We had a pretty good weekend around here. On Saturday Robert made waffles for breakfast. After breakfast was cleaned up I went shopping, without kids or a husband! I saw that Kohls was having a sale on just about everything. I got about half of her Christmas shopping done. I also picked up a few 4T items for Laura. She didn’t have a lot of long sleeve shirts and some of her 3T tops are getting small. The 4Ts are a bit baggy, but it won’t take long for her to grow into them. I also picked up some sleepers for Warren. I would have liked to get some sleep sacks with long sleeves, but Carter’s doesn’t make them any bigger than what we have. The one he has his feet are hitting the bottom already, so he is just in the regular sleepers now. Actually, the ones I got are a bit big, but he is growing like a weed and won’t take long to be in them.
This year both kids were dressed up as Tigger (same costume even!). I’ll work on getting pictures up soon. We went over to Helen’s subdivision to do Trick-or-Treating. We parked in Robert’s boss’s driveway and hit a few houses. I think it might have been close to 10 houses or so. By the time we did those, Laura was cold and tired. Warren was cold and ready to be back home. When we got home, I told Laura she could have one piece of candy. She picked out a Heath bar first. I tough that would be a bit hard for her to eat, so then she picked a pack of M&Ms. Guess she worked the system there.
The kids didn’t do so well with the time change this year. I didn’t start adjusting them ahead of time. Even with the time change, Warren woke up at 4am for his feeding (which would have been 5 so that isn’t bad at all!). He got back to bed around 5:15. Robert said he heard Laura around 5 (which is still too early if the time hadn’t changed). I think she went back to sleep, but she was up for the day at 6. I had gotten up at 5 to help get Warren back to sleep. I never did fall back asleep. So when Laura woke up at 6 I just got up with her and let Robert sleep some more. I ended up waking him up at 7:30 since we were heading up to his parent’s for brunch.
We had a good visit while up there. We ended up leaving around 1:30 and getting home 2:30 or so. We watched a little bit of the Packer/Viking game, but turned it off by half time. It just wasn’t that great of a game to watch. Laura was ready for bed at 6, but we kept her up until 7:30 so she’d be back on schedule. Warren took a long nap in the afternoon (he didn’t sleep much in the morning and at the in-law’s). He ended up crashing for the night around 9 or so. Unfortunately, he was up at 3 for his feeding. I really wish he would have gone until 4. He was back asleep at 3:30 though. I was up for the day at 6:30 when he wanted to eat again.
Today I should do a little bit of laundry. I am taking the kids down to Mom and Dad’s this week for a visit. I didn’t want to wait until Thanksgiving to spend time with them again. They were up for Warren’s baptism, but it was a short visit and we didn’t get that much time to spend together. I think Robert is ready for a bit of a break too. I now I still don’t get a big break, but I’ll have Mom around most days to help out so it is a little bit of a break for me. Plus, when his is refreshed, it helps me out when we get back.
In the mornings, I have started turning on Dora and Diego for Laura to watch. I like Sesame Street, but they repeat so much I get really tired of them. Laura seems to like the music in Dora and Diego better too. Just now she started to interact with the show. She was recognizing if the animal was a deer or not. She doesn’t talk like the characters say to, but that’s ok.
In potty training news, I have backed off for a while. She just wasn’t understanding what I wanted her to do. She could figure out how to release so things would happen. I’ll try again in a few weeks.
Since Laura knows her letters, numbers, colors, and shapes, I have started working on letter sounds with her. I am not pushing her, but when she names a letter, I talk about what sound it makes. I don’t know how many she knows for sure yet. It is still early. She seems to like learning the souneds. She will repeat the sounds after me. Who knows, maybe she will be reading by 3! If she is, great. If not, that’s ok too. She likes to learn which is why we do it. I don’t expect Warren to be the same way. If he enjoys it, we’ll do it too, but I won’t push it on him. He is letting me know every day that he is not just like his sister.
In discipline, things are getting better. Timeouts really work well with Laura. Last night she avoided two timeouts. I told her what I wanted to happen. If it didn’t happen right away, I asked her to do it again. That time I gave her until the count of three (“I’ll give you until 3 to get up. One, Two, Three). By the time I got to three, she was doing what I had asked. I was quite impressed that it worked. She did end up in timeout when she kept standing while eating (we forgot her booster seat at the in-laws). I think at that point she was just testing me to see if I would give a timeout. She was standing then laughing. After I told her to sit, she would sit for 30 seconds then stand and laugh. I had enough and put her in timeout. She knew I was serious. She didn’t cry and throw a fit though. After the 2 minutes, she gave me a hug and got down.
Well, time to give Laura attention. She needs a diaper change and is wanting me to read some books. I’ll try to get pictures posted soon.