Give Me Strength

6:35 p.m. Wednesday night. William's bedroom.

Me - "William, just be quiet and put on your pajamas"

William - incessant talking

Me - "William. Stop talking. Just stop talking and put on your pajamas"

William is now Spiderman leaping around the room, providing a non-stop narrative..

Me - "William! Shut it! Stop talking and put on your pajamas. I'm losing my freaking mind"

William is now naked....still jabbering non-stop....but at least the clothes are off...still Spiderman

Me - "William, for the love of God, why do you talk so much?!"

William stops and looks right at me.

William - "Daddy, you know I talk a lot. I need to talk. I think Daddy. I'm thinking of ideas. I'm using my BRAIN."

At this point he raises his eyebrows and leaves to brush his teeth. He turned 4 two weeks ago. Good times.

Almost there...

Josh has been trying every day, all day, to crawl. He is close, so so close. Any day now.

This is the end of the day, he's a little tuckered.

Bo Knows

Remember Bo Jackson? The pro football and baseball player? Okay, you'll be forgiven if you don't. Anyhow, back when he was in his prime, Nike I think, ran a series of ads called Bo Knows Football...Bo Knows <insert sport>.  

Well, here's our version of Bo Knows, 2-style.

Bo Knows Angry:

Bo Knows Happy:

 Bo Knows Mischief:

Bo Knows Sad: 

Bo Knows Sneaky:

And his favorite, Bo Knows No! (with a slap on my thigh):

Yes. He is in touch with his feelings. 

Parent Teacher Interviews and other stuff...

These posts have been a little William-centric so I'll try and balance them out with the other two, maybe even a bit about the ole mom and dad too.

So yesterday was William's first parent-teacher conference. There are no report cards in junior kindergarten so essentially, this meeting is his report card. We were curious how the little guy was doing. He seemed to like school, always comes home happy and in a good mood. We certainly don't have to twist his arm to get there....but we also know he has a multitude of, well, let's just call them "other" sides.

For the most part, it was all good news. He knows his letters and numbers, plays well, is happy, likes being there, maybe a little too much. Apparently William is almost always the last to put his coat and boots on for hometime. Yeah, he struggles a little with the zipper and his left and right shoes, but the real reason is because he's chatting away to everyone, slowing others down as well. His teacher told me that she has to "redirect" his attention. Likewise during storytime. More "redirection". Gotta love the subtext there...read: distractive and disruptive.

 Anyhow, all normal and nothing to worry about. In terms of at home behaviour, that's another story. Both Bo and William need some incentives to, ahem, cooperate. Hence our "Santa's Naughty and Nice" Chart:

It has been an interesting experiment.

In all honesty, we didn't think it would have

any impact on the boys' behaviour. But it has.

When the boys did something like intentionally
 hitting without remorse, or speaking to us with
a lot of attitude, they'd get an "X". This did not
 lead to improved behaviour. Rather, it led to a
 bunch more X's and a lot of stomping around,
 throwing toys and "Go Away!".

However if the boys begin their day with a Happy Face sticker, then generally, the day goes well and they're motivated to get more stickers. It took a few days for us to catch on to this trend so now we really pump the "let's get a happy face" as much as possible. Still, there are days when they can't help themselves and it's X X X...hopefully they'll stay on the smiley face track otherwise I foresee a phone call from Santa.

In other news...Bo no longer cries when I drop him off at Duffer Doo (morning playgroup sans parents). This past week, the craft theme was robots. Now, I don't know why I did this, I can only surmise his little robots planted a seed in my subconscious but...I decided a couple of days ago, when I was having trouble getting through to the boys (all the time, really) that I would become "Mommy Robot".

I spoke in a robotic voice, moved like a robot, and displayed no emotion. Well, the boys loved it...so much that they seem to prefer Mommy Robot to me! They often tell me that they want Mommy Robot back, which, after a while, is exhausting. It is interesting though, how much calmer and attentive they are to me when I pretend to be the robot. Not sure what that means exactly.

As for Joshua, he's cute, demanding, but very cute. He's a sliver away from crawling, which frustrates him to no end, and just started clapping the other day. He is a real snuggle bear, and knows it.

Here's his more demanding side...and a typical evening in the Raz Boy household. 

The Perks

One of the perks of being a self-employed Dad, is that I often get to stroll down the street around 11:30 to meet William as he gets off the school bus. Regardless of the weather it's always something I enjoy doing. But William is a different cat. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "William is like a box of chocolates,  you never know what you're going to get". I like to think that God created him simply to keep me and Jill on our toes.

Today as he stepped off the bus he was his usual chatty, smiley self. In fact, he had been cheering up one of his good buddies who was a little homesick, so he was feeling especially good about himself. It was sunny out, I had Bo with me, so I thought I'd snap a photo of my two handsome boys. Dumb, dumb, dumb....In doing so, I inadvertently opened the box of chocolates....

Below are the photos I was permitted to take. He is often a pain in the ass, but he's usually pretty amusing at the same time:)

Beautiful Boy

Today is William's 4th birthday. I remember his birth like it was yesterday -- what mother doesn't remember the birth of her first child?

I did not know what to expect. Jud and I took the weekend course that's supposed to "prepare" you for the beginnings of labor and to know when you should go to the hospital blah blah blah. Now, after having had three kids, to a certain degree when it comes to childbirth, I think we're still living in the dark ages. There's so much we don't know and yet all these textbooks and experts tell you it should go like this when sure enough it will go like what?????

But I digress...

William was in no hurry to enter the world. He was quite happy to stay put. A week overdue, I finally felt the beginnings of labor, or "false labor" as the experts like to call it. Nothing felt false about it to me. I felt pain and it wasn't stopping.

I was so convinced that I had dilated 6cm that we charged off to the hospital fully expecting to deliver our little bundle of joy within the hour. Nope. I had only dilated .5cm. Go me.

We were sent back home to "hang out" until the contractions got stronger and more painful. I don't know about you but when you have no yardstick to measure your "pain" against because, well, you've never given birth before, that advice may as well have been given by a monkey.

The day came and went, the contractions seemed to become more frequent and I couldn't talk during them. Well, apparently my pain threshold was not as high as I thought. I had only dilated another .5cm. At least this time the hospital kept me and decided it was time to get things going.

I was dumb enough to hold off on getting the epidural until I was 6cm (I did not make that mistake with Bo and Joshua). I had never felt such unending horrible pain in my life. The only way I've described it to other pregnant women -- and I had to be honest since some of them heard that it wasn't painful at all -- was that it was like being jabbed in the gut with a jagged knife, twisting and turning for 45 seconds, two minute reprieve and then the knife jabs again.

Despite these strong and frequent contractions, I felt like William was never going to come out of me. I was at the point of acceptance that I would be permanently pregnant when the nurse finally told me that I could push.

I couldn't feel my legs, I was shaking due to low sugars, I had been awake for 48 hours and I had Jud, my labor nurse and the doctor all telling me to push. Somewhere I found it in me and twenty minutes later, William Laird Rasmussen was born.

Turning 1...

Turning 2...

Turning 3...

And now our big boy is 4!

Happy Birthday to our beautiful boy.

Combat

The other day Jill turned to me while we stood in the kitchen listening to screams coming from the family room, and noted that boys will turn anything, and everything, into a weapon. I reflected upon this for a moment and realized it was true. The bubbles from a bubble bath become a weapon. Forks at dinner become weapons. Pillows, rubber boots, chicken nuggets, toy cars, tooth brushes....all maliciously designed to maim.

Today as I prepared to walk down the street to meet William's bus I noticed it was raining. As Bo pulled on his bright orange rubber boots he too noticed that it was raining, and demanded an umbrella. We were half way down the lane when I had an 'aha!' moment. William would lose his sh** if Bo had an umbrella and he did not, so I hustled back to the house for a second one.

You see the gap in my logic here....don't you....if I could insert a 'thought bubble' above Bo's head in the second image.....

I chose to post the happy pictures:)

-jud