Poop Happens

There are times as a parent when you are truly astounded by the behavior of your children. Astounded in that I-know-you're-only-3- but-what-in-the-hell-were-you-thinking kind of way. I'm speaking of my sweet little Geronimo.
Today at nap time some part of him decided it would be a good idea to play with his poop. I do mean play when I say this. When I came in to get him after nap time I found, not my handsome blue-eyed little boy, but a mostly fecal covered wild child, happily painting his door with poop. Ill spare you the pictures. We immediately went into code brown. He was put in the upstairs shower because I didn't even want to walk him downstairs to our tub. It took a good 15 minutes of scrubbing to get the poop off. While he and Henry played in the shower I went into his room to assess the damage. I discovered that my beautiful poop covered 3-year-old had climbed from his bookshelf onto his dresser and had smeared his window with his own excrement. So anyone driving by at the time would see an obviously neglected toddler desperately smearing his poop on the window as a signal of distress. I await DCFS's knock on my door.

The coolest stuff happens in the AM

So Isaac and I got up at the butt crack 'o dawn this morning to go to the Park City bike swap. It was well worth it even though I didn't find what I was looking for (a strider for Gmo).
We waited at the beginning of the line for over an hour, but luckily my friend Cassidy was on line right it front of us. Small world! She's always fun to talk too. Plus, some kiddos were selling snacks and coffee. We were set.
They let 25 peeps in at a time and we were the second batch so we pretty much had our choice of bikes. I found a cruiser bike for $10 and an 'off road' trike for a whopping $5! The trike was a total steal because it didn't have a price on it so the guy helping me said 5 bucks. Sold. It's just a touch too big for Gmo, but he grows.
There was a surprising dearth of bikes for small children and the ones they did have were on the pricey side. I'm still on he lookout for a strider for Gmo but I might just have to pick one up on ksl or buy it new.
When I got the bikes home, Gmo was interested in the trike for about 5 min, but Henry couldn't get enough. I think I might need to get him a little trike as well- one that fits him.

Sleepless in toddlerville

Do you ever wish you could be in two places at the same time? I swear this just gets worse when you become a parent. My little Geronimo has had a rough couple of nights. I think it just a combination of some changes in his routine that have thrown him off. He's usually the best sleeper of the bunch. By the time he was a year old I could read to him, rock him, nurse him and put him in his crib and he would sleep for 12 hours. He would also take at least a two hour nap during the day. Bliss. But lately he's been turning up his nose at naps and struggling to go to sleep at night. None of our usual tricks seem to work. So tonight I asked him if he was scared. Not sure it was my best idea but I thought that that might be what was keeping him up and he just didn't have the words for it. He said he was. So I told him that we could say good night to the scary things and they would go to bed. We did this several times and I thought it helped. Henry and I then went to my bed so I could get him to sleep. He is not the best sleeper and requires my bed and a nipple to sleep. As I was nursing Henry down my poor little Gmo cried in his crib. After about 5 minutes he stopped crying and starting saying "good night scary things! Ya boo! (Toddler translation- I love you)" in a very sad voice. It broke my heart. He was still saying it when I finally got Henry to sleep and walked into Gmo's room to cuddle him. We sang and talked about the scary things. I told him that dada and I are always here to keep him safe. Finally he was calm enough to go back in his crib and I rubbed his back until he fell asleep. I'll be glad when he gets back to sleeping well again, but it was nice to cuddle and sing to him tonight. I'm usually so wrapped up in getting Henry to sleep I just read one book with gmo and then he's in his crib for the night. I forget he's still a baby too, even if all I hear all day is "no!" and "I do it myself!".