'Say What' Wednesday

The part where Lex exerts his independence and expands his tyrannical reign over his parents.

Lex (sitting on toilet): Daddy, you need to leave my bathroom. You're bothering me.

Lex (to me last night at dinner): I'm in charge, not you.


This week's edition is a little light in content. Most of my comments from Lex are taken over the weekend or when he says something particularly amusing. However, Lex came down with strep throat Saturday night, and he didn't really do a lot this weekend outside of whining, sleeping, and then sleeping some more. It felt like I had three dogs instead of two with all the lazing around.

On another note of interest to me, mostly, is we moved from Lex's convertible daybed to his full size bed. He is now completely dwarfed and about 4 feet in the air. His bed actually sits, easily, 6-8in higher than our bed. He loves it. All he wanted to do was lay around on it last night. And for the first time since Friday night, slept soundly and through the night. It was all kinds of awesome.

And on the potty training front, Lex now only wears his pull-ups for naps and bedtime. On the binky front? Those little things have officially been kicked to the curb.

WDW Day 3 (Magic Kingdom) Part 1

Magic Kingdom...the one thing that I've been wishing for since I was about 10. It's shameful that most of the day was Lex in meltdown mode, but when you're 2 11/12 and your nap schedule is screwed up and you're going to bed about 3 hours later than you normally do, meltdowns are going to happen. It's inevitable. Needless to say, my camera was in my backpack for the majority of the day, and the only photos I think we took during the day were at the Polynesian with the character breakfast, and pictures of our character dinner at the Crystal Palace later that afternoon.

Initially, we weren't going to go to the Polynesian for breakfast, but I think we decided we should go because we'd spent all this money on the deluxe dining plan, and we were seldom making it to our reservations...little did I know at the time that Dennis was actually having a gall bladder attack and that's why HE wasn't eating, but that's neither here nor there. So, anyway, we go over to the Polynesian for breakfast at 11a at 'Ohana. Turns out it was a character breakfast, so we're VERY glad that we did go. The only times on MK day that we were able to get Lex to comply with ANYTHING was when we were hanging out with the characters. And truthfully, before we left I thought I would be really freaked out by the characters in all their ginormous headed glory, but watching Lex engaging with them took away some of my anxiety. Lex loved meeting all of the characters, and he was definitely very happy when Mickey came over to sign his autograph book and take pictures with him. My favorite part was watching Pluto try to sign the autograph books. As you can see Pluto had to put the autograph book up on his nose to actually see the autograph book to sign it! Hilarious! Lex didn't know who Lilo and Stitch were, but it didn't prevent him from being super excited to get hugs and autographs from them.

After we had our fill of Mickey waffles, we hopped the monorail to Magic Kingdom. I've never been more excited to see something in all of my life. I guess I never told Dennis how much I wanted to go, but man, I was so overwhelmed at all of the 'stuff'! The first thing we did was hopped the Walt Disney World Express train around the park. Lex was already starting to get into his, "I don't want to!" phase, and we figured the train would be the best thing...kind of get his mind on things he DOES like. So, we rode the train around the park once, and then stayed on to get off in Mickey's Toon Town Fair. Holy lord. I can honestly say that I've never seen this many people in one place at one time. It was frightening how overwhelming all of the people are. And since we were having trouble getting Lex to really want to do anything, we spent a good portion of time just trying to get him to take it all in and enjoy it. You could get your picture taken with Minnie in her house, I think, but the line was CRAZY long (you'll start to notice a trend here) so I let the boys wander around in her house while I went to find a bathroom (line!!).

At some point, I decided that regardless of whether Lex wanted to be there or not, damn it, I was going to ride some of the rides that I'd read about as a kid. So, off to Dumbo we went. When we walked up, guess what? LINE! a 45 minute line...but I was dissuaded? Hellz no. So, I made my family stand in line for 3/4 of an hour for 2 minutes of pure bliss. And not just my own. Surprisingly, waiting in line was something that Lex seemed to tolerate (no idea why). And once we got him on the Dumbo, he was stoked. So much so, that I basically had to drag his tiny ass off of the elephant so another family could ride it. We promised we'd come back later.

Dennis downloaded some crazy app that lets you know the waiting time (both fast pass and stand by)for the rides. All of the rides we were interested in all had wait times of 60 minutes or more. So, in frustration, we got on the Liberty Square Riverboat. At this point, Lex lost his shit. He screamed the ENTIRE time we were on the boat. The whole 20-30 minutes. Mostly because we wouldn't let him run up and down the stairs willy-nilly.

After the disastrous boat ride, it was getting close to parade time. Now, parade time is cool, but it is also very well organized and very crazy. My friend, Melissa (here's where she makes her appearance and will have a MUCH bigger role in the next edition ), is a big shot! She works for Disney and on this particular day she was manning the Main Street parade. She'd told me the night before that she would be doing this, and due to our late start we got in touch with her kind of late. We weren't going to be able to see the Main Street's afternoon parade (which I'm sure has a name, but I just don't know it!), but she would hook us up for the Main Street Electrical Parade. While we tried to find a place to view the parade, which never happened, Lex proceeded to throw the tantrum to end all tantrums. So, what did we do? Oh, we headed for 'dinner'.

'Dinner' (which is in quotes because it was at 3:40p) was at the Crystal Palace. Now, when I told everyone we were eating here, everyone said, "Oh, it's so awesome! It's my favorite". Well, it easily became MY favorite too. Another character meal? Yes, please. Because as I've stated on NUMEROUS occasions: You want my kid to behave? Put a character in his face! So, that's what we did. And I'm so glad we did. Because this tiny little face lit up every single time a character came near him. He ate most of his food with out us having to coerce him, he interacted pleasantly with us, he squealed when characters would get near us, and most of all he got over his terrible temper tantrum.

After lunch, we hopped on the bus to head back to the 'Star House' so that Mommy and Daddy could relax after the insane Lex day, and so that Lex could try to wind down a bit and take a nap. At this point, getting Lex past the arcade is proving to be nothing short of a challenge. On the first day we were there, I took him in there to keep him busy while Dennis stood in line for 90 minutes or whatever to check us in. From that point on, every single time we needed to go into the main part of the building, Lex had a cow if we would try to go past the arcade without going in. No amount of pulling, pushing, whatever, kept him from freaking the hell out if we didn't let him go inside. This day was no exception. So, we dragged a screaming toddler (oh, the best part of WDW? We were NEVER the only parents with the screaming toddler)past the arcade...again.

I would have to say that my biggest regret was not taking nearly enough pictures during the day at MK. Oh, we MORE than made up for it at night, that's for sure, but I mean, really? Who wants a bunch of pictures of a red-faced screaming kid on a 2k vacation? Not me. That's for sure.

'Say What' Wednesday

Well, Lex is definitely learning some of our colorful vernacular.

Lex: Daddy, you are a wiener.

Lex: Daddy, do NOT talk with your mouth full!

Lex: I'm gonna kick you in the NUTS! (yeah, he got that one from me. My bad.)

Last week, it snowed terribly in Bloomington, so I left the 4x4 with the boys in case they wanted to get out. Apparently, this was what Lex said to Dennis

Lex: If we don't go pick up mommy at work, she'll have to work all night and she'll be mad. And then she won't come to my birthday party!

Next time on 'Intervention'

Well, now that we seem to have slight handle on the potty training thing, it's now time to move onto my son's crack habit aka 'the binky'. I remember *gazes wistfully out the window* when I was pregnant (read: stupid) and I thought, "My son will NEVER get a pacifier. Ick". Then, we brought him home. And he cried. A lot. And I needed my sanity. So, on our first night home, I took my hand inside of the dresser cabinet in his room and swept EVERYTHING on the floor. I dug through all of the baby stuff we had until I found a binky with a wee mouse on it (I still have it). He took the pacifier and was content. This means, if the pacifier is my son's drug of choice, I'm the drug dealer. And I'm still the drug dealer/enabler. Our daycare provider broke him of his addiction over a year ago, and I'm still dutifully, albeit unhappily, handing out 2 binkies a night when he asks for them. I've been wanting to break him of the habit for a long time, but I've always thought, "Well, let's wait until he gets to crawling phase..." and then crawling, led to walking, walking led to talking, and we're now at the point of no return. Now, he's working on his last two year molar, and I'm thinking when he finally cuts it all the way, I'm done.

I've heard many theories of how to handle this, and I'm thinking cutting the nub off is going to be the way to go. I've watched my son fall asleep and I know he puts the nub between his fingers of one binky to relax. I know when he's close to falling asleep because of this. And it sort of makes me sad because I feel like I'm forcing one thing after another and effectively MAKING him grow up. The only reason I'm making a big deal out of it is that we ran into a speech pathologist in WDW and she mentioned that she could tell my son still used a pacifier based on his L's and S's. She said that I needed to get him off of it ASAP. Initially, I was a little offended because it's none of her business, and part of me still feels that way. But she makes a valid point; I don't want to inhibit my son's speech by continuing to give him his drug of choice.

I wonder if A&E does a 'binky' intervention...

WDW Day 2 (Hollywood Studios) Part 2

I think Lex woke up around 6ish or so, and we headed back out to Hollywood Studios. We were going to see the 9p showing of Fantasmic (which was something that I was kind of wishy-washy about seeing), and after that we were going to see the Osborne Family Christmas Lights (not to be confused with THOSE Osbornes!). When we showed up at Hollywood Studios, there was already a line to get to the Fantasmic auditorium. Now, remember, we have no idea what this is. But the travel agent said that it wasn't something to be missed, and Dennis clearly took that to heart!

So, we stood in line. For about 30 minutes. And eventually, we started to move. And for the second time I made a Nazi Death March joke. I mean, seriously, we're just walking through the park like cattle with no idea where we're going, but when we did get to the auditorium it was HUGE. I'd say it easily held 10,000 people. and so we waited some more. With LOTS of 'Wave' action. Now, for whatever reason, Dennis HATES the wave. HATES. IT. I do not, so whenever it came to our section, I taught Lex the joys of the wave.

Promptly, at 9p, the show started with Mickey describing his 'dreams'. And I'm just going to go all dork on you, but this was definitely one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And I, personally, was so enthralled that I don't think I took a single picture of the things that we saw. Water fanned up out of the lake, and movies were projected on the water. On. THE. WATER. I've never seen anything this cool before. It probably lasted about 20 minutes with fire on water (again, Lex loves that stuff!), and boats of characters~ When it was over, we filed out, and headed towards the Osborne lights. Now, again, we've (for whatever reason) decided not to bring the stroller. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It is around 10p, Lex isn't willing to walk, and Dennis and I are having to switch off and on from carrying him, and trying to coerce him into walking.

Once we finally made it to the light show, it was spectacular. I've never seen anything like it. This was about the only time that we were able to get Lex to walk because he was clearly exhausted/enamored like we were! We loved the 'appearance' of Dr. Doofenshchmirtz; it was definitely the highlight of our night! And it was COLD. It was like being in Indiana. They had fake snow flying, but I swear it was freaking cold enough to actually really snow down there. Once we were sufficiently frozen, we decided to head back to the 'Star House' for the night. Back on the bus, all snuggled up with the little man, and off to sleep.

Day 2 was at Magic Kingdom and we were PUMPED!

'Say What' Wednesday

Oh, my 7 readers, I'm so sorry about slacking on the Disney thing. When I get home from work, I'm exhausted, and then I have 3 year old up in my face, and when he goes to bed I go work out...blogging is usually saved for lunches and in between work to refresh myself. I'll try to get back to it, but mostly for me. I'm going to forget all the terrible/wonderful things.

At any rate, I bring you, LEX!

Me: Lex, go pee pee.
Lex: No, mommy, I'm too lazy.

Lex (randomly to me): *pats my hand* You'll be fine, mommy. (for whatever reason, this shocked me)

Me: *hands Lex a cup full of water*
Lex: Ugh. Mommy, this water tastes TERRIBLE

Me to D: Turn this (2010 'Clash of the Titans') off.
Lex: Nooooooo! I'm watching this!

Say What Wednesday

Lex: Mommy, you only have four hands.
Me: Lex, I only have two hands.
Lex: Yeah, whatever.

Lex: I don't want to go pee pee in my underwear.
Me: That's good.
Lex: Yeah, I want to go pee pee on the floor.

Lex (seeing my bottle of wine): I want YOUR grape juice.
Me: You stay AWAY from my sangria, kid.