Our Beautiful Two Year Old

Aiden is two. I know, I can't believe it either!

The great "Blizzard of 2010" put a bit of a damper on our party plans for Saturday, however the most important people were all here to celebrate (mommy, daddy, and Kenzie)! I didn't order a cake (thank goodness) because of the possibility of snow. When we woke up on Saturday I cooked a wonderful breakfast and decided I would bake a cake for later. After scouring the pantry for a box of cake mix I discovered that I was without. All I had was a box of spice cake mix. UM, I think not!

I decided that I would attempt to make a cake from scratch. A chocolate cake at that! I had everything I needed so when Aiden went down for his nap I set out on my mission. The cake batter looked great and I even made Luke try some. He informed me that I was good so in the oven it went. Surprisingly, it turned out OK. My penmanship when using icing isn't the greatest but Aiden didn't seem to care!
Once Aiden woke up we had a few of the neighbors over and enjoyed a yummy piece of chocolate cake. Aiden even blew out both of his candles all by himself!

My baby is growing up. It makes momma sad.

Aiden enjoying his cake. I had minimal to work with in the way of writing as you can see! It was yummy though!

Bad Ninny!

Ok, so we have decided that it's finally that time...to rid Aiden of his pacifier. He's been a 'sleep only user' since he was one and now that he's about to turn two, it's time for it to be GONE.

Last night, was the night! We tried cold turkey before and it didn't work so this time we decided to do the cutting of the ninny!

Luke snipped off the end and when we handed it to him he looked at it, looked at us, then looked back at it and tossed it away.

We thought, "wow, that's easy" but such was not the case.

We resumed the nighttime routine and when we left, he cried for a bit but then went to sleep.

I couldn't tell if he tried to sleep with it or not, but he DID sleep through the night and seemed well rested this morning.

Fast forward to nap time today!

Once again he didn't seem too happy about the "broken" ninny but I left him to it. He cried for a little while and then there was silence. After about 10 minutes I decided to peek in on him with the monitor and discovered he wasn't asleep at all. In fact, he was very much awake and talking. I listened very closely and all of a sudden I saw him pull his paci from his mouth, hold it out in front of him and say "bad ninny, no!". He did this over and over again for some time. At one point he even began to discipline his monkey.

He never ended up going to sleep today. He actually began to cry hystericallly after being in his room for about two hours so I gave in and brought him out.

This evening was successful. He went down after only fussing for about five minutes.

I'm keeping my fingers cross that this is it!! NO MORE NINNY!! NO MORE NINNY!

New Daycare Adventure

Today was Aiden's first day at the new daycare. This woman is wonderful and I think Aiden's time here will be very good for him! He's been home with me for almost a whole year now and I think it's about time he get some good old fashioned structure in his life.

(I hate to admit that working from home doesn't exactly allow me to give Aiden the best structured day)

So, drop off today went better than expected. He only cried for a second before I left. I thought about him all day, wondering how he was doing, but knowing he was fine. I daydreamed about how it would play out when I picked him up. I imagined that I would walk in and he would yell "mommy" and run up to me. That's not exactly how it happened.

First, when I walked in I turned the corner, Aiden looked up briefly and then resumed his play on the floor. No biggie right?? Well then I noticed something very blue around his mouth. It seems that he tricked his caregiver into giving him his paci all day. I feel bad because I think my reaction was a bit much and she felt very guilty for having given it to him, but I simply explained that he only gets it at sleep time. My fault..I should have been clear about that up front.

Little bugger...tricky one, he is!

Needless to say, I didn't get the big exaggerated welcome I was hoping for, but it was still wonderful to see him at the end of the day! Apparently he did great and aside from the paci fit, he didn't cry a bit all day!

Hopefully tomorrow is much better!

Since when....

did our two year old care what he wore for the day???

Yesterday morning I went in to find Aiden wide awake with blankets and stuffed animals tossed about his room (very typical these days) and we began our AM ritual. Sometimes I leave him in his jammies but today I decided to get him dressed. As I began to pull clothes from his closet I turned and noticed he was watching me very closely, which was new. Usually he runs around his room and plays.

I threw some clothes in a pile on the floor along with a new diaper and asked him to get undressed. He managed to only get his pants off so I decided to speed up the process and help things along. As I began to put his a clean shirt on he started screaming. NOOOOO and then said something that sounded like "ackt".

(Hmmm...another one of these impossible moments where he's telling me what he wants and I'm not understanding).

I asked him what he wanted and told him to go into the closet and show me. In we went and he pointed right to what he wanted. This orange and blue (YEAH SU!) Nike wind breaker jacket. That's what he was saying! JACKET! I just began to laugh because for the first time EVER he was telling me what to dress him in.

I still don't know why he chose this particual item. The only thing I can think of is that his pants were sort of wind breaker-ish so it made him want the jacket????

Still...so funny. I fear this is become a common occurance in the Callas household.

A talkative, bossy little dancer

Why do parents wish the time by? When our child starts to coo, we wish they were crawling. When they begin to crawl, we wish they were walking. When the begin to walk, we wish they were talking. Time just goes by way too fast. I'm about to have a two year old...that's right, A TWO YEAR OLD!

And there is no doubt that I have a two year old toddler on my hands, that's for sure.

Aiden is talking...A LOT! Constantly, in fact. He walks around the house rambling on. Most of the things he says are not comprehendable, but it's fun to hear them, just the same. He gets extremely frustrated when he wants something and I don't know what he's saying. So frustrated that he throws himself down on the floor and a tantrum ensues. It takes WAY too long to calm him down and once I do, about 10 seconds go by before it begins again.

Aye...Aye...Aye, that's all I have to say.

Oh, and when did he get so big that he bosses me around?

"No mommy!", "Come on mommy" and "Go mommy"

This is what I hear all day it seems. Ah, but it still makes me giggle inside sometimes. With all the bad moments throughout the day there are plenty of good ones!

He LOVES LOVES LOVES to give kisses and big bear hugs. He'll say "hug mommy" and that will just melt my heart. He loves to dance. When he hears any music at all he says "come on mommy, dance" and won't stop until you follow him and dance around (and by dancing I mean turning in circles until he falls down).

I love him so much it hurts...really it does. Today I sent him with Nana and Poppy so that I could get some rest and when he walked out the door my heart actually hurt. I have been missing him all day (but I really needed to rest).

A wrench in our plan

I don't even know where to begin.

There have been several differences in my pregnancies. With Aiden I wasn't sick or tired, well maybe a little tired, but never totally exhausted. I had a somewhat boring pregnancy (I say this happily, by the way). I was a week overdue when I had him and everything went by the book!

This time, NOT THE CASE.

During the course of my entire first trimester I was extremely nauseated. Then two weeks prior to my second trimester, I began to get physically sick. All that ended and I began to feel better. Then came our ultrasound. At 18 weeks we found out we were going to have a baby girl (which I am still in awe about) but that's not the only thing we found out. It seems that I have a shortened cervix. This was a little alarming to the doc, so she asked that we come back for a follow up ultrasound in 5 weeks.

5 weeks later, we showed up and got to see our little bundle again (which was so exciting). She was of course bigger now and STILL A GIRL!!! However, once again, we got bad news. It looked like my cervix had changed again, so the doc asked that I come back for a checkup every week. She said I could still work but that she just wanted to err on the side of caution (of course) to make sure there were no drastic changes.

Skip to Tuesday of this week....

ONCE AGAIN we got bad news. Things looked even worse and the doctor feared that my body was just weakening by the day and that now I really needed to take it easy and get out of the water. I broke down right there. The stress of this news, the stress of having just started my own business that was now flourishing and having to basically put everything on hold and of course the stress of not knowing the fate of our baby girl.

Amidst all of this there is some good news...the baby looks great! She's moving and kicking all the time!

SO...the doc wanted to run one more test to see exactly where I was with regards to going into labor early. She tested to see if my body was producing a chemical that typically shows up prior to doing so.

Wednesday morning we FINALLY got some good news. Chemical test returned a negative result which means it's VERY UNLIKELY that I will be going into labor any time soon BUT I still need to take it easy.

After scurrying around for the past 3 days, I am getting fill ins for my classes and somehow managing to keep it all together! The strange thing is that in all of this, I feel great. I feel better today than I have my entire pregnancy, so none of this news makes any sense.

All we can do at this point is take it day by day! Things will be fine and life will go on!

Our blossoming little boy!

Aiden is changing so rapidly every day. It's really an amazing thing to watch!

He's becoming more and more independent and wants to be a BIG boy (and with this there are some downsides too). The other day we sat down to eat breakfast and I handed him his bowl of cereal with his little spoon. The second he saw it he began to throw a fit. At first I was totally thrown off by his behavior. Why was he acting like this? Then he started to say "bisp" over and over again. I didn't know what he was saying which was VERY VERY frustrating. Then finally it dawned on me..he was asking for a BIG SPOON. I handed him one and he was as happy as can be!

He's talking more and using more words to form little sentences. He says things like "Hey mommy catch" and "come on daddy". He completely understands you when you are talking to him and he's a bit of a manipulator too. At night we go upstairs, take a bath, get dressed, listen to some music and read books. Lately, he doesn't want to go to bed (that's a whole other post), so he will ask you over and over again to read more books. When I let him down off my lap to pick a new book, he's easily distracted with other things in his room. He'll wander over to his aquarium and talk to his fish. He'll conveniently need to go potty, and sometimes he'll just sit in front of his books pondering over which one to read. This can sometimes take up to ten minutes to pick ONE BOOK! He's playing mommy...and some days I give in because I'm so tired that it actually feels good to rock in his chair by myself, and then others I protest immediately.

He's growing up before our very eyes and sometimes just thinking about it makes me tear up! He's no longer a baby...but our blossoming little boy!