Dribs and Drabs from November

Picking through his free veggie cup that the nice man behind the veggie counter at Wegman's gave him!  I think to pick out the tomatoes and tell me to eat them.  Hahaha.  

Mmmm, raisins.  Pantsless snack time!

Getting a little braver at the gym.

Showing off his Terrific Tots ribbon! (We missed the week where there was apparently a ceremony, so he just got the ribbon separately.)

Putting his feet in for instructions (possibly the first time he's ever complied with that instruction!)

Sitting with at least the illusion of patience as he watches Charlie attack the Tarzan rope.

William's turn!

Mama's glasses apparently make William feel pretty glorious!

More sitting on the mat like a big boy! (Different day, same shirt.  Oops.)

Reading to himself after wrecking his playroom.

I gave him a home haircut, and he ended up looking like he had hairy old man back.  Hahaha.  

New haircut!  (With Mama's piles of maternity clothes and other chaos in the background.)

Really digging in to a breakfast sandwich at Panera

A little detour during winter coat shopping with Mama and Daddy (between meltdowns--it was an ill-fated trip).  Donald wouldn't let me/us get this one.  Haha.  

Slightly more formal shirtless dining than he's accustomed to--smothered chicken in the dining room with Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick!

Trying out a new trick he picked up from Miss Jackie at the gym--picking his feet up super high on the rings!

I found him at my desk, with my one-line-a-day journal: "I'm looking up a number."

Singing to the Beatles with Declan.

Playing Boggle with Declan!

(Their way of playing Boggle involves dumping all of the letters out and then putting them back in and then dumping them out again, etc.  With a little bit of throwing and trying to lose the letters tossed in for good measure.  William calls it "playing letters".)

I don't know what their goal was here, but the important thing was they both seemed to know, and they were united for a common purpose.  Which obviously involved dismantling the ark.  

Telling on himself and showing me where he had just ripped his Poem-Mobiles book.

Experimenting with new ways to play Boggle.  Now time for fun with the timer!  "All da sand went out of dere and into down here!"

"I'm a robot!"

Back from Indiana and celebrating being out of the car with a nice plate of spider pastas!

"I drawed a rainstorm on the boardchalk."  (I think the Kaplan girls must've taught him about rainstorms, because he's talked about them a fair amount since we returned from our trip. 

Absolutely thrilled to see the garbage truck drive past!

The Saga of the Toddler Bed

The introduction of the toddler bed (and a new big-boy room!) was not met with great enthusiasm.  Caution: this post is filled with more detail than you actually care to read.

He seemed intrigued with the toddler bed as a thing to look at, but the idea of actually sleeping in it (to be fair, I think the bigger problem was the new room, which, as you can see, is not quite...finished yet) was apparently a very troubling one.  So we said he didn't have to and could sleep in his baby room if he wanted but tried to acclimate him to the new room as we continued to give the option.  This is the first night of the new toddler bed, grudgingly accepting reading his books in the big boy room before demanding to be taken to his crib.

For a while, he refused even to sit on his toddler bed.  Then his Spider-Man sheet showed up.  He still refused to sit on it when I asked him to, but I caught him in there one time trying it out.  (Baby steps!)

Loving his Spider-Man sheet!

And loving his new (to him) play mat in his new room!  More baby steps!

Once his blanket and top sheet got here, he was even willing to sit in it when I asked him to! (But obviously not sleep there! Perish the thought!)

Playing on his bed while Hop and his buffalo and chimpanzee give it a try.

When we got to Indiana, Peppy's old toddler bed was set up for William in the guest room with us.  We decided to embrace the allure of all things Peppy and the lack of his old room as an option to cloud the issue. William was skeptical but intrigued by the Penelope-ness of it all.  And the pink flowers and butterflies.  Haha.

DEVASTATION when we tried to turn off (some of) the lights.  Getting a little comfort from Daddy.

We turned on another light, and he calmed down a bit but refused to lie down.  He sat like this, looking around and talking, for a good long while.  

Then on to lying down and sucking his finger but still asking a thousand (hard-to-understand-because-of-the-finger) questions.  And we borrowed a panda bear from the play room to give him something to snuggle with.

Success? (Was it the panda bear that did the trick??)

Success!!!

Naptime the next day presented its own issues, but the combination of the panda bear, Aunt Jane bookuhs (a critical element of his naptime regime at home), and Donald's agreeing to lie down in the room while he fell asleep all added up to an actual nap in Peppy's bed!

Arrival at the hotel on the way back home (this time around midnight--way more reasonable!), and he makes a beeline for his pack-pack to look for his Aunt Jane bookuhs. 

Sadly, the hotel was out of cribs.
A new challenge for William just days into his introduction to the world outside of cribs--a foldout sofa!!

Pretty excited about the "wheelbarrow"! (Because of the handle to pull it out?  I don't know.  But whatever gets him excited for sleeping there...)

Still excited after we made the bed up and set up barriers and whatnot.
Side note--looks pretty ready to go to sleep, doesn't he?  Sigh.  

But he did it!  It took him a long time to wind down, but he met the challenge!

A regular sleepin' pro!

When we got back from our trip, we just decided to coast on the successes of the trip and try the toddler bed at home.  There was a little minor questioning/fussing (and maybe a minor stretching of the truth by Mama about thinking the light was broken in his baby room--I mean, one of the two is broken...), but he seemed almost entirely over the hurdle thanks to the magic of Peppy's toddler bed!  

Stalker pic

Still snoozing in the morning! He was pretty excited when I told him that Aunt Jane had (generously) sent the panda bear back with us to snuggle with him in his big boy bed. 

On to nap attempts!  These have been a little trickier to keep him contained, but he's slept in his bed every night and nap since we got home! (Although he's obviously discovered the joy of early morning escapes to our room, and he gave it a try in the middle of the night last night, too...)  So, still a work in progress, but it's amazing what a little cousin time will do!