red nail polish – a success story

In an effort to start blogging with some degree of regularity, I am using the events of yesterday as a springboard into getting myself writing again.  Because yesterday was a bit of a story.  🙂
 
After supper last night, Lyd left to go to the bathroom.  About ten minutes later, as I was putting supper dishes away, she came into the kitchen with tears streaming down her face.  She immediately put her arms around me and said, “I’m so sorry, Mom!”  I asked her what had happened, and she managed to choke out to me that she had taken out my red nail polish and somehow it had spilled all over the floor.  She showed me her hands, and they were covered in red nail polish as well.  (It initially looked like blood to me, and for a split second, I was wracking my brain, wondering how her hands could have gotten so bloody.  When she said it was nail polish, I was secretly, momentarily relieved.  Had it been blood, we would have been in Big Trouble.)
 
What she did was problematic on many levels.  First of all, she didn’t ask permission to use my nail polish.  Secondly, at our house, we make every effort to apply nail polish outside.  Thirdly, she now had red nail polish spilled onto my bathroom rug (an old vintage rug I had from my Grandma), it had soaked through the rug onto the natural stone tile on the bathroom floor, and there was red nail polish on the white bathroom sink.  Ack!  What a mess!
 
First things first: I tried to clean up the mess.  Lately, I’ve been a bit obsessed with using natural cleaning products, namely baking soda and vinegar.  I had both of those products easily available in my bathroom, so after grabbing a roll of paper towels, I poured some vinegar on the stain.  (JJ had already taken the polish-soaked rug outside.)  The vinegar didn’t do very much, sadly.  I knew that baking soda is mildly abrasive, so I shook some of that onto the stain and scrubbed.  Lo and behold, the stain started to come off!  I was shocked.  I put on some more baking soda and vinegar, let it foam for ten seconds or so, and then scrubbed some more.  Unbelievably, with a bit of elbow grease (but not that much!), ALL OF THE POLISH CAME OFF THE FLOOR.  Wow!  I tried the same baking soda/vinegar combo on the sink, and happily, with a little scrubbing the sink became perfectly clean, too.  I was amazed and very, very relieved!
 
If we hadn’t been able to get that red nail polish off the floor, JJ and I would have been seriously unhappy.  While we have no immediate plans to sell our house, we do talk about it as a “someday” event.  And having a bathroom floor with a giant bloodstain-looking stain on the floor would not have been helpful for resale value.
 
Of course, the other problem was that Lyd was ignoring what she had been told.  We’ve had a lot of that from both girls lately.  They hear what we say, but don’t pay attention to it, or else they know what they’re supposed to do, and they choose not to do it anyway.  This has become quite a problem.  So, Lyd’s consequence is no nail polish for a month.  Unfortunately for her, later that evening she was told to help pick up the toys, she ignored the instruction (again!), and she thereby lost another month of nail polish privileges, so now she will be nail polish-free for two months.  I don’t know if that’s a strong enough consequence, but we’ll see.

Unfortunately, the rug is a lost cause.  We tried to scrub it with baking soda and vinegar today, but it did absolutely no good.  I’m not sure what will happen with that.  We’ll probably keep using it anyway, even with the stain on it, because our bathroom is not the company bathroom, and we do need a rug on our floor.  The floor space needing to be covered is a long rectangle, and this oddly shaped rug is just the right size for the space.  But, when the day comes that we move, we’ll probably throw out the rug, because I highly doubt we would get another house that would need a rug of that particular space.

Maybe we’ll just save the rug for Lyd to take to college with her.  Ha ha.  🙂

a man on the move

I have no idea where the time has gone since I last posted.  It’s a testament to my busy life that I don’t blog nearly as much as I used to.  It’s also a testament to how Facebook has changed the way I spend time on the internet!  Anyway…

The Little Man is perilously close to eight months old, and since today happened to be a day with two big milestones in it for him, I thought I had better document this day for posterity.

First of all, the Little Man climbed up the one and only step in our house today!  He still only army-crawls around the house.  Somehow, he got both hands up on the step and, little by little, heaved himself up so that he got himself fully up the step.  Once up there, he is on hard ground, and for an army crawler, that allows him to scooch himself along the floor much faster than he can on carpeting.  (Poor LM has perpetual rugburn on his abdomen from army-crawling on the carpeting of the family room!)  Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to climb DOWN the step, and during one of his trips up the step, he would have rolled right back down the step if we hadn’t caught him.  I’m sure the day will come when he does roll down, but at least it’s only one step and it’s onto carpeting.  But this new ability means we need to babyproof the house – now.  Oye vey!

The Little Man’s other new trick today was that of standing up in his crib!  JJ put LM in his crib while he prepared a bath for him, and when JJ came back to get the baby, he was STANDING UP IN HIS CRIB.  Holy buckets!  Thank God for sending a guardian angel to keep LM from toppling over the side and landing flat on the floor.  JJ and I made sure to lower LM’s crib, in order to prevent that from happening again.  Since LM is still on the small side, we lowered it only to the middle slot.  This means we’ll have to lower it again to the bottom slot at some point, but for now it keeps us from having to lean quite so far down to pick him up.  Interestingly, we’ve never lowered the crib to the middle spot before; with the girls, the crib was either at the top spot or at the bottom spot.  Boys are definitely different!

And in one more milestone, on top of all that, I had the opportunity to weigh LM today.  With his lightweight clothes on, he weighed exactly 18 pounds.  Woo-hoo!  However, I still have quite a few packages of size 2 diapers left in my garage, diapers that are for babies 12-18 pounds.  Thankfully, he hasn’t outgrown the diapers yet, and they still seem to be holding their own, so to speak.  So, I’ll just continue to use them until they’re gone.  Then, on to size 3 we go!

In milestones of the recent past, one week ago today, the Little Man got his first haircut, courtesy of Me.  I don’t cut hair, and I certainly don’t cut boys’ hair, so this was a big First for me.  JJ helped me by holding LM’s head still, which allowed me to do my poor best to cut and trim.  LM’s bangs were hanging in his eyes, and his hair was quite long at the sides of his head over his ears, so those both got trimmed.  I also trimmed off his “mullet” in the back of his head.  I measured it, and it came to 3 inches long!  Wow!  LM looks SO MUCH more boyish with his haircut!  He looks older, too.  It took me a few days to adjust to his new ‘do, but now at a week later, I’m quite used to it.  He is so stinkin’ cute, I can hardly stand it sometimes.

The Little Man is definitely a stereotypical boy.  He likes to be on the move all the time, he likes to explore new things, and he isn’t content to sit still.  However, he’s also very sweet, and he continues to be the smiliest baby I’ve ever had.  He loves to be where the people are.  Last Wednesday I got the high chair out of the garage, washed it up and put it in the kitchen.  LM thinks that is the best thing ever!  He loves being in there when the family is eating; he has always liked to be where the people are.  Last week, I also got the exersaucer out of the garage, and he immediately loved that gadget, too.  He’s now ready for these bigger-baby toys.

My Little Man is growing so fast!  I wonder what new tricks he’ll learn next week!

the Little Man

Greetings!

My new baby, who shall be known on this blog as “Little Man,” or LM for short, is six months old today.  And it’s time for me to start writing about this marvelous baby – as well as other topics – on my trusty blog.  It’s good to be back!  🙂

The Little Man is, by far, the happiest baby I’ve birthed yet.  He is unbelievably cheerful almost all of the time.  He is very content, curious, and alert.  I can’t tell you how many times since he was a newborn that people at church have commented, “What an alert baby he is!”  He watches whatever is going on around him, looking very serious as he does so.  With so much to see at church, he typically doesn’t smile very much, leading some members to think he is a very serious baby.  But, he’s not really serious.  He’s just serious about his “work,” which right now consists of taking in the world around him.  Once he’s back at home, his smiles and cheerfulness return in full force, and we all adore him.

Little Man is not quite a perfect baby, although he’s pretty close.  His biggest imperfection has to do with his sleeping habits.  He gets enough sleep, but he comes by it a bit unusually.  For the first 3-ish months of life, LM didn’t go to bed at night until at least 11pm, if not midnight or later.  He wasn’t fussy, he wasn’t grumpy, he wasn’t colic-y, and he didn’t act tired.  He was just … Very Awake.  Smiling, happy, cheerful — and awake.  It meant for a lot of late nights for me, but also a lot of movies watched!  Thankfully, we finally seemed to have solved this problem.  I’ve really strived to make his going-to-sleep process the same every time, which means I always nurse him in the same rocking chair.  Also, while he’s usually in the room during our bedtime prayers with Lyd and Jujubee, he’s noticing more that these same prayers happen every night.  I think all of this is helping him to realize that it’s now time to sleep.  The other thing that has helped is that as soon as the girls are off to school every moning, I go in and wake him up.  I think these various routines in our family are helping him to figure out his sleeping a bit more.

Unfortunately, while LM’s naps are very predictable, he reliably naps for 45 minutes only.  Just like Dr. Weissbluth says, LM gets tired after about an hour and a half to two hours of being awake, and we have a routine that puts him to sleep fairly quickly and easily.  But, he sleeps for only 45 minutes.  No matter if he’s nursed before napping or not nursed, whether his room is darkened or not, he naps for 45 minutes at a time.  I seem to remember Lyd being the same way at this age, and thankfully, she did grow out of it, eventually becoming a fantastic napper.  So, I have hope that LM will eventually change his napping habits, too!

Once in a blue moon however, he will nap longer.  One of the most well-timed instances was on Valentine’s Day, when LM inexplicably napped for 3 hours!  I considered that nap my Valentine’s gift from my baby.  Over the last week or two, these long naps happened a bit more frequently, which makes me think that they’re connected to the few times when I’ve given LM a bit of solid food.  Unfortunately, while his taste buds and tummy like the solid food, the rest of his digestive system does not seem to share the joy.  We have a six-month checkup with the doctor next week, and I’ll ask the Dr what he thinks about LM starting solid food.

But, other than those slight biological issues, I have no complaints about this new little boy.  He loves me, he loves his family, and as long as he is where the people are, he’s almost always happy.  (We often sing the line from the song “Part of Your World” from Disney movie The Little Mermaid — “Wish I could be, part of your world…”)  He even rarely fusses over a messy diaper!  He’s gotten a touch of diaper rash at times because I miss the fact that he’s sitting in a mess.  Silly boy.  🙂

JJ and I have said more than once that if we could be assured that all of our future babies would be this happy, we’d have a dozen more kids.  My Little Man really is such a sweet boy.  We couldn’t have asked for a better baby than him.