Thankful

Saturday night D and I went to an Avett Brothers concert in Milwaukee (about an hour away).  Awesome show, for any of you who like singer-songwriter, alt-country, alternative type music.  We stayed downtown at a fancy hotel.  It was glorious.  We drank too much and ate too much.   My MIL and D's 14 year old niece came to our house and stayed with L and the dogs.    I have written here over the years about my varying degrees of annoyances with my MIL.   But today? I am thankful.   I am thankful she loves her grandson and would stay at our house and do that.  She even CLEANED.   Then she sent me an email saying she hoped I wasn't offended or upset that she "picked some things up" and ran the dishwasher.  Um, she even washed the sheets she slept on in the guest room, as well as the towels I set out.   Offended?    Umm.......no.   You can clean at my house, anytime!   Really.   Not offended.  

Thank you.

And on Thursday, I'm hosting my first Thanksgiving!   It's for D's family, not a huge deal, but I'm still nervous about the turkey!  Everyone is giving me different advice about thawing/cooking, etc.  I just don't want it to be nasty.   And if it is?  Arby's for everyone!

Bottle be Gone

So we have successfully rid our household of any bottles!   And by 'rid', I mean they are in storage.  But it sounds like much more of a dramatic accomplishment if I pretend they're totally gone :)   We have stopped L from even getting milk at bedtime at all now.  Yay!   A wise person told me that it was probably going to be harder on us than him.   I didn't buy it.  He was totally still into his bedtime bottle to fall asleep.    Yeah.  I guess not.  We switched to water and he didn't even care.  We were so stressed about that!   He just wants his binky and to go to sleep without drinking anything most nights.

But yes.  The binky.  *SIGH*.  That has NOT gone away.   We have not made a whole lot of progress there I don't think.  I will be very interested to see what his doctor says about this at his 18 month (!!!) appt in 3 weeks.   I do think his top teeth are affected by it, and I do think his talking could be better.  He will go to the counter area where we wash his cups/binkies/spoons, etc, and he will point up and do the sign for "please".  DUDE.   He's saying PLEASE!   He's being POLITE about it.  Well, he's not so polite if he doesn't get it.  Not so polite at all, in fact.

Another obstacle to overcome.   There is always something.

Rawr!

So we went from this:

To this:

 To finally, this:

 All in a period of about 30 minutes. Evidently it was the pants that he really hated. And the head.   But really?  Who knows.  As his teacher said of him this week "He is mad at everything".     That pretty much sums it up.  He goes from just pissed off at life to happy as a clam in a span of seconds, leaving us having no idea what the HELL is going on.   (More than usual, I mean).  So far, 17 months has been somewhat challenging for us.

He does have his first cold of season (suh-weet!), but he actually seems to be fighting it fairly well this time around, rather than sending us straight to the doctor for antibiotics like every little thing last year that he couldn't kick on his own.

All in all, I think he's just an emotional "spirited" child, and maybe that will turn into a good thing.  Right now it can be frustrating, but when he's happy, he is so silly and full of it that we can't stop laughing at him.  We are hoping as he learns to say more, he will be happier, thus making EVERYONE happier!

Happy Halloween!
Damn you,  Baby Ruth bars!