Family | Marriage Confessions Family | Laugh. Fight. Stay Married.

Last week, Gracie had a runny nose. Within two days, she had spread that runny nose to Bean, who then took on multiple cold symptoms – runny nose, cough, low fevers. At that point, Gracie was feeling much better. But then the weekend hit and as Bean and Gracie spent more time together, their cold germs were shared again. By Saturday morning, both of them were hot, sweaty, sticky, snotty messes.

Poor pumpkins.

We took it easy this weekend to let the kids recover, but I was reminded for the 1,000th time that nursing little kids back to good health is tough. As sick as they are, neither of my kids seems to be aware of the fact that they don’t feel good.

Neither of them is sleeping good at night right now. Between stuffy noses and little fevers and teething (Gracie’s getting one more tooth and Bean’s cutting his 2 year molars), they have been waking up throughout the night for the past few nights. Which means, during the day they are tired and cranky. For Gracie, we’ve been letting her sleep as much as she wants during the day, instead of limiting her nap times to under 2 hours like we normally do. For Bean, we’ve been doing a lot of football watching because it’s just about the only thing that keeps him sitting still for any period of time. He’s such a good sports commentator! He cheers and yells and says, “Oh, man!” when they miss a field goal.

You know, I really think it’s the parent’s responsibility to limit their child’s activity when they are sick.

I just don’t understand those irresponsible parents who let their children run wild when they are supposed to be getting over an illness.

If you ask me, bed rest and fluids are the only way to go when you’re nursing your children back to health.

Yes, sir. We take sickness around this house very seriously. Very. Seriously.

*****

Be sure to check out my review page today for a chance to win a 31 Gifts giveaway!

16 comments | posted in Family, Fun with Mom, Playing, Sick Bean, The Romper Room | tags: babies, Family, parenting, toddlers

This Sunday after church, we picked Bean up from his Sunday School room like we do every week. Then, he walked with us down to the nursery to get Gracie, like he does every week.

While we were loading Gracie up in her carrier, Bean was messing around with some of the toys, checking through things to make sure Gracie didn’t get anything more fun than he had in his classroom. When I turned around to get him so we could leave, he was holding a Lightning McQueen car. It was the same car that we had at home, so I thought maybe it was ours. But I didn’t remember him bringing it to church that morning. Though, maybe I had just overlooked it in the morning shuffle. So, we all headed out to the car, Bean happily toting his Lightning McQueen car.

When we got to the new house later that afternoon to finish scraping wallpaper, Bean squealed as he discovered he now had TWO Lightning McQueen cars! One was ours and one, of course, belonged to the church.

“Daddy! TWO Lightning McQueens!” he shouted.

“No, buddy. We can’t be happy about that,” said Chris very seriously. “Because you stole from Jesus.”

Nice, Chris. Real nice.

31 comments | posted in Family, Fun with Dad, Sweet Bean, The Bean, The Romper Room | tags: church, humor, parenting, toddlers

I am constantly amazed at how unique babies are. Even though Gracie is only three weeks old, she is still a very different baby than Bean was.

For one thing, she wears dresses. Which could be the most fun thing in the whole wide world. You know how they say that having a baby girl is like having a doll to dress up?

THEY’RE RIGHT!

Aside from the dress thing, though, there are a lot of differences between Baby Bean and Baby Gracie.

Gracie loves to be held. You put her on your shoulder and she will snuggle into your neck as close as she can get. Then she sighs happily and falls right to sleep. It’s the sweetest thing. Bean, on the other hand, wasn’t a huge cuddler. He still isn’t. He likes to be held as much as the next two-year-old (which ain’t much…) and he gives out hugs and kisses like he’s throwing Moon Pies from a Mardi Gras float. But you’d never find Bean snuggled up in your neck. Even as an infant.

Another big difference? Gracie doesn’t like pacifiers. Bean couldn’t sleep without one. Wouldn’t be separated from his binky. It was permanently glued to his little pie face. He loved that sucker. But Gracie? Notsomuch. We keep trying because…well…I don’t really know why we keep trying. I guess it’s because I read “Happiest Baby on the Block,” and Dr. Karp suggested binkies as a sucking mechanism to help your baby sleep. Or maybe it’s because we are just in the habit of giving the baby a binky when they are crying or falling asleep. Truth be told, the binky was awesome with Bean. But I’m also learning that there are some really great things about having a baby who isn’t dependent on the binky. For starters, we don’t have to deal with that big problem where the binky falls out of her mouth when she finally falls asleep, which then wakes her up. Bean went through that for months and it was horrible. Also a plus? Gracie doesn’t have an enormous binky in all her pictures.

Gracie’s temper is different than Bean, too. When Bean was mad as an infant – and even now as a toddler – his temper was built up when it came out. His cry was a slow building explosion. When you first heard him start to whimper, you had about 5 seconds to get him happy again before he went crazy. But Gracie? There is no 5 second “grace” period. Gracie goes from sleeping to screaming bloody murder instantly. But the up-side is that a) she hardly ever gets upset unless she needs something and b) she comes down from her hysteria just as fast as she gets there.

Even at three weeks old, I think it’s so neat how different Gracie is from Bean. She has different needs, different preferences, and different reactions. And I’m even more excited to see what those differences bring to our family in the coming years.

24 comments | posted in About Gracie, Family, Gracie Girl, Siblings, The Romper Room | tags: babies, new siblings, parenting, toddlers

First, thank you all for the suggestions on how to deal with Bean during this transition period. We had an appointment with our pediatrician on Friday for Gracie and while we were there, he talked with us a lot about how to handle Bean during this time and then this weekend I talked to my mom about it when she came over to stay with Gracie and both the doctor and my mom agreed with what most of you said – consistency is key! We’ve decided to pay a little more attention to Bean and to love him up even more, but as far as his behavior, we really have to stick to our guns. My doctor had a good rule of thumb for Bean (and any child going through the terrible two’s). He said to redirect and correct unacceptable behavior and to discipline defiant behavior. Keeping that in mind, along with advice my mom gave me, and everything you all suggested, I feel like we at least have options going forward.

We decided last week that we really needed to not just spend time with Bean and the family, but by himself. So, we asked my mom to come down and keep Gracie Saturday morning while we took Bean to the Orlando Science Center for some hands-on Big Boy fun! They had a Curious George exhibit and we thought Bean would really love that. And he did!

There was a whole Curious George town set up in one wing of the museum that you could walk through. Each area had a part of the Curious George books that you could participate in. Bean loved the part where you got to dress up in Curious George’s work outfit and then move around all these big foam blocks.

Bean’s other favorite part was a big rocket ship slide. He got to climb up the stairs all by himself (which was slightly terrifying as a parent because it was so high – I kept checking to make sure I brought our health insurance card) and then slide down. It was big and fast and Bean loved it!

After the Curious George exhibit, we headed out to check out the other exhibits and things to do. Bean was actually just a bit young for the museum. It was completely hands on and had all these cool science experiments you could do. But almost everything was adaptable for him. We just helped him and did modified versions of everything so that he got to do stuff. He didn’t know the difference and thought everything was great!

We maneuvered a big fan and made wind socks blow…

We stopped and played with widgets and gadgets and built things that spun…

We made noise on the big PVC pipes by whacking them with a big mallet…

We played with the train table (which Bean took very seriously)…

We raced cars down this giant racetrack…

And we studied law of motion…I think…

One of Bean’s favorite parts though was the dinosaur exhibit. I thought it might scare him, but he walked around roaring the whole time, so I’m guessing he was fine.

I think I even heard Chris roar a time or two.

Bean especially liked the part where he got to dig for fossils in the big bed of sand.

The last floor of the museum focused on Florida wildlife. Have I mentioned how much I don’t like Florida wildlife? Snakes, alligators, lizards, frogs? No, thanks. But Bean and Chris loved it!

(You’ll notice there aren’t many close-up pictures of this part because I was standing about 20 feet away from the critters – it’s how I roll.)

The whole day we kept telling Bean what a big boy he was. Everything was big boy. Big Boy with Curious George. Big Boy racing cars. Big Boy dinosaurs. And at the end, we went out for a Big Boy lunch at Chick-fil-a. It was a great Big Boy day!

I knew the day would be good for Bean, but I wasn’t expecting how good it would be for me and Chris. It was nice to spend some time alone with Bean for us, too. It gave us time to reconnect with him and listen to him and talk to him and play with him. It was just a great day for all of us.