It's not a bird, it's not a plane, it's Terrible Two Boy

We've heard this from plenty of folks (and regrettably experienced it first hand) that the Terrible Two's actually start around 18 months. Andrei was a bit late in getting into those episodes where his new found independence (or semi-independence) leads to some pretty trying behaviors. But he's in it full swing right now and let me tell you they are trying times.

He's actually so easy going and well behaved and even after a situation in which he really pushes our buttons, I feel almost like, "Well, that's good though, he's growing and trying to be his own person."

Of course I feel that may most often after a Corona or two.

But the testing rules is the one that just annoys the heck out of me. Case in point is tonight (about 30 min. ago to be exact). Mom did a diaper change and while she was cleaning up, Andrei and I were waiting for her. He finds the most unusual things interesting as toys and often I'm fine with him playing with them. The thing tonight was my drafting ruler (you know the ones that are triangular shaped).

So he's holding it through the railings (we're upstairs at the time) and then looks over to me. I say "Don't drop that down there, you know you're not allowed to put things through the railings and drop them."

That was all the encouragement he needed, and down goes my ruler making interesting sounds as it bounces several times on the tile floor below.

That lead to an immediate Time Out. Normally we don't use Time Outs ("TO") as the first level of discipline (unless he hits, hitting is an instant Time Out in our house). It is just so irritating when he intentionally disobeys a rule (usually after rehearing the rule). And thankfully the TO did it's work because he was pretty sad that he had to stand against the wall for a full minute. They say to use 1 minute per year of age, but Andrei really gets the message pretty quickly so ours are usually between 1-2 minutes.

Anyway, the really nice part of our Time Out method is that after a short discussion on why he got the Time Out we both say "I love you" and kiss and hug. And Andrei has such a sweet demeanor, that he really means it and feels great after a TO and doesn't really have any sense of holding a grudge. I just wish he had a little bit better memory of these TOs so that he'd at least not try breaking the same rule over and over and over again.

And the "We don't drop things over the railing" is his favorite rule to break.

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's ReadingMan!!!

As the title implies, one of Andrei's favorite activities is reading books, well actually listening to us read him books. As brilliant as he is, he can't read at 23 months - I know, you're all as shocked as I am (so, no he's not actually reading in this shot).


But the boy loves his books. This weekend we got a great set of 10 books called Amazing Machines from Costco. Each book has a story about some type of machine, from boats to airplanes to cars to trains. He loves them but doesn't quite stay put for the whole story so we have to invent a slimmed down version of the story. Sort of the Cliff Notes version.

But he really loves books. We read every night and if it was up to him we would probably read 10 or more books. But I cut it down to just 2 or 3 depending on how long each book is. His library of books is getting so large we may actually need to build him a bookcase just to house his collection. But this is all good (or "good-goood-good" as Andrei would say) and we want to foster his reading as much as possible.

During the day he'll often go over to his stash of books and take out...oh...six of them and head over to either Steve or myself and plop himself down and have us read to him. There was some study done that showed that children that get read to are able to learn the alphabet at earlier ages and we can see Andrei looking at the letters, almost realizing, that they stand for something. He even likes looking at our books (which of course don't have pictures).

We don't really push him into doing anything fast. So the toys we give him are for his age, because we want him to have that sense of accomplishment. But at the same time we do try to lead him towards good habits (very little TV, more reading, more outdoor play, etc.). And it's pretty cool (and makes us feel great) that he'd rather go and grab a book than ask for the TV to be on.

Quick Sandbox Update

The sandbox is a huge hit!!



Just one quick statement - Toddler, Sandbox, Yorkshire Terrier = not a good combo!


[Steve's comment]: So the picture is after we took Chianti (our dog) out of the sandbox. As Stef says he's a Yorkshire Terrier and thus has long hair. Well, Andrei thought it was cool to pour sand over him.

Maybe the Gloworm is more important than we thought

We've been able to "test" what happens when a lovey looses it's ability to make noise and the result wasn't pretty. The responses to Steve's post about noise making lovies mention letting the batteries die as a possibility to relieving ourselves of the noise. Well I'm here to tell you that this approach may not work as expected.

Steve teaches his class on Monday nights so I was going through our nightly bed time routine with our little man. The nightly routine includes bathtime, books, and then into the crib for sleep. Before I leave the room I MUST kiss the gazillion animals good night all while the gloworm is playing his (I'm assuming it's a him) songs. Monday night we ran into a little glitch. Gloworm's batteries were dying. You'd hit the button to play his song and he'd start out okay but then fade fast. Actually I thought it was quite funny but our child didn't share the same idea of humor so I had to treat this with the seriousness it required.

First thought, I'll grab the backup gloworm and do a quick switcheroo. Oh but wait, Steve had moved the backup gloworm and neglected to tell me the hiding place. No problem, he keeps the extra rechargeable batteries in his desk so I'll just replace the batteries. Oh but wait, Steve's moved those as well. So now I have a traumatized toddler on my hands while searching through my husbands office to find the batteries.

Good news, I found the drawer with the batteries. Bad news, there are only two batteries and I need three for the gloworm. Luckily we use rechargables in the toys so I just have to recharge the original three. While the batteries are charging, the boy finally calms down and falls asleep in my arms. I'm able to replace the batteries and get everyone to bed. Whew, that was a close one.

Since we always try to find the opportunity to learn something from these "events" here's a quick recap of what we learned. (1) Make sure any backups are in the approved spot and any moving is done with both parents. (2) Don't rearrange your office without letting the other parent know.

You'll all be happy to know that both the backup Elmo and Gloworm are in a known super secret spot within easy reach of the crib. We also bought even more rechargeable batteries so we shouldn't run low for a while.

Swimming and Sandbox weekend

Andrei had another busy weekend but he had a blast and as a result didn't really do any "toddler testing" which meant both Stef and I had a great weekend as well. Saturday was non-stop action as he had his second swimming lesson and then went to his first children's birthday party.

I attended the swimming lesson this week to take some pictures and as usual Andrei was the water king. All the other kids were either crying or clinging to their parents (again this is for the under 2 crowd to learn not to be afraid of water so their reaction is pretty normal), however Andrei has so much fun that he can't be contained. You can see him here running away from Stef to go play all around the pool.



He is just so unbelievably adventurous in the water that he was the only kid to go down the water slide by himself. All the other kids, even the ones who liked the water, went down with their parents. But Andrei would have non of that and pushed Stef away so he could go it alone.

Sorry about the fuzzy picture, I took a few and this was actually the best of the bunch.



After the action in the pool we hurried off to the birthday party for our friend Cristina's son. He's four and it was a wonderful party. They had it at a bowling alley and it was really fun. All the kids just loved it. They actually have these little rails that come up so the kids can't possibly throw a gutter ball. So needless to say the kids thought this whole bowling thing was really cool.

Andrei was of course one of the youngest kids there but he had a great time as well. Cristina and Todd adopted their son from Russia too and in fact, they where the inspiration for our decision to get going. We actually "pulled the trigger" on moving forward with adoption after seeing their wonderful son at his 2nd birthday party.

Anyway, here's a shot of Andrei trying to pick up the spare.



On Sunday, we finished his sandbox and it was naturally a bit hit. With the weather so nice now in the Bay Area, I suspect the sandbox is going to be a daily routine. A couple of notes, Ryan mentioned that it's vital to have a cover otherwise cats (or other animals) in the neighborhood might use it as well (yuck!). I also have a beach umbrella out there to make sure the whole thing is shaded.