Bed Buddies

So the boys have been sleeping together in Caleb's bed all week. We've continued the bedtime routine of reading books, praying, and then one of us laying down with them until at least one of them is asleep. Most of the nights, they have both stayed in bed together until morning. Two nights, Ethan woke up during the night and joined us in our bed until morning. They look SO SWEET curled up sleeping together. Sometimes they end up snuggled up, and sometimes they stay on their halfs of the bed. Ethan looks so tiny in that big bed, and they both look absolutely precious sleeping together.

Bugs

So Ethan's other recent fixation is with tiny, tiny bugs. When Aunt Wendi first came to stay with us in mid-November, she brought a children's science book called Ouch: How Your Body Makes It Through a Very Bad Day . (I actually had to go look at the title because since Day 1, Ethan dubbed the book the "Yucky Bug Book" and that is what we have called it ever since.) On pages 28 and 29 of this book, there is a two-page spread of tiny bug photo enlargements: chiggers, scabies mites, fleas, dust mites, head louse and eyelash mites. Ethan was fascinated with this page, so Wendi explained to him that these are big pictures of tiny bugs that just look like dots or small pieces of dirt in real life. She taught him that tiny bugs live on our bodies, in our hair, and on our clothes. The lesson was so thorough that Ethan absorbed which different bugs make us itch in different places. He can explain to you that dust mites make you sneeze, head lice make your head itch, chiggers bite your ankle, etc. Unfortunately, what started out to be an excellent science lesson quickly turned into a toddler obsession.

For the past eight weeks, tiny bugs have made their way into every aspect of Ethan's life. He'll be playing happily and see a speck of dirt on his hand. He stops playing, leaps up and shouts "BUGS! WASH HANDS!" Nothing can deter him from climbing both sets of stairs from the playroom to his bathroom and scrubbing his hands for a full five minutes. A speck of dirt on his clothes warrants a new outfit, and an itch on his back or on his head leaves him begging Mommy to "GET THE BUG!" If a piece of food falls, not just on the floor, but out of his bowl onto the table, it has bugs on it and is therefore inedible. (He also promptly dubs any food he finds unappetizing as bug-infested, as well.)

The newest bug complication is that he sees tiny bugs in the BATH WATER! The irony is evident: if the water can't be trusted to be clean, what is he to do????? For three nights, he only lasted about 30 seconds in the bath before climbing out of the tub in a panic after spotting a fleck of dirt floating in the water. Even if I "catch the bug" floating in the water, he won't get back in. So last night I rinsed the tub out thoroughly, rinsed both boys off before running the bath water, and then filled the tub with bubbles. Ethan got his first good bath in four days.

I've hidden the book, but there is no getting this bug thing out of his head. I'll just need an extra measure of patience until he outgrows it. :)

Bare Feet

Ethan's two latest things are providing us (mostly me) with a heavy dose of frustration as well as some comic relief. The first is that he refuses to keep his shoes and socks on. Ever. As soon as I put them on, he takes them off. Now, considering that we are coming out of a record-breaking cold stretch, you can imagine the problems this causes. I try to get the boys bundled up with jackets, hats, shoes and socks before we get into the car, so I don't have to stand in the freezing air tying shoes and zipping jackets after we arrive at our destination. Since Ethan won't leave his shoes and socks on in the car, I end up standing in the freezing air anyway. After about a week of putting his shoes on twice for every outing, I started telling him that if he took them off, I would not put them back on, and his feet would get very cold. Ethan is a very bright little dude, and he completely understood me, but decided to call my bluff anyway. He had them all off before I'd pulled out of the driveway. And so I took him into Publix barefoot. I got quite a few stares and two people even commented, but I just explained the situation (more for his benefit than theirs). After several days of carrying him bare foot everywhere we went, he started to figure out that he didn't like never getting down and walking around. I think the icing on the cake was when we all went to Toys R Us on Saturday: he took his shoes off, so Daddy and I wouldn't let him get down and play with the Thomas train table. He had to sit in the cart and watch Caleb play by himself. He wailed his pitiful, "I SAAAA-AAAD!!! I SORRY, MAMA! SORRY!!!!!!" but he stayed in the cart. Since then he has left his shoes on more than half the time. I'm pretty sure the little booger actually weighs where we are going and whether or not he has anything to lose. He took them off on the way to Publix yesterday (where he always has to sit in the cart anyway), but left them alone on the way to church tonight. Little stinker :)

See tomorrow's post for Ethan's other issue, which is much funnier and even more frustrating.

Sleep Struggles

After ten months straight of Ethan sleeping through the night (starting right after his ear tube surgery last February), he's been waking up multiple times a night for the past couple of weeks. I'm not sure whether the sleep interruptions were precipitated by our traveling and abnormal sleeping arrangements, or if perhaps his tubes have come out and he has an ear infection again. I'm taking him to the doctor this morning to eliminate (or confirm) the ear possibility.

Whatever the reason for all the night wakings (and him getting up for the day before 5:30 am, no matter how late his bedtime is), Marcus and I are starting to feel like parents of a young baby again! In the past two weeks, we've done the middle-of-the-night rocking and patting, we've brought him into our bed, and we've let him cry for periods of time, all in an effort to get him to go back to sleep in the middle of the night. Only, this time around, it is even harder because he can argue with us, and he says the most heart-rending things from his crib. He's developed a fear of shadows (thanks to big brother), and he's always pointing at the shadows around his room and saying "I SCARED!" MONSTER!" Whenever anyone mentions or makes a move toward putting him in his crib for bed, he starts crying and wailing "I SAAA--AAADD!" This is such a dramatic change from the little boy of past months who used to ask to go bed when he was tired. He loved his bedtime routine and he went contentedly into his crib after books and rocking, talked to himself for a little while, and fell asleep without a protest. Now he BEGS to sleep in our bed or Caleb's bed every night. Marcus does not sleep well at all when either child is in our bed, so Ethan sleeping in our king with us on a regular basis is not really an option.

We've tried three times putting him to bed with Caleb in Caleb's queen-sized bed. The first two times, they just talked and played and eventually got too rowdy, so we separated them back into their own rooms. Last night, I did their bed time routine together in Caleb's room, and then I laid down in between them in Caleb's bed, and we all fell asleep together. I woke up around 10:30 and slipped out of bed, and the boys slept on until Ethan woke up at 5:30. Marcus said he heard Ethan wake up once, but he went back to sleep without any parental help. We would love it if the boys would get used to sleeping in the same room. Our best friends have 3-year-old triplets who share a room, and when we are over there, Marcus and I love hearing their kids talk to each other in the monitor before they fall asleep each night. Chatting before sleep is such great bonding time, and hopefully our boys will be old enough to handle sharing a room very soon.

Catch-Up

I am so behind in blog-land. It has been an unbelievable four weeks since I have written a post! I haven't written about Christmas or New Years, and I missed both boys' monthly updates.

Well, we have finally gotten back into the swing of things after the chaos and fun of the holidays, so I think I'll be able to get some of our experiences and events typed up. For today, here are some pictures that my parents took when we were in Searcy for Thanksgiving. My mom gave me a CD of these pics over Christmas, and some of them turned out really well. The pictures outside are at the elementary school park one block from my parents house. (The elementary school I attended for kindergarten and first grade.) The inside pictures are at my parents house. Enjoy :)