Little Man turns 2.

Well, the little man is turning 2. Actually his birthday is this weekend and we are going to Santa's Village to celebrate. Santa's Village is a winter wonderland here in Huntsville. But we celebrated his birthday a little early to space it out from Christmas. We had his party at Grandma and Grandpa Gruber's house. It was a Finding Nemo party, which Jack refers to as "The Boat". He definitely has figured out the process of opening presents. He got lots of good toys and he is loving all of them. His favorites are his hot wheels, potato heads, John Deer tools and big wheel. His feet just almost reach the pedals of the big wheel, but that didn't keep Uncle Joey from giving him a little push down the driveway on it. He's also been "repairing" things around the house with his tools. So in closing, I was wondering if anyone knows why in the world the toy companies package the toys like they are lined with gold?? Why does it have to be so difficult to get the toys out of their packages?? Is it really necessary to secure one little toy with 15 metal ties? I think not.

The Big Crash!

On Monday, Jonathan and I had this kind of funny conversation about how Jack is "all boy". We talked about some of the funny things that he always does and how rough he is. So there we were getting ready for bed. Jack was taking a bath and for some reason he started throwing his stars out of the tub and thought it was funny. He doesn't usually do that. Point is...the tile floor was wet. We got into our jammies and I returned to the bathroom to clean up. Well of course Jack followed. Just as I warned him "don't run", he had the big crash. I see him just in time to see his face hit the corner of the door frame and not in enough time to catch him. I scooped him up and pulled him away to look and his left eye is full of blood and still bleeding. Mixing with tears of course. Problem...he won't let me look at it because he is just burying his head in my shoulder and chest. We went to seek help from daddy. After a few minutes we managed to console him a little but he still wouldn't let me examine his eye. I knew there was a small cut on his upper eyelid. Since I can't see his face, I was having Jonathan describe to me what he could see. So the cutest thing is that while we are trying to examine his eye, he looks up at Jonathan and says, "dada, let oli in" because Oli was scratching at the door and we weren't paying attention. So we debate a few minutes on treatment. How is it that I have eight years of critical care nursing experience, work in the 5Th busiest ER in the nation as a trauma nurse and I fall apart when Jack gets hurt and don't know whether or not he needs to see a MD? My dilemma was that I was concerned about damage to his actual eyeball, like vision problems. I thought the little cut would be ok and knew that he was going to have a shiner, but got paranoid that he hurt his eye. Jonathan agrees but says, "you know you won't sleep if we don't take him". I told him he was right and called up my friends at the ER. We took him in for a quick exam by the MD. He looked in his eye (which Jack was NOT happy about) and said that the eye was ok. He thought he could probably put a couple of stitches in but thought it would be worse on Jack to try that as opposed to watching it. I agreed. We said our thank-yous and returned home. Jack was over it by then. He came strutting into the kitchen with my tennis shoes on, his cap on backwards and posed for a picture. Like he was proud of it. So we took some Tylenol and placed an ice pack and went to bed. I think Jack has barely noticed it since then.

Thankfulness and Success

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The things I am thankful for are too numerous to count. On Tuesday before Thanksgiving we went to Uncle Mike's house. Jack completely entertained himself in Tyler's room for most of the day. Of course, I picked up about 100 army men and crayons before I left. But Jack helped and Tyler was a good sport and didn't mind. He also had some quality time with Lindsay "playing" video games. We had lots of good food and lots of fun getting to spend time with everyone.

On Thursday we were at Grandma and Grandpa Gruber's. I think everyone took a turn pushing Jack in his swing, especially Aunt Amy and Grandma. Uncle Joey and Uncle Josh even took Jack for a hike. He loves that. Jack somehow managed to avoid a nap all day and passed out at 7pm, for the night. He also managed to find Uncle Josh's huge collection of hot wheels. We picked those up a couple of times. Again, really nice to spend some quality time with our family.

So, on to the potty-training issue. We have been kind of casually working on potty training for a couple of months now and just letting Jack do his thing without pushing him. A couple of weeks ago we decided it was time to get serious about it since Jack is constantly taking his diaper off! I'm still working nights and Jonathan days. The other night Jonathan rolled over in bed and there was Jack, stark naked! Jonathan, knowing that he had put Jack in his little footed jammies, gets up to investigate the situation. He finds Jack's diaper and jammies laying just beside the toilet with his elmo potty seat in place. At this point we decided he was definitly ready to be pushed a little. I picked Jack up new underwear that he was really excited about because they had Buzz Lightyear and Nemo on them. When we got them home we had to put all eight pairs on at the same time! Even though Jack has been sitting on the potty for months now, he had not had any success until last week. He was in the bathtub and stopped playing suddenly and looked down. I asked if he needed to potty, he climbed out of the tub, up onto the potty and success!! Number 1 that is. Today, we sat on the potty reading books for about 30-45 minutes and had success with number 2!! I now feel like Jack is well on his way to a diaper free life!

The Artist at Work

Ok, so again...it's been awhile. When you read this post you will know why, I'm just going to give the highlights but you will get the idea of how busy Jonathan and I stay with the wild child. So, a couple of weeks ago Jack and I were having a typical day at home. I was not feeling well and trying to be lazy. I go to the kitchen and get Jack a snack. Well, he lingers behind to play with his fridge phonics magnets. I return to the couch. I can hear his magnets moving around on the fridge for about ten minutes, then I partially see him cut through the dining room and go to his room. After about ten minutes in his room I say to myself, "self...it's too quiet in there". So here I go into his room where I find that he has obtained a black sharpie marker from a drawer in the kitchen. I then followed the marks from multiple places in his room, down the wall in the dining room and into the kitchen. The kitchen being the worst! So now on top of not feeling well, I spent four hours, eight magic erasers and a bottle of goo gone cleaning the walls, the appliances, the cabinets and more. When Jack braves getting up from time-out, he comes into the kitchen where I'm cleaning and leans over my back and says, "color momma??". My answer was "no".