Fear of Flying

As some of you may know, we will be leaving tomorrow on our very first vacation with Rory - a 7 day cruise of the Hawaiian Islands, which includes a 5 hour plane flight there and back. And while this may sound like a FABULOUS vacation (and I'm sure it WILL be once we actually get there), the idea of flying with my EXTREMELY ACTIVE 17 month old absolutely terrifies me.

Unfortunately, since we've never done this before, we didn't realize that it would be a good idea to get him his own seat and take his car seat (which would be familiar and more calming), so instead, he will be sitting on our laps for the entire flight. And for those of you who know Rory, have you EVER seen him sitting on our laps for five minutes let alone five hours? My God, we must be crazy.

Yes, we thought about trying to "knock him out", but we followed the advice of our pediatrician and did a trial run with Benadryl, and of course our Rory is one of the 10% of kids in which Benadryl has the OPPOSITE effect. So instead of falling asleep, he was running all over the house like he was on speed for 2 hours. Good thing we tried it out first, eh?

Yup, we're just THAT lucky.

So Plan B is to try and keep him entertained with a bunch of new little gifts, all beautifully wrapped for maximum attention grabbing potential, and perhaps we'll just save the Benedryl to take ourselves. Haha.

Well, if all else fails, at least we'll have some fabulous blog stories for when we get back!

Wish us luck...

17 Month Newsletter

Dear Rory,

Summers have always gone by quickly, but this year August snuck up on me out of no where. I'd swear that I just wrote your last newsletter a week ago - where DOES the time go?

But as fast as the days have been speeding by, you are unfortunately still stuck in this mind-numbing phase of "ALL DADDY, ALL THE TIME." Everything is "Dada this" and "Dada that", and when he's home, you cling to him like a little monkey on a tree. He can't be out of your sight for even a minute or all hell breaks loose. And heaven forbid that your father should try and hug or kiss me! You get ridiculously jeolous and squeal like a little pig. It's like you're shouting "He's MY DADA! HANDS OFF, LADY!" I must say, child, this is getting REALLY OLD. Everyone keeps telling me that this is just a phase so GET ON WITH IT ALREADY! Just once I'd like you to call for ME when you first wake up in the morning, and it would be nice if you'd show just a teensy bit of interest when I leave for work, especially since I have usually just spent an hour consoling you over the fact that your Dada has left for the day. So, just in case I haven't made myself clear before, ANYTIME you want to move out of this phase would be just fine by me.

But amazingly, even though it may seem like almost every word out of your mouth is Dada, I am starting to hear a lot of new words creep into your vocabulary this month. I'm sure this isn't a complete list, but here are some of the latest:

- Pool
- Cheese
- Pita (Pronounced "PEE TAA")
- Boys (unfortunately used in reference to what we are cleaning when we are changing your diaper!Oops!)
- Off (Pronounced "AWWWFFFFF" and used most often when you want out of something, like a stroller, car seat, etc.)
- Papa and Nana
- Slide (pronounced "IDE")
- I Do (pronounced "EYE DEEEWWWWW, which is your way of saying YES and my personal favorite!)

This month has also seen you get excited about reading, and although I've read you "Knuffle Bunny" approximately 5 million times, I'm still overjoyed that you'll finally sit still long enough for a story. And it's pretty damn cute when you wake us up by carrying your book into our room and saying "PEEEEZ". Luckily, your obsession with the Teletubbies has died down considerably (THANK GOD!), but you've now found Barney, that ridiculous purple dinasour, and I'm beginning to think that maybe the Tubbies weren't ALL that bad. When you get older, you'll understand how painful it is to sit through an episode featuring child actors who are exaggerating every word they say. It is THE WORST ACTING EVER. Truly. But because your eyes light up when you watch it and you dance when they sing songs, I'll sit through it. I'll even Tivo it. Just for you.

Now, I couldn't report on this month's activities without mentioning the whole sleep issue. In my last blog entry, we were doing the bedtime routine and it was going amazingly well... for a while. Apparently the world has become just too interesting of a place for you to close your eyes and miss a minute of it. So while we are still sticking to the rountine, it's certainly not working like it did. Most nights it takes at least a half an hour to get you down to sleep, and then you don't stay asleep all night. You don't make things easy on us, kid. It's a good thing that you're DAMN cute.



But as much as you may drive me crazy, Rory, you still manage to do something every day that makes me melt into a pool of mommy-jello. Like when you come over and play with my hair. Or the way you love to hold my hand in the car. Or how you've FINALLY started to give me little hugs and you always pat me on the back while you're doing it like you're saying, "It's okay, Mommy. It's okay." And you're right, Ro, it IS okay. It's better than okay.

It's WONDERFUL.

Love,
Mama

Sweet Success

There are a lot of things I've approached the wrong way with Rory, especially when it comes to getting him to sleep. I always held him in my arms and rocked him, and I never had the heart to let him cry things out - but hey, he's my first baby, so truly I didn't know any better. But finally - FINALLY - I did something RIGHT!

After almost 17 months of bending over backwards to get Rory to bed at night, we finally realized that what we were doing wasn't working anymore. His bedtime was getting later and later and it was always a fight to get him to sleep. So after talking it over with a friend (THANK YOU, ERIN!!!), she made me see that we had a choice here. We could either nip this in the bud now (with maybe a week or two of crying), or we were going to be dealing with this problem for years to come. And I knew she was right.

So I took a deep breath and went right home to tell Hoby that we were starting a bed time routine that very night which something looks like this:

1.Bath and Jammies
2.Bottle
3.Brush Teeth
4.Read 2 Books
5.Kisses/Hugs and off to Bed!

As we were going through the new routine that first night, I braced myself for the worst - I know that my child has a temper that can make our house rattle - and I expected hours of angry crying once we tried to put him to bed. We had already decided that our best "cry it out" approach would be to have one of us sit in the room with him while he cried until he fell asleep because we know he can climb out of his crib and we didn't want any cuncussions. And although it was HARD listening to my little man cry his heart out that first night (along with several upset sounding "Dada, OUT! OUT! OUTs!"), he fell asleep after only 40 minutes. Then, the second night, it was only 15 minutes. The third night was even less.

Tonight was our fourth night (and the first night minus Dada, who is on a business trip), and I'm thrilled to report that it took less than FIVE MINUTES to get him to go down with only a few prostests and almost NO crying. And after I heard him begin to snore, I did the happy dance all through the house (quietly, of course!)

So here's to finally doing something right!!! I may get this parenting thing under control after all...

Rory's Skateboarding Debut

Look Ma, no hands!!!