And, Nevermind

Thankfully the crib goes back together as easily as we took it apart--we made the decision tonight to go back to the full crib set-up. 

After him waking up this morning at 6:30am, not napping at naptime (for the 3rd day), crashing for about 30 minutes in the car while we were couch shopping, and then not falling asleep at bedtime tonight, we decided he is way too overtired and too young to be going through this.

Tonight, we put him to bed a little after 6:30pm since he's been SO tired all day, but we could hear him up and around, saw him poking his hand under the door, and then finally discovered that he'd puked by the door. I gave him a bath while Kevin reassembled the crib, and we are currently (at 8:30pm) still waiting for him to fall asleep. He is a hot mess!

I finally went down this evening to retrieve our favorite sleep book (The SleepEasy Solution) to see what they suggest--they recommend making the transition closer to 3 years old which is so far off from 18 1/2 months. So for now, we've put the pillows on the floor around his crib, have him back in a sleep sack, and will hope for the best. He's only ever climbed out in the morning when he's ready to get up (while we're still asleep and haven't heard him yet), so I wonder if he will maybe eventually be able to climb out safely?? I'm not sure what we're doing yet, but we are NOT doing the toddler bed for now.

I mean, really:

Saddest thing.

Have I Learned Nothing in the Past 18 Months?

So strike what I said about sleeping so gloriously in his big boy bed.

• 1st nap - Slept about 30 minutes on the floor
• 1st night - Pretty normal, except for a few minutes of fussing and trying to open his door. Listened to Kevin when he told him to get in his bed. Slept until 7:30ish am.
• 2nd nap - Fail
• 2nd night - Fell asleep behind door, Kevin went in and picked him up/moved him to bed. Did well until approximately 6:33am (instead of his usual wake-up of 7:30-8am).
• 3rd nap - So far, major failure. He's standing behind his door, trying to open it.

My latest thoughts are that he has to crash eventually. He has to, right?

Big Boy Things

Over the past few weeks, Lewis has really started surprising us with what he wants to/knows how to help us with. 

He helped Kevin transfer the recycling from our indoor bin to the outdoor bin this weekend:

 

 

We found him a miniature broom at the thrift store last weekend, and he walks around with it, swooshing the floor as he goes. I added a nail to the kitchen wall for him to hang his broom next to our broom.

 Get on that dog hair detail, Lew!

There were some hole punches on the office floor the other day, and he was totally moving them around with his little broom! Very exciting. There is always dog hair to be swept. Always.

When we last left off from Lewis' crib escape maneuvers, we'd been able to keep him in a bit longer by putting him to bed in sleep sacks every naptime and nighttime. However, Monday night we once again woke up to a big thump and a cry out from him falling out. (He'd been hiking his leg up on the rail again, despite the restriction of the sleep sack, for the past week or so.)

This time, we decided to go ahead and convert his crib to a toddler bed (the instruction manual says we need to do so after he is 35 inches tall, which he is). We took off the front crib rail and added the safety rail yesterday before nap. We didn't really give him time to get familiar with it before nap (our bad...not sure if it would have helped anyway).

 Big Boy Bed, ready for a big boy.

Soooo as you might guess, it didn't go well. He cried and came to the door and stuck his fat, little fingers under the door and pulled books down and did everything but sleep. I think he did fall asleep on the floor for about 30 minutes, and then we went in and got him after he definitely sounded like he wasn't going to nap any further. 

Here's what his room looked like after his first nap of having relatively free range:

 Piled up just a few books to read

 Emptied quite a lot of books from the shelves

(I moved the railing back to center after I read the instructions fully, by the way. I thought he might feel more secure if I closed off his favorite corner spot of the crib, but you're supposed to leave at least a 9 inch gap on either side of the safety rail).

 Took out a few fabric drawers

After the failure of that nap, we took some time to get familiar with his new bed.

 Sliding out

Climbing in 

Bedtime was MUCH better. Kevin got down on the floor and told him under the door that he needed to get in his bed and go to sleep, and he actually did! He fussed about it, but he did it!

After like 30 minutes, Mom and I creeped in to see if he'd stayed in his bed or ended up on the floor--he was fast asleep in his bed, cute as can be. He stayed there all night (to our surprise).

 Our Sweet Little Buddy

 My, what a lot of drool that is. :) 

He also likes to help us put leftovers into storage containers and put his water back in the fridge after he is finished taking a drink.

Speaking of big boy, I've started noticing that shopping carts have a child's weight limit of 35 pounds--uh, if places don't have the race car carts, what am I supposed to do? Do people put children in the basket part or is that against the rules? I guess I could put him in the stroller again. Also, I'm pretty sure he is creeping up to the maximum height to be rear-facing in his car seat (which his pediatrician suggested might happen since he's so tall). I need to get a ruler out to see where we are. We might be going forward-facing sooner than later!

#BigBoyProblems :)

Touch a Truck

As I mentioned in the painting post, we took Lewis to his first Touch a Truck event last weekend. I think it's safe to say he was enthralled by all of them. He got to get in the driver's seat of most of them, and he quickly understood what to do! He would steer the steering wheel and mess with the gear shift and push buttons (I'm sure all of the drivers had to readjust the controls after the kids were done messing them all up.) :) We took a lot of pictures, so I'll just let them tell the story.

Excavator (or maybe it's a digger?)

We've read his truck book 100+ times, but I forget some of the names at this moment.

 

Tractor

He got distracted by the swings for a few minutes, but always kept one eye on where the trucks (and sirens/horns) were.

  

 

 Street Cleaner

 I think this was the sewage department's truck? They had a little remote-controlled camera on a car that we could drive, so I tried to show Lewis how to control it. He didn't get it and was kind of afraid of it, actually. They use it to look into pipes.

 

 Duke Energy truck

 School Bus

 An old fire truck

 Riding with Dad

 Army Jeep

(I'll put a few extra of these in for Dad to see, Mom.)

 Hot and Sweaty Lew

 

 Shifting gears

 Driving the jeep

 In the back of a UPS Delivery Truck

 And up front

 UPS Semi (or Big Rig, as his truck book calls it)

 

Fire Truck

Messing with the fire truck valves

We had fun! Since the weekend, I think, he has discovered that airplanes fly in the sky, so we pause when we hear or see one and watch it go by. Now that school is back in session, he loves watching the school buses come and go across the street.

Painting the Kitchen

I really didn't mean to/expect to, but I painted the kitchen this weekend! We didn't have plans except for a Touch-a-Truck yesterday morning, so I decided to go ahead and dive in.

The kitchen before:

 

These were the four colors I'd narrowed it down to. I asked four different people and got four different votes, so I ended up going with the color closest to the color I'd seen and liked on Pinterest--the one furthest to the right. (There were four other previous colors which were all ruled to be too dark in the first round of Color Swatch Madness.)

River Mist by Martha Stewart (far right)

The ceiling went white, too!

I ran out of ceiling paint with that much left, but look what a (brighter) difference it makes! That faint mustard color was glooooomy. We ran out to Home Depot before dinner last night and picked up more paint, so it is now finished.

I started painting Friday evening, 8pm until sometime after 11pm. I painted yesterday during naptime, so like 1pm until 4pm. Then this morning from about 9am until around 1pm. Then Kevin helped me load everything back into place (and dust/clean as we did so)--our kitchen has never been as clean as it is right now! And probably never will be again. :) I thought it would take like a week to get it painted, so I'm really glad we had a 'free'-ish weekend to knock it out.

Here is the after: 

 

 

I still have some accessorizing I want to do with bright pops of orange, yellow, red, and green. Yesterday I found three vintage Pyrex bowls in bright orange and yellow at a thrift store, so I hope to incorporate those, probably on the little open shelves next to the sink. (And Mom and Dad, we'll have to run to the Salvation Army Thrift Store next time you're in town--even better than Goodwill, if you can believe it!)

[Another side note: Mom, I found a bookshelf there that will be a perfect spot for the TV upstairs to keep Lewis from climbing up on our current TV stand. Just need to paint it, and we'll be good to go!]

Such Great Heights

While making a batch of no-bake cookies this afternoon, I caught Lewis trying to climb up on our (really tall/not kid-friendly) dining room chairs in order to get to his snacks. He just did it on his own for the first time yesterday, so I thought I'd get a video of it to show Kevin. As you'll see, he climbed the chair and kept going!

He must have really wanted those snacks!

 Just chilling like it's totally normal to sit on top of the dining room table.

He just wanted some Cheerios and Pirate's Booty:

Ooh, some Goldfish, too, if he can figure out how to open the canister:

Jackpot!

So now we need to figure out a way to keep him from getting on/falling off the chairs and/or tabletop. He's also started really getting into the drawers at his eye level (where the little paring knives, razor blades [to my horror!], batteries, little screwdriver, etc. currently live). I obviously need to do some further Lewis-proofing right now.

Kevin has a fantasy football draft tonight, so Lewis and I went out to dinner and ran to Target this evening. We had a little bit of time to play outside before bedtime, and then at 7:30, I said, 'Okay, Lewis, it's time for bed. Can you please put up your tools?' He took them straight to his hooks and hung them up! 

Such a good helper he is!

(I only hope it continues.) :)

Getting Back Outside

Now that the weather is cooling off a bit (and because I miss being outdoors), I've been trying to get us outside more often. We've reconnected with a mom from Mom Group and did a trip to the zoo last week and a trip to Henry's Ark today. Today was a bit hotter, but I'm definitely loving the cooler mornings that remind me that fall is near.

A few pictures from the zoo:

 A mama and baby giraffe

 A hungry tiger

We hit a couple of the exhibits at feeding time, which was neat.

 Carlton and Lewis

And Henry's Ark:

Winston, the camel

He's grown so much from the last time we saw him! He's like a teenager now.

Hanging with the deer

Here at the house, our butterfly bushes have taken off--they smell so sweet, and we have had so many butterflies flying around them. 

I'm definitely going to try to plant some other wildlife-attracting flowers in the future because I totally get my nature geek on when I see the butterflies flying around.

In the great yard sale clean-out, we pulled the treadmill from the basement (haven't sold it just yet, but hope to). We've moved a few things around and now have a spot for the school table my parents found at Goodwill and the school chairs I found at a shop in Gnaw Bone, Indiana.

 Lewis loves it!

He likes to climb on top of it (of course), but he also really likes to sit in the chairs like a big boy. Hopefully we'll do lots of arts/crafts projects at this table and homework down the road.