”  The first time it happens you feel awful for your child – you rock them, hold them do whatever you can to make them feel safe and get them back to sleep.  However, when it happens multiple times a night for weeks on end, my empathy (and patience) starts to run a bit thin.   A has always talked in his sleep, but these nightmares are a new occurrence.  So I of course ran off to read whatever I could about toddler nightmares, Turns out that it’s normal for kids to start having them around 3 years old.  Yup, that’s my kid - the punctual one.

They started out of the blue and then got worse after A got bit by a tick 2 weeks ago.  He started to freak out that the “bugs were going to get him.” My fix:  a special magic potion we sprayed each night around his bed that creates a force field no bug could get through (aka a spray bottle with water and a label made on photoshop).  Well, that took care of 1 waking….

Next up my sleeve: my spur of the moment dream catcher.  I took a shell necklace I had laying around, tied it to the lower part of his bedpost and told him that the magic necklace will take away all his bad dreams.  Ok…that took away another waking.

So we’re down to 1x a night and I’m out of crafty ideas.  Sometimes I wonder if he’s really had a bad dream or just wants more snuggle time with us, but I can’t ever make him think I don’t believe him.  So I try my hardest (in my sleepiness) to treat each time seriously, comfort him best I can and bring him back to bed.  And until this phase comes to an end (hopefully soon) I will simply be buying more coffee and concealer for the baggies under my eyes.

Huh? Where'd they Go?

So apparently blogger has decided to grow a mind of it’s own and delete comments from my blogs.  My post from yesterday has mysteriously lost all of it's comments.....odd.  Guess blogger didn't like what you guys had to say.  LOL

The Early Bird Catches the Worm

I am always early to everything.  I find it rude to make people wait so I try not to make others wait for me unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.   Like the saying goes “to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late”.  Both my husband and I are early people so you can guarantee that unless something blows up, we’ll be there 10-15 minutes early for any party, appointment, etc…  (that is, as long as it’s an event we want to be at.  LOL)

It drives me completely bananas at work that everyone at my job thinks it’s acceptable to be late to meetings.  They call it being on ___ time.  (The blank being the name of my company.)  However when I have a crammed day, the last thing I want to be doing is wasting 15 minutes waiting for a meeting to start when I could have used those minutes to get some extra work done.

I thought having a baby would immediately throw my time stamp out the window, but it hasn’t.  I just know that I need to start getting things ready to go a little bit earlier than I did before I had a kid.  Plus there’s my husband who is there to keep us on time as well.

This week’s Working Mommy Wednesday prompt from Julia over at Work, Wife, Mom….Life! is: Do you typically run early, on time, or late?

Week 18: Check In

Pounds Lost this Week:  -0.25

Pounds Lost to Date:  -23.50

Pounds Left to Go:  11.50

I’ve been a bad girl and skipped last week’s weigh in.  Nothing much to report as you can see from my 2 week pitiful result of a whopping quarter of a pound.  Although I’ve been keeping up with my weigh-ins I’ve sort of taken off the last few weeks from WW and tried to just maintain.  After 4 months on WW I was getting a bit tired of carrot sticks and fruit and just needed some junk food!!  However, with the first wedding that we are in only a month away it’s time to get back on the WW wagon full force and try to hit my goal.

So bye-bye carbs and sweets once again and hello my fruits and vegetable friends :)

Have a great week everyone!

TODSTWD 2011

April 28^th 2011 was National Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day 2011.  At my Agency we host a huge day-long event for 60 of our employee’s children between 6 and 12 years old.  The entire day is sponsored by our Working Parents Network, and being one of the leaders of the network I played a big part in not only planning the day but making sure the day itself ran smoothly.  We start planning in late Feb/early March and it takes a lot of effort to plan all the details of the day.  This year the kids did some pretty cool activities including shooting a TV commercial, designing a toy, creating a print ad featuring themselves and designing their dream room!  The older kids also wrote a press release about the day with the help of our Public Relations group that all the children took back to share with their schools.  The day was a huge success and I am so proud of my team and all the people who helped us pull off this event.

Even though A didn’t qualify for the day’s activities I brought him in to be my sidekick for the day and to help me run things.  He was thrilled to ride on a real train and we even took a taxi as a special treat.  He did a great job helping me and was a big hit around the office.  After about a 15 minute warm up he was throwing out orders and acting like he owned the place. I think I have a future CEO on my hands. LOL

Here are a few highlights from the day:

Riding a real Choo-Choo Train for the 1st Time!!

Taxi cab confessions anyone??

my future CEO

putting him to work on some emails

lunchtime at the event

Really into the move that was shown during lunch