Ollie Update

A day in the life

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This is the email I sent to Sara today about how our day was going. I think it provides you with a little slice of life on a typical Friday:

from:  Shane
to:  Sara
date:  Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 2:45 PM
subject:  what a day

My oh my.

There’s tons of tie dye stuff left, you can dye to your hearts content tonight. We didn’t do any roving, and there’s that other yarn you had. I’m not so sure about the yarn we did do, so we’ll see how it comes out. I think the 3 main things are going to come out awesome though. Evie really had a good time, Ollie did too but then he got tired of it by the time we were on to socks.

There was an art festival in the park in Oak Park, so we ate lunch and then walked around there. Ollie was getting a little tired, but he had a blast in the toy store. We were there for quite a while. I was a little disappointed in their selection for kids Evie’s age. They specialize in baby toys, and then they had some science kits and stuff for older kids, but not a lot in between. Plus they’re so expensive!! There were a lot of things out of evie’s range, but I thought $25 was pretty good for a toy store! I  guess not. There wasn’t really anything that I would have pushed for her to get. There were some cool things for older kids though.

Anyway, I let Evie give them the coupon and everything and they were like, “Is this for your birthday??” and made a big deal about it. So that was nice. She was really proud and she hugged her thing all the way home. She’s working on it now (it’s like a sleeping beauty book that you put sparkly stickers on…lovely, as you can imagine).

Meanwhile, Oliver took a massive smelly dump in his underwear and I had nothing else to put on him.

The end.

Ah, a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Backseat Drivers

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For some reason, Evie and Ollie have taken it upon themselves to become the new “driving monitors” for everything I do when we’re in the car. It is not uncommon to hear, “Daddy, are you going the right way?” or “Daddy, aren’t you supposed to turn there?” or “Daddy, why are you turning here?” as if they had any idea where we were going.

In fact, it seems to be stoplights in particular that get heavily monitored. The very millisecond the light turns, Oliver starts yelling, “It’s green! It’s green!” And then Evie immediately wants to know, “Why aren’t you going daddy?” “Because,” I usually tell her, “if I start going now I’m going to smash into the back of the car in front of me.”

The speed limit is often a topic of discussion as well, despite the fact that neither of them has any idea what the speed limit is, or what the speedometer says. “Dada, we’re going too fast!” shouts Ollie, or Evie questions, “Why are you driving so slow?” My favorite is when Evie casually (and passive aggressively) asks, “Are we on the highway daddy?”

Oliver seems particular concerned that I’m going to jam on the gas the second I’m in the car. He’s constantly admonishing me, “Don’t drive, dada! Don’t drive with the doors open!” or “Don’t drive without Mama!” if she’s not in the car yet. It’s like he’s absolutely certain that he’s the only thing keeping me from taking off with Sara hanging out the door only holding on by his still-unfastened seat belt. As if I’ve ever started going before everybody was ready. Usually, the car’s not even on yet.

However, the one cool thing is when we’re sitting next to a semi which starts driving. “We’re going backwards! We’re going backwards!” squeals Oliver. Oh man, I remember how much I used to love that when I was a kid!

“Look at my bottom!”

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Since we last spoke about Oliver’s potty training 3 months ago, things have been going very well.

He really never puts up a fuss about going to the potty, and he hasn’t had an accident in I don’t know how long. It doesn’t even occur to me to bring a change of clothes when we leave the house anymore. The only slight hitch is that he always makes us take him to the potty downstairs, but that is manageable I suppose. At least he always goes.

He can sometimes wear underpants for his nap, but it is very unpredictable.  He can go for hours without going, so he aught to be able to last through his nap, but even if you have him go right before he goes to bed, he sometimes still goes. If you think he will, he won’t, but if you don’t think he will, he will.

However, the one nut we haven’t been able to crack is poo poo. He *always* goes in his diaper at night (or at least first thing in the morning). It has been very difficult to convince him to go in the potty. He has gone several times in the potty, but it hasn’t quite translated into any sort of desire to go with regularity. Even M&M’s and a prize bucket hasn’t helped.

However, lately he has started to notice when he has to go, by suddenly announcing, “Look at my bottom!”. And I have to admit that, even though I know this is what he always says, it still makes me nervous. I always have to look at his bottom. When you get such a pronouncement (or sometimes just an emphatic “I do not have to go poo poo!” out of nowhere), you grab him and run. And then he goes, just like that.

Of course, he still goes in his diaper at night anyway, but hey, it’s going in the right direction, right?

The Terrible Twos

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Oh boy. It’s that time.

Oliver is in the midst of the most typical terrible twos there ever was. Although I know that the ability to throw down a tantrum and the desire to do exactly the opposite of what you’re told with a twinkle in his eye are normal for this age, it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I would say he is both better and worse than Evie (I was complaining about 15 minute crying fits? Ha!). On one hand, his personality is generally more easy going, and sometimes (very, very occasionally) you can derail him a little bit with distraction, because he’s not as single minded and determinedly furious as she was. (You would laugh at that last sentence if you could see how determinedly furious he has been at least once a day for the past few weeks.) He doesn’t seem to be *quite* as opinionated as Evie is about things. Okay, well, I will say this, at least he has never peed himself in anger just to spite me.

On the other hand, when Evie got really mad, she would always throw up. So it couldn’t go on that long; it had a built in time limit. Oliver can go on, and on, and on, and on no matter how many times you think, “He absolutely cannot keep up this level of anger for long.” Twice now he has kept me up for a solid hour in the middle of the night (believe me, I checked the time), shrieking, crying, sweating, kicking the ground, the whole nine, because I dared to change his dirty diaper. At one point I stopped trying to calm him down and just read a book. He never paused or even slowed down for a second. An hour is a long time to expend that much energy. I know I couldn’t manage it!

(Totally off topic here, by why is WordPress recommending that I tag this post Mitt Romney??? Draw your own conclusions on that one folks, I guess we know which way WordPress leans.)

Although most of the time his typical two year old behavior is frustrating (especially when it involves biting, hitting and kicking, and when it takes three times as long to get out the door), sometimes you can’t help but laugh. It’s just so funny to see someone totally Hulk out over something so trivial, like he would destroy the world with his anger over the fact that you put his dinner plate *there* instead of *right there* where it clearly belongs.

He’s normally such a sweetheart that this new thing is just so incongruous with his usual behavior. It’s really surprising, and then again it’s not. Having gone through this once already, it’s eerie how similar it is to when Evie was a two year old. As with a lot of things with raising Ollie, it’s easier to bear knowing that it’s totally normal, and it’s just a phase that will pass.

Although it’s never easy, parenting is a lot easier the second time around.

Ollie sings the ABCs

/ Shane / Leave a comment

What more needs to be said?

He was so proud to sing it, right up to the big finish. He looks so much older with his hair short!