Could things be getting better?

Dom slept through last night. Yay! Unfortunately, both he and Noel were up before six for some reason. That's just a little too early for me. We're hoping that Dom is starting to get over whatever it is that has been going on lately. Bedtime has been slightly easier the past two nights, perhaps because Dom was so tired, but we're still not back to normal there. Both boys need to be sleeping well at night if they're going to share a room eventually. Otherwise, I don't know how that will work.

Noel took two long naps again today, which gave Dom and me plenty of time to enjoy the weather. We even had lunch and a snack outside on the patio. Incidentally, I finally ordered some vines to grow on the pergola. We've always intended to plant vines, but I overthink things so much that it's taken me two years to make a decision. I went with crimson glory vine (vitis coignetiae), which is an ornamental grapevine. It has big leaves and spectacular fall color, so there's something to look forward to.

While we were outside, I moved some plants around, probably killing a hosta, or, as Dom says, "pasta," in the process. (Dom's favorite plants are the lambs' ears and carex, which he always points out by name.) When I was digging, Dom was happily looking for worms. He carried around three of them for some time, and as a result they have gone on to that great pile of dirt in the sky. Poor creatures.

...and many more rough nights

How sad is it that the baby is the easy one at night? This stuff with Dominick won't stop. I've started dreading nighttime because we never know exactly what it will bring. We know that Dom won't go to bed without major assistance from us, and that later our sleep will be interrupted by intense screams. For a few nights, Dom was acting very hyper at bedtime and refusing to stay in his room. One time, after he finally did fall asleep, he woke up around midnight and ended up with us the rest of the night. For some reason, he was sleeping with his feet at the top of the bed, so it was pretty much a given that he would kick me in the face. And then last night had a drama of its own. At 3:00, we heard the screaming, but it was slightly muted. Mike went down, then called for me. I went downstairs, thinking Dom must have gotten sick. Instead, I find his face and hands completely covered with blood. The floor by his door was also bloody. His nose was gushing. I guess he had something in there that just had to come out, and he had really gone at it. (He will hate me later for sharing this story!) On the plus side, Noel has become a champion napper.

This weekend, Mike bought Dominick a Slip and Slide. They set it up on Saturday and are out there again now. Dom likes it, but he prefers to crawl rather than slide. Here are some pictures:

Ah, a foreshadowing of Dom's teen years. Here he's playing with the phone, but his posture and glazed expression make me picture him playing video games (Halo 9, perhaps?). He was playing with the phone again today, which drives me crazy. He managed to change the display to Spanish. Fortunately, I was able to change it back. It wasn't easy, considering all the menus were in Spanish, but I guessed that I was looking for Idioma, then selected Ingles.

And finally, here's a sweet picture of Dominick holding Noel while sitting in his papasan chair.

Sleep

Oh, my gosh. Dominick is asleep on the couch! He wanted to lie down with an afghan ("cape"), so I covered him and went to make some tea. When I came back, he was still there, which was surprising enough. Then just now, while checking some things on the computer, I realized I could hear him breathing, so I took a peek. He is really sleeping. What's even better is that Noel is, too, so I have a few minutes to myself.

Last night was a massive improvement over the previous one. Dom slept all night, though he didn't want to go to sleep initially. I had to lie down with him until he fell asleep. Noel woke up at about 10:15 and cried rather halfheartedly for about 30 minutes, then slept until 4:30 am. Dom has still been talking about the lights coming down today. In addition to all the ceiling lights, he seems to have dreamed about the desk lamp, too.

Sorry for all the posts about sleep lately. Anybody with little ones knows how big an issue sleep can become. The problem is that as soon as you get one thing sorted out, another emerges. That was always the case with Dominick, and now that we have two kids, it's even more true.

And another rough night

Man, I am so tired. Last night the boys alternated waking up, so that I never got more than about an hour and a half of sleep at a time. I made the mistake of closing the bedroom window when I went to bed (11:20ish, later than usual). It was an attempt to keep Noel from getting cold during the night, but it just woke him up, so I had to feed him to get him to sleep again. Then Dom woke up around 1:30, screaming. He told Mike that the light was coming down, but it would stop if it were turned on low. He went back to sleep completely hidden by the covers. Noel woke at 3:00. Dom woke a second time (4:00ish?), screaming again, and Mike finally got him back to sleep on the couch around 5:30. Noel was up for good by 6:00, Dom by about 6:30. What's going on with these boys? If anyone has any advice for dealing with nightmares in three-year-olds, please share!

Easy day

Dominick slept very well last night, so it was Noel's turn to wake up a little more than usual. He made up for it in naps, however. His two naps today totalled more than five hours. Don't ask me how that happened! We had playgroup here from 10:00 to 1:00, and he slept through the whole thing. Dominick was a good boy today, so all in all, the day went about as well as it could have.

Dom is still talking frequently about the lights coming down. Apparently it's not just the one in his room. I pointed out the screws in the study's light fixture this afternoon and assured him that the light was fastened firmly to the ceiling. And before Mike put Dom to bed, he had a similar discussion about the light in his room. The turtle again is banished from Dom's room.

Noel has become quite a roly-poly little guy. He can roll both ways now and has even gone completely over (back-front-back) in a fairly quick sequence. He's also pushing up nice and high on his arms. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was worried that he wasn't doing these things, but obviously there was no need for concern.

Rough night

Last night was a little dramatic. Dominick has been having some strange dreams. He woke up around 1:30, crying, and when Mike went down he said that the lights were coming down and the turtle's (one of Noel's toys) eyes and mouth were moving. I could hear Dom chattering about it over the monitor. Mike put him back to bed a few times and came back upstairs, only to hear Dom cry again. The crying woke up Noel at 2:00, but once he ate for about two hours, off and on, he was good for the rest of the night. Mike brought Dominick up to our room for a while, which didn't do any good (it never does because he doesn't want to sleep), then laid down with him in his bed until he finally went to sleep around 4:00. We were all tired today, so I hope tonight goes better. Several times today Dom mentioned the lights coming down and the turtle's eyes moving. We took the turtle out of his room before he went to bed tonight in an effort to prevent any further problems.

Something else interesting is that Dom was upset by an episode of Little Einsteins that we watched this weekend. A baby chimpanzee has lost his parents, not in the dead sense but in the missing sense, and the Einsteins help him find them. Dominick said, "He is missing his mommy and daddy," then his mouth turned down more than I would have thought possible, and he started to cry. I went to comfort him, and he grabbed me and pulled me to him. Mind you, I'm holding Noel, too, so we are all very cozy. A few minutes later in the show, the characters came upon three large African masks on a bridge, and the first one was sad. Well, that set Dominick off again in exactly the same way. We stopped watching shortly thereafter. He's mentioned a couple of times since then that he doesn't like that episode, so I've deleted it from the TiVo.

Baseboards: check

Except for the kitchen, which has a different style of base trim, all of our baseboards are now complete, so we can consider the floor job basically done. Dom's room was saved for last for logistical reasons (when can I work on it? how to keep him out while I'm painting?). Ultimately we decided I would do the prep work and painting on successive mornings while Mike entertained Dominick elsewhere in the house. Dom did burst in a couple of times, so I moved the doorknob cover to the outside. Ha!

Yesterday morning, I was sanding the baseboard in his room, which was a bigger job than it should have been because of the gross incompetence of the previous owners. I have never seen such a bad paint job in my life. Unbelievable. Even though I sanded until my arms wanted to fall off, I didn't manage to eliminate all of the glops, drips and carpet fibers from the baseboard. Of course this was not obvious until I started painting today. Still, it's a massive improvement. Anyway, my point is that I was struggling and getting very frustrated during the sanding when Dominick came in to cheer me on. He told me, "You can take it off. You can do it!" Sweet, right? I didn't realize until later that he wasn't actually trying to encourage me: he was just mixing up his pronouns again. He was talking about himself, how he'd just removed the masking tape from the floor in the study. I should have known.

With today's nicer weather, we got outside a couple of times. The four of us went for a walk this morning, and Dominick was moving sooooooo slowly. It was actually excruciating. This afternoon, we went up the street to a neighbor's house to feed the goats. Yes, we have goats and chickens in our neighborhood. Dom fed some euonymous to the goats and got very excited, then he tried to feed a worm to a chicken, but it fell. We were there with a neighbor, her two boys, and the two boys of another neighbor, so there were six boys altogether. As you might expect with boys, they found the goats' bodily functions most fascinating. Not so much my boys, of course, but two or three of the others, who are older. I can't imagine what things will be like around our house in a few years!

Rainy-day Dominisms

We're boring this week. For lack of anything else to post, here are the latest Dominisms:

Threesday

markering

D starts with "down"

Well, I guess I could brag about something nice Dominick did yesterday at playgroup. A toy train went under a play yard and got stuck there, and Dom's little friend couldn't reach it. Dom got down, pulled out the train for his friend, then went back to playing with the bouncy seat or whatever was amusing him at the time. I was very proud.

Easter

Happy Easter! We had a pretty low-key weekend. The cold weather kept us inside, but we did manage to have an Easter egg hunt inside the house this morning. Note for next year: do not put treats inside the eggs. Dom wanted to eat the contents of each egg as he found them, and this was just after breakfast. (By the way, we made pecan whole-wheat waffles--yum!) When we tried to get him to stop eating so he could finish looking for eggs, he responded with a tantrum. Later we dyed eggs, and Dom managed not to ruin his clothes by slinging around the little egg holder thing, but he did put a couple of stains on the counter. No big deal.

Dom and Daddy dyeing Easter eggs the Paas way. Note the hardwood floor in the background.

Noel with his Easter present, a bath book. I took about four pictures in a row, and he had the same expression on his face in each one.

Check out this link for some very scientific and hilarious studies of that classic Easter treat, the Marshmallow Peep. If you haven't seen this before, enjoy!

Five months

Here is Noel at five months. How fitting that he's sucking his hand in this picture. At first, I thought about trying to get him to stop, but it's a perfect illustration of him at this age. By the way, through the miracle of cloth diapering, he's wearing the same diaper in this photo as in the four previous monthly photos. You couldn't say that about disposables! He'll probably outgrow this one by next month, though.

So you'd think that after five months of having Noel around, I'd be able to get his name right. He probably thinks his name is "Dom--I mean Noel," he's heard it so often. Maybe it's because they look so much alike. That and I am so used to saying Dominick's name that it just slips out.

Noel's first haircut

He's not quite five months old, so it seems early for a haircut, but Noel's hair was getting so long, something had to be done. Where original baby hair remained on the sides, it was already past his ears; the front is in his eyes; and the back has gotten twisted and matted into balls. I just cleaned up the sides a little bit. I didn't want to risk butchering the front, but it can just be brushed to the side. It'll probably fall out soon anyway, along with the rest of the baby hair. Unfortunately, I had Noel on a black towel, which was not the best idea for photographing this momentous event. I didn't want to get hair all over the towel he would need for his bath right after. Oh well.

I was just telling a friend yesterday that Dominick had been behaving very well at PDO and that I'd never heard of any problems. So today, of course, the teacher told me she'd given him a time out for hitting another boy. She followed this by saying that she calls him her "gentle giant" because he's so much bigger than the other kids and so sweet. Whew! Apparently, today's assault was an isolated incident.

Here are today's Dominisms:

"plug it out" [Pretty clever, actually. What else would be the opposite of plugging in? The next one is in a similar vein.]

"tie it out"

"I'm going to sit on the Boppy. I'm going to feed baby Noel. Oh, I can't feed baby Noel. I doesn't have boo-boos on me."

Dominisms

Last weekend, our big excursion was a trip to the pet store, which was holding a hamster race. We thought Dominick might like it, and it was free, so why not? In reality, it was pretty lame. They started about 15 minutes late, too, so that was annoying. Dom didn't seem too interested in watching the hamsters, but he did enjoy wandering around the pet store. By the time we left, my allergies had started up. Too much fur and too many feathers for me in that place.

With Dominick's speech explosion as of late, I need to start a list of the amusing things he says. It's possible they might not be as amusing to anyone but his mom, but I'll share them, anyway. Here's a few to get started:

"He just bless-youed."

"I don't want to get thunder on me."

"You made it! You made it all the way to top!" [In this example, he's referring to himself as "you," proudly telling some other kid that he (Dominick) climbed all the way up the ladder to the slide at the park.]

"I'm combing Mommy's hair. That will be nice."

"That plant isn't happy."

"Two R's! Bump!" [Can you guess? Railroad tracks.]

Interestingly, some of Dom's quirkier words have remained despite his overall improvement in enunciation. For example, he still drinks "muck" at mealtimes, has a toy "bullbozer," eats "hamburgergers" and knows all his shapes, including the basic "rectatangle."

I feel like I should say something about Noel, but there's not much to say at this point. He spends his days being cute and not napping. He's still only rolled over twice, but he can do a 180-degree turn in his crib.

I'll close by posting a couple of recent photos. Nothing terribly exciting, just the boys hanging out in the living room. Dom always makes silly face when I tell him to smile. I love Noel's concentration face in the second photo.

New link

I think I may have figured out how to share photos on this site. Click on the new link entitled "Blog photos," and it will take you to my Picasa Web Album. There you'll see only the three most recent photos I've posted in the blog, but it's a start. I hope to upload more photos and create more albums, but I can't say when that will happen. Bear with me!