Well, according to Jace, it is a

Hickup truck

Just one of the many Jace-isms but probably my favorite

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This week, at 2 years 9 1/2 months, Jace learned how to open the doors in our house. No more contained child. We have a true free range Jace.

He had already figured out the lever handles at my parents house as they learned when he came to stay while Steve and I went to Puerto Rico. Every morning they woke up to the pattering of little feet and “Wakeup. It’s wakeup time. It’s light outside. It’s wake up time”.  However, we have knob handles that are rather stiff to turn so we still were able to put him in timeout in his room and keep him there and put him to bed at night and have him stay there. Now, not so much.

Some people have recommended the child safe door knob covers but we have a potty training little boy on our hands so we really do need to let him out of his room at night to pee. And frankly, I would like to encourage that he learn to go on his own rather than laying in bed yelling “mommy mommy” everytime he has to go use the potty.

Oh well, guess all good things come to an end eventually. Hopefully there will be other good things (like a solid night sleep for me) that eventually comes from this new skill.

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Last week I went to Vermont to check on the construction of the building I have been working on for the last year. I left in the afternoon and got to Burlington just in time to eat some dinner. After I was done, I called home to wish Jace goodnight. After a brief exchange I got off the phone and headed to the Bed and Breakfast I was staying in. As soon as I had settled in, my phone rang again.

Heather – Hello

Jace – I can’t go to sleep. I need to say good night to mommy

Jace – Good night mommy

Jace – <kiss>

Heather – I love you, sleep well

Jace – bye mommy

click

I wouldn’t be surprised if he figured out how to dial the phone on his own too.

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It started out with no. “Jace do you want a snack?” “No Mommy, no”. No was the answer to everything, even if he clearly wanted it. Then we moved onto “what’s that mommy” which was kinda cool as Jace was trying to identify the things around him. Plus there is an answer to that question and it left us all feeling satisfied. Next we entered the “why” phase. “Why” is in interesting concept and is fairly simple to answer the first few times but when every answer you give gets responded to by another “why”, it gets rather frustrating and harder and harder to find an appropriate answer. Luckily April (our daycare provider) gave us a useful trick on how to deal with the why’s. Once Jace started to get into a repetitive loop, we started to ask the question back to him. “I don’t know why the truck is blue. Why do you think that it is blue?” He was pretty good natured about this line of questioning and came up with some very creative and interesting answers. We have officially moved out the of why phase (luckily for us, this was a fairly short phase compared to many toddlers) but have moved into something much worse! The dreaded “I can’t”, which is usually followed by “you do it mommy/daddy” in a very demanding tone. Most toddlers around this age are trying to show their independence and insist on doing everything themselves, even if it takes them 20 minutes to put on their shoes. Not our son. He is totally capable of putting on his shoes by himself but outright refuses. “I can’t put my shoes on”, “I can’t pick up my toys”, “I can’t” “I can’t” “I can’t”. We try to be patient and suggest that he tries and if he needs help we will assist but really, you can’t make him try to do something. Shoes need to go on in order to leave the house so at times we feel like we are slaves to our 2 year old. Hopefully he will outgrow this phase and phrase soon, but I wonder what is next in the pipeline!

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Last night Jace and I decided to bake cookies. I had been thinking about it the night before as my friend from work has been having a rough time and I knew she would appreciate it. Then spontaneously, the next morning, Jace mentioned making cookies. After getting home from daycare Jace debated whether we should make oatmeal raisin (his idea) or chocolate chip (my idea). We settled on chocolate chip and got to work. Jace was a great helper, dumping all the ingredients into the bowl, mixing the dry ingredients together and “helping” me turn on the mixer. He did, however, impose one rule on the task. He had to taste each ingredient. Sugar, brown sugar (tasted several times for quality control), chocolate chips, flour, salt, butter, and even baking soda and vanilla extract. But, once we added the eggs to the mixure, he was very good at following my direction that he could no longer eat the batter “because of the little bugs, right mommy” that might be in the eggs. Yes, our family is not fair. Mommy can eat the batter (when Jace isn’t looking) but he is not allowed to. My justification, his tummy is much less experieced with bugs and much smaller than mine so a little salmonella would do him much worse than me. When it came time to put the cookies on the cookie sheet, Jace had his own spoon. He ended up scoping about 1 chocolate chip plus batter at a time but he got the idea. We had fun working together and yes, he thoroughly enjoyed the end result. Chocolate from ear to ear.

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It started the day after Thanksgiving with Jace asking us if we were going to get a Christmas tree. He was so excited when I said yes that we went to get one the first weekend in December, much earlier than we usually do. Once the tree had been set upright, the branches dropped and everyone was home on the same evening, we started to decorate the tree. Jace immediately informed us it was his job to put the star on top of the tree. I hadn’t even taken the star out of the box yet or even mentioned it so I wonder if he made a lucky guess that we had a star instead of an angel or if he remembered from last year? I was winding the lights around the tree and Jace was very impatient to start hanging ornaments. As soon has he was handed the non-breakable ornaments he was off, hanging them all about 1′6″ above the floor and in one big clump. We tried to direct him to hang some higher and further apart with limited success. Once he ran out of non-breakable ornaments he decided he needed to find some other ones to hang on the tree. He hung his O-ball and one of my ponytail holders! The ball has subsequently been removed to play with but the ponytail holder remains. I did spread his ornaments out later that night.

He is very excited about all the presents under the tree but isn’t a big fan of the fact that they are mostly for his cousins and uncles/aunts. He clearly thought he was going to get them all. Yet when asked what he wants for Christmas, he replies “oatmeal”.

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Like everyone else in this country we have weighed the options as to whether to get Jace an H1N1 vaccine. Having decided that it was probably a good idea, we waited, with everyone else, to find out when it might be a available. I got a phone call from our pediatrian’s office saying that they had a limited supply of  vaccines. I have no idea how they got them when so many others have not, but perhaps, because go to a family care doctor instead of a true pediatrian, they have less children in the practice so they are not just limiting it to kids with asthma etc. We signed up to go Wednesday night and I told Jace he was going to get a piggy shot. He is a trooper when it comes to shots and actually likes going to the doctor’s office because he gets stickers. However, this time he informed me he didn’t want a piggy shot. At first I was worried this was going to be the start of a fear of shots, but he quickly added he wanted a donkey shot instead. When we went the doctor’s office the nurse was more than happy to play along. Jace got the very first donkey shot in the country!

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The other day I wasn’t feeling very well when I pick Jace up from daycare. We came home, played for a little, then I made him dinner. As he sat at the table eating, I curled up on the couch to take a nap. Once Jace was done eating dinner he came in to the living room to see what I was doing. After finding me napping, he ran into his bedroom and got his stuffed bear. He brought it over to me, gave it to me, then ran off to get his monkey and puppy. Once he was sure I had enough friends to cuddle with, he patted my head and told me “Mommy sleep”. What a sweet little boy he can been when he wants to be!

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Well technically it is the same bed with a different side but that doesn’t sounds nearly as exciting. A couple of weeks ago his cousin was here to stay and we set up an airbed on the floor for her. She left on Friday night but we didn’t deflate it right away because Jace was enjoying playing on it. On that Saturday he asked if he could nap on it. Being an agreeable guy, Steve said sure, so long as he (Jace) stayed on the airbed but didn’t jump on it. No problem. He had a great nap. I guess that shouldn’t be that surprising since he naps on a mat at daycare but he just never has at home. The airbed got cleaned up and nothing more happened until Sunday when Jace asked if he could nap on his mattress on the floor. Again it was a success so I decided that perhaps he was ready to transition out of the crib into a toddler bed.

When we bought his crib, we opted to pay the extra $50 to get a toddler rail that attaches where the drop rail usually goes. A few minutes of construction and Jace is the proud owner of a toddler bed. So far we have had no issues. He climbs in without a fuss and doesn’t try to get out and run around. I guess the real test will be this weekend for nap if he isn’t in the mood to lie down. We keep his door shut and he has no clue how to open it so he is essentially trapped even if he climbs out of bed. Perhaps that will be enough of a deterrent for now. I do have to say it is great not having to lift all 34lbs of him in and out of the crib!

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Jace has clearly entered another phase of childhood where he is showing his (sometimes too) active imagination. At daycare he takes a nap on a mat and after nap he is supposed to put the mat away in the pile. April asked him one day during snack if he had put his mat away. “Yes, put mat on porch” “On porch, in rain”. Now the porch is outside and it was sunny out but in Jace’s imagination that clearly wasn’t the case.

The other night he woke me up crying hysterically. When I asked him what was wrong he said there was a dragon in his bed as he pointed towards the corner of his crib where his blanket was hanging. The blanket is fleece which is tied with little knots all around the perimeter. I guess the tufts looked like dragon scales or something in his half awake state. I slayed that dragon and Jace returned to sleep.

I have also told monsters to leave the closet on several occasions and looked for bears in the closet too. How much is Jace just trying to get attention and how much he believes I cannot tell, but when he asks me to make the robot go away, I am sure going to try.

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