Knocking

Do you ever wonder where your kid picks things up? I have seen other kids repeat words just like their parents would say. For example, a kid telling another kid “no, don’t do it that way” and all they are trying to do is put some Lagos together or something. Kids pick up so much of what we do and say.


I have yet to experience Luke repeating anything I say. As much as it might annoy me in time, I look forward to that day!! I think it will be wonderful!! I know it is coming, just in its own time.

Even though he may not repeat words, he is starting to repeat actions. The other day I was feeding him lunch and he started knocking on the table. Knocking!! Where did he get that from?? I was perplexed, but at the same time I thought it was great!! The fact he was doing something like that is another step taken in the direction of his development.

So throughout the day we knocked…on everything; the kitchen table, walls, refrigerator, doors, and when I went to the bathroom we knocked back and forth through the door. It was great!! One of the best days I have had in a long time. I found out a few days later from Luke’s grandma, that he picked up the knocking from his grandpa who would “knock” with him at the dinner table.

Those grandparents!! What are they thinking, trying to trick us moms into thinking our kids come up with these things on their own!!

"Mommyproof"

I know that certain things need to be childproof. But, sometimes I have to wonder if instead of testing these things on children, they use adults instead. It is like they are trying to keep us out as well!! Sometimes I have such a hard time just trying to open the Cascade bottle for the dishwasher, or even the lid on a jar of spaghetti sauce. Maybe I just need to work on my “mommy muscles”.


Every day I need to give Luke 6mL (total) of medicine to help the acid in his stomach, 3mL at night and 3 mL in the morning. I never had a problem with the medicine bottles in the past 8 months that he has been on this medicine. But, a few weeks ago…on a morning where we were going to have to go to therapy, I could not get the stupid lid off the medicine bottle. Childproof lids…uurrrggg!! I felt like a complete idiot…but I tried and tried…and could not get the lid to catch when I pushed down on the cap!! It was a bottle that we had been using for about a week and a half already…so I knew it had been working. I couldn’t figure it out.

I knew Luke really needed his medicine, if he doesn’t get it you can tell he is uncomfortable or in pain. Knowing this I knew I needed to figure something out as quickly as possible, so he could still get his morning dose. So we left early for therapy and went to Wal-Mart where we got his prescription filled. I told the ladies at the pharmacy my problem, and they were sympathetic. Of course one of the ladies was able to get the lid off without much difficulty!! Boy…did I feel silly!! Then they asked if the medicine was kept out of the reach of children…if so they would give me a “regular” cap…so I wouldn’t have to worry about the childproof stuff. I was grateful, but also felt so dumb….after all it is supposed to be “childproof” not “mommyproof”, right? Oh well….we survived and they gave me the “idiotproof” lid. It worked…I was happy…we didn’t even need to break the bottle or anything to get it fixed.

You’ll be happy to know that we had Luke’s prescription filled again last week and so far it hasn’t been “mommyproof”.

Shoes?

What is it with shoes? Luke absolutely loves shoes. He throws them, hides them, tries to eat them…it never ends. When I leave the door open to the garage to go get something out of the deep freeze, he throws my shoes out the door. And, of course when I put them back inside…he quickly throws them back out in the garage…laughing. It is so hard to be the “mean mommy” and say “no” and mean it when you just want to laugh…especially when he is laughing and obviously loving what he is doing. As my husband says, he can be a “knuckle head”. But a cute one.


Then when I try to load the dishwasher, he puts my shoes in the bottom rack of the dishwasher. Once again I take them out…but he quickly laughs and puts it back in. Is he trying to tell me something? Are my shoes stinky?

Other times he must think they are yummy, especially my bright pink galoshes. When he isn’t throwing these out the door or into the dishwasher, he tries to eat them. When I take those away, he tries to eat his own dark blue pair. What is it about the rubber? Or is he just mouthing the shoes like all his other toys? Who knows. It is just one of the many things I see him do and shake my head.

Mommy Brain

I know I have mentioned this kind of thing before, but I must tell of the latest “mommy brain” episode. This last week I have forgotten or misplaced several things. Last Sunday I left my coat at church, which luckily I didn’t need since it warmed up so well!!


Then on Thursday a friend helped me out when I took Luke to PT, since I also needed to take our baby with us. Of course I needed to get the oil changed on the car as well. So my friend met us at the oil changing place, and was our “taxi” for the day. That day it was raining throughout the day and when we returned to get my car after therapy, we were dealing with rain, children and car seats….and in the process we forgot something important. No…it wasn’t Luke or the baby…I didn’t forget the MOST important things. But, I did leave Luke’s walker in her van. Sine we didn’t really need it again until Sunday, we went a few days without the walker. Although I was kicking myself for forgetting it, it wasn’t the end of my “mommy brain” week.

Yesterday (Sunday), we were loading up kids, diaper bags, books, and my nephew’s present for his graduation (a card). You know how when you deal with kids sometimes the little things just get forgotten?. Well, that’s what happened. I put the books, card and purse on the roof of the car while I loaded Luke in his car seat. When I was done I grabbed everything off the roof…or at least I thought I did. It wasn’t until we were celebrating my nephew’s graduation and I was looking for the card, that I realized I must have left it at home or something.

My angel was looking out for me once again, as it turns out my husband’s parents found the card in the driveway when they came home with the kids after church. It has a nice dirty tire mark on the front marking the adventure it had yesterday morning. I’m just glad it didn’t travel down the road a couple miles like my library books did that last time I experienced “mommy brain”. My husband thinks I’m nuts, he just doesn’t understand what kids can do to Mommy’s brain.

Feeding two?

Do you ever have one of those “blonde” moments? It seems like when I became a mom, those moments were showing up more often. One of those latest moments showed up when I was trying to be efficient and in a hurry. Those two things don’t always go together well.


To truly understand this, you have to remember that with Luke he is about at a 12 month level with feeding. He can use his hands or fists to grab food…but we are working on using forks and spoons. Which when we just give them to him, he throws…so we have to help him with that.

Over the last month I have tried to feed both Luke and baby girl at the same time. You would think this would be easy, and efficient…right? Well at first I found it to work pretty well. So of course once I get something down well, I feel like I can add something else to the mix. For example; I can feed them both and listen to the radio, or even eat my food as well. The other day I did a dangerous thing. I tried feeding them both while talking on the phone.

I was giving Luke his normal breakfast of scrambled eggs and a banana, and baby girl her puréed bananas. Maybe that was my first mistake, feeding them both bananas. My subconscious mind probably figured as long as they both got bananas I was fine.

I’m sure you can figure out what happened...I was so in tuned with my conversation I was just automatically feeding Luke…before I realized it I think I gave him at least 4 spoons of the baby’s bananas!! When I caught that, I laughed and tried to focus better. Then I got back into my conversation…and began feeding automatically again. And I’m sure you can guess what happened…yep...I gave the baby part of her brother’s banana. The only good part to this was that she realized right away that something wasn’t right…the the banana never really got inside her mouth. I think it was the action of her spitting it out, that made me realize what I had done.

It’s a good thing she keeps her momma in line!! Luke doesn’t care what he eats…as long as he eats…so I didn’t catch it as quickly. I think I better go back to just feeding both of them, and forget trying to get anything else done at the same time!! As much as I like to be efficient, I’m afraid one day I may try to feed something to the baby and she decides she’ll try it instead of spitting it back out at me.

Packing to Fit

In preparation for our trip to Baltimore with Luke, I have begun a list of everything we need to take. We are taking the baby, so we need everything from two pack-n-plays to a dish rack to wash the baby’s bottles. In that process my husband and I have also been trying to figure out what size vehicle we should rent to take out East. We knew our car would be too small and our SUV is so big that he doesn’t want to drive it through Baltimore traffic. Plus, it is a long trip and my husband prefers not to put all the miles from this trip on our current vehicles. So that leaves us with the option of car rental.


The only problem is we had a “friendly debate” as to what kind of car we should rent. We don’t want to spend too much money on the rental and there was a huge difference in price between the various car sizes and a minivan, so after a few days I lost that battle. I figured a minivan would have plenty of room, not be too long for traffic, and would get good gas mileage….but no it costs too much. Then we began to “debate” about the car size; there are mid-size (we have), full-size, premium, luxury, and then there was the mid-size SUV. So many options! We spent so much time trying to find dimensions of trunks online, only to find volume capacity. That helped, but we really needed to know the dimensions so we could figure out exactly what would fit.

My husband was so sure we could fit everything into the trunk of a full-size car, and I’m thinking…no way, it is only one size bigger than our car and according to the internet only about 1 foot more in cubic space!! So I set out to prove my point!! I cleared a rectangular area in the kitchen and took my list I had been working on for our trip, and figured out what would have to go in the trunk. Then, I proceeded to pack. Yes, I know I was making something that should be easy…hard….I do that a lot. But, once I got everything into my little rectangle I measured and knew I would need a lot more space than what was in our trunk. After all I had a large suitcase, medium suitcase, two pack-n-plays, double stroller, small box of food, jug of water, dish rack, portable booster seat, bath seat, and dish pan. Those were the bigger things anyway. I left that pile there the whole day so my husband would see what I had been trying to tell him. When he got home from work, of course he said “it will fit…I bet I could fit it into our car”. I’m definitely not agreeing with this….so after supper…what does he do?? Yep…he starts packing up the car…so sure it would all fit in our trunk.

Of course, Luke got mad with daddy left the house to do this…so I opened the front door so he could see daddy through the screen. So here was our happy family; my husband shoving stuff into the trunk and Luke looking on with so much interest and saying “aahhh….aahhhdaahh”…as if he was cheering daddy on. Then there was me, the skeptic…who kept peeking out the window…and thinking…oh no, he may just get it to fit!!

Well I have to admit…I was wrong…..everything fit. I have no idea how he did it. I’m usually the one who gets everything to fit when we pack everything up on trips. I now have a new respect for my husband’s abilities to pack!! So I lost the debate and we are taking a full-size car out East!! I can only hope when I go to pack for real, that I didn’t miss anything else big we need to take!! It may just have to stay behind, whatever it is!!

non-verbal communication?

You know, sometimes I think speaking can be over rated. There are definitely times where I wish I could communicate verbally with my son, like when he needs to go potty or when he gets frustrated and obviously wants help with something. Although I would love for communication to be a two-way street, Luke manages to get across his point pretty well without words. He has very expressive eyebrows. Ever since he was born, you could really tell when he is thinking hard about something. His eyebrows turn up and this forehead scrunches together. Like he is says “Hmmm….I wonder?” When he is surprised or impressed by something he raises his eyebrows as if to say “wow, what was that” or “that was cool”.


I find myself having conversations with him, while reading his facial expressions. I might say something and then he’ll respond by looking at me a certain way and then I say something out loud for him. I know many moms do this when their children are babies, but it seems to me like that stage may never end.

Despite that, it is amazing how Luke can communicate his sadness, surprise, curiosity and even his humor just by looking at me. I love the personality I see and pray he keeps it when he starts to form all those words that I know are floating around in that cute little head.