Rayman

IMG_8176I feel like I documented Noah and Liam’s younger life better than I have done with Ray. So here’s my effort to keep up. Ray is 3 and a half and adorable these days. And he loves me the best.

He says hilarious stuff. Lately these are my faves:

“nermal” (normal)

“smokes” (cloaks … on his lego guys)

“lellow” (yellow)

“Green Lanturd” (Green Lantern)

He consistently refers to Daniel and I not as daddy and mommy but as “Dad” and “Mom”. It sounds so grown up for a 3 year old. Even as a 2 year old he did that. We’ll even say things like, “Tell Daddy – ‘Daddy I’m sorry'” and he’ll repeat it as “Dad, I’m sorry”. So funny. He also consistently refers to his poop as “stinkies” not poopies or anything else we call it. He seems like he has his own opinion about stuff.

He’s ridiculously happy. The only time he gets in a bad mood is if he hasn’t had enough food or if he doesn’t get enough alone time at home. He seems to kind of love his time with me while the older boys are at school. He gets to rule the house and the legos and nobody tells him what he can or can’t do and for a youngest child, who gets told he’s too little quite a bit, it’s good for him to have time when he’s in charge of his own little life.

Ray is VERY loving. He spontaneously gives “huggies” and kisses throughout the day. He will tell me he loves me all the time too. He’s a love. I can usually talk him out of a fit and I can generally take him with me anywhere I go. He’s a pretty good natured kid. I’ve taken him to class parties in Noah’s fourth grade class several times because I’m the Room Mom and have to go. He stays close to me and is pretty low key in public.

His best friend is Emily Clark, his cousin. Today in Primary they were sitting side by side in the front row and I was teaching singing time and they just kept talking to one another and then finally started kissing each other and giggling. He calls her “Emlee”. Emily is pretty bossy but Ray is pretty easy going so they work well together. They both like pretending together and we call them, collectively, “the babies”. They are both the youngest of our families and we might refer to them as that for the rest of their mortal lives. They’ll probably hate it. But they play so well together, that sometimes I will call Christina and ask her to bring over Emily so I can get some stuff done. Emily and Ray will play for hours, happily. I love it. If Emily or a playmate is not here for Ray to play with, he will follow me everywhere and ask me to play with him. He doesn’t like to be alone. I constantly trip over him because he is usually at my feet or right behind me or within 24 inches of me at all times. I see it in photographs. It’s kind of funny, kind of cute and kind of frustrating at the same time.

I have a hard time playing “guys” with Ray, so I generally don’t do it. We do other things together, but Daniel plays “guys” with him. It’s usually Lego guys. Daniel says Ray is a pretty demanding player though. He has specific things he wants you to say and do and pretend with him as you play with him. He doesn’t seem to do that with friends, just adults. I think he feels the need to guide us because we don’t seem to know how to pretend very well.

He’s a beautiful little soul and I love him.

 

eating my words

So remember when I potty trained Ray in 3 days? And I didn’t think it would work and it did? And remember when I was so proud of myself and sharing with other women I met how unbelievable it was and how they should try it too? Remember when I smugly told Christina that I could potty train Emily too cuz I was evidently so good at it? And remember when I thought, “wow, this third kid is actually easier than the first two. He did it! He’s the best! I knew I could do it with him because I didn’t make the same mistakes  as I did with Noah and Liam!” ….. yeah.

So Ray has majorly regressed in the potty training department. In fact, he has completely forgotten how to go to the bathroom. Like, he’s a large baby wearing underwear that I have to clean up 7 times a day. It would be easier if I’d just admit that he doesn’t know how to go to the bathroom and put a stinking diaper on him. But something inside me says that it’s wrong to do that and that it will have major emotional consequences or something.

I keep telling myself that it’s just a set back, that he’s busy playing and forgets, or that cousins are over, his schedule was disrupted and that’s why it’s happening. But guess what? We were home all day, in our normal schedule with nobody distracting him today and guess how many times I’ve cleaned poop out of his underwear? Three times. Do you know how gross that is? Like waaaaaaaaaaay grosser than changing a diaper because when you change a diaper, the poop usually stays inside the diaper and you can undo the diaper while he’s lying down and wipe it with wet wipes and then toss it in the trash. But when you’re changing underwear that’s been pooped in you know you will touch feces at some point. It’s only a matter of time. Because you have to pull it down his legs and poop inevitably gets all over his legs when you pull down his pants and then sometimes he loses his balance while you’re pulling the pants off his feet and he steps in the poop.

Sometimes he says he needs to go potty, and you believe him (first mistake), so you run to the potty with him and pull his pants down quickly, plop him on the toilet and realize he didn’t make it and his poopy underwear is smashed up against the front of the toilet now. So now you’re cleaning poop off the toilet too. Then you have to clean the poop off the underwear by swishing it around in the toilet. That’s the worst. Because when you’re turning the underwear inside out, poop usually gets on your fingers or when you’re swishing, poopy water gets on you (equally as disgusting). If poop mysteriously doesn’t get on you when you’re swishing then it happens when you’re wiping the poop off his bum. If it doesn’t get on your hand then, it’s when you’re cleaning the poop off the front of the toilet, or off his legs or feet or when you pull down his pants …. it becomes unavoidable that you will have poop on your fingers at some point during clean up of a poopy pants situation. I’ve done that 3 times today. Three times!! I mean, how much poop could a child his size make? I feel like I should stop feeding him so he stops pooping so darn much.

So I’m at my wits end. A few nights ago, I cried about it. I don’t know what to do. Heavens knows I’ve tried though. I made a potty chart and gave him rewards, stickers and treats, but that didn’t seem to make a dent in the problem, so I tried making him clean up the poopy mess. You know what’s a sure fire way to make a poopy pants situation worse and a bigger mess? … having him clean it up. Major fail. I’ve been putting him on time outs now every time he does it and I just don’t know what else to do.

He says all the right things though. I ask him if he wants to go back to diapers and he says, “Nooo. I’m a BIG boy and big boys wear underwear!” and I ask him after he sits on time out what he did wrong and he says, “I went stinkies in my underwear and that’s bad. I go poopies in the potty!” Then smiles. He seems super optimistic.

Well, I will no longer be preaching the good word of potty training in 3 days. Cuz that’s a sham. And I don’t believe people that tell me that potty training isn’t that bad … maybe it’s just me and the children I create. They have potty issues. It’s always a year long, drawn out, terribly dirty, frustrating experience where everybody involved cries … especially me.

 

what happened to my Ray?

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Ray has been my happiest baby by far … I use the past tense because it is a thing of the past. What happened to my sweet, happy Ray?

He used to be my pal. My little side kick. We’d eat breakfast together, talking about the berries in his yogurt and giggle about how they looked with yogurt on them. Not anymore. Now he cries because the yogurt is touching the berries. Or because the spoon is already in the yogurt, so he whips the spoon out, flinging yogurt everywhere (including all over himself) then cries because he now has yogurt on himself. He’s no fun anymore.

We used to meander outside, look at the lemon trees, water them and talk to one another about the flowers and then sniff them. Not anymore. Now he has serious opinions about wearing a sweatshirt or not and cries about it. He doesn’t like the shoes I put on him, or the socks, or the fact that I opened the door instead of him. He wants me to let HIM water the plants, but refuses to let me help him hold it, so then we both get wet when he jerks away and well … he’s no fun.

He cries all. the. time. About everything. He whines and cries and yells and his language has taken a turn for the worse. He used to try and copy what I would say. I’d get close to his face and help him repeat it. We’d touch each other’s lips and I’d stick out my tongue and so would he. We smiled. Not anymore. Now he just grunts and whines. I have to guess at everything he says.

I pick him up to go outside:
Ray: uh uuuuuuuh!!
Me: Ray, you don’t want to go outside?
Ray: uh uh.
Me: No?
Ray: uh UH!
Me: ok, no outside.
Ray: ahhhhhhhh!
Me: what? You want to go outside? Do you mean yes?
Ray: uuuuuuh ….
Me: Outside? Yes?
Ray: uh uh.
Me: Ok. (I put him down and walk away from the backdoor)
Ray: (crying, wailing, gnashing of teeth)
Me: (I pick him up to go outside – he goes straight as a board and screams like I ripped off a limb).

There are no winners here. He cries and is sad all the time and I feel like crying after spending 10-15 minutes with him at a time. The days are full of time outs in his room, lots of grunting, crying and questions. We are at an impasse. Everyday. All day. Nothing gets done and no one is happy.

The worst part is that I feel absolutely no empathy for him. at. all. He stares at me with his face covered in greek yogurt and honey, crying about something stupid like the placement of his spoon and I think, “Man! Do you have any idea how good you have it kid?!” So I put him in his room and let him cry it out until he’s more ready to deal with the world around him. Aaaaaand, he’s actually there right now – in his room. But lucky for me, I live in a two story house, so his crying is like the faint, distant crying of maybe someone else’s kid. I can imagine that it has nothing to do with me and I don’t have to worry about it for a few more minutes. Then it’s back to being a mom of a 2 and a 1/2 year old. ugh.

cider mill 2014

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Well, what do you do on Halloween during the day with a two year old? You go to a cider mill. It was absolutely gorgeous there. It was about 70 degrees with a little breeze. Not quite cold enough to sport the infinity scarf I had brought, but enough to wear a sweater. It was such a lazy afternoon feel because there weren’t many people there at noon, so there was plenty of room to let the kids play and the lady behind the donut counter was so sweet. She asked Zac, Emily and Ray to say “trick or treat” and they all did, so she gave them 6 mini donuts each! They loved it. It was so cute to see each one saunter away with a little bag of donuts, stuffing one in their mouths and getting cinnamon and sugar everywhere. beautiful.

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Can you see Ray holding his bag of donuts and the huge grin on his face?

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We saw a woodpecker. It was captivating. That’s what Ray was looking at.

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See??! There’s fall in southern California!

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Zacky got a stomach ache because he ate all 6 of his donuts in under ten minutes. #smallpeopleproblems.

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Then Ray, Emily and I went on a walk.

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Good Halloween Day! Now I’m thinking of carving Ray’s and my pumpkins (the boys did theirs last night), eating dinner, getting dressed up and going trick or treating! Happy Halloween!

pumpkin patch

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Even in Southern California, where the fall season consists of 80 degree weather, there are fun fall-ish things to do – the pumpkin patch being one of them! There’s even a cider mill in the mountains that we went to last year that I plan on visiting in November when it cools down around here a little :)

We had never been to this pumpkin patch and it was super cool, but waaaaaaayy overpriced. Still. We let the boys pick one ting they wanted to do and they picked the zip line. It was awesome. Check out the pictures to see their little overjoyed faces. We had fresh squeezed strawberry lemonade, climbed and jumped all over a hay castle, listened to a live band, the boys did the zip line and we got Ray a tiny pumpkin. Ray is wild about pumpkins. He has been carrying his pumpkin around everywhere for the past 24 hours … until it finally busted open last night. Ray even took it to church yesterday. He would just hold it in one hand and sometimes give it a little hug. hilarious.

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Little side note: at the end of the ride I asked the boys how it was and Noah said, “It was so crazy that at the end I almost yelled ‘Holy s-word’!” I asked him what’s the s-word and then he said the four letter word I was hoping he didn’t know. It was a growing moment. I realized that he wasn’t as naïve as I had hoped. He knows and hears things I wish he didn’t, but at the same moment I thought, “well, he knew it, he thought it and then decided not to say it.” Tiny victory I guess. Wow, my boys are so big. It’s scary. I wanted to protect them a little longer. It feels like times up.

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This is right after the ride. Look at their glowing little boy faces. Just awesome. They were super pumped about it.