It's 12:30PM and my son fell asleep on the floor in the livingroom. Nothing special, right? Well, it's very special since Matthew has never fallen asleep on his own in his life. High-need kids keep going and going and going even if they are exhausted, and this is true for my son too. I was about to take him up for a nap, but pleasantly surprise to find his already out. I was going to move him upstairs, but he protested. I guess I will leave him on the floor.

I mentioned that my son is into Little Nemo right now. He watches it about 2x a day. A few days ago, I noticed that he screams while watching it. I don't usually watch it with him, because I take the opportunity to do some house cleaning since he sits down for almost the whole movie. Well lately, the hubby and I noticed that he screams during 2 parts of the movie. First he screams when Nemo gets captured by the diver and Nemo screams for his dad. After screaming continuously for a minute, Matthew does a pretend cry and says, "no, no, Momo." The second part is when Dori and Marlon get chased by a deep water fish (with a light dangling from its head). During this part, both Dori and Marlon screams to get away and apparently, so that my son.

I saw teh screen of my laptop a couple of days ago flicker. It scared me so even it hasn;t done it again, I;ve been saving my pictures to a CD. Now I am downloading videos from the camcorder so I can edit them and make a DVD. I;ve been so bad...the oldest video I have is from my son;s first birthday in March. Anyway, this why I;ve not been so active on Minti lately. Uploading an hour of video doesn;t take long, but I have to do some editing {about 2 hours} and finally burning it into a DVD takes about 3-4 hours for a 1 hour video alone.

I am using the hubby;s computer right now and it;s highly frustrating. It has a gaming keyboard so my fingers are;t hitting the right keys. I apologize.

 

Matthew is into Little Nemo right now. I can put on the movie and he sits down and watches the whole thing. After breakfast we've played with his train, we've read a book, he has chased the dogs around the house... and now he's watching little Nemo. He calls it Momo, which is, incidentally, the same as what he calls Elmo.

He loves watching all the fish and the "toto" (turtles). Very cute.  I've showed him other animal movies but somehow they don't catch his attention like Little Nemo does. Hmmmm.

Wow, what a great night. My son slept through the night for the first time in his life. He stirred and cried just a wee bit when I went to bed at 11, but I layed my hand on him and he went right back to sleep. For the past 2 weeks since he's been on his bed (right beside ours on the floor), he's been waking up at about 1 am and climbing up to bed with us. Well, last night he didn't. He didn't wake up until 6:15, at which time he did climb in to bed with me. I think his dad showering woke him up. What a good day! Sleeping through the night this way may not be such a cause for celebration for other moms out there, but if you have a kid like mine... it's an amazing thing!

I have learned my lesson enough that I will not expect a repeat of last night's amazing events though.

Last night I found an article of MumtobeKim in which she talks about the FlyLady. I checked it out and found that it's a website to organize the home. You join the site through yahoo groups so I did and this morning I found a few emails on what I'm supposed to do this morning to be on my way to a clean, organized, less stressful house. It's simply amazing. Today I'm supposed to go through and get rid of paper clutter in one hot spot in the house for 15 minutes. I haven't done this particular task because I think it's something the hubby can do tonight. BUT, that said, I've done a load of laundry, dusted my cabinets (which I haven't done in months!), and cleaned some windows. After my roomba is done sweeping the kitchen floor, I will be mopping it shortly.

This is the most I've done in a one morning and I'm not even stressed out about it. What an amazing feeling. My house is far from being where I want it to be, but at least I'm doing something and I feel good. To top it off, Matthew and I have a great morning together.  He helped me gather up the laundry and drop them in the washing machine. After that, I handed him one of my swiffer duster and taught him how to use it. He went around the house dusting EVERYTHING! He dusted his toys, the couch, the dogs.. yes, the dogs! It was so funny!

Well, hopefully I can keep up with the FlyLady.   Thanks MumtobeKim!

Several years ago I gave my husband a Hummer model car as a gift. Last week Matthew discovered it and played with it for an hour! Imagine such a young toddler getting occupied by a toy for such a long time. I was amazed! But the problem is, it isn't a toy so when he plays with it, the wheels come off and when it does, he runs to me for help to fix it. After a day or two, he even learned to fix it himself. Being that it is a model car, it comes apart in really small pieces so it's only played with with close supervision.

Today, the hubby and I went out to ToysRUs to find a more appropriate car and found a Magnetix MagnaModel Hummer. It's a 20 pieces car that is designed to fall apart after crashing. Whoops, I thought. That's a lot of pieces! But Matthew loves it! He tried to open the doors and when it came off, he said "uh oh".  After a couple of times of it coming off, he has already figured out the right way to put it on. Amazing! It's a great toy designed for 6 years old and up, but he is already enjoying it. But again, it requires close supervision.

 

This was taken 2 months ago when Matthew discovered Ranch dressing. Yummy!

I placed Matthew on his potty chair after he woke up from a nap. He was sitting in it for about 4 minutes after he peed. Woo hoo! Had to call the hubby right away to share the news, of course. It's the first time so I think Matthew is still far from making the connection, but he has at least made it once.

The hubby and I have bought Matthew his halloween costume. He will be Zorro!  He wanted him to be Batman, but the head mask wasn't a hit with Matthew so that flew out the window. So we bought a cape, a hat and mask, and a sword. But the sword is a ninja sword though, but we won't tell him that. shhhh. He is already running around the house with cape and the hat and hitting everything with the sword, so it should be a fun halloween.

I was in the pantry bending down to get something and here comes Matthew. I felt him hold on to my pants and then, bam! A nice little bite on my butt. Youch! Suffice it to say, I'm a little gun shy about bending down when Matthew is behind me. What a naughty boy!

The hubby and I bought our son a potty. The past month, Matthew has been pointing at his diaper after he finishes pooping. He doesn't do it all the time, but he does it. We are not in any hurry, so our plan is to just let him sit on the potty and let him get comfortable with it. And he has. He's actually sitting in it like it's a chair, so I may take it out of the livingroom.

But, in thinking about potty training, the hubby and I came up with some questions and no answers. Do we teach Matthew to poop first because that's the one that requires sitting? How do we teach how to pee in it? Well, that's only a couple of the unanswered questions and I'm sure we'll have a lot more when we really get into the training.

For the past  3 weeks, I've been watching my son show interest in other kids. Sure he enjoyed other kids before, but he has never trully played with them. But now, I see him watch other kids to see how they play and try to figure out how to make the move so that they end up playing together. At the Little Gym, I've also seen him follow particular kids around and just touch and do high fives. It is trully exciting! There is even a girl who kept hugging him, so he hugs her back.

I can't say enough about it... it's magical to watch!! Sometimes I get to thinking back how much he has changed in his 19 months of life and how much he has developed.

The TV is playing at the moment and the program that is on mentions organization in the home.  It reminded me of the Container Store because we used to live close to one. I love that store, it's a dream place for all of us who fantasizes about an organized home. Aaaaah, happy place.

Ten years ago, the hubby and I lived in an apartment and couldn't wait to own our own home. When we did, we bought furnitures and unnecessary things that quickly overwhelmed the space. Then we moved to a bigger place, and a bigger place after that. I used to say that if we only had a bigger house, there'll be a place for everything in the house. How wrong was I?! More room just means more mess, they're just hidden!

 

It's been a week since Matthew has been sleeping in his big boy bed. It's been pretty smooth. I lay down with him at bed time until he falls asleep and then I sneak out. The first few days he woke up at about 2am, but when I dangle my arm to touch him, he goes back to sleep. At about 5-6 am, he wakes up and climbs up to bed with me and my husband. At this time, I just let him.  So far, so good.

The only thing I notice is that when he climbs to bed with us, it is no longer enough that he has body contact with either me or his daddy. He now wants to be ON us, either sleeping on an arm or right on us (as in laying on the chest or tummy)s. It's a bit uncomfortable as it forces me to get into weird positions, which then hurts my back. The hubby thinks that this may be a sign that we are moving too fast, but I think it's been pretty good. If that is the only sign, I think things are progressing nicely. We will proceed with this for a while and see how things go.

For dinner, we went to Chick-Fil-A. It's a chicken only fast food restaurant with a play area for kids, much like McDonald's. I let Matthew play in there after eating. He climbed up to the tunnel. There were about 10 kids, a few were older kids (about 7 yrs old). One in particular took interest to Matthew. She asked me how old he was and when I told her he's only 1, she took care to assist him in climbing up. She also warned the other kids to be careful of the baby.

So Matthew was up there, having a good old time. But after 10 minutes or so with other kids running up and down and sliding, I got a little worried that he may get knocked down. I started calling him but it didn't seem like he could hear me. The little girl said it didn't seem like he wanted to leave yet. I got a little worried so I climbed up too! The whole time I was afraid the thing would collapse because of my big old butt. My husband, who was still eating and watching us through the glass window got worried too and came in. He called out to Matthew. He climbed on something and said that from what he could see, Matthew was playing with a propeller. Anyway, I called and called and he wouldn't come to me or go down the slide. I climbed up the stairs, but I really didn't go into the tunnel myself. Finally, I guess Matthew decided that he had enough time where he couldn't see either me or daddy and came down the slide. Phew!

A couple of other momma's got in the playarea as well, probably to see what was going on. One momma said that she had to crawl in after her son too when she was 7 months pregnant. Yikes!

 

Well, thanks for all who answered my question about my son not eating. But yesterday, he turned the corner! He ate a good dinner for the first time in 3 weeks. He had some fruits, hard boiled eggs, few peices of chicken. It amazed both my husband and I. Then this morning, he finished a small bowl of oatmeal. I guess he was just so sick that he didn't want to eat anything before and since this was the first time he's been sick like this, we didn't know what to expect.

Yesterday, we also bought Matthew a twin bed with box spring. This is our phase 1 of getting him out of our bed. We placed it beside our bed of course, for a very gradual transition. The hubby picked up a bedding decorated with tons of balls (Matthew loves all sorts of balls). I still had to lie down next to him to get him to sleep (our routine). But once he fell asleep, I left him to sleep on our bed. He didn't cry out until about 3:30AM when he woke up and didn't see anyone around him (his mattress is slighly lower than the master bed). I scooted myself over to his bed and he fell back asleep. After an hour, I left him again (his bed is just too tiny to be comfortable for the both of us). When he woke up in the morning, he crawled to our bed. All in all, a very successful first night on his grown up bed.

We're going to take this transition very very slow, the end result being Matthew in his own bed in his own room. I don't want  to have Matthew in our bed when the next baby comes (whenever that would be) . I have no expectation at all that this will happen in a few days, or even a week, or even a month. My timeline is at least 9 months if hubby and I are blessed with a second baby right away. I am a proponent of co-sleeping and understand wholeheartedly that the process of getting a child out of the family bed is not easy.