William is three!

At precisely 8:35 a.m. this morning, I sang "Happy Birthday" to William. We were riding in the car on the way to school when the digital clock flipped to that time. That's the time, adjusted for the time zone change, when William was born, exactly three years ago today.

And as I say every year on this date now, I am SO GLAD that it's this year and not 2006. Labor and delivery? Not so very much fun. I didn't tell William that part, though. However, he was charmed to learn that I got to eat waffles for breakfast the morning he was born. He also was interested to learn that David brought me an Oreo cookie milkshake from Carl's Jr (obligatory "Carl's Jr what?" remark inserted here) later that day, too. And again, as I always say, those were the best waffles and the best milkshake I have ever had in my entire life.

So, without further ado, let's have a brief retrospective, shall we?

William David Wyckoff, born at 6:35 a.m. pacific time on April 22, 2006, in Twentyine Palms, California:




















William David Wyckoff at about 8:15 a.m. central time on April 22, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee:




















In the hospital on April 22, 2006 with David:


















In front of our house in Nashville this morning before school:



















I still can't believe William is three, though. That cool April morning when he finally--finally!--was born took place three years ago.

It's even a little hard for me to believe it's the same person. I know, I know, that's such a cliche. I'm sorry. But it's true. I look at the photos of that tiny little baby and think about how I had no idea who the baby would become. That little seven-pound baby became a 34-pound boy who wore his Halloween wizard costume over his pajamas to watch "SuperWhy" on television this morning. That baby became the person who picked out popsicles in Publix this morning to take to school (he proudly announced to everyone he encountered, "It's my birthday! I'm three!").

And I changed from the person who endured multiple middle-of-the-night feedings with something less than a stoic attitude to a person who endures temper tantrums over snacks I won't let my son eat with something less than a stoic attitude (but I'm working on it). I won't go so far as to say I know exactly what I'm doing now, but I do think I know more than I did three years ago.

Catching up with Easter photos

We have been so busy lately that I still haven't gotten around to posting Easter photos, and it's been more than a week. I'm so embarrassed to be so far behind.

But as my friend's mom pointed out, hey, Easter season technically lasts for the 50 days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. I guess as a preacher's kid, I should've remembered that. Ah well. Like I said, I've been busy. So we're good now, right?

William, all dressed up in his JFK, Jr. coat:





















The outfit under the coat. It was a little too big but he wore it anyway.





















Putting flowers on the cross in front of the sanctuary at Westminster:




















At church. I actually let him stay in the balcony for the first 15 minutes of the service, and he did very well. He told all the men around us that he wanted to see his daddy march in with the choir.



















At Diane and Aaron's house in front of the flowers:




















My favorite picture of the day:




















The three of us:

















William and his Uncle Mark:





















We had a very nice Easter this year. The weather was lovely, and we didn't have any trouble getting to and from churchm, which is almost a miracle in and of itself when you consider all the people who turn up out of the woodwork on Easter. And we had a terrific Easter lunch at Diane and Aaron's house. For the record, William received some books, lollipops, a remote-controlled Geotrax train and a bubble machine from the Easter Bunny.

Two good things

We've had a very up-and-down week here. But I did want to share two of the highlights.

The first was...William asked me last night at dinner if he could say a prayer for all the people who lost all their things in the storm (we had a bad tornado come through Middle Tennessee last week). And he remembered and included them in his night-night prayer.

The second was...we asked William what else he wanted to have for breakfast this morning to go with his oatmeal. And I swear to God, the boy said, "How about some vegetables?" David recovered his composure first and said, "Well, sure, William. Um, how about some carrots?" And William said, "Hmm, no. Can I have some broccoli, please?" I am not making this up. I couldn't make that up. You can ask David if you don't believe me.

If nothing else, this sort of thing reminds me why I still love my child even when he takes the Terrible Almost-Threes and rachets them up by a factor of about, oh, infinity.

Egg Dyeing 101

As promised, here are some photos from the Great Egg Dyeing Session of 2009:




















William's DeeDee did all the hard work, the drawing, the dyeing, the mopping up. I just took pictures.


































Oh, and you can get a mini-tutorial on creative egg-dyeing and watch William ham it up a little bit here:

Easter Egg "Hunt"

Whew. Two Easter egg hunts in one day. That's a lot of Easter egg hunting.

We went to one in our neighborhood, which was very very nice, and then we went to Cheekwood to attend the Easter festival there. As part of the festival, there were egg hunts every 30 minutes for several hours.

Although, to be accurate, these really weren't Easter egg hunts, not in the "hunt" sense of the term. There was no actual hunting involved. At both "hunts," the organizers merely rolled dozens of eggs out there and let the kids run for 'em. Someone at the neighborhood hunt did get very ambitious, though, and scattered some eggs on the playground equipment. So there was some climbing involved in that, at least.

But they were fun. William was big enough this year to pick up the eggs by himself with no trouble, and I think he thoroughly enjoyed doing so.




















































And here are some photos from Cheekwood.

We opted to attend the Cheekwood Easter egg hunt this year instead of the one at the zoo, and that turned out to be a good decision. The parking was a little more challenging, but the set-up at Cheekwood was terrific. Since there was a new egg hunt every 30 minutes, it wasn't like all your child's egg-hunting dreams hinged on one little moment when they might get stuck behind an oversized kid who should probably be studying for his geometry mid-term instead of hunting for eggs. Or a parent who doesn't get the concept that it's an Easter egg hunt for the children, and the children are supposed to pick up the eggs. We picked up Diane on the way, and then we met up with Leland and Mary-Allen and their families when we got there.



















We couldn't get them altogether to pose for a picture. This was as close as I got.















Yes, that's my son with his Easter basket on his head. We're expecting him to be valedictorian one day, of course.



















A rare photo of me with William. We were opening his eggs to find out what was inside. Mostly caramels, as it turned out.

















This was an unexpected hit. After the kids picked up a handful of eggs, we all meandered down the hill to the little pond. A bunch of frogs (toads?) live there, where they showed off for their enthusiastic audience.


















Photos of yesterday's egg-dyeing session to come!

Edge moments

Just when you think your child is going to push you over the edge--and you just realized that there really is an edge and that it's not just a figure of speech--he does something really sweet.

Last night, William was saying his prayer. It was a fairly short one, mostly thanks for his mommy and daddy and his big boy bed, but then he added, "and please help my friend (A) from school feel better soon." His little friend had been absent from school the day before because she had been sick, so he wanted to pray for her to get well.

I love those moments. I think those are the kinds of moments that help parents like me to get through the other kinds of moments, the edge moments. You know. The moment when you find out your child had to go to the director's office at school for misbehaving again. Or the moment when you have to literally wrestle your child into his room for a time out because he just. won't. go. Or the moment when your child flings M&Ms across the bathroom because you won't let him pick out his own massive handful of candy as a reward for going poopy on the potty.

As for future edge moments, well, let's just say that I'm reading a book called 1,2,3 Magic that multiple people have recommended to me. I'm learning about how to react with less emotion and more consistency when William deliberately does something that he's not supposed to do. I'm learning that I need to stop explaining so much to my son when he misbehaves. (That, of course, is hard. I'm a writer. I use words for a living.) And I'm trying to coach myself into believing that it will work...eventually.

And in the meantime, I am going to keep believing in the good moments to get me through the hard times. Like the moment this morning when my son crawled up onto my bed and gently kissed both my cheeks and said cheerfully, "I love you, Mommy!" We'll get through this Terrible (Almost) Threes. We will.

(We will, won't we?)

Send me away

I so need a vacation. I need to go away to a nice beach where I can lie on the sand with a fruity drink and doze under an umbrella. And when I come back, I will be rested and refreshed. And my son will be fully potty-trained and will have stopped hitting and kicking and spitting and all the other horrible bratty behaviors that he's shown such an affinity for of late.

What? A girl can dream, can't she?

How to discuss death and all those cheerful topics

I wrote a piece for an online publication called BettyConfidential.com...I've never written for them before, but an editor contacted me recently. I pitched a few ideas, and lo and behold, my first piece is up today.

So here it is: How do you talk to your young child about death? It came up because our Sunday School class has been discussing the best way to handle Easter with our kids. As I write in my article, it's a lot easier to explain Christmas from a Christian perspective to a preschooler than it is to explain Easter. For fairly obvious reasons.

W-i-l-l-i-a-m

So William's friend Sammy came over to play a few days ago (and Sammy's mom Jaclyn came over to play with me). Jaclyn asked Sammy to spell his name, and he did!

I was very impressed. Sammy won't be three 'til May, after all.

Then last night, during the traditional Wyckoff family Opening Night Hot Dog dinner, Diane asked William to spell his name. I just figured he'd spout off some random letters. But to my shock, he actually spelled his name correctly. I think my jaw nearly hit the floor.

So I worked very hard this afternoon to convince William to perform his little trick for the camera....



(Bonus: you get to see the big boy bed here, too.)

Big Boy Bed progress report

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath to hear how the Big Boy Bed is working out for us, haven't you?

To our shock, it is working out beautifully. No, really. It is.

The first night, granted, was rough. Drunk with freedom, William was in and out of bed until nearly midnight. Even after David and I turned off our bedroom lights, William tiptoed into our room and crawled tentatively up onto our bed a few times. We ignored him, while stifling giggles, the first few times.

Then finally, I got up out of my nice cozy bed and walked him back to his room. It was around 11:50, so I said, "William, it's nearly midnight, and it's time for you to settle down."

And William replied, "Midnight? Like in Cinderella?"

And in one of my finer moments in parenting, I said, "Yes, and you might turn into a pumpkin if you don't to go sleep now." And I turned the lights off and made my escape...er, my exit.

Hey, it worked. He stayed in his bed after that. He can take it up with his therapist in a few years.

Friday was a long day, and we were all pretty wiped out. The silver lining, however, was that William went to bed without a fuss at 8 p.m. on Friday night, and the next time either of us saw or heard him was at 7:30 on Saturday morning. He had stayed in his bed all night. All night. (Or as far as we know, which is the same thing in my book.)

Amazing. Simply amazing. Grand Canyon-Statue of Liberty-Mount Rushmore amazing.

The best part is that William did it again on Saturday night and again on Sunday night. AND he's mostly managed to restrain himself from the lure of unfettered freedom during naptime, too. Okay, yes, today was a little trickier and involved a mid-nap trip to the potty and a few M&Ms. But he still managed to stay in his bed for almost two more hours, which is remarkable, really. He's still not entirely convinced that he needs a bedspread on his bed, but we'll work on that.

And I had one hilarious moment this morning that is a direct result of the Big Boy Bed. William woke up and scampered out of his bed this morning, only to come into my room and find me still sleeping. I hazily remember him gently crawling up onto the bed next to me and scrambling aroud for a few seconds before climbing back down. I dozed back off for a little while. When I woke up, I turned over and there, lying in the bed next to me, was my old baby doll, Amy, who often stayed in William's crib with him. He had brought her to snuggle in the bed with me so I wouldn't be lonely.

Is this just a wonderful reward for surviving the Terrible Almost-Threes?

At long last...the Big Boy Bed is here

So this is what William's room looked like as of about 4 p.m. this afternoon:
















And this is what it looked like at 6 p.m.:




















That's right. We put up the Big Boy Bed at last.

Right now, it has the Wall-E sheets that David picked up at Target, although we do plan to get some nicer sheets for it soon, too. (William has specifically requested Star Wars sheets, and David enthusiastically agreed that his son needs Star Wars sheets. Needs them.) I still need to buy a quilt or comforter and shams for it, but at least it has some sheets and a pillow.

William was so pleased with the new bed, he could barely stand it. As soon as we got it all put together, he threw himself on his new bed with a great sigh of delight. Then he sat up and declared, in what was just short of a royal proclamation, "Take the crib away. I'm too big for it now."

I suggested that maybe he just sleep in his crib again tonight, and he looked at me like I had grown a second head. He rejected that idea. The crib is still up, but no one is sleeping in it, except for poor lonely Pooh Bear and Knuffle Bunny.

William is here:



















As for first experiences, I am also expecting a first experience tonight. I am expecting my very first experience with a toddler creeping into bed with me in the middle of the night.

*******************


Gratuitous picture of William from Cheekwood last week:

Tomorrow is another day

It's early, but so far, today is better than yesterday. Aaron is here, distracting William while I try to get some work done. We created a Good Behavior chart, and so far, William seems eager to live up to it. So cross your fingers.

And I feel it's only fair to report that we did have one small victory yesterday. Frustrated with being alone in the house with William, I ordered him into the car to run some errands with me after an early dinner. It was only when we were about to leave that I remembered he was wearing underpants. But we went out anyway, and guess what? He stayed dry the whole time. We did make a short pitstop in the bathroom of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and William willingly went potty. And we made it home with no incidents (of the potty variety).

One day at a time, one day at a time, da da da da, one day at a time.

Exhausted

I've heard about how some kids are worse at three years of age than they were at two. And I'm starting to really believe it.

William, at almost three, is far more of a handful now than he was even six months ago. In fact, I'd say that his current stage is the hardest I've ever dealt with, aside from the early months when all he did was nurse and not let me sleep.

I am so exhausted. I am exhausted, physically and emotionally. I am exhausted from trying to curb the bad behaviors--the hitting and the throwing things and the pushing. I am exhausted from trying to institute time outs. I am exhausted from trying to encourage good behavior. I am exhausted from dealing with his constant defiance.

And I am exhausted from failing.

I just lost it this afternoon. I tossed William into his crib, since it's the one place he can't escape. And I shut the door to his room and called my parents and cried.

I just can't do this. I know that children at this age are a bundle of impulses, and I know that they are just asserting their independence and pushing every button that they can. But I feel like my child is doing it far beyond anything I've ever seen from anyone else's kids that we know. Nothing seems to be making a difference.

And I really don't know where to go from here. I just feel...defeated.

The list

Took William to Target today. (I wore my red shoes, so I could click my heels together and chant, 'There's no place like Target, there's no place like Target, there's no place like Target.' Because you know, there really is no place quite like Target. If you just tried to say Wal-Mart or KMart, well, all I have to say is 'you poor poor deluded thing you.')

I had jotted down a short shopping list the night before. After I plunked him into the cart, I dutifully turned over the list to him so he could be the Listmaster. The list was very exciting. It had the following items on it: kitchen soap, bath soap, brown socks for David, waterproof mattress pad, napkins and Goldfish crackers. This should give you a sense of the thrill-a-minute life I lead, no? At any rate, that was my list. We bought the stuff on the list, plus oh, $20 or $30 worth of other random stuff*, and we headed home. (*Target has a $50 minimum, you know. And by minimum, I mean, absolute bare minimum. It really should be $100. Just hand over $100 when you cross the threshold. Don't expect any change.)

Tonight, at bedtime, William was "reading" a favorite Frog and Toad story called "The List" to David and me. I asked William if he remembered what was on our shopping list this morning.

He thoughtfully considered the question before confidently replying, "Books....toys...and candy."

And you know what? For a few seconds, I sincerely wished my list really HAD had "books, toys and candy" printed on it. The small pleasures that make us happy, you know?

Quickie read

Nice post today on CoolMomsCare.org about how competitive mothers can be: Mommy Wars. And no, even though I contribute a weekly post to the CoolMomsCare blog, I didn't write it. But I'm glad I read it.

I can pedal!

As it turns out, William can actually pedal his tricycle by himself. We've been encouraging him to do it for awhile, but usually he'll pedal a few times and then whine for us to push him again. See below:
















But after getting a report from Miss Aubrey that William is a fast-and-furious pedaler at school, we've decided to encourage him to power his own self a little more often.





































But of course, sometimes he still wants Daddy to push him.

Sneaking a treat

So this morning, I was working upstairs on the computer when I heard a rustling noise coming from downstairs. I immediately suspected my lovely son of getting into something yummy and off-limits from the pantry, so I went to investigate.

"William, are you eating something?" I called as I walked down the stairs.

A second later, he popped into view. He was holding a crumpled handful of pink plastic. He unfolded his palm to show me the empty wrapper of Hello Kitty fruit treats, which had been in a goody bag he received recently.

"Yes," he said. "I ate the catfood, Mommy."

The CD player

I didn't mean to let a whole week without a post go by. Gah! A week in the online world is like a month in the real world. Sorry, y'all. I'll do better. I've been snowed under with some freelance projects, but I'm slowly digging myself out.

In the meantime, the most interesting news about Prince William is his newfound addiction to the CD player in his bedroom. I'm about to just suck it up and spend some money to get him a kiddie CD player so he won't destroy the clock-CD player that's in his room right now.

It sort of amuses me and makes me feel old at the same time to think that whatever CD player I buy will be the equivalent of the little red and white record player (yes, I am that old) that I had as a small child. But instead of listening to Disney books on records with the little chime that tells you to turn the page, he's all into hip-kid music like They Might Be Giants. Well, and since he's still his father's son, the Star Wars soundtrack. I wonde whatever happened to that old record player I had. I remember listening to "Sleeping Beauty" (yes, really) and "101 Dalmatians" and a whole bunch of others on it. Later, Mom and Daddy upgraded and bought me a bright red Panasonic tape player that ground out a lifetime's worth of Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson songs. Ah, the '80s.

So if anyone's bought a super-indestructible CD player recently, please let me know the details. We need one ASAP.

What's he up to now?

Random photos from the small snowfall we received on Sunday:



































Let's see. Since the Great M&M Caper, we've had a couple more interesting episodes happen here.

About an hour or two after the GM&MC, I had to do another phone interview for a freelance story I'm working on. As I was winding up the phone call, I started hearing the toilet flush, over and over. Like when your child is too quiet, a constantly-flushing toilet is also a bad sign. Not just a bad sign. A Bad Sign. Still on the phone, I walked out of my office and down the hall to William's bathroom.

There he stood, bare-bottomed with a very poopy diaper down between his ankles. He was wiping his bottom with a wipe, then flushing the wipe, then wiping with a new wipe, then flushing it. And had been doing so for awhile, apparently. Judging by the meager amount of wipes left in the box, I estimated that he had to have used up at least a dozen. Maybe more. I gasped something about a poop-tastrophe to the woman on the other end of the phone and hung up to help him out. He's never tried to do that before, but you just had to know he'd try when I was attempting to get something else done. But you know, I have to give him props for trying to clean himself up. That's the sort of thing we do want him to be able to do. Er, but without so much flushing.

Last night, I was again working on some freelance stuff while attemping to cook dinner. I was dashing back and forth between the computer and the kitchen. William was off allegedly entertaining himself, although he occasionally intercepted me to, I don't know, tell me about Darth Vader or the castle people or something. On my last dash upstairs, I noticed a package of hot dogs on the dining room floor, so I stopped and grabbed it and threw it back in the fridge. Five minutes later or so, I returned to the stove and started cooking some vegetables.

A minute or so later, William toddles back into the kitchen and hands me the now-empty package of hot dog, save for an inch-long piece still left at the bottom. "I ate the hot dogs," he reported.

He had eaten THREE uncooked hot dogs directly out of the fridge. Three cold slimy turkey hot dogs. I sputtered all over the place, sort of grossed out but mostly trying not to laugh, but not doing a very good job of doing so. "Wha, wha, wha...but WHY?" I finally managed to spit out.

Apparently, he was hungry and he wanted hot dogs. He had just eaten a (cooked) hot dog for lunch a few hours earlier, but I guess he just wanted more. And I guess the whole uncooked-ness didn't bother him because he ate THREE of them like that. THREE. (I'm a little hung up on anyone eating an uncooked hot dog at all, much less multiple uncooked hot dogs). You'd think I didn't feed the kid. But as I remarked to a friend on Facebook, hello, does he look like he's starving to you?

Every time I think, hey, I think I have a handle on what to expect out of my son, I get a surprise. Not that I have a good handle on how to get him to stop kicking and hitting sometimes, but I at least knew that it happens and I have to deal with it. But I never saw the Three Hot Dog Incident coming. Who expects that? I mean, it never ever would have occurred to me to say, "Hey, William, please don't go into the fridge and eat the raw hot dogs in there, okay?" And I couldn't really get mad at him because I hadn't ever told him he couldn't eat three uncooked hot dogs.

But we did have a nice little chat about asking Mommy for food when we're hungry. But given that this is the same kid who found a way to get M&Ms, I don't know how effective the chat is going to be. I guess we'll see.

Melts in your hand

So, I was checking my email a little while ago, and I kept hearing this weird rattling sound. I stuck my head out of the office and peered around. The door to Wiliam's room was shut, and I could hear him puttering around in there. His CD player was playing, so I could hear music, too. I went back to the computer.

A few minutes later, I finished up my email and went to see what William was up to. He opened the door right as I got there and said, "Mommy, can you put this jar of Em-Ems back up?"

Remember that big glass jar of M&Ms that I put in the bathroom to entice William to go potty? William had taken it down from the bathroom counter, somehow figured out how to unscrew the huge lid that I never thought he could get into. Behind the closed bedroom door, he then feasted on the candy 'til his little heart's content.

Astonished, I looked at his face, smeared with chocolate. His hands were smeary, too (don't listen to the Mars folks: M&Ms certainly do melt in your hands). As he smiled and offered up the jar, I sputtered with laughter (really, you would have laughed, too). And then I tried to regain my composure and be stern.

"William! How many of these did you eat?" I asked, surveying the amount of candy left in the jar. I estimated that at least a quarter of the candy was missing, maybe more.

"I ate a lot of them," he reported.

Good grief.

The jar is now on top of the armoire in my bedroom in the place more commonly known as Toy Time Out. Who knew I'd need M&M Time Out, too?

DST starts this weekend

Public service announcement time.

Hey, y'all, did you realize that Daylight Savings Time starts this coming Sunday? That is, March 8. Yes, it does seem early. That's because it is earlier than we're used to it starting. It used to start in April. But now that it lasts later into the fall, it starts earlier in the spring, too.

I'm actually looking forward to it. First of all, I'm pro-anything that allows there to be more daylight later in the day. Nothing is more depressing than darkness at 5 p.m. on a cold, grim day. This is particularly true when it would be nice to take my child outside and let him run around but can't because it's dark outside. I'm looking forward to pre- and post-dinner walks around the neighborhood again when it warms up a little more, too.

Secondly, William's sleep schedule has been a little wonky lately, and I'm guardedly hopeful that DST will perhaps result in him sleeping a little later in the morning. Please, God. It worked last year, and it would be very, very helpful if it worked this year, too.

So fall back, spring forward. Bring it on.

The good stuff

So I've written a lot recently about the trials and tribulations of having a strong-willed little boy.

I started feeling a little bad about complaining so much because he really can be such a great kid a lot of the time. I don't want him to grow up thinking that I only noticed the not-so-great things about him. And I don't want y'all to think that he doesn't have any good qualities either.

So I'm going to list a few of the GOOD things about my dear son William. I figure, we can all use a little extra praise, don't you think? So, without further ado...

William Wyckoff:

*Is a great eater. He rarely complains about any food, and he almost always finishes whatever I put in front of him. He loves to tell me that "I ate all my lunch!" when I pick him up from school, even though he always eats all his lunch.

*Loves vegetables. Seriously. He'll even ask for more broccoli. About the only vegetable that he's ever tried and didn't like was lettuce. And honestly, I can't blame him. Lettuce doesn't have much flavor, and if you don't like the texture, why bother? Except for romaine, it doesn't even have that much nutritional value.

*Is not now and has never really been a biter. I can count on one hand the number of times he's ever bitten me, and that includes breastfeeding.

*Is a happy kid. I'd say his default mood really is happy. He doesn't stay grumpy for long, and you can usually joke him out of a fleeting bad mood pretty quickly. When he was a baby, I started calling him my little smiley guy, and that's still a pretty good way to describe him.

*Loves to make up stories to tell me. This morning's story started out like this: "Once upon a time, there was a little boy named William, and he wanted to go to the zoo. But the castle people weren't ready yet..."

*Loves to read books. I'm a reader, so this makes me very happy. If I had a child who didn't love books, I'm not sure I'd know what to do with him. To my delight, Wiliam even loves many of the same books I loved as a child, too.

*Is friendly. I have a picture of William waving to all and sundry while his daddy carried him into church last Easter. That's William. He's the mayor. He waves and greets everyone in the grocery store. He chats with the people in line behind us. He saw other small children at the beach last summer and tugged at our hands so we'd take him over so he could "meet those friends over there." The corollary to this, of course, is he's not shy.

*Apologizes when he does something wrong and he knows he upset us. This might not sound like a big deal, but it is. I'm hopeful this means that he understands when he's messed up and that it's important to say he's sorry and make amends. This is an important social skill to have throughout life.

*Loves to hug and kiss us and tell us how much he loves us. There is really nothing better than when William clamors up onto a chair or the couch and reaches up to hold my face before he bestows damp kisses on my cheeks and my nose.

*Didn't really require that much child-proofing. This is selfish on my part, but I am so glad that William wasn't too interested in getting into certain things that I've heard other kids do. We never needed an oven lock or a fridge lock or anything like that. He never was a big climber, so I never had to worry that much about that either. Pretty much, we needed--and used--baby gates and outlet covers and drawer and cabinet locks, and that was about it. I'm sure that if we ever have another child, we won't be so lucky.

*Loves to sing. Yeah, I'm sure most small children love to sing, but I get a kick out of hearing William warble "Once Upon a Dream" or "The Rainbow Connection" or "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" no matter how many times I've heard him sing them before. He's improving, too.

*Is pretty well-behaved when you take him shopping. Now, I will qualify this by saying that he does still have a tendency to run off if he's not contained in a shopping cart, but if you put him in a cart at Kroger, he usually does really well. He never complains or cries, and he usually enjoys looking at everything. He occasionally gets upset if you don't take him to look at something he wants to see (i.e. the decorated birthday cakes in the Publix bakery or the Star Wars toys at Target), but he almost never throws a fit.

So, that is a partial list of the good things about my son. See, I realize that he's a great kid and not just a crazy toddler. I need to make sure to tell him, too.

New Facebook group

In the spirit of solidarity with my fellow parents of toddlers, I have created a new Facebook group called The Terrible Twos...and Threes. If you're on Facebook, please stop by and share some stories and advice with us.

Let us know that we're all in this together. I figure, if it takes a village to raise a child, well, then I need some village people. Er. You know what I mean.

Anyway, come on over. Tell me your best story about a Toddler Run Amok. Tell me your double-secret strategy for getting your preschooler do what what he's supposed to be doing, from going potty to staying in his bed at night. Reassure me that you occasionally resort to the bribe, too.

A little progress

Fans of William will be happy to know that he was able to retrieve both his Cinderella book AND his Snow White book from Toy Time Out this afternoon. He was wild at school, but he managed to restrain himself pretty well at home. And I really needed to find a reason to reward the mostly-good behavior and encourage him to keep it up.

Tomorrow morning, I have a Young Leaders Council meeting. So William will have his regular Thursday morning Daddy time. I promised him that if he was good through tomorrow morning, he could watch "Sleeping Beauty" with his father. That seems to be working as a motivational tool...except that he couldn't fall asleep tonight. He was too excited about the prospect of watching his favorite movie again. Oh well.

It's a phase. It has to be a phase.

The Terrible Twos are in vogue here at our house. Actually, the Terrible Twos-Going-on-Threes might be a better description.

The willful defiance. The hitting. The spitting. (Seriously, where did the spitting come from?) The struggling. Even the occasional refusal of favorite foods (yes, you read that right).

It's a phase. It has to be a phase. It's got to be a phase.

It's a phase, right?

This morning, I was wondering to myself how long a "phase" lasts. What exactly constitutes a "phase"? How long does something have to go on to meet the minimum "phase" time-length requirement? How long can it last before it becomes a permanent condition? Is my child going to find himself so enamored with, say, spitting that he's going to be trundling off to middle school, still spitting at me when I tell him to put his coat back on because it's freezing outside? Is he going to be friendless because I don't know how to transition him from "it's a phase" to more appropriate behavior and he gets a reputation as the kid who spits and hits? Who wants to be friends with the kid who spits and hits?

Surely it's a phase.

The other day, I took away William's beloved Sleeping Beauty book (yes, gasp!) because he was hitting me--and because the time outs didn't seem to be working as a deterrent. Then David took away his Cinderella book last night. I took away the new They Might Be Giants CD this afternoon. And then the wizard hat. I've threatened to take away the Luke Skywalker spaceship next. I've got a whole stack of his favorite stuff piled on top of the armoire in my bedroom, and it doesn't even seem to be making a dent in his attitude. Meanwhile, my room is starting to look like a garage sale.

This has got to just be a phase.

I love my child. I do. He can be the most delightful, amazingly wonderful person on earth. This morning, for a few ours, that William resurfaced. We snuggled up in my bed and read "Snow White" together. He asked me to help him learn the names of all the seven dwarfs, and I did. It was lovely. We went to Cheekwood, and we did an art project, then wandered around the art museum and grounds for awhile. William climbed in and out of his carseat when he was asked. He held my hand in the parking lot. He enjoyed gluing feathers to his art project and helped me wash his hands afterward. He came with me when it was time to go home for lunch. Then we got home. And it was all over. He put his feet on the kitchen table...repeatedly. He pushed away his bowl of mac and cheese and turkey hot dog. He spit some more. He flailed his arms at me a few times. And the glow was gone. That's when I wanted to go online and find out if any sleepaway camps will accept toddlers for a week or so.

Must be a phase.

One step forward, ten steps back

Anyone who has talked to me recently probably knows that we've been experiencing some ups and downs on the potty training front.

That is, William will have a very rare success, and there will be lots of wahooing and dancing-of-celebratory-jigs....followed by days and days and days of backsliding. The sticker chart was successful at first. Now, not so much. The Thomas the Tank Engine and Spider-Man underpants? He liked them, liked the cartoon pictures, but not enough to replace his diapers and Pull-Ups with them. Even the big jar of M&Ms only worked for a few days. Can you believe that? We were willing to give our child pure unmitigated sugar as a reward for going potty, and it didn't even work! What child turns down M&Ms for something as simple as going potty? My son, that's who.

So we upped the ante. David bought a Darth Vader TIE fighter toy and ceremoniously displayed it in front of our wide-eyed son.

"If you can start going poopy in the potty, then you can wear big-boy underpants all the time. And THEN then you can have this," he told William, who eagerly reached out to touch the package.

Now, given how much William adores his little Star Wars figures, we thought surely that little bribe would work. Well. The TIE fighter has been sitting on the dresser in the guest room for at least three weeks now. William goes in there to visit it, but he seems content enough to just know it's there. For someday. He totally understands what it's for. He knows that he can win the toy by just going potty; he even told his teachers at school that he could get Star Wars toys for going potty. But he just doesn't want to. So he doesn't.

Upon hearing about all this, experienced parents tend to smile and shake their heads and say either, "Boys are just so much harder than girls to potty train" (gee, thanks for the newsflash) or "He'll catch on one day, but he has to decide on his own" (I want to believe you but why should I?).

I know that all the books just advise parents like me to chill out a little, to do the best we can to encourage our child to use the potty, and eventually William will come around. He has to come around. He's just about outgrown all but the very largest sizes of diapers and Pull-Ups!

Puzzlemania

When I was a little girl, my mom used to buy a gigantic 500 or 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle for our family as a joint Christmas gift. The more complicated, the better. One year, it was the puzzle that looked like a huge spill of jellybeans. Another year, it was a bunch of different types of candy bars. (For some reason, food was a big puzzle theme in the '80s.)

After all the presents were opened, and the Christmas dinner had been devoured, we'd clear off the dining room table and dump all the puzzle pieces onto it. There, the puzzle would remain until we ceremoniously slotted in the last piece. Then we'd pat ourselves on the back and then put the whole thing back in the box...and we'd dig out a couple of puzzles from previous Christmases because we'd be in the puzzle zone.

I even had my own personal stash of puzzles that I could work on my own. The one I remember the most clearly was a huge Incredible Hulk floor puzzle. I have no idea why someone thought it would be a good idea to give a five-year-old little girl a puzzle of a big scary green monster man with bulging muscles, but there you go. And I guess to be fair, I loved that puzzle. And yeah, you see that that's the one I remember.

To our great delight, William must have gotten the puzzle gene, too. He always liked the little baby puzzles with the seven or eight wooden pieces, but now he's heavily into actual puzzle puzzles.

David started the craze when he...er, Santa Claus...purchased a big two-foot-by-three-foot Melissa & Doug puzzle for one of William's Christmas gifts. I took one look at the box, which proclaimed the puzzle, which featured a montage of dinosaurs, had 48 pieces and declared, "Oh, that's way too advanced for him."

Wrong. I was so wrong. (And yes, David has crowed smugly about this many times. What? I can admit when I'm wrong. I'm just not...wrong very often. Ahem.) William needed some help from his grandmother or his daddy the first couple of times that he worked on the puzzle, but after that, he had no trouble working the entire puzzle by himself. All 48 pieces.

Diane brought over a couple of smaller puzzles, and I added a second Melissa & Doug puzzle (a picture of a fairy tale castle) and a cheap Cinderella puzzle from Target to the stash. William immediately adored them all. And after a couple of trial runs, he was able to work them all by himself. He especially likes telling anyone who will listen about how he worked the puzzle "all by myself and I am so proud of me!"

The only trouble I have with William's puzzlemania is that he often doesn't want to clean up the puzzles once he's finished with them. He wants to leave them on the floor so you and everyone who might drop by can admire them. It'll be nice when we can finally put him up at the dining room table and let him work his puzzles there. That way, he can keep his work intact and we'll still be able to walk through the family room. And maybe in a few years, we'll restart the old Larson Family Christmas Puzzle tradition here. Wonder if Mom and Daddy kept any of those old puzzles?

William with his masterpieces:

Just a snapshot

Mid-bounce at a birthday party at Bounce U on Saturday:



















Side note: do you know how hard it is to get a non-blurry picture of a bunch of two- and three-year-olds bouncing in a bouncy house?

Wild Thing

God help me, I put my son to bed a half-hour early tonight because he was driving me nuts. Mostly because we only had a short window for a nap this afternoon, and yup, you guessed it, he stood in his crib and sang. And jumped. And shook the crib. And sang some more.

Argh.

He behaved nicely enough at the late-afternoon playdate that we attended, but then we came home. And Mr. Hyde showed up to relieve Dr. Jekyll.

Wildmanwildmanwildmanwildmanwildmanwildmanwildmanwildmanwildmanwildman.

How can I love him so much, yet get so frustrated by him? How can I marvel at how smart he is (like when he effortlessly puts a 48-piece puzzle together all by himself) and then feel like beating my head up against the wall when he refuses to put it away? Is this still the Terrible Twos, or is this a preview of the Terrible Threes?

Argh!

Luckily, he is still very cute. And he still loves to hug and kiss me. Hugs and kisses go a long way. Yes, I'm a sucker.

William and his daddy, all dressed up for church on Sunday:



















William and his mama, after school today, in a rare uncrazy moment:

Stalling

The stalling. Oh, my God, the stalling.

It takes us forever to get William to do certain things these days. It's getting absurd.

We try to leave the house on time. William announces he has to go potty. Of course, by the time I get him situated on the potty, he doesn't produce but a drop or two. He didn't really have to go potty, but who refuses a toddler who says he wants to go potty? So then I have to yank all his clothes back on and into place, get his jacket back on him (because of course how could he go potty while fully dressed?) and wrestle him into his carseat. Great, now we're running ten minutes late.

We try to get William to get into the bathroom. But first he has to try on his wizard costume or put the baby doll in her stroller and take the stroller to the rec room or look for his missing Percy train. By the time we finally convince him to get into the bathtub, we're running ten minutes behind, and bedtime once again will be delayed.

And we try to get William to bed at a reasonable time each night. But before he will consent to lying down and winding down, he has to have a sip of water from that sippy cup and a sip from his other sippy cup, and oh yes, this cup is nearly empty. And he has to move his music box from one side of the crib to the other, then test out all the musical options to find the right one to suit his mood, then compulsively adjust the volume. When the lights finally go off, we're running...you guessed it...ten minutes behind.

If I could add up all those ten-minute increments that I lose each day due to my son's stalling techniques, I'd have an extra hour in my day. Think what I could do with all that time! I could, er, write on this...er, blog...

Pretty, pretty princess

I used to think I'd never have to deal with all the Cinderella, Ariel and Snow White things because I had a boy. I figured that we'd be completely immersed in All Things Boy, and our house would be completely devoid of anything the slightest bit pink or princessy.

Ha ha! The Disney Princess love continues at our house and shows no signs of abating. The current activities include:

*William now sleeps with both his Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty books in his crib with him.

*He likes to pick out a Disney Princess sticker for potty-training successes.

*He brushes his teeth with Disney Princess toothpaste.

*He insisted that I buy a Cinderella puzzle for him as one of his "big" potty-training treats.

*He saw some Disney Princess fruit treats at Publix a few days ago and nearly surrendered his beloved Spider-Man fruit treats in favor of the pink frilly ones.

*He likes to don his little dress-up crown and have us call him "Prince William."

*And today, William insisted on taking his beloved Sleeping Beauty book to school to show to his teachers and friends.

But you know what? I'm fine with all this. So what if William's a boy and he loves all the princessy stuff? It's a phase. It's a funny phase, to be sure, but it's just a phase. I blogged about it recently over on Go Get Your Jacket, in fact. The way I see it is this: it must get boring to have to play with the same-old, same-old stuff that stuffy old grown-ups think is appropriate for your gender. Why not shake things up a bit and let little boys dabble in princess stuff and let girls play with footballs and Thomas the Tank Engine?

Right now, William's into princesses. Next month, he'll probably have moved onto something else. So I might as well just sit back and enjoy the brief reprieve from trains, tractors and Star Wars. So I think I will.

How to handle a wild man

Okay, help!

I feel like I work so hard at this trying-to-be-a-good-parent thing. I encourage my child to eat a variety of healthy foods, including fruits and vegetables. I expose him to culture by taking him to museums, botanical gardens and even a play last weekend. I read multiple books to him every day. I take him to Sunday School every week. I never used baby talk when I talked to him. I praise him for the things that he does well. I set boundaries when it comes to behaviors that are not acceptable. I make sure he gets plenty of sleep. I talk to him. I laugh with him and tell him I love him all the time.

And I try, I really do, to be patient with William when he does stuff that drives me crazy. So, why, oh why, does he insist on doing things that drive me nuts? Am I not responding correctly?

Here's an example. When I walked into his classroom to pick him up from school today, William acted like a hurricane. A fast-moving, destroy-everything-in-his-path hurricane. He began screeching happily and tearing madly around the classroom, knocking toys away from a couple of his classmates. He pushed one little boy who was trying to use the potty. He tore around the room and refused to stay still long enough for me to wrestle him into his coat. It was maddening. And exhausting.

And it's like this nearly every single time I pick him up from school or the nursery at church. None of the other kids act like that, and I have to admit that I get a little embarrassed. I worry that the other parents are looking at me and thinking, "Why doesn't she control her child?" I worry that no one is ever going to want to play with my son because he's so wild. I worry that he's not going to have any friends because the other kids are going to be afraid of him! He's not mean, but he gets so rambunctious. Why does this happen? What can I do about it?

And the other thing is...he can behave so beautifully when he wants to. On Saturday, I took him to see the play "The Wizard of Oz" at the Belcourt Theatre down in Hillsboro Village. He was an angel. He sat nicely in his seat for the first part, then in my lap for the rest of it. He didn't yell or scream or fidget or get down and run around. He used his "inside voice" when he wanted to ask me a question. He behaved better than most of the older children who were there. And yesterday at Cheekwood, he behaved very nicely inside the museum. He didn't run off or screech or keep doing anything that I asked him not to do.

So why does he does act like such a madman at church and school at pickup time? And why don't any of the other kids? What am I doing wrong?

Man, it's cold

You know how I know when it's really freaking cold outside?

When my son actually declines an offer to run around outside like a wild banshee.

Yep, that's what happened this morning. We bundled up and went to Cheekwood to participate in the Tuesday morning kiddie art class. Afterward William "made" a groundhog puppet out of a paper bag, I suggested that we take a stroll...or a mad dash...around the grounds so he could burn off some of his endless energy.

About 25 yards into his run, the wind started to pick up. William slowed to a fast walk. Ten more yards down the deserted sidewalk, and he stopped. Brrrrr. No wonder no one else was outside. No wonder the shuttle bus driver kept trying to wave to me to come get on his bus. William peered up at me from under his baseball hat, which was mostly covered with the fleece-lined hood of his heavy coat, and said, "Mommy, I'm done. I don't want to run anymore." If it had been any warmer, I would have responded, "Who are you and what have you done with my son?" As it was, my teeth were chattering so hard that I couldn't say anything. So I grabbed his mittened hand, and we braced ourselves against the howling wind and beat a hasty retreat to the nearby art museum.

Why am I still so surprised that it gets this cold here in Nashville? We lived here last winter. I survived a half dozen snows last year. Am I really still at least partially in denial that it really does get bitterly cold here?

Pea in the pod, indeed

William stuck a pea up his nose last night.

He realized as soon as he put the pea in his nose that he had done Something Wrong. He bellowed, "My nose! Mommy!" and began sobbing. In fact, he got so upset that I was worried he was going to inhale the pea into his brain (okay, into his sinuses. I do have a better grasp on basic anatomy than that).

Luckily, with some coaxing and a little help from our friend Mr. Tweezers, the pea was quickly removed. Tearfully, William promised to never ever ever do it again.

David shook his head when he heard about this. "I always thought William was too smart to do somtehing like that," he mused.

Oh well. What is it about the nose that makes it so tempting for children to put things into it? Don't we all know someone who's stuck a pea or something up his nose? In fact, I could probably put together a list of perfectly normal smart people who, as small children, just happened to stuff random objects into their nostrils. I know my brother did. And my friend Phuong (sorry, for outing you on the interwebs, Phuongie).

Anyone else want to confess?

Dressed up and down

William, all dressed up:







































...and all dressed down...






































"Mom, please. I'm a serious artist."

Busted...almost.

William was driving me crazy this morning while I was in the bathroom, trying to brush my teeth and get ready for the day.

He was constantly saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, look at this" and pulling on my arm to look at his Sleeping Beauty book/Little People figure/family tree scroll (don't ask). Then he'd sweep his arm across the counter and knock everything in his way into the bathroom sink. Lather, rinse, repeat. Argh.

At one point, I got so frustrated that I said, "If you throw Daddy's contact case in the sink one more time, I'm going to take that Sleeping Beauty book right back to the store."

(Not that they'd take it. It's a mess, with lots of slightly torn and dogeared pages. It's clearly been well-loved.)

And William stopped his act and said, "But, Mommy. Santa Claus brought me that book."

Whoops. Busted. Quickly, I regrouped and managed to sputter a lame, "Well, I'll take it back to the store where Santa Claus bought it." Gah. Way to go.

On strike

Having a child is like owning a company with unionized employees. You just never know when they're going to strike.

With babies, it was the nursing strike. With toddlers, the eating strike. With older toddlers, it's the nap strike.

We're flirting with the nap strike here. Y'all know I'm not ready for William to give up his afternoon nap yet. He needs that nap. I need that nap. But William didn't nap on Saturday and barely napped yesterday. I was scared to death that he was going to stay awake all afternoon today, too, especially when he was yelling "come open my door" less than an hour after I closed the door in the first place. Not that he ever settled down and napped during that short time.

So I marshalled my best negotiating skills, preparing to march in there and lay down the law. I walked in and realized that whew! He needed a change. Not in a grand, sweeping Barack Obama way. No, he needed a change in a clean diaper kind of way. Stat. Once that was taken care of, I told him that in no uncertain terms was he allowed to get up yet. And I covered him with his blankie and marched myself outta there.

That was about an hour ago. So far, so good.

Bathtub serenade

I live for moments like this:



I mean, you should have seen the grin on my face when William was serenading me. It gets me every time.

Er, that's William's imitation of Kermit the Frog singing "The Rainbow Connection," just in case you weren't able to make out the lyrics...

Rite of passage

Today, I played a CD for William in the car.

I know, stop the presses, right? How about this: it was the first time I'd actually played one of his own CDs for him, per his request, in the car.

Usually, I play my own CDs or we listen to satellite radio. I have played the XM Kids channel for him, and I also played Christmas choral music for him in December. But I'd never taken one of his little kiddie CDs and played it for him. He's been happy enough with the Mom-dictated format up until now, so I hadn't seen any reason to mess with it. If ain't broke, don't fix it, etc. etc.

Also, I'd always heard people moan and groan about how all they ever get to listen to in their cars is Raffi (or Barney or whatever grating kid's music their child became slavishly devoted to). I always turned up my nose a bit and thought, "Hello, who's in charge here? You're the parent. You're driving. You get to choose what music you listen to in the car. End of story."

Of course, then I realized that my child was getting old enough to hear and understand some of the lyrics to the songs I was listening to. Good-bye, vintage Beastie Boys CD. See you later, Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack. I relegated those to the "listen to only when alone" stack awhile ago, and that's when I began turning to the satellite radio children's channel (116, if you need to know).

So I guess it was only a matter of time before I toted William's CDs out to the Mazda. But happily, at least he wanted to listen to a They Might Be Giants CD. It may be kiddie music, but it's still TMBG. It's a win-win for both of us. And it's kind of amazing, now that I think about it, that it took this long.

Frog and Toad are my friends, too.

Y'know, I'm sort of lukewarm on some of the characters in popular children's literature. Some of them irritate me (Max and Ruby), some of them are boring (too many to count), some of them are set well-meaning but annoyingly bad examples for your children (Curious George), and some of them....well, I just don't get them. (Yes, Madeline, I'm talking about you.)

But Frog and Toad are different. I love Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books. You know: "Frog and Toad are Friends" and "Frog and Together." Do I love them because I remember enjoying the books so much as a child? Do I love them because the stories are short, but not too short, and easy to read without being deadly dull? Do I love them because I just get a big kick out of silly old Toad and his good buddy Frog, who always goes along with his crazy schemes but reins him in when he gets too close to trouble? Yes, yes and yes.

Oh yes, and I love them because they often manage to impart a lesson without resorting to the dreadful Overly Earnest Message approach that so many contemporary kids books do. Please. Kids are not stupid. They know when they're being preached at. Give them a decent story, and if you can also fit in a good message, fine. Please do not insult my or my child's intelligence by sacrificing a good story on the altar of this-is-good-for-you-so-who-gives-a-whoop-about-fun? What child is going to want to read if that's the sort of drivel the book publishers are pushing on them?

I particularly love the story in which Frog gives Toad a hat for his birthday, but the hat turns out to be too big. But Toad doesn't want to hurt Frog's feelings so he wears it anyway, and he falls into holes and trips over tree roots. So unbeknownst to Toad, Frog sneaks into Toad's house to retrieve the hat, finds a way to shrink it, then returns it to his friend. And Toad wears his better-fitting hat with joy. Isn't that a wonderful examples of two friends looking out for each other?

By the way, we still need "Frog and Toad All Year," in case anyone runs across a copy...

The Big Easy

When William willingly agreed to go potty at Target yesterday, I made sure I was effusive in my praise of him afterward. You have to encourage these things, and I wasn't going to let him think that it wasn't a Big Deal.

After I'd heaped praise upon him for awhile, I added, "See, wasn't it easy?"

"Yes," William responded. Then after a beat, he added, "But it's not easy being green."

Not yet

So, when are you going to have another baby?

I cannot tell you how many times someone has made that remark or a version of it to me lately. Don't worry. I'm not offended. I take it as a compliment, in fact. I blithely chalk it up to the likelihood that you are all so dazzled by the sheer brilliance that is my first child that you are breathless for another.

Or, you know, there's always the "everyone else is doing it" explanation. And actually, that's not so far from the truth. On Saturday, three different friends announced to me that they're expecting again. And that doesn't count the four friends who had babies this past fall, or the women from church who are all due any minute now. Everyone's having a baby!

Except me. I know, that just burst your bubble, didn't it? Maybe someday. I'm still working through the feelings I experienced when I was pregnant with William.

For those of you who don't know, I spent most of the first six months of my pregnancy racing to the toilet. It was wretched. I was wretched. I was covering education for The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, and I scoped out all my usual haunts for good places in which to privately throw up. (For the record, the staff bathroom just off the library at Palm Desert High School is ideal. It's a quiet, single seater, and you can lock the door. And nothing is nearby, so you don't have anyone sitting right there, listening to you upchuck whatever you so valiantly managed to choke down earlier.) I kept a just-in-case kit on the front seat of my car, since I was commuting an hour to and from work each day. And when I got home each night, I basically just slumped on the bathroom floor until it was time to get in bed and feel nauseated there. I'm not exactly eager to relive that, in any form or fashion.

And then there's the Bell's Palsy issue. I had finally managed to conquer the worst of the nausea and vomiting (which I darkly referred to as the All Day Ugliness, since it was never ever confined to the morning) and was just merely uncomfortable all the time, when half my face was suddenly paralyzed. I was 33 weeks pregnant, and not only I was swollen and unattractive due to late pregnancy, but the left side of my face was completely frozen. I could not blink my left eye. I could not raise my left eyebrow. I could not even hold the left side of my mouth shut. I could not taste salt, since even my tastebuds were affected. It was devastating to my self-esteem. I felt ugly. I felt damaged. And it continued to be devastating, since I didn't even begin to recover any movement on the left side of my face until my son was about two months old.

My former neurologist said he doubted the Bell's Palsy would return, were I to get pregnant again. But the possibility, even slim, still remains at the back of my brain. It lurks there. Surely no one can blame me for that, especially since the effects of the original paralysis never fully resolved. Look at my face, and you can tell:

















My left eyelid still sags, but at least, thank God, I can blink my eye. I still cannot raise my left eyebrow at all. And when I smile, you can see that the left side of my mouth cannot smile as broadly as the right side of my mouth. I try not to dwell on it, but I still really miss my old smile. I think I used to have a really wonderful smile, and it was one of my favorite things about myself.

So, I still am coming to terms with the residual feelings that I still have about my last pregnancy. I was lucky in one regard, however: I gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, full-term baby boy who had absolutely no problems. When he was born, they wiped him off and suctioned out his nose (and yes, David insisted on giving him some oxygen because he's a worrywart), and they handed him to me, and that was it. No NICU. No tubes. No surgeries. No worries.

We'd like to have a bigger family. Just give me some time to get my brain around it.

Gotta go back to school again

Today, William returned to school after a three-week winter break. Good grief, three weeks is a long time. I don't know who was more glad to arrive at his school this morning: me or him. We have spent a lot of time together over the past three weeks, and I think we both needed to get back to our usual routine.

Apparently that's a common sentiment. Every mom I ran into at school had a variation of the same thing to say: Yes, Christmas was great, a little hectic, but fun, and oh man, I sure am glad the kids are going back to school at last. I guess we were all ready for a little downtime after several weeks of lots and lots of quality time. Quality time spent inside. I don't think I need to spell out what that means.

But lest I sound cold and unfeeling, I will say I'm sympathetic to the plight of the cooped-up toddler. It's got to be hard to be energetic and active and have to stay inside a small house because it's cold, rainy and altogether miserable outside, let alone have to do so for most of three weeks. Let alone be quiet and relatively calm while doing so. Especially when Christmas cookies are also involved.

Despite the fun of the holidays, it was a looooong break. Finally, finally on Saturday, there was a break in the weather. I took William to Cheekwood, since we have a new membership, courtesy of my parents. We worked on an art project together in the learning center, and then I just let him run as fast as he could up and down the various trails. He joined an impromptu soccer game, and I just let him work out some of that pent-up energy until he actually volunteered that he was tired.

Here's the little prince, mugging for the camera in between his sprinting and his soccer game:



















Admit it: you can see the energy radiating off him, can't you?
















We went back to Cheekwood again yesterday, even though it was raining. We pulled up the hoods to our raincoats and walked around. It wasn't as invigorating as Saturday's trip, since William couldn't really run around. But at least we weren't inside. I just couldn't deal with staying inside the house again.

I also admit to feeling a little bit bad for William's teachers when I dropped him off in his classroom today. Can you imagine having a dozen small kids with cabin-fever dropped off on your doorstep? Whew. They were still alive when I arrived to pick him up, but I'm thinking they might have earned combat pay today...

Speech, speech

One thing that's been a lot of fun about William as he's gotten older is his language development. He started talking pretty early and acquired words at a very rapid rate, then began speaking in sentences before I could even write down all his new words. He said the word "balcony" yesterday, and I wondered, "Where did he learn that?" And then I remembered the times when I would run to make a note of his new words.

Now he's at the age where he has started telling long, rambling, imaginative stories. The other morning, he sat in his bed and told himself a story. I know this because I was eavesdropping via the baby monitor. I couldn't make out every single word, but clearly he was caught up in his own story. When David finally went in to liberate him from the crib, he told him all about how the SuperReaders (from the PBS show "SuperWhy") and the "castle people" (the people from his Fisher-Price castle) showed up at the front door. We often hear stories now about the castle people. In fact, I need to sit down next to him with a pen and write them down when he starts to spin these stories and preserve them for his amusement (and mine) years from now.

Of course, the language and cognitive development has its downside, too. Yesterday morning, I was changing him and getting him dressed, and he stuck his face up and chirped, "You're stupid, Mommy!" Great. He knows the toddler S word. David has apologized, saying William might have learned it from him (you know, of course, that David's general approach toward life is "if something is stupid, I tend to say so.") We're taking a zero tolerance approach to name-calling, though. I immediately told William "time out" and marched out of the room, shutting the door. He burst into tears and sobbed until I came back in. Then he fell on me, saying, "I won't say that word anymore, Mommy, I'm sorry." He knew he was saying something naughty. And now he knows we don't like it and won't put up with it. I think you have to take a hard line with this sort of thing--biting and hitting, too. You don't want them to ever think it's acceptable to hit someone or hurt them by calling them a mean name. "Stupid" isn't really that bad, but it is mean to call someone that, and William needs to understand that. It's also the first step towards names that are much worse.

Of course, he does still say many wonderful things, too. I was sick off and on during Christmas and New Year's, and many times, he sweetly inquired, "Mommy, are you still feeling sick?" And when I said that I was still feeling bad, he would pat my arm or hug me and respond, "I'll take care of you." All together now: Awwwwwww.