my birthday

Today is my birthday.  This is what I got for my birthday.

Alex woke-up crying at 5:15am and when I went in the nursery to bring him into our bedroom Jakob woke-up too.  Awesome.  I took Alex back to our bedroom and went back to retrieve Jakob.  Jakob was soaking wet.  (note: my boys can’t even stay dry in diapers at night how the HECK will they stay dry in underwear)  I got Jakob in new pajamas and then we headed to the bedroom.  I knew no one was going back to sleep.  We were all laying in bed “talking” (really Jakob and Alex were talking and Momma and Mommy were trying to pretend we weren’t really awake) and the boys suddenly realized it was my birthday.  And Alex immediately insisted on going downstairs and out into our garage to get my gift.  Sure.  Why not?  It’s only 5:30am.  I can only imagine the gift in the garage that awaits for me.  So down the stairs went Kara and Alex.  A few minutes later I hear the pitter patter of little feet and out of nowhere a monster truck comes hurling towards my head and behind it I hear a small voice saying, “Happy Birthday Momma.” Be still my heart.  So Kara then turns to Jakob and the following conversation takes place…

Kara: “You need to wish Momma a Happy Birthday.”
Jakob: “No.”
Kara: “How about you sing Happy Birthday to Momma?”
Jakob: “No.  I sing Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

And out came the best ever rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

So those were my gifts from my crazy little boys.  I’ll take it.

Mary

another bath story

The shenanigans continue …

Jakob got a bit excited in the bathtub last night and after getting a couple of warnings about splashing water outside of the tub I had to take him out of the tub.  Alex continued to play for a bit longer as I was getting Jakob all dried off and dressed in his pajamas.  Of course Alex decides to start partaking in the mischievous behavior initiated by Jake and begins filling up the spoon** and dumping the water outside of the tub.  Alex got a couple of warnings before I yanked the spoon out of his hand and sternly told him to step out of the tub.  This is the conversation that took place …

Me: “Nope.  You are done.  Out of the tub.”
Alex: “No.  I was cooking!”
Me: “You are not cooking.  You are making a mess.  Out.  Now.”
Alex: (as he is climbing out of the tub) “I sad.”
Jake: “No be sad Alex.  I had to get out tub too.  I being bad.  You being bad.  We all bad.  It okay.”
Alex: “I want to cook.”
Jake: “No brother.  You in trouble.  You come lay next to me.”
(Alex lays down next to Jakob and Jakob starts to pat his back)

Be still my heart.  Though I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that "being in trouble" is commonplace in our house.

** a utensil used in our nightly television show  “Cooking in the Tub with Jake and Alex”

Mary

just another bath

A conversation during bath time.

Jake: “I making soup.”
Alex: “I making cupcakes.  For Jake.”
Jake: “I make the soup for Alex.”
Alex: “Happy Birthday Jake.”
Jake: “No.  I need a candle.”
Alex (looking in the bathtub for a candle) “No candle.”
Jake: “It not my birthday without a candle.”
Alex: “Sorry Jake.” (pauses for a minute to think)
Alex: “It not cupcakes.  It soup.”
Jake: “That better Alex. Now we no need candle.”

Where do they get this stuff?

Mary

they way we do

We moved the boys to "big boy" beds about a month ago.  It happened by default.  I would have loved for them to stay in their cribs much longer but Mr. Alex had other ideas.  So like most other developmental milestones we moved forward with "big boy" beds because it was simply time to do so.  Alex had been having difficulty sleeping for several nights leading up to the big switch.  I would have to spend the nights on the floor in the nursery holding his hand through his crib.  Talk about super uncomfortable for this old woman.  So we let the boys pick out new sheets and we made a very BIG deal about the transition.  Kara actually made them toddler platform beds for the floor and we have them sleeping next to each other.  Both boys transferred without a hitch.  They slept for almost a week with zero issue!  Yay!  But then Alex started to struggle BIG time.  We are talking about some serious sleep regression.  Alex would no longer fall asleep on his own at night.  And he was waking up in panic several times a night.  So after walking around like zombies for several days we made another big decision.  Time to drop the nap.  (insert eye rolls from my readers)  Just like sleeping was getting to be a struggle in the cribs we were both starting to absolutely dread nap time.  It was a fight to get them to sleep.  And then it would be a fight to get them awake.  Because if it was up to the boys they would nap for 4 hours and then stay up all night.  So we dropped the nap.  Cold Turkey.  And it has been a really good thing for us.  Jakob has not had a problem at all.  And of course he never had a problem transitioning to the "big boy" bed either.  Mr. Easy.  Alex will still need a cat nap in the afternoon on most days.  But we just let him shut his eyes for a bit when it becomes too much.  And so how is Alex sleeping?  Not horrible.  Not the best.  We've gotten into a new routine and while we are probably not following any of the rules in the parent handbook our new sleep routine works for us.  The boys are going upstairs to take a bath about 6:30pm each night.  We do story time, video time, and music time each night after bath.  This all takes about 30 minutes.  I then tuck the boys into bed and I will sit by the door until Alex falls asleep.  He knows that I am going to leave when he falls asleep.  We communicate this over and over again each night.  It usually only takes 10 minutes for the boys to fall asleep as with no nap the boys are fairly tired at night.  There are some nights I have to get them to cut off the chatter but it is usually not a struggle.  I am then downstairs and able to get stuff done no later than 8pm and on most nights it is 7:30pm.  And then Alex will wake-up.  Every night.  The good news is that Alex typically does not wake-up until between Midnight - 5am.  So it's not a big deal.  Kara will simply go into the nursery and grab him out of bed.  Alex will then sleep the rest of the night in our bed until I get up for work at 6:30am.  Jakob will sometimes wake-up too when Alex wakes-up but he just looks at us like "Please remove that noisy child from this room" and promptly falls back to sleep.  Alex will always fall right back to sleep in our bed.  We fought this in the beginning because every parent handbook tells you to NEVER let your child start sleeping in your bed.  We tried all the tricks in the book.  But no one was happy.  And no one was sleeping.  And here is the thing.  I know Alex.  I know exactly everything that goes through that little dude's head.  And I know that each night he just needs the comfort of Momma and Mommy.  He falls asleep most night holding my hand.  And we can provide comfort to him.  So why not?  I know for a fact he will not be sleeping in our bed when he is 18 years old.  So we are embracing it.  We aren't going to have these moments forever.  We will miss them when they are gone.

Mary