If You Take a Toddler to School. . .

I had a doctor's appointment this morning, so Rich was going to look after Hayden.

(Baby update: the ultrasound my doctor did today measured the baby at 6 lbs 12 oz. Hayden was 6 lbs 13 oz when he was born, which wasn't for another 4 1/2 weeks from the point I'm currently at in this pregnancy. Perhaps "little" brother isn't going to be so little!)

Anyhow, rather than come home to babysit, Rich suggested I just bring Hayden over to the MSU campus. There was an elementary school science fair in the Student Union Building and Hayden loves to check out the campus bookstore. Rich figured he could keep him occupied for an hour or so while I was gone.

So, we were getting our shoes on to head out the door and I told Hayden that he was going to school to see Daddy. And he said, "you [I] take your [my] backpack with you [me], just like Mouse!" We've been reading If You Take a Mouse to School lately and Hayden knew that if he was going to school, he should take his backpack. I ran upstairs to get it for him and he loaded it with the essentials: the very book he was just talking about, his mini doodle pad, two of his stuffed friends, goldfish crackers, and his water. Now he was ready for school!

He was so excited and so proud of himself. When I dropped him off with Rich, it really did look like he was headed off to school!

He may be starting pre-school one-day-a-week this fall, but thankfully we have several more years before he truly heads off to school. This mama isn't quite ready to see her boy taking that rite of passage yet (despite how adorable he was today)!

The Hand That Feeds You

Poor Maggie. . . She had it pretty good in the Shertzer household for about 4 years. Then, Hayden showed up and things instantly changed. At first, she wasn't getting quite as much attention from us as she was used to and the runs/walks she had gotten on a daily basis for the previous 4 years were often preempted by tending to a newborn or post-poned due to weather or shear exhaustion on our part. As Hayden got older, Maggie started to get her walks on a more routine daily basis again, but now she had to deal with a curious and mobile person crawling over her and pulling on her tail or ears.

Now, as a rambunctious 2-year-old, Hayden really gives her a run for her money! He does love her and considers her part of the family, but he's keenly aware of the pecking order and knows that he pulls rank on her. He loves to "play" with her, by chasing her on his indoor bicycle and often tells her to "go lay down on your bed" or yells "no! no! Maggie" if he drops some food on the floor when she's hovering near his chair.

She seems to take it all in stride, but I do feel bad for her. Perhaps in the coming weeks, however, she'll come to her appreciate her human brother a little more. Hayden's latest chore that he likes helping with is feeding Maggie her breakfast and dinner. With a little assistance from us, he can fill up her food scoop, walk it over to her bowl, carefully dump it in, and return the scooper back to the food bin.

The surest way to a canine's heart is through her stomach. At least maybe now Hayden can make up for all the change he brought to Maggie's life!

What happened to Spring?!

After wearing shorts for the last 3 days (see photos in previous post), and even setting a record high temperature in Bozeman yesterday (it got to 80 degrees!), I laid down to take a nap this afternoon and woke up to this:

In mere hours, we acquired close to 6" of snow and there may be more on the way.

Maybe Santa just wanted some familiar weather. . . he'll be making a little delivery in the form of a new camera to our front door sometime in the next week!

Ten on Tuesday

1. The Boston Marathon was yesterday and a small part of me was sad that I wasn't running it. I was following updates on the race on-line, though, and it was pretty exciting. Maybe I'll be back out there for the race next year.

2. It was only a small part of me that was sad because, mostly, I'm just feeling big and uncomfortable and I can't remember what it feels like to not have a big huge belly and 24 extra pounds of body weight. So, here's the belly at 36 weeks (I think it's looking very basketball-like!):

3. I've managed to stay pretty healthy throughout this pregnancy, which has been wonderful (the stomach bug I caught while pregnant with Hayden was quite a drag). Well, this weekend I came down with a cold. My sinuses have not been this congested in a long, long time. I can't breathe through my nose at all. And I can't take anything to help. Ugh! Getting a restful night of sleep was challenging enough with my big belly and numerous trips to the bathroom. Now, lying down also makes me feel like my head is going to explode. Fun.

4. I'm this close to upgrading to a new camera. I've been toying with the idea for a few months now, but feel like if I'm going to do it, I might as well have it before we bring home a warm, soft, cuddly, adorable newborn subject. I really want the Canon 5D, but I'm having trouble swallowing the price tag. I've been stalking eBay and a few other photography sites for a good deal on a used one, but so far it's eluded me. If I obsess about it for another day or two, Rich may just order one for me. . . I'm sure he's growing tired of my play-by-play of every eBay auction that I debate bidding on (the merits of a specific camera/seller, the price wars, etc).

5. A friendly little service announcement: don't try to wash your garage rags in your home washing machine. A "to-be-un-named" person did just that on Sunday night and the rags contained just the right combination of chemicals to leave a foul order lingering throughout the house and in the washing machine. We've been running the machine all day with various combinations of detergent, vinegar, and baking soda trying to ensure the next load of clothing we wash won't smell like a mechanic's work clothes!

6. After our crazy snow storm last week, today felt like summer. The sunshine was strong, the skies were blue and the temperature reached 70! It was Hayden's first day in shorts in over 5 months and he spent plenty of time playing with all of his outdoor toys. He especially loved putting the boats into the snowmelt-filled pool.

7. So, the first day of shorts was also the first skinned knee of the season (check out his right knee). . .

8. Hayden is anti-bandaid. He scraped his finger late last week and threw a fit when we tried to cover his boo-boo. I did eventually get him to put one on, but he ripped it off within 5 minutes. I even have band-aids with cars on them! I didn't even attempt to cover this knee scrape. Any tips on how to get him to comply for those instances when he really will need one?

9. In addition to playing with the boats and sand, Hayden broke in his swing set for the season. It's hard to believe that it was 8 months ago that we moved to Bozeman and set it up in the backyard. As you can see, he's quite a bit bigger now than he was back in August!

April 2009:

August 2008:

10. And to show how big he's really gotten, he insisted on using the "big boy swing" after he was done with his ride in the infant seat. When did he get big enough to do this?!

Mr. Independent

The joy of life with a 2-year-old. . .

He was insisting on taking his jacket off himself. He was having a little difficulty getting his arms out of the sleeves and he stood there struggling and fussing for about 10 minutes. My offers to help him were met with a furious chorus of "no!, no!, no!" and even more fussing. So I let him struggle. He did eventually get it, but more and more of our days are spent enduring his stubborn independent streak.

I'm all for promoting his ability to do things on his own, and I try to be patient and give ourselves an extra 20 minutes to do simple tasks like getting shoes on or taking coats off or washing hands or climbing into his booster seat at meal time. Sometimes, though, we just don't have the extra minutes, which results in a frustrated and screaming toddler and a stressed out mommy.

I've found that we're in a period of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Not a single day passes that my heart doesn't soar with love and joy at something Hayden has done. The sweet and silly things he says or the unprompted, "thank you, Mommy!" when I hand him something. But we go from moments like that to moments of shear chaos, and then back again, before it seems like you've even blinked an eye.

And "disciplining" a 2-year-old is good in theory, but bad in practice. We've worked hard to do the "right" things. . . positive reinforcement, empowering him with decision-making (the blue cup or the red cup), encouraging him to use his words to tell us what the problem is rather than fussing. We clearly spell out our expectations. . . put the trucks back in the bin then you can have your snack, for example. All that works well when he is doing the "right" things. But when he's throwing a fit because I took him pajama shirt off (instead of letting him do it), there's no way to get that behavior to stop. He's not sophisticated enough to really understand consequences yet. He like gymnastics class, but when I tell him that if does not get dressed right now, we're not going to go to gym class, he just doesn't get it. We just have to wait it out and then give him praise when he cooperates the next time. But in those instances, especially when it's the sixth instance before breakfast, it really wears on you.

That's when I try to take a deep breath, tell myself that he's not doing it to be malicious to me on purpose, and remember that this phase shall pass. I'm really praying it passes soon, though!

Snow, snow, snow

I know, we chose to move to Montana, so in a sense, we asked for it. And we're no strangers to spring snow. Colorado got its fair share of spring storms. But the snow in our yard had just melted. . . it was in the 60's and we could actually see the grass! True, it was brown, dormant grass, but it was grass that was eager to see sunshine and start turning green.

This was the scene in our backyard on Easter Sunday:

This was the scene on Wednesday morning (April 15th!) after having constant snow for the 24 hours prior:

Poor Maggie was up to her belly in the cold, wet, white stuff!

Wednesday morning I heard Rich leave for school through the garage. I came downstairs, fixed some breakfast and was reading the newspaper when he walked back through the door. I said, "oh, you're back!" and he replied, "Back? I haven't left yet! I've been shoveling and digging my car out for the last 45 minutes!" Spring snow is very wet and very heavy. At least he got a good workout!

I didn't think I'd be getting any more pictures of Hayden like this until next winter!

As long as I don't have to pull a snowsuit out for the new baby, I'll be okay with it. Supposedly it's going to be in the 60's and sunny again by Saturday. But then again, we did hear of a snowstorm here last year during June. Yikes!

Easter Sunday

We had the egg coloring and the egg hunting, then Easter morning arrived. We got all dressed up in our finest spring duds and although we didn't have time for a formal photo before church, we did have time for Hayden to check out his Easter basket.

I stuffed his basket with all sorts of fun stuff. . . a car for playing in the sand, bubbles, a Little Golden book of bible stories, a garden rake and shovel, and even some toddler-sized garden gloves!

I wasn't a total scrooge on the candy. He had an M&M filled plastic egg and a collection of 5 hollow chick-shaped chocolates. While I was fiddling with camera settings, he had unwrapped and eaten one and was already onto the second. He bit the head off of that one and was opening a third. He's quick!

Sometime in the last few days he really figured out what "chocolate" and "candy" are! I was glad we were headed to church where he could burn off his sugary breakfast in the nursery. Playing in the nursery is one of the highlights of his week. He loves their assortment of cars and trucks! After the service when I went to pick him up I noticed that he wasn't wearing any pants. Apparently, he had a major poop blowout (I guess maybe he had a little too much chocolate for breakfast!). My dilemma was to let him walk through the church and the block and a half back to our car Risky Business style (dress shirt, socks, no pants) or put the pants back on. And remember, I hadn't yet taken our official Easter photos! The poop on the inside of his pants had dried, so I opted to put them back on and just not let him sit down. I attempted a few photos on the walk back to the car, but Hayden wasn't cooperating. My guys still look pretty dapper, though!

Hayden rode pants-less in the car back home and I grabbed a back-up pair of khakis so we could get a family photo. We only had the patience to snap one shot with the self-timer and this is it:

Hope you and your family had a blessed day!

Easter Colors

Coloring Easter eggs with Hayden was so much fun this year. It was the perfect activity for a curious toddler who knows all his colors! And I love that I can explain something to him, he'll listen, and then say, "yeah" in total agreement/understanding. We didn't bother involving him with egg dying last year since he was just too young to really get it. This year he's known what's coming since he found the box of egg dyes in a kitchen drawer a few weeks ago. When I told him it was finally the day we were going to color eggs, he went straight for that drawer to look for the box! Then went to town with the colors!

He got a little over-zealous with putting the eggs into the dye cups at times, but we avoided any major catastrophes!

The fun part was the oooo's and aaaahhh's as we started to pull the eggs out!

Once the eggs were colored the fun didn't end, it was time for stickers!

We only suffered one casualty. . .

. . . and got to enjoy some beautiful Easter colors!