Timoun Update

When Nick and I were talking about the possibility of bringing Wedly into our home, I made the comment "It's not like adding a child doubles the work load because they entertain each other and the seconds not nearly as much work as the first."

Boy was I wrong.

It has been a few months since the last time we had two children and apparently I forgot that having a second isn't doubling the work load, it's more than that!  I don't know how Nick and I had 4 kids last December for a month on top of everything else, especially when two of them were tiny 4 lbs newborn twins.

I forgot how much of a process a bedtime routine is when there is a second child.  It goes from a fun time of playing in the bath, to a pretty big process.  Some times Nick and I play zone defense, where one of us baths, combs, and brushes teeth, while the other dries, diapers, and pajamas.  Other nights we do man to man defense where we each take one of the boys and follow them the whole way through the process.  Personally, I prefer man to man, but Nick likes zone defense better, so we switch off!  Each night it slowly becomes less of a process and more enjoyable as each of the boys learn the new routine and Nick and I get our system down.  It's even becoming a bit fun again!

Overall, both boys are doing much better now than they were two weeks ago.  I decided that I was going to do very little work for two weeks and just focus on the boys. After I got back from my trip, Eventz was throwing big fits all of the time and Wedly was still transitioning to his new routine.  I was so glad to be able to spend some quality time with them and get them both on track again and am happy to say that Eventz fits have completely stopped!

I tried for about a week to switch Eventz to Wedly's nap schedule, but the boy is stubborn and in love with his morning nap, so I finally gave up.  I however, couldn't continue with them taking naps at different times because as I was trying to put Wedly down for naps, Eventz would come barging in, dragging his giant nerf gun behind him, laugh uncontrollably, and start crawling all over Wedly.  Or as I was putting Eventz down, Wedly would come in and start talking to Eventz.  Finally I decided to try and see if Wedly would sleep at the same time as Eventz, and surprisingly it worked like a charm!  Both boys now sleep 11 hours at night, and then take two naps for a total of 3-4 hours.  Wedly doesn't always sleep the whole time, but lays there quietly until we let him get up!

They are also slowly learning how to play together!  Eventz constantly wants to play with Wedly, but Wedly wants nothing to do with him and gets upset if Eventz even looks like he is going to touch him.  This afternoon however, Eventz crawled on his Thomas the Train and Wedly pushed him all over the house!  I was so excited to see this.  Over the past few days I have noticed that I haven't been saying "BOYS" quite as much as I was at first.

Now for a little individual update on each!

Eventz is doing amazing!  Nick and I fall more and more in love with him each day.  I tell Nick all the time how glad I am that we are adopting him.  He is amazing and can do no wrong in my eyes!  He will forever be my little baby.  The boy's getting ornerier every day.  He's not necessarily naughty, just very adventurous and always on the go.  I was eating lunch down stairs and Eventz kept going out the front door.  I chased after him multiple times and brought him back.  Once I finished my conversation for about 20 seconds before I went after him, but he was already out of sight.  I yelled to Nick who was in the office, but was told that he was not in there.  One of our nannies pointed to the back of the building, so I went over there, and sure enough Eventz was haning out in the special needs room with his friends and one of the nannies.

I'm pretty sure Eventz is going to think his name is Dezoid (trouble maker) because I call him it all the time!  He walks/runs all over the place constantly.  If we leave our front door open he runs out to our patio and climbs up his slide, teetering over the edge like a little maniac.  The boys going to cause me stress when he's older, I can tell already.  He has been climbing up the slide since before he even knew how to walk.  I have been trying to get him to play with playdoh, but after he learns he can't eat it, he much prefers to just carry his container to the top of the slide and then throw it down and come down after it!

Twice this past week Nick and I have caught him putting two different dead beetles up to his mouth that he was planning on eating!  Luckily we stopped him before he was able to eat either.

Nick made the comment the other day that if they ever want to find water on Mars they just need to send Eventz up there and they'll find it instantly.  He is a water junky and can't get enough of it!  His favorite part of pool day is grabbing the hose and squirting himself right in the face with it.  He also loves when we dump water on his head.  The other night we had both boys all ready for bed, diapered, pajamaed and everything.  Eventz however decided that he wasn't done with bath time, so he crawled back in, pj's and all!  Some times he'll crawl into his little inflatable pool even when theres no water in it and then give us this pathetic little look that makes us feel so guilty that we have to fill it for him!

Eventz was taking a nap in Nick and I's bed the other day.  I was in the living room working on the computer, when all of the sudden I saw Eventz out of the corner of my eye, giant smile on his face, running past me and straight out the door.  The look on his face said "I hope she doesn't see me so that I can crawl up the slide."  Apparently he knows how to get off of our bed now!

This past week Eventz learned to say Thank you and Bye Bye, his 2nd and 3rd words!  Seriously, the kid went from saying uh-oh, to thank you!  He even says it unprompted when I hand him things!  Every time I ask him to say Mama, he says Dada with a giant smile on his face.  Drives me nuts, but he (and everyone else) sure think it's funny.

We were playing with the boy's tool set the other day, and I was trying to teach Eventz how to put a bolt on a screw.  The next day Nick and I watched in amazement as Eventz put the bolt on top of the screw and tried to twist it on.  Unfortunately he doesn't quite have the motor movement yet to complete this but the fact that he was trying was pretty precious!

Eventz fully understands both English and Creole and will follow directions in both.  I think that fairly soon the boy will be speaking better Creole than both Nick and I and it'll probably drive us nuts, but make us proud all at the same time!

He loves to go to nightly prayer and singing, although I think the nannies are starting to get annoyed by our (or at least Eventz) presence.  Going to the baby house for Eventz is like going to the park!  He feels the need to run up and down the hallway the ENTIRE time and laugh loudly as he's doing so.  Since he's new, all of the kids are drawn to him like a magnet and follow him where ever he goes, which is all over the place.  One of us is constantly chasing him trying to get him to stay put while the nannies give us a look that says "control your kid."  When we don't go the rest of the children sit and listen intently, clapping along to the beat.  But when we are there, it's utter chaos all because of our son!

We couldn't have asked for a better child, he's amazing and fits so well into our family.  I realized this past week that he is very much like his uncles Chris and Jason.  I could see him sticking to a hobby even after multiple surgeries, and pleading from his Mother to stop!  He is so adventurous, has no fear, and loves a good thrill.  If he falls down, he laughs, gets up, and does it again!  It makes me really excited for both of my brothers to met their little nephew some day so that they can pick on him in only the way that Uncles can!

Wedly's self confidence has improved so much since he has moved in with us.  He used to come up for play dates with Eventz and I, and after every thing he did, he would look at me for approval.  He no longer does this.  Wedly has always craved adult interaction more than he does interaction from other kids.  We are really working with Wedly to get him to play with Eventz and we are slowly seeing improvement here.

Wedly's also learning how to play with toys.  When Nick or I are on the ground with him, he will play just fine, but the second (and I do mean second) we walk away, Wedly quits playing and follows us where ever we go.  If I'm doing the dishes, brushing my teeth, etc, Wedly has his little arms wrapped tightly around my legs.  Where ever I go, he is right there as a little shadow.  We try to encourage him to go play with Eventz and the toys even if we aren't there with him, and he is slowly starting to do so.

So far I have seen Wedly take an interest in three toys.  He loves trucks and pushes them all over the place and says Vroom as he does so.  He likes to sit across from me and then we push them back and forth together.  He also loves this nasty, old, pink, doll stroller that he found on our balcony.  He pushes it up and down our patio all the time, running behind it and laughing the whole time.  Wedly has basically claimed this as his toy, and if Eventz tries to touch it, even if Wedly wasn't playing with it at the time, he'll get upset and try to steal it from Eventz.  The third toy that he likes is this stuffed puppy that sings and talks to him.  He pushes it's buttons all the time and talks back to it.  When it shuts off it says Bye, and Wedly always responds with a simple little bye!

Wedly has become amazing at doing peg puzzles since he has been up here!  He didn't know how to do them before, but now can buzz right through one in less than a minute, that is unless Eventz is by us because he takes the pieces back out which drives Wedly nuts and throws off his whole focus!  He also loves to sit and listen to books.  I read him his first "Lift the Flap" book yesterday and was impressed at how well he did looking under each one!

He loves to help me water the plants on my balcony.  Some times if I'm not paying close enough attention I'll suddenly realize that he has watered the same one 5 times and it's overfilling with water!

For the most part he has done really good in his big boy bed.  He did roll out once though.  We always put him down for naps and bed time in his bed, but several times now I have gone to get him up and some how he has ended up in his cot on the floor.  At first I thought maybe he was doing this in his sleep, but after he did it during nap time I realized he was doing it on purpose.  We had him sleep on his cot for several days before switching to the bed so that it would be an easier transition, but apparently he prefers the tiny cot to his own personal queen sized bed.  We have since put his cot in the corner of his room between his bed and the wall.  However today when we went to get him up from his nap, he had pulled it onto his bed and was sleeping on top of it.

Wedly likes to repeat things that he hears.  We have been trying to get him to talk way more.  In order to improve his language skills, I speak to him for the most part only in English.  His favorite phrashes are "ALLLL  DOOONE," "Ev-entz, pa touche (don't touch) Ev-entz" and "Ev-entz, no Ev-entz."  Although when he says these it sounds more like "Onion, nan nou ne onion."  Wedly loves to count to ten with us, but the only one he knows to say on his own is 2. He has been singing some of his favorite songs more though and I have noticed them becoming a little more clear.

We tried to potty train Wedly for a while, but weren't making any progress.  I have since decided that he probably isn't ready and plan to wait about a month before trying to start again.  I was hoping that as he moved up here we would just have that be a part of his new routine, but I don't feel he is ready any more.  Hopefully once he is fully comfortable up here he will be more ready and successful at potty training.

When ever any of the kids from his room see either Wedly or I, they all point and shout "Edly Ale" (Wedly left).  I have been telling them "Wedly pa ale, li la wi?" Wedly didn't leave, he's here right.  So now they say "Edly ale.  Li la!"  It's interesting to see that they recognize that he is gone.  Wedly's nannies miss him and he always runs over and gives them hugs whenever he sees them.  I even had one nanny tell me she was mad at me because I stole her baby.  Our nannies really do love our kids!

The other day I had a nanny watch them for 1.5 hours while I did formula program.  While I was gone one of my boys decided they would draw me a picture!  I'm not sure where they found a crayon, because we have never used crayons up here, but they found one and drew all over one of our walls!  I will never know who the artist is.  I have tried getting it off, but haven't had any luck yet.  If anyone has any suggestions of how to get red crayon off of a cement wall, I would greatly appreciate it!

I am so thankful to have both of these boys in my home and have been enjoying watching them grow and develop every day!  They are both amazing.  It's been entertaining to see how to boys with VERY different personalities fit into the same home!