He Walks The Walk

... And now he's talking the talk!

Whoop, Whoop!

Chunko has finally decided to share with us his speech skills and I am so very excited!

He's starting to add a new word or sound almost every other day. Right now, his animal noises include: Pig (*grunt*), Kitty (*Moooowwww and hiss), Puppy (Bark and *panting*), Duck (cack, cack, cack), and now a Cow (Mooooooooooo).

It was so cute because my (super awesomely amazing) Mother-In-Law was upset because he rarely talks to her, if ever. We tried explaining to her that he doesn't really talk to us either but she still wanted to hear something or anything. So one day, during her weekly visit with him, he goes and grabs his animal flashcards and hands them to her. He says "Cow" and she smiles and asks, "What does the cow say?" and he answers, "Mooooooooooooooo." She was very excited but not overly. When we got home, she told us what happened and we freaked out! We explained that he has never said "Cow" or "Mooed" before and then we all flipped out!

He's been watching us quietly, and waiting until he's perfected it before he shares it with us.

He's been using hand signals for the things he can't quite express to us and has become quite animated and eager to communicate with us.

His new vocabulary includes:

His animal noises

Up

Ball

Move

PopPop

Jamma

Mama

Dada

Hannah

NaeNae

Uhoh

Brodo

Bath

Butt

Butt crack

Down

More

I'm sure there are plenty more but I am just so overly excited that my silent baby has finally chosen to share with us!!!!

On top of that, he can now easily open our fridge door and will peruse our fridge foods. He constantly goes into our pantry or fridge, selects his food, will get a bowl or cup, sit at the table and eat it. He strongly refuses to sit in his highchair anymore and is rejecting most "baby" foods. He eats what his brother eats or nothing. If brother dips it in ketchup, he has to, too. If brother gets a cupcake, then he better get one, too. He demands his daily gummy bear vitamin because brother gets one.

Last week, our sitter stepped out to her car to grab something. He took that time to put our trash bag in the fridge, take out the Parmesan cheese and dump it on the table, and get out the veggie fries and sit and eat those. When she came back in, he was sitting there, looking at her as if asking "I don't know who did it, but I've been sitting here eating my fries the whole time." Her car was right outside the door! This was less than 3 minutes, at most!

He likes to take out the trash and the recycling. No one can take either out without him there, waiting with open arms. He is the only person allowed to put in a new trash bag and put the lid back on. He can't stretch it out nicely to fit, but he thinks he can, so we have to go behind him later on and fix it.

He refuses to be babied and is slowly, albeit reluctantly, giving up his binky. He is Not the baby and will not allow anyone to call him one.

I swear, our baby is an 18 year old trapped in a baby's body (lol, or actually in a 3 year  old's body).

I don't really have any new videos of his cute animal noises, so I'll just with you a picture of him with his new favorite toy... My sanitary pads... Oiy

Why Won't My Baby Sleep

 It crept up on us and we had no idea until it smacked us in our sleep deprived faces...

Our baby wasn't sleeping through the night... again.

I don't know when it happened or even how but suddenly he started waking more often and not going back to sleep as easily.

We were so excited when he started sleeping all the way through the night! We would stumble into our bed and lie there, pretending to watch TV but secretly listening to the monitor for the signs of Chunko climbing out of his bed, ready to rumble.

For a few months, it went like a dream, mostly because we were able to sleep long enough to dream.
Once a week, he might wake up but he would go right back to bed when we told him to.

Then it became a few nights, but we excused it saying that he was just overly tired, or overly excited, or just confused. 

Then it became almost every single night. We kept excusing it with explanations of how it was just a bad week...
Then we realized... EVERY week was a bad week.
We were back into the sleepless rut.

At first he would wake up about 5am and snuggle in with us and we didn't think that was too bad. Then it became a 4am snuggle, which then became a 3am snuggle... And I started waking up with a new baby scarf:

We started sleeping less and less and suddenly we're back to zombies and Chunko is back in our bed for half of the night.
When we put our foot down and said no more snuggles until 5am, he threw a fit. Which means he screamed for an hour while trying to escape his room. Which also means he would pretend to go back to bed, wait for ten minutes (long enough to lure us into a false sense of sleepiness) and start his screaming fit again.

We are trying new tactics but so far duct taping him to the bed hasn't worked and neither has stringing him from the ceiling fan... Any ideas would be very very very very very much appreciated....


I NEED SLEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Abe Lincoln Makes Me Cringe

Fart Bone had a school report due on Friday. We've known about it for about a month but of course he decided not to remind us about it until the Sunday before (which is way better than the night before like he did with his science project).

Did I mention this was the same Sunday my love left for a week? Yup, not to return until Friday.
*Insert insane scream here, k?*

He was given a "packet" (which I didn't know was a packet until Friday but we'll discuss that later) and told to follow the guidelines to write a report and a visual aid.

His subject was our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.

*cringe*

Being the crazy person that I am, I insisted that he not only provide the usual facts but he also include something unusual... I had no idea what I was asking for.

So we researched him and Fart Bone found the usual "Civil war" and "Freeing the slaves" spiel.
I asked a co-worker and she mentioned that he was a victim of spousal abuse and became a well known advocate against spousal abuse...

Say what?????

So you know I had to include it all in there.

I happen to be a huge Civil War buff and have done quite a bit research on Lincoln and his efforts of freeing the slaves. I must commend the fact that he never seemed to have cared what color anybody was and had several conversations with Frederick Douglas. But besides his indifference to race, I can't write that he freed the slaves. His Emanicpation Proclomation was based off of the Confederacy's constitution and it was never his intention to free the slaves. It was a political move that just worked out for him. I wasn't comfortable teaching my son the wrong answers because that's what is accepted as historical fact.

Listen to me yammering on about it... It's like word vomit now.

So we spent a week studying Lincoln, writing the perfect (and interesting report) and thinking on the best visual aid.

Our first thought was to do a diorama of Lincoln's assassination but after doing a sample, I was already bored and wanted to do something... different... more... better.

So my next thought was to do a comical diorama of Lincoln being hit with a broom. If you pull the tab on the side, his wife would swing and hit him.
That idea was vetoed, though.

Then I thought that we should do an Operation game style visual, showing all of his injuries over the years. I really wanted to make a playable game but all the Lincoln facts were eating my brain by then.

So Fart Bone picked out his favorite injuries and illnesses and we made this:

Then we put together his report (it asked for three paragraphs... we gave them 5) and made it look like this:

 

We busted butt for four nights, working until late putting it all together but we finished it and it was ready to be turned in Friday morning (*and the crowd goes wild, cheering*)

Fart Bone practiced his speech, he knew these facts by heart, and when I picked him up Friday afternoon, he told me.... that he didn't get to present because he didn't have his packet.

What the heck is a packet?
We did the report
We did the visual aid
What the heck is a packet?????

I was so mad. I found out that what I thought was a template to help kids write their reports (you know for the kids whose parents aren't crazy and didn't have to write regulated reports every single week in perfect "CD, Com, Com" format (<---- I know some of the Academy kids just totally cringed when I said that)) was actually a "packet"

I ranted the whole weekend. If that evil teacher deducted 1 point from my baby's report I was going to skin her alive (I still might).

The weekend passed, Monday came and he got to present (the packet was torn, written all over and stapled weird but she got it back). Everyone laughed when he pulled out his creative visual aid and was very proud of how well he spoke (that would be my dad, the ultimate public speaker).

He got a 98/100 and lost 2 points from sloppy handwriting.

That could be because he finished the packet within 2 minutes once we knew that it was supposed to be turned in, too but whatever...

I am so happy that this report non sense is over.

Now, who wants to help us write a report on Mary Cassatt, it's due in a week?????????