Halloween

Today was Halloween! And Davy had a full day. It started around noon, we went over to Nana and Grandpa's house where we met up with Davy's cousin's Sydney and Payton. We had a Halloween themed lunch with bat wings and goblin snot (tortilla chips and guac), sloppy joes (I can't remember what my parent's called them) and lots of cute treats. Then Nana played some Halloween games with Davy and Sydney, Payton watched but was too young to participate yet (next year), she told them a story where they had to feel things in buckets during parts of the story, and had them play pumpkin buckets (like bozo buckets but with pumpkins). Then we all went down town and trick or treated at the local businesses and at the nursing home. After that we went back to Nana and Grandpa's and had a Halloween themed dinner, with Ogre toes (fingerling potatos), Witches Brew (punch), Zombie fingers (cocktail sausages in sauce), and Halloweenies (hot dogs rolled up into croissants to look like mummies). After dinner we all went trick or treating around the neighborhood. Davy ran with Daddy from door to door and was able to hit quite a few houses that way. Halfway through he ran out of gas, and thankfully Mommy brought a stroller so he relaxed in the stroller while Mommy and Daddy took him to the remaining houses on our route. We put him to bed an hour early and he pretty much fell right to sleep without a peep. Below are some pictures of him in his fox costume, and a picture of me in the pregnant skeleton costume I made for myself.

Word Count

This morning Kevin asked me, "How many words does Davy know now?" So I did a count. Counting the original 10 words I mentioned before as well as the new words he has picked up which come to a total of 18 (this is including the numbers he knows), then if we include the letters as words (because they are) we come to a rough total of 54 words. I am sure there are some I have missed, but that is pretty good. Especially since it was back in August that he only knew 10 words. This is the time during which he will begin to add words quickly and it is amazing to see how many he adds to his vocabulary daily. It is exciting watching my little boy grow up, even though at times I would like him to slow down just a bit.

Reading

As I have mentioned before I have had a goal of teaching my children to read by/during the age of 2. As I have been mentioning lately Davy has been blowing my mind with how fast he has learned his letters and how good he is doing with it all. Well today we passed another milestone. Lately when we are going to bed Davy and I have a part of the routine that I do to avoid a tantrum. Davy LOVES water, he loves brushing his teeth because he gets to play with water, so when tooth brushing is done he generally throws a fit, to diffuse this tantrum I have him help me turn the light off. Lately he has been saying On when we get to the switch (which has a tiny "on" written on the switch) and he says Off when he points to the fan switch that has a tiny "off" written on it when in the off position. So today, on a whim, I had Kevin write the words "On" and "Off" on Davy's magnadoodle and sure enough Davy said on when he saw the word on and off when he saw the word off. Now keep in mind that these are not words we have been practicing with him, we have practiced "Wow" and "Mom" and "Yay" and "Yeah" but not On or Off, and yet these are the first words he has learned to read. Though it is only two words now it still marks a milestone, Davy has learned to read at 21 months, a full three months before turning two.

It is kind of crazy to me, my mom (who I tend to think of as a SuperMom) got me reading at age 2, and here Kevin and I have beat that with helping Davy learn to read when he was still 1 year old. Craziness, pure craziness!!

Violet

Leap Frog videos are the shows that have taken over the well worn spot from Go Diego Go as Davy's favorite shows. Leap Frog videos are educational videos that the company Leap Frog has put out for kids. Davy's favorite one is Phonics Farm, but he also likes many of the others. Though I try to cut down on how much TV he watches each day I don't mind the fact that he has been learning good stuff from these shows. Phonics Farm for example goes through the ABCs and what sounds they make. I do think that Davy has learned most of his letters from us, but I also will agree to the fact that he has probably had them solidified in his head due to Phonics Farm. And Numbers Ahoy has been helping him pick up his numbers as well. He doesn't know his letters or number in order yet, but he now knows all his letters as well as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9. We are still working on 1, 7 and 10.

Anyway, one of the characters from Phonics Farm is a purple dog named Violet. My parents just happened to have a Violet stuffed animal that they had found at a thrift store. With her batteries in Violet sings, and interacts with Davy, plus by downloading a simple program and plugging Violet into the computer I was able to get her to say Davy's name (David). We brought Violet home tonight with us after visiting my parents and Davy took her to all his favorite toys and showed her the numbers and letters on them (his favorite things right now). When it came time for bed he took Violet with him to brush his teeth and then, ended up playing with the water for only a short amount of time before leaving the bathroom on his own to find Violet (this has never happened before, he LOVES the water). Then when it came time for bed he played with Violet during his diaper change and was not interested in reading a book. I put him to bed with a star and with Violet, sang him his song, turned off the light and closed the door and didn't hear a peep from him. Wow! I know eventually Violet will get old and the new fun of her will wear off, but for now it has been pretty fun to watch Davy with her.

Glucose and Nightmares

I finally got back the results for my 3 hour glucose test. And I passed it!! I have been a good bit nervous about it this pregnancy that I would not pass it and that I would have gestational diabetes, but the results came back normal. I was a worried after I didn't pass my 1 hour test. Thankfully this means that I can eat pie this Thanksgiving, which I have been looking forward to for quite a few weeks now. Yay for pie!!

On another note, Davy seems to be having nightmares lately. Last night he woke up screaming and started crying. Kevin went in and rocked him for a bit and then changed his diaper which brought on another crying fit. So I went in and rocked him for a little bit and then put him to bed. While we were rocking the dogs came in to say Hi, which Davy seemed to like as he kind of roused himself and petted both dogs. Thankfully after I put him back in his bed he pretty much went back to sleep after babbling to himself for a little bit.

Letters and Words

So I know we have entered the time where Davy's word list starts to grow drastically. But it still surprises me  at how fast he is learning things. He now knows the majority of his letters.
Letters he knows: A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T U W X Z
Letters he still has trouble with: G J V Y
Four letters, that is really saying something! I am SO blown away by how fast Davy has learned his letters, every day it seems like letters that were difficult for him he suddenly knows. And he is learning lowercase as well. And numbers are next, he already knows 2 and 9. He is learning names for things and picking up new words every day. Today he said turtle, as well as other things. We went and visited my sister and her family to celebrate her husband's birthday. While we were there Davy's cousin Sydney was telling Davy to say stuff and he was responding to her. I don't know that he said everything she said to say, but he was saying stuff nonetheless.

He now says Sun (pronounced Nun), Star, Nose, Doggy, as well as many others that I can't keep track of at this point. It doesn't seem like all that long ago that he only knew about 12 words and now he knows a bunch. I am excited to see what he learns next and to see how fast he learns everything. I will admit that I did have a goal of teaching him to read before age three, I never thought though that he would know almost all his letters before he even turned two. Though I do work with him quite a bit on his letters I will admit that a good part of where he has learned most of what he knows is from Kevin. Kevin works with him quite a lot and has been a big driving force behind many of the letters that he has been struggling with. I still remember, Davy didn't even know B and then one day there he was saying "Buh, buh B" and I knew it was all Kevin's doing. It is great having a husband who works with me to teach our son things.

Parenting choices

When you get pregnant for the first time you suddenly become aware of a whole new set of conversation topics that are hot topics and points for debate among the members of society who have children. These topics all center around parenting and how people choose to parent. Should I circumcise my son? Should I give him a pacifier? Should I use breastmilk or formula? Should I let him sleep in my bed or in a bassinet or crib? Cloth diapers or disposable? How long should he keep his pacifier/bottle? The list of parenting choices goes on and on, and the debates on what is the right choice are usually quite heated. Truth of the matter is, do whatever you feel is best for your child. And for you for that matter.

We made different decisions on parenting after much discussion, or after a good deal of research on my side of things. But some things I attribute to dumb luck. Like co-sleeping, letting Davy sleep in our bed with us was never really an option. Why? Because the dogs sleep with us and they tend to get in our way and mess up our backs at night and I had no doubt that they might accidentally hurt the baby if we had the baby in bed with us. So no baby in bed with us. Which turned out perfect for us because now when I hear about other people who can't figure out how to get their toddler to sleep in their own bed I am happy that Davy never got into the habit of sleeping with Mommy and Daddy. And bedtimes are pretty much perfect now.

Another thing is bottles and pacifiers. We let Davy have bottles and pacifiers, but we never let him have a bottle at night, mostly because I had fear of SIDS from it. Well now when I hear about other parents who can't figure out how to get their toddler to give up the night time bottle I am glad we never started that tradition. And pacifiers, like I said we let Davy have pacifiers, he took them to bed with him too. But around 14 - 16 months we lost his pacifier, he did pretty well without it and once we found the paci again we just started to phase it out. We took the paci from an all the time thing to a night time thing, and then we just kind of got rid of it all together. Now when he sees a pacifier he doesn't think of it as something he needs. He even knows that pacifiers go to babies and when he finds one with a baby around he will give it to the baby.

Did we intend to make choices that would work best for us in those regards? Not really, we were first time parents with no knowledge of how everything would work out for us. But I am pretty glad that some of our choices worked out so good for us. Not that the choices of others aren't the best choices for them, but for us our choices have worked pretty good so far.

The chopping of nails

I am blessed, I guess you could say, with the natural ability to grow my nails rather long and rather quickly. While this is useful for many things, not the least making my short fingers look a little better, it can get annoying quickly. Today I ran into one of those things.

We went to the mall today after my 3 hour glucose test, which I hope I pass, we met up with my parents for lunch before we had to head home. My mom and I chased Davy around, which was rather fun at times. However during his escapades I reached for him and caught a nail on his clothes right as he was running away. Needless to say my nail snagged and broke, to the point that it ripped into my cuticle a bit and caused me to bleed. Yes it hurt. And it brought to my attention the fact that my nails needed to be chopped again. Usually I wait until they are uncomfortable when typing and then I chop them, but nails getting caught and broken tends to lead to chopping as well.

So tonight I got some nail clippers and my file and cut my nails short again. Then after cutting them all I decided that I should make a night of it and chop Davy's nails too. Anyone who has ever had a small child in their house knows just how fast children's nails grow. Well his nails were getting to the point that they were almost talon like, and he was beginning to scratch things, like me. So I chased him down with his own nail clippers and chopped his nails too. Nail chopping with Davy is much like nail chopping with Ronan, a wrestling match with a being that does not want their nails cut. Although Davy is much smaller, weaker and does less damage to me than Ronan does when cutting nails. After all his nails were cut, Davy did his usual after nail cutting ritual, he took the nail clippers from me and played with them for awhile. One would think that if he hated his nails being cut so much that he would want nothing to do with the clippers, but no, he loves playing with them. Which I don't blame him for, I remember playing with nail clippers as a child on a regular basis. What I find to be amusing about the whole thing, was that after he had the nail clippers he then pretended to clip his toe nails with it. Another nail trimming he hates.

When I brought out the nail file he was a bit more interested. At first he wasn't sure what I wanted to do with his fingers again, but once I showed him how the file worked he thought it was great! He played with it a good bit, but also let Mommy use it every so often so that I was able to finish my nails too. Fun stuff!

Costume time!

So this year I have been wracking my brain as to what to make for Davy's Halloween costume. Last year as some may remember he was a Viking, complete with horned hat and beard. This year I was really trying to figure out what to make him. At first I thought maybe a jaguar, since he likes Diego, but my plan was to make it out of a sweat suit, but I couldn't find any sweat suits in his size that were the color I needed. So I thought that maybe I could make him a dinosaur costume out of a sweat suit, because surely I could find a green sweat suit. Nope, that was a no go too. As I was looking around the internet for some ideas, I came across a cute pattern for making a fox costume. Though I am an amateur sewer at best, having just started sewing last year I thought that this might be a hefty undertaking for me. But I was able to get it done, in just three days and less than what it would have cost to buy a pre-made costume for him. Here are some pictures of the cuteness that is a Davy fox.