Candyce Lund Bollinger

We were going a little crazy with Beckett. In fact, we wondered if he was normal. In the last 6-months or so, he's changed from our sweet, little boy to a nutty, loud, tantrum throwing kid. We've often blamed it on day care. How does he even know what a gun is anyway? So, we enlisted the help of Olympia's premier parent educator. Most parents in Oly know who Candyce is. Katie has attended several of Candyce's classes since Beckett was about 6-months old. She's taken the last year or so off, but is headed back in January. However, Candyce also has a private practice and that was where we headed today.

Well, it turns out Beckett is perfectly normal. If 3 is 'oppositional', then 4 is 'intense'. Tell me about it. Everything is all or nothing with him right now. She gave us a few coping techniques. #1 is to write down 3-5 rules and post them. Things that we're not willing to compromise on. Those things that are our absolutes. For us, #1 is probably going to be 'no name calling'. It could be a bit difficult to change a few of the things that we've done, but it is important. We tried a few things tonight and actually had a very enjoyable evening. Now, we just need to go for consistency. Of course, there is an end in sight. Apparently 5 is the magic age. The age where they want to please you. My goodness, I can't wait for that.

Bedtime Battles

Beckett has slept through the night since he was 4-months old. It was amazing and wonderful for a sleep deprived set of parents like us. Over the last 2 years and 4 months, we've had our ups and downs (sitting in his room until he fell asleep, waking up to find him asleep in our bed, and even night terrors) but nothing could prepare us for what started a couple of weeks ago. We have been at our wits end at bedtime. We have a pretty good bedtime routine - bath, PJ's, brush teeth, read books (or watch 1 show) and then bedtime. However, when we put him down for bed now, there is inevitably a tantrum that occurs. At first, several weeks ago, he only asked for extra things - a glass of water, rub my back, etc. Then, it was getting up every 5 minutes. Now, it's screaming. We've tried a number of tactics - take away privileges (i.e. the door being open, the music in his room, etc.), not engaging him when he has a fit, putting a baby gate in his door, closing his door, allowing him to fall asleep on his floor on the hall. And every night, it's the same thing - screaming and tantrums. It really can wear on a person after awhile. I'm also quite sure that it's affecting Katie and me. We went to visit Candyce's class today. She's a local parenting and child development expert. We just wanted to listen to other parents of 3-year olds and make sure we weren't alone. Thank Goodness, we're not! Normal or not - night after night it gets really draining and I hope that it passes soon. However, from talking to other parents, it sounds like that's just part of having a three-year old. Yea for us!

Baby Dust

Babies, babies everywhere. It seems that when you're not looking, suddenly everyone is having babies. Everyone except us that is. We were back at the dr again on Saturday morning. For another ultrasound. He checks for cysts before he'll give clomid. So, no cysts and back to clomid I go. However, he didn't like the looks of my fibroid. He wanted to know if it was inside or outside the endometrial lining. Basically, from the way I understand it - if it's inside the lining and the fertilized egg attempts to attach there, it just won't happen. So, it's back to the dr again on Wednesday. This time for a sonohistiogram. Something about a balloon catheter and checking the shape & size of my uterus. This will be attempt #3. I know there's so many women out there that have a lot more attempts than we've had, but it still doesn't make the waiting and the time any easier. The picture below is of our friends Casey and Nathan's baby girl, Lauren. Beckett got to meet her and hold her on the day she was born (9/1/08) and the look on his face was so wonderful. He absolutely loves that little baby girl. However, he's quite sensitive and when she starts to cry, he gets pretty upset about things. This process is hard for me too, because I had honestly thought that perhaps Beckett would be an only child. I know that everyone says you can't explain it, but you just love #2 just as much as #1. I sure hope so, because my Beckett is the absolute light in my eyes. He is my favorite person in the world and I can't imagine my life without him. I don't even remember life before him.

Beckett's Red Foot

Katie graduated from community college on Friday night. The whole family went out to dinner afterwards and after dinner, Beckett was running to meet Grandma. Well, since he's not so light on his feet, he fell. He started crying and we thought it had been a long night so we took him home and put him to bed. The next morning, he woke up and wouldn't get out of bed. He said that his foot hurt. I tried to get him to stand on it, but he wouldn't. So, luckily his pediatrician has Saturday hours and we had an appointment at 10:30 Saturday morning. We took him in and he needed an X-Ray at the hospital across the street. He wasn't too keen on the X-Ray, it killed me to have to practically hold him down while they took the X-Ray. We had to go back to his dr's office to get the results and as soon as we walked in, the nurse asked what his favorite color was. Which could only mean one thing - he needed a little cast. He said his favorite color was red. So, that's what he got. A little red cast. So tiny. He'll tell you what happened. He can't say the 'k' sound, so it sounds something like this...
"Bettett walk, walk walk. Bettett trash. Owie foot" Basically that's what happened. He'll also tell you "Dr Open. Yellow hands". Yes, the dr had to open the cast packaging and he was wearing gloves.

He's doing very well with it. He started walking around on it and has gotten rather good at scooting around and getting onto and off of the couch and chairs. My sweet boy is very resilient and you may not ever even know he had a broken 5th metacarpal.

updates

Blogging is something that I can't seem to get my arms around. I read people's blogs and they are often so good at it, I feel inadequate. So, here I am - trying again. We'll see how it goes this time. To update everyone on the last 9 months of our lives. We have now lived in Olympia for a year and we finally decided to buy a house. We searched and searched, thank goodness our real estate agent had the patience of Job. We put an offer in on a gorgeous house in Chehalis and it just didn't feel right. As the fates would have it, it didn't pass inspection, so we continued to look and we lowered our wants list quite a bit. We decided square footage wasn't as important as being somewhere that our family is comfortable and respected. So, we finally found a house in West Olympia. Not far from where we're living now. It's a great neighborhood and a great house. I can see us raising Beckett there for some time to come. In other news, Beckett turned 1. He walks now. Katie is 3 quarters away from graduating from South Puget Sound Community College and she'll be applying to The Everegreen State College for Spring 2008. It seems so far way, but the way this last year has flown by, I know it'll be here before we know it. As for me, I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. I'm considering accounting (something I can do from home), teaching or just going to Evergreen and taking programs that interest me. They do have a Masters in Public Administration that is very interesting to me. However, I still am not sure exactly what I'll do with it. But of course, I'm not doing much with the degree I have now. I'm posting a picture of Beckett from the fountain here in Olympia. It was a beautiful day and the sun just lit his face so perfectly.