A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words...

Do you see how far it is from the step stool to

CamCam's feet?

What kind of upper body strength must CamCam have to be able to push himself up that far?

And he's still smiling???

Pediatrician's Office

Today "The Baby" had his 9 month checkup. It was at 9:50 AM, so I knew it would be really hard to get to it. It's not easy to get my three little monsters ready to go out the door in the morning. We arrive at the office, and I'm in a hurry, so I decided to forgo the stroller this time. I grab "The Baby" out of his car seat. He has one of those fleece car seat covers, so he is not wearing a coat. It's a really short walk to the office, and I'm tempted to carry him in as-is, just so I do not have one more thing to carry. However, it is his appointment, and the pediatrician is going to be checking him out and I assume checking out how well he's cared for, so bringing him in with no socks, no hat, and a light-weight one piece outfit in November in Maine probably isn't going to cut it. I grab the quilt in the van and wrap him in it. Then I grab my purse, and then the overstuffed diaper bag. The diaper bag is overstuffed because along with the normal diaper changing stuff I need, it's also filled with things to bribe good behavior out of "Mr. Trouble" and CamCam.

I walk around to the other side of the van to get "Mr. Trouble" out and then CamCam. "Mr. Trouble" pushes the button that shuts the automatic door. CamCam starts to throw a fit. He drops to the ground and starts whining/screaming "I ush, I ush, I ush!" He wanted to push the button, so I open the door and tell him to push it. Nope, he just throws his fit. I put the diaper bag and my purse around my arm that's holding "The Baby", and hook my other arm around CamCam's waist to pick him up. He makes his body dead weight. I don't know if you've ever experienced trying to pick up a child that has done this, but in one second they are miraculously able to make themselves weight an extra 50 pounds.

So I walk to the front door, what a sight we are- two people stop and stare. "Mr. Trouble" has run on ahead to use his "magic powers" to open the automatic door. I hope no one ever tells him that the door is automatic and he actually doesn't have magic powers as this is the only way I can get him into the office willingly. I have "The Baby" on my right hip with the diaper bag and purse hooked over my arm, and CamCam is facing out with my arm around his waist holding him, but he is arching his body and kicking and screaming.

We reach the elevator and I ask CamCam if he'd like to push the button and he immediately stops his fit and runs to push it. However "Mr. Trouble" runs ahead and pushes it before CamCam can. Grrrrrrr. I speak to "Mr. Trouble", and tell CamCam he can push the one inside. But an elderly couple get in before us and the woman pushes the inside button. Apparently they never had kids and so do not realize that one of the great joys of childhood is pushing buttons. I vow that as long as kids are around me, I will never ever push a button without asking the child if they'd like to first. CamCam starts yelling his angry jibberish at the elderly women, and then resumes his fit. I grab him again as the door opens and we walk down the hall to the office. Only 5 minutes late, not too bad.

I tell CamCam he can go play toys, but he says no and cries a bit in the chair instead. After a couple minutes he changes his mind and goes to play. At that exact moment "Mr. Trouble" has to pee. Poor CamCam is so mad he has to leave the toys, so again I carry him as we head off to the bathroom. We get back to the waiting room and they have about 5 minutes to play before we are called in. I watched the fish swimming in the tank, it was heavenly.

CamCam is NOT happy about going to the room, I think he must believe the appointment is for him. Eventually we make it there and I pull out the box of car cookies I have. "Mr. Trouble" eagerly sits to get his cookie. Not CamCam though. I give him 2 and he throws them on the floor. I throw them in the garbage and he cries and yells at me, now he wants them. That's pretty much how the entire appointment goes: CamCam telling me no at everything I suggest, then him crying and yelling because he wants it or wants to do it after all.

I'm so grateful when it's over and we all head to the front desk to check out. The phone rings just as we get there, and the receptionist picks it up. It takes FOREVER!!! My little boys cannot take being there anymore. I have run out of things to bribe them with to stay close to me. CamCam starts to run off, I tell "Mr. Trouble" not to run after him but he does. They run down the hall with me chasing them, take a right, run down that hall, take a left and run about halfway down before "Mr. Trouble" tackles CamCam to the ground.

I'm beginning to think that "The Baby" not wearing a coat into this appointment would have been the least of my problems.

We finally are leaving. I give "Mr. Trouble" a very stern warning not to push the elevator button, that it's CamCam's turn. He actually listens and CamCam finally gets to push his button. We go inside the elevator and CamCam sees another red button and pushes it. Off goes the emergency alarm. It's so embarrassing whenever this happens. But this elevator has an extra button I do not know about. We're going down when suddenly I hear a voice say: "911, What's your emergency."

Oh my goodness, they actually made a button that instantly calls 911 RIGHT at kid level!!! It's only like 2 feet off the ground, adults can't even see it, did they actually make it for kids only?!?!?! I'm tempted just to run and say nothing, but I tell her what happened and off we go to the van.

Next time, I think we'll take the stairs.

Jail Break

My first 2 kids never tried to escape out of my house. So I was in for quite a surprise when I had "Mr. Trouble". Every chance he had, he'd try and sneak out of the house. It didn't take much for him to figure out how to undo the deadbolt. Eventually I put up a hinge lock, the kind that you can find in hotel rooms, so he couldn't open the door.

CamCam also figured out how to undo the deadbolt- once he was tall enough to reach it, it took him all of 5 minutes to figure it out. So I am very grateful that I still have the hinge locks on my doors. There isn't much that is scarier then realizing your 2 year old is no longer in your house and you have to run outside frantically looking for him.

This past Sunday I came home from work and couldn't get into my house because the high lock was on, so I knocked and knocked. CamCam and "Mr. Trouble" came running, and "Mr. Trouble" said he'd open the door for me. I talked to him through the crack and said it was too high, go and get dad.

So "Mr. Trouble" ran off to get dad.

CamCam, however, decided to let me in.

Juice Time!

CamCam is so funny, whenever he wants a drink he goes to the drawer where I keep his cups, grabs a cup, grabs the top, and grabs the plastic thing that goes in the top to keep it "spill proof."


I use that term VERY lightly, nothing is spill-proof when it comes to a two year old. If you take the cup and turn it upside down and shake it with all your might, juice droplets will come out. Even better, if you turn it upside down and bang it as hard as your little two year old arm can handle on the floor, you can get quite a bit of liquid to come out. This is best if done with milk as white shows up very well against a hardwood floor, and then you can take your little pool of milk and smear it all over the floor. If I could find a way to make a truly spill-proof cup, I bet I'd be a very rich woman.


It amuses me that he knows to grab all parts to the cup when he wants a drink. Kids really do watch what we do very closely and copy us. A while back, I really needed to get to the grocery store and so was out of juice, and milk, and he wanted a drink. I told him I could give him water, he said "No wa-woo, a-pa ju!" We had this discussion a number of times over the next 15 minutes. Finally he took matters into his own hands and went to our wine rack, grabbed a bottle of wine, brought it to me and said "A-PA JU!"


Anyone know how to explain to a two year old that not all bottles of "juice" are for them???

Does Anyone Else Have to Paint Like This?

I took on the enormous task of repainting our basement. The walls were pretty beat up from the kids. Also, there was a bunch of writing on them from our resident wall muralist. I had been putting off this task, as I knew it would be a doosie. I started out painting the walls, and quickly realized that I was going to have to do the ceiling as well. Since I was painting our ceiling anyways, I figured I may as well do a textured surface on it since the original taping job was so poor. So the mega project turned into a colossal project.

But I had CamCam to help me.

CamCam was fascinated by the paint. He so badly wanted at it. Every time I turned my back, he'd grab a brush and run to a wall. My baby was also fascinated by the paint. He was constantly crawling towards it. Once, "The Baby" reached the paint tray before I reached him and got two big fist fulls of the stuff. From that point on I blocked off a section of the room with a chair, ottoman, dinosaur toy and exersaucer turned sideways to keep him out of my paint. But CamCam cannot be contained so easily. The first thing he painted was the metal pole running down the center of our basement. It was painted black, but now the bottom half has off-white paint all over it. Many times he grabbed the roller and rolled the wall. This wasn't a very big deal, I just took it and quickly went over the area he had done and you'd never know he'd been there.

But one day I was using the roller, and had a spare laying on the ground. It didn't have a cover on it, it was just the metal frame. I didn't even realize CamCam was in the room, I thought he was upstairs watching a movie. I was walking across my carpet and stepped in something wet. I was so mad at myself for dripping paint on the carpet, and looked and realized there was paint ALL over the carpet. Then I saw CamCam in the bar area, he had the metal roller dripping paint and was "rolling" the wall. I took the roller away, and ran him to the bathroom and washed him up. His clothes were ruined, so much paint was on them and I have yet to discover if there is a way to get paint out of clothes. In the trash they went.

Now I surveyed the damage done to my carpet. I grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and started dabbing at the paint. It wasn't going well, and no matter how gently I tried to dab, it just spread out. Not to mention that this was taking some time and the paint on the rest of the carpet was quickly drying. So I figured it was better to work fast then to work gently, and I scrubbed as much as I could off with the wet washcloth. Then I ran and got our carpet cleaner machine and went over and over the carpet. It didn't come up, but at least it was faded pretty well and when the light hits it just so, you almost can't see it.

Obviously all this carpet cleaning took quite some time, so by the time I got over to my wall to roll at it with the correct roller, the paint CamCam had got on it had dried. I rolled and rolled but I couldn't erase the ridges that the metal frame had made. I let the whole thing dry and sanded and sanded, then repainted. Ridges are still there. I gave up on it after that.

It took me 2 weeks and a lot of playing defence with CamCam to finish the ceiling, all the walls, and the massive amount of trim and doors. The end of last week is when I finally finished. It was such a great feeling! Our basement looks so fresh and new. The lighter color really opens up the room.

Then yesterday I'm in the kitchen doing dishes. I hear my hubby say: Where did CamCam get that marker? I look over and CamCam had just come up the stairs and is hunched over the top step and coloring all over our hardwood floor with red marker. He had colored all over every step on his way up before we saw him.

I hope he didn't color on your walls, my hubby says. I ran down to the basement to check my walls while he washed up the marker. I looked all over the room and couldn't see marker anywhere. I felt so lucky. I was so grateful that my hard work wasn't ruined so quickly. I didn't even punish CamCam for coloring on the stairs, I totally forgot to mention to him that what he did was wrong, I was just so happy my walls were fine.

Then later that night my husband went into our bar area to get a drink and says: Uh oh, I found where CamCam colored. Inside the bar, CamCam had colored an entire wall with red marker. Well, to be fair, it wasn't the whole wall, only three feet and lower.

I suppose I'll look on the bright side, at least I had 3 whole days of the room looking fresh and new.

Temper Tantrums

Temper tantrums amaze me. They used to stress me out, but after going through a few kids, the novelty of them has worn off and I am amused.

Well, unless I'm in public, then it's just embarrassing.

Anything can set off a temper tantrum in CamCam. If something doesn't go the way he wants, rage ensues. I do not understand how a person can go from complete calm to extreme rage in less then 5 seconds.

Sometimes he'll be playing with baby legos and the pieces won't stay together. He yells, throws ALL the pieces across the room, throws himself down to the floor and has a fit. Yesterday we were out and walking from the van to the toy store. I'm not sure what path he wanted me to take to the toy store, but apparently it wasn't a straight path, because he started yelling nonsense at me and when I didn't comply, he dropped to the ground and arched his back and yelled, kicked and screamed. There is nothing like walking through a parking lot, having your 4 year old walking on ahead of you, carrying your baby in the moby wrap, and having your 2 year old decide to drop to the ground just as you are crossing the busy part. Often one of his siblings will take something he wants and CamCam yells a loud "NO" followed by lots of angry gibberish and usually an attempt to hit them, and finally he ends with the classic drop to the ground with screaming and kicking.

However, most of his temper tantrums are thrown as a result of me. He'll be drawing on my health insurance papers so I take the pencil away. Fit. He's drawing on his sister's homework and I take the pen away. Fit. He's running around the living room trying to spray his brother with a bottle of Windex and I take the Windex away. Fit. He asks me for apple juice, and I give him a cup of apple juice, but apparently it isn't the kind he had in mind. (huh?) Fit. He's had 4 cookies and asks for another but I say no. Fit. He asks for "ca-ca" and I give him some crackers since 99% of the time ca-ca = crackers, but apparently not this time. Fit.

Today he wanted a snack, and he handed me goldfish, cheezits and animal crackers. I put some goldfish in a bowl, followed by animal crackers, and cheezits on top. Well he couldn't see the fish, so he starts yelling "ish, ish, ish," at me, and I pushed aside the crackers and told him that he had fish, they were at the bottom. Next came a very loud "NO! ISH" followed by the bowl being thrown across the room. Silly boy, now he wasn't getting ANY cheezits, OR animal crackers, OR fish.

Here's what CamCam's temper tantrums look like:

First, he throws himself to the floor and wails and cries as he rolls around a bit

Screaming and covering his face in the

"woe is me" pose

Lots of crying and he likes to bury his face into the floor. This is his "show of desperation."

Temper tantrums are very physical. For some reason he started moving backwards as he cried and kicked.

I'm really not sure why anger would bring this move on. Up and over the chair legs he goes.

And finally he reached his destination, inside the chair and all was well.
Just like that, his fit ended.

The only shot I'm missing is when he looks back to make sure I'm still watching. He was mad I was taking his picture during his very dramatic show, and so hid his face and never did the typical "she's still watching me do this so I should keep going, right?" look. Like I said, it's very entertaining.

Random Sleepiness

CamCam has embraced the freedom his "big-boy" bed has given him. At the age of 2 years he is exerting his independence and has decided that he's no longer taking his nap. I can bring him to his room. I can put him in his bed. I can make him stay in his room. I cannot make him fall asleep. So instead of taking his much needed nap at 1PM, he is up playing. He likes to empty his toy box and climb into it. He likes to fill his toy box with everything in his room. Often I hear banging on the walls up there and don't know if I should go and check or not. On the one hand, he could be causing trouble and I should go and see. On the other hand, what if he isn't causing trouble, but then he would see me checking on him and throw a fit because he wants to get out. So I figure it's probably nothing.

So instead of taking his nap at a normal time, he is randomly falling asleep throughout the day. Usually it's very late in the afternoon and he sleeps for a couple of hours and then is up pretty late at night because of it. Or the worst case scenario, he falls asleep 5pm or later, takes his 2 hour nap, and then is up until midnight or later. Or sometimes he doesn't fall asleep at all and is pretty cranky in the evenings, but at least he goes to bed early.

He's falling asleep here....

Most obvious one, in the van

He's falling asleep here....

Rocking Chair is a very comfy place to fall asleep

He's falling asleep here....
This doesn't look very comfy

He's falling asleep here....

On the floor

He's falling asleep here....

Same outfit, same floor, different day

He's falling asleep here....

Between his bed and his brother's

He's falling asleep here....

Watching TV with his brother

But not here....