April 17, 2012 ~ Baby's got a new pair of shoes

Yep. New shoes. Sorry, no pics yet.

Inevitably, Billy has changed size again. This time he changed shoe size, clothing size and diaper size all at once. It's a cornucopia of new things around here. Like the new outfit from yesterday (see yesterday's post).

I swear, every time I turn around the kid has outgrown something. I'm always ripping clothes off of him because they are too small, even though they fit yesterday before I washed them and the zillion times before that. And of course, once it's ripped off and tossed into the "Don't Fit" pile (read: entire floor of his closet) he starts screaming and running around madly wanting to put the too tight clothes back on. Sometimes, he wins and goes to school with his belly hanging out like he's nine months preggo. Then I wash them and hide them before he freaks out again.

So today we introduced new shoes. These are shoes to make Pierce S. proud. (If you don't know who that is, then you're not my cousin.) Red plaid with navy blue accents. I can't describe men's shoes. So I'm probably making them sound crappy when they're super cute.

Anyways, he wanted to go "oush-shide" and was carrying around his old shoes. I had his socks. I broke open the new box of shoes. Ooooooooooooooooooooh! Quickly he chucks his old shoes over his shoulder. So yesterday.  We sit down and I put them on. More oooooooooooooooohs! Immediately, he has to try them out.

Smack. Smack. Smack. I have a vision of a clown stomping. They're so big. He's so small! (In a not-so-much-anymore kind of way).

Ok, imagine you're one. You've got new shoes. What do you do? Clearly, the first thing to do is smack smack over to your old shoes and... stomp on them! Take that, too small shoes! Ha! And that! "Ok, Billy, enough shoe carnage." Wait, they're still twitching. A few more stomps for good measure. Alright, got 'em!

And now the question for the day: put those old shoes (now dead and mangled thanks to a thorough toddlering) in the "Don't Fit" pile or in the trash pile. Hmm.

Oh yeah, and when I tried to take the shoes off at the end of the day? Massive tantrum. Tears. "Noooooooooooooooo! Shoooooooooooooooes! Miiine!"

I think he likes them. Glass slipper? ruby slippers? Nope. Plaid shoes.

February 14, 2012 ~ The New Shoe Jig

Billy has finally outgrown his old shoes. This morning I broke out the new pair I bought him for Christmas that have been waiting in the closet for the inevitable growth spurt. It was love at first sight. He put them on and danced around the whole morning in his new shoes. Little stutter steps and lots of spinning around. It looked like a jig as he tested his new shoes.

Today also came with the Crayon Incident. The paper came off of the green crayon. This was an absolute tragedy. I tried to get him to color with the paperless crayon, but it was a No Go. Finally, I got the paper back on to the crayon and the world was right again. I never thought I'd see tears shed over the crayon wrapper.

For dinner I decided to treat him to dessert. As soon as I pulled out the cake that was the end of dinner. He saw that cake and that was all he was going to eat. He sucked every last sugar crystal from the fork like it was pure gold. Well, it is a pretty tasty treat- key lime cheesecake from the cheesecake factory. Yum. Even Billy was saying, "nom, nom, nom!"

So in honor of the holiday Billy would like to send you this very special valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day, toddler style.

January 27, 2012 ~ Sniffing Socks

Don't ask me why, but every day Billy has to inspect the socks that go on his feet. It's a morning ritual. I put him in the big brown chair or I choose to put them on him when he's trapped in his high chair. Either way, he has to inspect them before they go on his feet.

First he takes the folded socks and checks them out. Ok, then he hands them back to me to separate. I try to put one on his foot, but he has to hold it first. He looks at it. Then he sniffs it, an affront to my laundry abilities I'm sure. I promise, I have properly laundered all of his socks. But he will sniff them anyway.

Then he lays the sock over his foot as though it will magically jump on. Perhaps he should try some soap, like Peter Pan did when trying to attach his shadow. But no. If he lays the sock on his foot, then it has been approved for Mommy to put the sock on. The the sock is unapproved, then he will try to rip the sock off as soon as I put it on.

Once we've got socks, then we repeat the same procedure with the shoes. Except, he doesn't sniff his shoes. I guess socks get approved via the sniff test.

October 24, 2011 ~ Sick Day Cultivates Budding Artist

Since yesterday Billy came down with a fever, it was obvious that he was going to have to stay home today. Fortunately, his fever broke sometime between 2 and 5am. Yes, I know this for a fact.

In the dark of night all of a sudden there was loud shrieking. Not the typical, "wah, wah" of a regular baby cry, but a definite voice-cracking, terrified scream. I ran in to check on him. He was sitting up, wide awake, whimpering. He saw me and put his hands up, begging for me to pick him up. I rocked him, but he was clearly not going to just fall back to sleep.

Unfortunately, Billy is prone to night terrors. It's been a long time since he's had one. But since he was just a tiny lil guy, he has often woken up in the middle of the night screaming- about since the time that we stopped swaddling him. He often talks in his sleep saying "Mama" or "Dada", so I suspect in his terrors he is alone. When he wakes up he neds company for a long while.

So, I brought him into the bed with us. I even gave him is own pillow (a very flat one.) He was content for about five minutes until he started giggling and clapping. Then he started slapping Daddy on the back. Ok, time to go back to the crib. He went right back to sleep in his crib.

We started our morning examining his art hanging on the wall in the kitchen. He was so excited to see the pciture he drew (I loosely use that term) yesterday, that I decided to give him crayons first thing this morning. I had to break open a new box sine he broke all of the crayons I gave him yesterday. He was excited to see new colors in the box and colored furiously. He kept going back to see his art hanging up. He's so excited that I hung it up. But I had to take the crayons away after he wanted to carry the crayons all over the house and presumably try them on things other than paper.

I decided to take him up to Sam's Club to get more fruits and Chobani. I needed food for his lunch and dinner, so I figured, since he seemed ok, that we would go get him some treats. We came home and he had Chobani for lunch. He even picked out which flavor he wanted out of the fridge and handed the container to me.

The day deteriorated from there.

He refused to take a nap. I tried everything. More stuffed animals in the crib. More milk. More rocking. Nope. I finally gave up and got him up to play. But, because he was so tired, he was miserable. We tried all kinds of toys. I set up his tent fort. We threw toys for Buddy. He would be happy for a few minutes, but every little thing would set him off. It doesn't help that Buddy has a cone on his head and keeps running in to Billy, knocking him over and setting him to wailing.

Finally! Finally, he was so tired that I was able to get him to go to sleep. It was a fitful sleep and didn;t last long, but it made a world of difference in his mood. Grandma had suggested I drive him around, but he wakes up as soon as I get him out of the car and then refuses to go back to sleep. And of course, if I'm driving around for naptime just to have him sleep, then i lose those crucial minutes of time when I can get things done. This time is important to me- he wants to help me with whatever I'm doing, and if I'm doing something that would be dangerous for him (like cleaning the toilet with chemicals), then I don't want him around for that.

It's not that I don't want him around. I tried once to clean the den with Green Works. I'm constantly cleaning the coffee table. So, I decided to try to clean it with him around. Buddy did something that required being yelled at. In the two seconds it took to yell at Buddy "Hey, stop that!" I turned to find Billy putting his mouth over the back of the spray bottle. 1.) thank God it was the back and 2.) it was like Billy was lying in wait for me to turn my head for literally 2 seconds to try to kill himself. He wasn't even near the bottle at the time I started yelling at Buddy. So, now I don't do things like that when he is around.

Here is how I knew he was ready to take his nap:

Billy, don't squeeze the Charmin!

After naptime Billy was a happy baby again. We learned all about cameras and cell phones, took a turn around the court on the Green Piece of Awesome, chased down some big sticks, played with airplanes and just had a good ole time. I let him play with clay and took his handprints in the clay.

So, I'll leave you today with a picture of Billy learning about size.

Billy went and got Daddy's shoes and asked me to put them on him. He quickly learned that walking in Daddy's shoes is much harder than he thought, no matter how much he tried.