We have settled into a new pattern with Thing 4. She has started waking up around 4 in the morning. She is wide awake and wants to crawl/walk around and play.
I guess she isn’t needing as much sleep anymore. Except, shortly after being wide awake, she is so tired, she’ll fall asleep anywhere.
This is what she looked like at 5:30 this morning, after getting up at 4:15. Passed out in the high chair.
When you are a fourth child you get a lot of hand me down toys. And when the three before you were boys, those hand me downs include a lot of cars, trucks, trains, and blocks.
So I guess this was expected. Thing 4 likes to play with cars. And bang on drums. And climb.
She does NOT like to play with dolls. She doesn’t just prefer other toys. No, she is actually *afraid* of dolls. Especially the ones that look like real babies. She cries until you take it away. We need to change this. So SuburbanMommy has already bought some to give for her upcoming birthday. We’ll see what happens.
There are some things I didn’t think were possible. I never thought we’d get as much snow in DC as we did last winter. I didn’t think the Redskins could get any worse, but they manage to do it every year, much to my enjoyment.
And, I never thought Thing 3 would be potty trained. But now he is! It’s something we’ve been working on for upwards of a year. It was going so poorly at one point we abandoned potty training completely, hoping he’d eventually come around. He was the only one left in his preschool class in pull-ups. Just getting him to give up diapers for pull-ups was an enormous struggle that took months.
Last week we went to Target and Thing 3 picked out the underwear he wanted. They were two sizes too big, but I didn’t care. He can wear a bra and panties for all I care as long as he doesn’t pee and poop in them. When we got home, we put all his pull-ups in a trash bag and threw them in the garbage. That was about 10 days ago. He cried for the pull-ups for a couple days but I told him they are all gone, he has to wear underwear now. We’ve had some accidents but for the most part he’s been peeing in the potty, especially at school. Pooping was where Thing 3 made his final stand, but I’m happy to report that tonight we had our first “splash down”.
We’ve been offering Thing 3 as many desserts as he wants for the last year if he’ll just use the potty. Tonight, we happily made good on the promise.
Thing 3 definitely marches to his own beat. Every 3 year old pretty much does that, except Thing 3 takes it to a new level. This kid has a unique way of expressing himself which provides endless amusement for us.
It takes a miracle to get Things 1-3 to sit still, at the same time, for more than 10 seconds. There is a reason you don’t see many pictures of all three.
But miracles do happen. And this miracle is sold in stores everywhere. It’s called Nintendo Wii and it’s worth every penny.
If you are Thing 1, all you want are your two front teeth. He lost one last week, helped along by his brother’s fist, and lost his second front tooth this morning in a piece of toast. On Christmas Eve. I hope the tooth fairy and Santa don’t get confused tonight. Merry Christmas.
This is always a busy time of year.? Here’s a quick update in pictures on what we’ve been up to the last few weeks.
Thing 1 turned 7 years old.? Hard to believe.? He had a fun laser tag birthday party which seems to be the norm for that age group.? I’ve been to three laser tag parties in the last month.? There are worse things.
We enjoyed some two layer, double chocolate frosted cake.? I was ordered entrusted to make the cake.? Believe it or not, it was the first time I’ve ever made one.? I thought it came out pretty good but there were comments that the frosting maybe wasn’t as smooth as it could have been.
We celebrated SuburbanGrandpa’s 75th birthday.? Grandpa was thrilled to be with all his grandsons as usual for Thanksgiving.
And also this year, a first Thanksgiving with a granddaughter, Thing 4.
He received a really big birthday card from SuburbanNephews who don’t like to pose for pictures.
But the excitement level picked up for everyone when SuburbanGrandpa opened his present – an iPad!
In the course of just one week, Thing 4 has gone from taking her first crawl, to pulling herself up and standing, sitting back down on her own (not always a given), and starting to shuffle her feet. At that pace she may be walking next week, when she turns 9 months old.
