a geeky girl

So today appears to be one of those fluke days when Jack defies napping odds to sleep for.. I don’t actually know how long yet as he is still sleeping. I would say he fell asleep around 1:10, it’s currently 3:40. He usually sleeps for 1.5-2 hours so this is definitely getting into mega-nap territory and that brings me to the dilemma part.

The part where I start wondering… how long is too long? Is there a “too long” or should I shut up and thank my lucky stars that he’s sleeping? I mean he’s had a cough for the last few days that have made sleep less than ideal at night and during nap time, but last night he barely coughed at all and this morning he slept til 7 so I sort of thought that covered it.

And now I start thinking about things like…. is he going to sleep tonight? Is he going to get in bed and play til 9pm? (Not that I mind so much because he’s usually content singing and talking to himself from bed time til whenever he falls asleep, I just feel kind of bad for him that he’s not sleeping). And so should I wake him up? I know, I know.. don’t wake a sleeping baby! But I hate for his schedule to go completely wonky.

On the other hand, I don’t want to wake him up.. does this mean he’ll fall asleep late and therefore sleep later in the morning so I can also sleep later in the morning? (Let’s be real, I’m going to wake up by 7 no matter what happens, my body is programmed it cannot be altered).

So that leaves me here, trying to distract myself on the computer while hoping that he sleeps as long as he needs to sleep, but also hoping that he wakes up soon because long naps like this are SO WEIRD and they freak me out that here I was given this gift that I did not take proper advantage of so what kind of crappy sleep am I going to get tonight in return?

And he’s still sleeping…. stilllll sleeping…. and I’m still staring at the video monitor looking for signs of life and there are none. I’m almost tempted to go start reorganizing the cabinets with the glasses in them to make room for baby bottles and other such stuff, but I know that’s pretty much begging for him to wake up right in the middle and then I’ll just be sad I can’t finish.

So in the mean time if you need me I’ll be on the sofa staring at the video monitor and trying to pretend I’m busy or something.

3:45, still sleeping.

Ah YouTube. Where would I be without you? Just for fun, here are some of Jack’s current favorites:

“The Wheels on the Bus” (Super creepy edition, but really he’ll watch them all)

“Shape Train” (And all of the other learning trains)

“2009 St. Louis Great Fire Engine Rally Parade” (I love whoever put this one up there)

“Heavy Metal Mater” (aka “Green Mater” to Jack, and the rest of Mater’s Tall Tales)

“All He Does is Win” (the Tim Tebow song, I dare you not to get this stuck in your head)

I wanted to embed them as well, but I was having trouble getting that plugin to work and frankly I’m too lazy to mess with it right now.

Thursday we were supposed to be going to Boogie Babies at the town community center, but it was canceled because the instructor had to go out of town for a family thing. So since we had no place to go and I was starting to get afraid that Jack was getting a kind of cabin fever and it was still pretty darn cold (and somewhat wet) outside (yes, we’d been out on little trips earlier in the week, but by the evenings he was so full of extra energy I knew we needed to do something bigger to get it all out) I decided to go to Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh.

Of course it took us SO MUCH LONGER to get out of the house than I had hoped so instead of getting there by 9:45ish we got there at like 10:20ish and I may have had to circle the block because I missed the parking deck on my first go round, in the end we made it and I’m happy to report that Jack had a blast!

Right when you get to the play area there’s a big front part of a city bus for the kids to “drive” and Jack was instantly in love.

He hit up a few other areas, like this car and the barn, before finding…

TRAINS!

I think he could have played there all day. Several groups of kids came and went while Jack played happily with the trains.

I did manage to drag him away on a temporary detour, but before you knew it we were back at the trains.

I tell you what though, one thing that’s SUPER hard about being a parent in public? Not telling other people’s kids to back the heck off when they come up and snatch something up out of your kid’s hand. Especially if that kid is obviously a few years older. Fortunately Jack is extremely laid back and on the few occasions that it happened he instantly moved on to another train to play with, but man did I have to bite my tongue hard.

Anyways, I think we were there for maybe an hour and 15 minutes or so? When he didn’t even doze a little on the car ride home I was worried that he didn’t do enough running around there, but then he took a nap that lasted slightly over 2 hours and I think it totally paid off. (Anything over about an hour and 20 minutes for this kid is a gift.)

Yesterday when I put Jack down for his nap, this is what I heard:

*Sound of Jack rolling and chewing on his blanket, kind of rustling and nomnomnomnomnoming*

*Sudden slightly panicked crying*

About a minute went by as I tried to decide if I should go up there and see if he hurt himself or was just testing me…

“It’s ok! Don’t cry. It’s ok!”

Aww, he’s comforting himself! Cute. I still wondered what happened at this point and then he switched to…

“Did you bite your finger? It’s ok! Did you bite your finger?”

Mystery solved!

Then back to the sound of rolling around, minus the sound of chewing on his blanket.

So a few months ago my sister told me about how one of the local malls has a little train that drives around it and we’ve been meaning to take Jack to go see it but just never got around to it. I decided that today would finally be that day, so around 11:20 we finally made it to the mall!

I had hoped to get there around 11 when the train started (thank god I looked up the start time online last night because I would have been there at like 10 wondering why it wasn’t running..) but pretty much everything I did that morning took longer than I thought it would (surprise) so we were a tad late.

Anyways, Jack totally loved the train.

Once we were in he was a little nervous, “want to get out” he said, but once it started running he decided he was OK with it after all and he had a blast!

It did a lap around the (relatively small) mall and then dropped us back off. Fortunately it’s parked close to the “rides” or whatever they are, so we went over there to play next.

He was so excited that by the time he got seated in one thing he was just about climbing out of it. Finally he settled into an animal ambulance thing, I put in the money for it, and he promptly climbed back out. So I figured maybe the “ride” aspect of it wasn’t really for him, he could just sit in them. And so he did. Back and forth and back and forth until he finally settled into SCOOP from Bob the Builder, which he LOVES.

He loved it so much that he actually let me put money in it and rode in it the whole time. Because it was BOB! And BOB’S HAND! And CAT! And most importantly.. SCOOP!

So we played there until about 10 after noon and then headed home to pick up lunch on the way. Unfortunately about 15 minutes before we got home (I’d noticed he was fading and I was trying to keep him awake) I turned around and saw this.

It was too late. No amount of talking, yelling, or leg shaking could wake up him up. Since we were so close to home and it was only 12:20 I figured he’d take a short nap in the car, wake up and have lunch, then play a little bit more before his nap. I would just push his nap back from 1 to 1:30ish or so to give him time to get tired again.

Sadly it did not work. I put him down at 1:30 and he did try really hard to get to sleep, it just never happened. So I left him in the crib to “keep trying” for almost an hour while I did some vacuuming and cleaned the bathroom real quick, then I went and rescued him. (He’s not a big fan of the vacuum lately so I really wanted to get that done while he was otherwise occupied.)

Finally around 3 I took him for a walk hoping that maybe he would doze off, but it didn’t happen. He was in a relatively good mood for most of the afternoon, just a little wired and maybe a little faster to start bawling if he didn’t get his way immediately, as in APPLESAUCE, NOW! But fortunately he was also easy to distract until dinner time.

Then just for kicks I asked him if he wanted a bath. I was sure the answer would be no (it always is) and he ran for the bathroom yelling “bath time!” Just when you think you have it figured out…

So I happily obliged, and into bed he went a few minutes early tonight. I don’t think we heard a peep out of him. That kid was ZONKED! I love it when that happens!

Once upon a time (back in March, according to the video date) Jack started wanting to spoon his own food and I was a smug asshole who thought her precious snowflake was a damn genius, using the spoon all by himself!

Like 3 weeks later he decided that took way to damn long and he went back to letting us feed him.

9 months later I kept hoping he would decide to pick up the spoon on his own again, but his response was always “want mommy do it!” My goal was “before the baby comes” but as that is rapidly approaching I was starting to lose hope.

So Sunday morning we took matters into our own hands and have refused to hold the spoon/fork to feed him ever since. A few (impressive) tantrums and missed snacks later I think we’ve made some progress. This morning he ate his cereal with his fingers (yes there was milk) but he spooned the milk out to drink on his own, dumping off the cereal that happened to climb onto the spoon in the process. Then he asked to watch the fire truck video (off youtube) and I told him not unless he ate some cereal with his spoon.

Never underestimate the power of a youtube firetruck parade apparently, because he actually started scooping up cereal to eat!

Since then he’s eaten applesauce, and two different yogurt snacks (this kid is like a bottomless pit some days) while spooning it for himself. Mostly without spilling, like he’s just had the skills all along and he just didn’t feel like using them. I mean why feed yourself when you have minions to do it for you, amiright?