Why dinosaurs are annoying

Dinosaurs are not bad by themselves. They keep the little guy entertained for hours and he loves playing with them. And, he has about a million of them.

What sucks about dinosaurs is that there's a trillion different kinds with all sorts of weird hard-to-pronounce names. And that little guy must know the name of EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Ok. I know a couple different dinosaur names, but when they start to deviate from the main 5 I know (brontosaurus, T-rex, stegosaurus, pterodactyl, triceratops), I have no idea what they are. And that little guy is not impressed.

Ok, so half the dinosaurs we call "jumping dinosaurs" and the other half are "long neck dinosaurs" and some of them are "open mouth dinosaurs." Or they simply get a new name each time they're played with and I pray that the little guy doesn't remember what I called them the last time.

And that's why dinosaurs are annoying -- their names are just too hard to remember. I guess I'm not cut out to be a paleontologist.

(Also, stepping on dinosaurs or accidentally getting hit in the face with one is annoying, but that's a whole other story.)

Grocery shopping with a toddler

It's annoying to run errands with a toddler. I mean, sure, everything can be a fun learning experience, but I'd rather not have to fight with the little guy to put on his jacket, get in the car seat, get out of the car seat, worry about him getting bored or hungry, etc. A quick run to the drugstore that would usually only take 5 minutes by myself will turn into an hour-long affair.

Grocery shopping, though, isn't too bad. It has its perks.

When we get home...

It's nice to have someone to blame.

Baby sea otter

One of the female sea otters at the Seattle Aquarium just had a baby a few weeks ago, so we were really excited to go for a visit. We talked to the little guy about all the fish and sea creatures they had there, but the thing he was most excited about was going to see the new baby sea otter.

The day before the visit, we asked him what we were going to do the next day.

Umm... okay. Good luck with that.

Going to school

We're signing the little guy up for preschool this fall. I'm kind of worried because he's pretty clingy when I take him to his weekly music mommy-and-me music class.

All the other little kids do just fine. He'll do fine sometimes, but usually for the first half hour (of the one-hour class), he'll just cling to me and not participate.

I stopped going to the gym because I was sick of getting paged every time I dropped him off at the childcare. It's hard to work out when you can hear your kid screaming from across the room.

I don't like working out anyway so it's fine with me :)

He does go to a two-hour drop-off childcare with my mom when she goes to Bible study once a week, and I *think* he's fine with that, but I've never actually seen him there, so I have no idea how that is. But according to my mom, he doesn't cry anymore and looks happy when she peeks in on him during her break. Good sign!

Now that he's turning three soon, he can start preschool (2 hours for 2 days a week) and we started introducing him to the concept of "school."

He thinks it's going to be awesome. We took him to the preschool open house before we registered, so maybe he thinks school is just 10 minutes long, and mommy and daddy will be there the entire time, and then we go get doughnuts afterwards.

And maybe he will enjoy it, who knows? But one thing is for sure.

I'm going to be so sad that my little boy is growing up so fast, and I have a feeling it's going to be harder for mommy than it is for him.

I can't trust my toddler in front of others

Last month, we took the little guy along with us when we went to get our ultrasound (it's a girl!) and we showed him that the baby was in mommy's tummy.

 When we got home, we asked him where the baby was.

And he remembered! We asked a couple more times and he got it right each time.

The next day happened to be my husband's birthday, so we went out to dinner with my parents, in-laws and grandma. We were so excited to tell everyone that it was a girl, so we asked the little guy to point out BABY SISTER!

But instead of pointing at my tummy, he decided it would be better to pull down my shirt for everyone to see.

And that's why I can't trust my toddler to say (or point to) the right things in front of others.

Toddlers and nosebleeds

All over the internet, moms love to talk about their kids' gross bodily functions, like pee, poo and spit-up. But rarely do they talk about bloody noses, so I was entirely unprepared the first time I encountered a nosebleed.

This was back when the little guy still slept in his crib, and he would sometimes wake up whining in the middle of the night, but would eventually cry himself back to sleep. On this particular night, he kept crying and crying, and so I got up and went to see what was wrong. I picked him up without turning on the light, and immediately felt that his face was wet and sticky. I looked closer and I completely freaked out. It was like a scene from a horror movie. Blood was all over the place, on his pajamas, his face, his crib, everywhere.

Panic-stricken, I cleaned him up, thinking that he had hit his head or lip on his crib, or had some nasty gash on his face, but it just turned out that it was only a nosebleed. Whew! I quickly found the culprit, a tiny little blood-crusted pointer finger... the finger of a child who just learned how to pick his own nose.

He's had a few nose bleeds since then, all of them in the middle of the night. When he's awake, he knows better than to pick his nose too much (although he can't entirely avoid it though, he is a kid.)

But when he's sleeping, it's an entirely different story. You know how sometimes you get an itch on your leg in the middle of the night, and then wake up and find that you scratched it raw in your sleep? (Or is that just me?) He just can't stop himself from digging away, which sometimes will result in a bloody nose.

But because we co-sleep, I'm usually able to catch it pretty early on, and I keep a few washcloths next to the bed just in case. STILL, that doesn't stop a little blood from getting on his pillow and the sheets (and my pillow for that matter, because that's where he usually is).

So much fun, especially at 3am!

Right now, all our sheets are mismatched because I only want to wash the bloodied ones, and if I don't have to wash the duvet cover, I'm not going to (you know how annoying that thing is to put on?)

Anyway, my point of the post is, nosebleeds are normal part of growing up (except if they're getting them too often, then you should see a doctor) and nose-picking kids are more susceptible to them in the winter months when the air is dryer. I'd use a humidifier but ours broke after a week of using it and we never got around to fixing or replacing it. I've heard saline drops are good at keeping the nose moist, but I'd never be able to get those into the little guy's nose. 

Any tips from the more experienced mommas?

Why I have to draw my pictures.

In an ideal world, my camera would be full of beautiful photos of the little guy, beaming up at me. Pictures worthy of magazines (or mommy blogs for that matter). Instead, I have 5 half-blurry photos of a kid running the other way. I barely bother taking out my camera anymore. Now you know why I have to draw pictures of my family instead of showing you pictures.

This is what happens when I take out my camera:

The little guy will protest.

Or he'll run away. He never stands still long enough for me to get a good shot.

 Or he'll make funny faces or won't look at the camera.

But most of the time, he just takes the camera out of my hands, and wants to take pictures of me .

So this is what the camera is full of:

Thank goodness my drawings can't convey the utter unattractiveness of these photos on the camera (which are promptly deleted).

And this is why I don't have an expensive camera. Or good pictures.