The littlest Kitchen is growing up so quickly! We had his 18 month appointment yesterday and he’s 27 pounds and mostly in 24 month / 2T clothing. I look at how active and crazy he is and think, “Wow, I cannot believe I was 6 months pregnant with him when the twins were this age. How the heck did I keep up with them???” But truth be told, I think he is wilder and crazier than the twins ever were. He just loves to be on the move, climbing, running, and doing what his big brother and sister are doing. I think he thinks he was born a triplet to them, not 21 months younger.

One of his favorite things to do these days is dance. He smiles and spins in circles and flaps his arms til he falls over. He’s also mastered Jennifer Beals’ running dance from Flashdance, which is hilarious. He goes over to the iPod dock or brings me the iPod itself, saying “Song? Song?” and gets super excited when I put anything on. We have regular dance parties to Bob Marley’s Legend, Taylor Swift’s 2 records, and somehow he and Alex learned about Foo Fighters so sometimes he requests them: “Foo? Foo?” He also is in love with the Hokey Pokey Elmo we got last Christmas from Aunt Hailey and Aunt Lauren. He puts it on and expects everyone to stop what they are doing and Hokey Pokey with them. He’s not a fan of slow songs, though, saying, “No, no, no!” whenever one comes on.

He’s becoming quite the drama queen as well, tattling on Avery and Alex if they so much as touch him sometimes. A typical incident goes like this:

A twin takes a toy from him, shoves him, or accidentally bumps into him.
Adam grabs the “injured” body part and says, “Ow! Ow!” over and over again.
Me: What happened?
Adam: “Ah” (which is not helpful at all since he calls both twins Ah most of the time.)
Me: What did he/she do?
Adam: uses hand motions and words like “hit” or “poosh” to tell on them, complete with sad face and eyes welling with tears
And then I have to ask the witness and perpetrator to tell me what happened, which they always declare is nothing at all, and I feel like I am trying a crime with no evidence. Half the time he will have hit one of them first… He likes to tell on the cats for scratching him too, and I tell him to go tell them No No, and he goes over and shakes his finger at them and tells them no. The scratches aren’t undeserved – he chases those poor kittens, carries them around, and yesterday I found him kneeling with his full weight on Charlotte. Never a dull moment.

He’s picking up more and more words, but not stringing them together yet. He’s learned the names of some of the Playhouse Disney crew: Mickey is “Mouse,” Manny is “Manny,” and Oso sounds dangerously close to “Asshole.” Lovely. He also likes to demand a “nack” (snack), and loves to ask for “mo”(more) of everything – food, drinks, planes flying overhead, and thunder – while doing the sign for more. He’s not pleased when something he requests more of is out of our control, as with the planes and thunder.

Adam is starting to really enjoy books, too. His vocabulary has taken off and there’s not much he can’t name. He likes to tell me what everything is in Goodnight Moon and move the flaps in Karen Katz books. He’s doing puzzles and shape sorters all the time. And he also really likes helping Avery take care of her baby dolls, especially Baby Alive, whom he gags with her spoon daily.

He’s still nursing, usually 2-3 times a day. Part of me is very ready to be done, but it’s easy for us and makes putting him to bed and naps super easy, so I haven’t pushed it too hard. He loves his blue puppy dog and playing with Baby Tad in his crib. He’s super friendly and waves hi to anyone and everyone, not shy at all. He’s very much a happy-go-lucky kid with a great sense of humor, and I hope that continues instead of getting to the terrible 2s for him!

So do little boys who push stools around the garage, enjoying the ear-splitting, obnoxious sound they make. Alex found that out the hard way. Tuesday night as I was making dinner, the kids were playing in the garage. I stepped inside to stir something for 30 seconds, and heard the unmistakable sound of an injury. Running out, I saw Alex sobbing with blood pouring from his mouth. I think there’s nothing that prepares you for that as a parent – the fear that they’ve really hurt themselves or knocked teeth out. I grabbed him up and plunked him down on the kitchen counter and held pressure by his mouth with a towel to try and stop the flow. When I took a peek to see the damage, it was clear that he had bitten himself by the two perfect little toothmarks below his bottom lip. The blood coming from inside his mouth told me he’d gone all the way through. A cool piercing when you are 18, but not so much when you’re three.

Alex was really brave, though. He had stopped crying within five minutes or so and in fact was kind of pissed when Avery and Adam were eating tacos and he wasn’t as we waited for the doctor to call back and advise us about his need for stitches. In the end, he ate a taco, I put Adam to bed, and then he and I made a 4 hour trip to the emergency room. Well, the drive was only 35 minutes but the wait…Ugh. We got there at 7:30, and he had been up since 7 am with no nap. He was such a trooper, sitting in my lap and not complaining that I wouldn’t let him touch anything but my phone as we waited and waited and waited some more to be triaged. I didn’t want us bringing home swine flu or anything else we didn’t arrive with. He happily played driving games and others as we sat. We finally got back to the nurse around 9:15, and it was decided that he needed LET gel, which is lidocaine and two other things to numb the skin. After it was on, the nurse informed me it would take about 45 minutes to work, so it was back to the waiting room for us. Yay. Just before 11, we were finally called back into the patient care area. I sat him on the bed. As a lady came in and began to handle registration and insurance information, I noticed Alex’s eyes closing and his head wobbling. He really looked like he was about to fall over from exhaustion. I laid him down and within 30 seconds, he was asleep. Over the course of the next 30 minutes, the doctor came in to take a look at the wound and I asked if he’d be able to stitch him while he slept. He said he hoped so and would try. Sure enough, Alex flinched as the bandage holding the gel on was removed, but then slept right through the big moment. Two stitches that should dissolve in a week or so were sewn in, and we were done. The poor guy stayed completely knocked out through that, me carrying him to the van, strapping him in, driving home, carrying him into his room, and laying him in bed. Thank goodness I had thought to put him in his pajamas before we left for the hospital. It was midnight by the time we got home.

In the end, I’m glad we got our first stitches out of the way. I’m sure they won’t be the only ones, especially for the boys, but hopefully this sets a precedent for smooth sailing through any future ones!

Yes everybody, this is what my 3 year old son has been obsessing over for the past few months.  For whatever reason when we got a Halloween costume catalog a few months ago THIS is what he decided he wanted to be.  A Garden Gnome.  For a second we were relived that the biggest it came in from the catalog was a 2T.  Then this week while shopping at Walmart Jen saw it in bigger sizes.

So, Alex got his “Gnome Guard” and he will be a happy boy this Halloween.  Crazy kid!

It’s been a pretty exciting last few weeks. I was in the shower one day thinking about Avery and Alex’s room, and someday giving them their own rooms by moving Avery to the guest room. For as rarely as people spend the night here, it seemed a waste to leave one of the largest spaces in the cramped house empty 99% of the time. So I told Don my idea in this “Someday, I think we should…” sort of way and he was all, “Yeah, let’s do it by next weekend!” We talked it up with Avery, painted some pink stripes on her walls and got her a princess canopy for the bed, which she’s coveted ever since she saw at Ikea a year or so ago. We made the move and hoped for the best, and it’s gone beyond my wildest dreams well. Don had to sleep with her the first night, and she came and slept in our bed around 3 the next night, but since then, she’s done pretty well, with only a few instances of coming to our room saying she needs someone to snuggle with her. She loves having a girly room and wasted no time in hauling every pink, girly item in the house into her room. I came downstairs one day and she was dragging the cradle/highchair combo that sat unused in their play area into her room. She now plays with it and her dolls every day during rest time, and it’s so cute to hear her in there setting up picnics, packing bags for them, etc.

The move has been good for Alex as well. He’s getting a big-boy sports themed room, with a full mattress and he now has room for some of his own toys in his room too, since we took Avery’s toddler bed out. He also plays nicely with his cars or tools during rest time. Even better, both kids seem to be getting the sleep they need rather than being subjected to the other’s scheduling. Alex tends to need more naps, but when they were sharing, we had reached a point where they wrestled and were loud and silly most days instead of getting any rest. Everyone was whiny and cranky on those days – not fun for kids or mom or dad. Also, Alex tends to be an earlier to bed, earlier to rise sort of person than his sister. We still have arguments about them not being ready for bed, or not being able to sleep, but at least now they only affect themselves and not their twin as well.

We’ll post pics once Alex’s room is finished.

Will I ever catch up on all the milestones in this house? Here’s a big one.

Upon our return from the Outer Banks, we decided to try having the Binky Fairy come to take away Alex’s 2 binks and leave him a big boy toy. I was dreading the big event, sure it would mess up the one child in this house who does reliably sleep through the night. I know he’s 3, but it’s not like he’s that 5 year old in Walmart taking his pacifier out so he can suck down his Mountain Dew. The old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” sprang to mind every time I considered it. But when a speech therapist from Frederick County Public Schools could tell within a 5 minute conversation that he used one, even if it was only at bedtime and for naps, and hinted that it could be causing some of the speech concerns we have, I knew the time had come.

We talked it up for a few weeks before, and Alex was mostly on board. He wanted a suction cup dart shooter like his good buddies Evan and Jake have at their house in exchange for giving the pacifiers to a new baby who needed them via the Binky Fairy.

I was feeling wimpy, though, so I decided to give it a trial run on the night we got home from the beach. The kids were exhausted and we put Alex to bed telling him that we couldn’t find his binkies, they must have been packed in our luggage, and I’d bring them when I found them. I figured if things got ugly, we could give them back and lie to ourselves about him just not being ready and put it off another 6 months or so. To my great shock, he slept all night without them. Success! The next night, he got a letter from the binky fairy explaining that she had taken his binkies, and she’d leave him a great toy the following night because she was so grateful and proud of him. He got his suction cup dart shooter the next morning. Turns out the binky fairy didn’t read the packaging that said the toy was appropriate for kids 8 and up, so Alex can’t pull the action part back, and you have to do that every time you want to shoot. I helped him a few times, but for the most part now, a couple of weeks later, the gun is MIA, the kittens play with the dusty old darts when they find them under the couch, and Adam has bitten 2 or 3 darts in half. The biggest miracle of all is that after the first couple of days, when Alex would randomly ask for his binky, he has completely forgotten about them. We’ve not had a single tear, much less the crying, screaming fits I had envisioned. I’m so proud of how easily Alex gave up something that gave him lots of comfort and really helped him to settle himself down when he was upset.

Now, we just need to get Avery to stop sucking her thumb! A long time ago, she asked me if there was a thumb fairy who would come and cut hers off. I told her no, but we may need to revisit that.