Shortest Phase on Earth?!

I don't want to say that the hitting has stopped but since I posted this (Liam must be reading also...!) he has only hit me three times - PROGRESS!

I am doing the hands at his side, talking to him at his level & direct eye contact thing. Either it's working or this is the shortest "phase" ever - whatever it is, I'll take it & keep working with him!

I can say to him "if you do that again (throw a toy), you will get a time out, do you want a time out?" to which he will respond "no, no!" and he doesn't do it again. I like that the treat of time out seems to have an effect on him and just the other day he actually sat in time out by himself, crying and carrying on but then when it was over, he was fine & gave me the standard "I'm sorry" hug.

Thanks for the encouragement & support - it's times like these that we all need to hear "keep it up, it works, you'll come through it" or else sometimes Mama needs the time out too :)

Entering Terrible Twos Territory - need help!

I need a little help with some discipline suggestions as Liam has started to hit us in the face when we have to pick him up to make him do something he doesn't want to do. He even hit the beloved Nana last week when she was struggling to get a wiggling, non-cooperative Liam on the changing table! I do not like being slapped in the face & the other day he hit me hard enough for it to smart for a good 10 minutes afterwards.

At the moment, we are sitting him down, looking him in the eye, getting down to his eye-level and telling him very sternly that you never, ever hit someone. And he has even been known to hit us when we are telling him this!

I think there has got to be a way to discipline him firmly without having to spank him but I've yet to find it. I have started just dropping everything I am doing and sitting him down right away and having the little talk with him because I know that consistency is part of the key here & even though the reason I've picked him up to begin with is because we have to do something right then but stopping it all to set him straight has to be the main focus at that point.

I should maybe point out that he doesn't act out because we've stopped him from doing something, it's always usually because we have to change his diaper or put him in his highchair.

I also don't think that the Time Outs on the stairs are working seeing as he doesn't sit & we have to sit with him. I might try the "corner" approach like Rach does and see how he handles that. I don't want to make a Time Out Chair cause I don't want him to start resenting chairs and not wanting to sit on one during normal play time so I thought the top stair would work but now I think the corner will be a better option for us...who cares if he hates the corner, right?!

How did you guys get your precious one to stop hitting? I know it's a Phase & natural (rolls eyes) part of exploring and testing (you don't say?) their boundaries but I do not enjoy getting hauled off on & slapped straight across the face. I really don't think "waiting it out" is an option, I do think I have to punish him for his actions I'm just kind of at a loss...I'm not one to believe that spanking him in response to this is a great way of showing discipline cause hitting for hitting isn't really moving us forward towards a resolution, no is it? You hit me, I hit you doesn't make much sense for me so at this point I'm trying to reason with a emerging terrible two-er while making sure I've not got a toddler sized hand print across my cheek!

A New Developement I'm Not So Thrilled With

In recent weeks, Liam has taken to throwing things at Mystic & I am not too pleased about this, for many reasons.

1) She's my cat
2) She's old - 15 1/2
3) She's sick - diabetic
4) She's not too thrilled about this

He usually throws his Leap Frog Fridge animals at her while she's eating on the other side of the baby/cat-be-safe gate & his aim is unusually good; hitting her about 1/2 the time and usually right about the head. Not good! When he's downstairs with her he tends to throw discs at her; granted those probably hurt a lot less but with some good trajectory he has been able to smack her square in the face, at short range, with good speed.

I fail to be able to 'punish' him accordingly because it really upsets me so I have passed this task onto Dada to handle without being as emotional about it as I appear to be. We've taken away his magnet set & have limited his access to discs but he enjoys putting them in the disc drive so there's that to contend with also. Monkey seems to have escaped this attention simply by becoming a recluse & not leaving the confines of a safe compound found upstairs far behind the baby/cat-be-safe gate; thus making him a somewhat lonely & Needy (yes, a capital N) Monkers when naptime & nightnight times roll around.

Beyond the obvious "take the offending items away" & telling him "no throw at Mystic" does anyone have any suggestions for our little Fellow?

Now with More Whine!

The whining today is really, seriously about to push me over the edge. Just about 11 hours of straight whining every single time he opens his mouth. And there's nothing wrong, well minus the whole issue that he cannot go outside any single time he pleases not ONLY because it's snowing but also BELOW freezing & you just got over a infection that included a 103 temp.

Driving me nuts. My jaw is killing me from clenching my teeth & now I have a headache because of it. He finally calmed down but would only 'allow' me to sit on the couch or else the whine would return for me to do something else that we were not going to do.

Like watch another video. Or throw puzzle pieces at Mystic. Or play in the pantry. Or the fridge.

New Rule: No videos on the TV or computer before 9am and after 6pm.

He's got plenty of awesome toys & he needs to play with them.

(can you hear me saying that to him fifty million times with my jaw clenched shut?)

Too soon to tell BUT

I have been watching the Baby Einstein DVD with Liam (thanks Nana!) - the My First Signs one.

And I think he's learning something, it's hard to tell BUT I've been signing & saying "eat" to him since we've been having eating "issues" and he actually pays attention, watches what I'm doing and then EATS.

The signs are helpful & I am trying to remember them while watching & not just zoning off thankful for the minutes of sitting down BUT I still haven't found the signs for "you touch those computer cords again & I'm going to taser you" or the ever popular "get that out of your mouth, you got it from the garbage!" so I'm still a little skeptical about all of this.

I've asked Matias to "get" some Signing Times episodes for us to watch & I'm hoping they have more "useful" words & phrases in them ;) I've been using the sign for "milk" (which, hello, does it have to be UDDERS?!?!), eat & Mommy and Daddy quite often so we'll see what happens!

I know it's probably too much to ask but I really want a way for him to communicate with us about things he is feeling & doing not necessarily signs about nouns - he's pretty good on that front, I just need to him to express other wants & needs and for ME to be able to communicate with him in a way he understands and trust me, he understands "milk" and "mama" & "dada" (thanks for the retarded looking sign for that one, I'm sure in some other languages it's a not nice word)...

And I know a lot of my frustration comes from him pushing his limits cause he KNOWS what I am saying and he is trying to find work arounds and loopholes to those limits I am setting. And I know that's normal, it just makes me want to pull out a taser :)

Quick recap

Liam has been busy keeping Mommy on her toes so I haven't had as much time to devote to my ramblings here but here's a quick recap of things that have happened this week!

On Friday Grandpa's flight got canceled from Dulles to home so he rented a car and stopped on by & decided to stay the night :) He fed Liam his dinner, napped while he napped & just generally hung out & hugged & kissed on him the entire time! Grandpa has the same double cough that Grandma has & the copying was in full force again & now even when we cough (and poor Matias with his allergies...) he mimics us :) It's too cute! He's not quite sure what to make of the 9 sneezes Daddy manages to get out in a row though! You can see his little brain working away to figure out how to copy that noise!

Saturday we went to Lowe's to get a freezer for the garage - our little freezer doesn't cut it with all of Liam's foods & Matias' Favorite Food (Meat!) so we got one for the garage. And then browsed around looking at the patio furniture & bought some PLANTS! Matias planted an herb garden after successfully growing his own basil for quite some time now & I actually planted some flower pots! Liam hung out outside with us in his Pack n' Play - making that the first time we've used the Play portion of that device! He watched us but mostly spent his timing watching the landing pattern for Dulles :) The boy loves his planes!

Sunday, I held my Memoranza (CM's equivalent for National Scrapbooking Day/Month) so it was a Liam & Daddy day! They spent most of it at the mall while Matias got new tires & brakes & he hung out in his stroller most of the time. Matias said he had a good time and that he took a nap while they were wasting time. He's got quite the little crush on one of my friends/customers Jodi & he hammed it up good for her whenever he got the chance!

The yeast infection pretty much cleared up over the weekend as well - and along with that the FLIPPING STOPPED! I'm assuming he was in such discomfort that flipping was one of his ways of dealing with it - whatever it was I'm SO GLAD it has disappeared!

Also, since we've been giving him Heartier Meals I've started offering him water in between bites - he basically refused to use a sippy cup & will only drink from a cup - assisted, of course. He's getting much better at each meal & only dribbles the tiniest bit on himself & I really do think he appreciates the chance to cleanse his palette ;)

Another milestone that I've noticed him reaching has been Sorting - he puts things into their proper place, he puts his Cheerios into the "cup holder" on his tray & has mastered the cubes for his farm, along with fitting the circle in the circle hole - the triangle is giving him some issues but I'm sure he will work it out in no time! It's really cute to watch him put his finger goods in his cup holder :) He also hands me things now - the remote, his bottle, the phone(s), a book...and that is just totally adorable :) I say "thank you" every time he hands me something & I think that encourages him to hand me more things...

And that brings me to something else - having to tell him "NO". We've, of course, had to start telling him "no touch" once he became mobile and he wasn't REALLY grasping the concept until the past handful of days. He listens about 90% of the time but the ONLY downside is when he stops touching the thing, I say "thank you, that's a good boy" & since I've praised him for doing what I've asked, he does it again to hear me say "thank you" - you can see where that is leading...he reaches out for the forbidden item & smiles at me, waiting for me to say "no touch" & "thank you". So, I do it. Again, I'm the demented parent parrot saying "no touch", "thank you" & "open/closed". It's no wonder I cannot speak in full sentences anymore ;)

The Cruising is increasing daily :) Please someone give me a cute Liam Fellow term for Cruising - I can only think of gay boys at a truck stop or Tom Cruise - oh wait, those are the same thing...anyway I digress...the Cruising is getting much better although he's still working on his confidence - he reaches out to the ottoman from the couch & just barely cannot make it so instead of just letting go for that brief moment he sits & crawls two paces to get there. But when he Cruises on one piece of furniture, he's much more confident about it & now goes all along the couch, daybed downstairs, Pack n' Play & he walks around his Office (now refusing actually go IN it). I'm sure it will just be days before he lets himself take that plunge and releases one hand to grab his next piece of Cruising material (refraining from making Katie Holmes joke here...).

Liam is blowing raspberries on ME now - usually my thigh/knee area or upper arm (the nice flabby sections!) and also attempting to hit his open mouth on me to make the Indian Sound.

And for a quick recap, this got awful long :) Don't fret I'm wrapping it up as LOST is on! Tomorrow, I will talk about my need to clean out & sort his baby toys from his Little Big Boy toys & more exciting things like Gymboree sales & polo shirts!