Lost and finally found

It took some time, but we found my keys. They were in a plastic bag in our sunroom.
Hmm, I wonder how they got there? It doesn't really matter, we found them and I've learned that I need to have a safe and secure place to put my keys every day that the kids cannot reach.

I'm just thankful they weren't in the garbage.

Lost and not found - yet

I lost my keys this morning. I don't mean the kind of lost like they weren't were I left them and I found them someplace else, I mean lost like I had to get our spare house key and use the valet key to start my car this morning.

They are gone.

I discovered their disappearance in the midst of our mad rush out the door this morning. Ryan was in his car seat, Sophia had her jacket on and I was headed for the door when I discovered my keys weren't in my pocket. I checked my pocket book. Nothing. I emptied my purse three separate times. Still no keys.

So, the frantic search for the keys began. We checked in all the usual places: the door, the computer table, the kitchen counter and all the coat pockets. Then we started in some not-so usual places, like the under the couch, the bookcase, Sophia's toy box, even the trash can. For 45 minutes, my husband and I turned the house upside down looking for these keys. We found nothing.

As far as I'm concerned they got up and walked out the door themselves.

This is a disaster. I know it's not the end of the world, but it is so frustrating. The remote for my car is now gone, so I can't use the automatic door opener function on my car or set the alarm. All those silly grocery store cards are on my keys, and the worst is the key fob to get into daycare is gone and that's $10 to replace.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my dear Sophia may have thrown out the keys, but I have no real proof. She's never thrown anything like that out before, but there is a first time for everything and I think this might be it. I'm secretly hoping I'll get home tonight and they'll be sitting on the counter, but I doubt that will really happen.

The restaurant scene

After being stuck in the house and feeling sick last week, we decided to go out Saturday. No one was feeling 100 percent yet, but my husband and I were desperate to get out of the house. Between the sicknesses and the snow, we had a severe case of cabin fever. So we packed up the babies and my stepson and invited my aunt to meet us at a restaurant for an early dinner.

It started off very well. Sophia was well-behaved and actually eating and Ryan sat happily in his car seat, but this lasted for about 10 minutes.

Before our food even came to the table Ryan had enough of sitting in the car seat. I picked him up and he ate a little, but before long he was tired. He still wasn't feeling great and he was ready for another nap.

From the beginning, we've been very consistent that when Ryan is tired, we lay him down so he can fall asleep. We don't rock him to sleep and we don't feed him to sleep. Because of this, he's generally good at getting himself to sleep. (We're still working on getting him to fall back to sleep after waking in the middle of the night, but we're talking small victories here)

Anyway, in the restaurant, Ryan is tired and letting the entire restaurant know that he needs a nap. He doesn't want to be held, he won't take a bottle and he didn't want baby food. If we stood up with him and walked around he'd quiet for a bit and then start screaming again.

He wanted to lay down and go to sleep. Nothing else would soothe him.

When our food got to the table, one of us shoved some food in our mouths while the other held the baby. With the addition of my aunt and stepson, Sophia was kept occupied and my aunt helped hold Ryan. But this doesn't fly for very long out in public.

After about 10 minutes, I'm sweating, nervous and really ready to go home. I feel like we are making a scene. I just want to leave so that all the good people around us can eat in peace. I take the baby from my husband and stand up, knocking the car seat off the chair and onto the floor with a loud bang. A nice woman at a table next to us ran over to help pick up the car seat.

Now I know we're making a scene and it's time to go.

But we still have to pack up the kids and pay the bill, so my husband puts Ryan's jacket on and takes him outside. At this point, Ryan is screaming uncontrollably as the hostess seats a nice family on either side of our table.

With Ryan outside I can think. I look up and see Sophia standing up in the high chair trying to climb out.

Like lightening, we put on Sophia's coat, grab our stuff, pay the bill and race out the door. As soon as the car is on, Ryan stops crying.

If we were at home, we would have put Ryan in his crib and he would've fallen asleep and we would have had a peaceful dinner. So, we'll be eating in for now, until cabin fever sets in again and we forget how bad it really is to take the kids out to dinner.

Terrible mommy moment

Sometimes I feel like the worst mom on the planet. Most of the time, it's because I did something, or didn't do something, that most moms wouldn't blink an eye at doing. Today, it's the flu shot.

I've never gotten a flu shot. Most people I know who've gotten the shot get the flu anyway. Plus, I'm relatively healthy, so what's the big deal, right?

Sophia gets a flu shot every year. I was told that Ryan couldn't get one until he was at least 6 months old, which meant he wasn't getting one this flu season and my husband and I had to get one to help protect our little guy.

Well, we never got one, so of course, I got the flu.

It started last week with some aches and pains, chills and a fever. I ignored it. On Wednesday, Ryan was sent home from daycare with a fever. By Thursday, he and I were both so sick that I made doctor's appointments for both of us.

If you've ever gotten a flu test, you know that it's reason enough to get a flu shot. If you haven't, I'll tell you that the doctor sticks this tube up your nose and rubs your sinuses to collect mucus and then tests it for influenza.

It hurts like nothing I've ever felt before. It's a sharp pain that makes your eyes water and your nose run and bleed.

My test came back positive, which, according to Ryan's pediatrician, likely means my little guy has the flu too.

Ryan has done pretty much nothing but sleep, cry and sometimes eat for the last three days. I feel terrible about it. I'm taking Tamiflu, which helps me get over the flu faster, but there isn't anything we can give him. Only time and Tylenol to help with the fever.

I am sick. Really sick, like I haven't been for a very long time. And I feel terribly guilty knowing that all this suffering could have been prevented with one simple trip to the doctor for a flu shot that I didn't have time for.

Baby love

Since my daughter was born, we have been fanatical about taking her picture. Every time she does anything, we take a picture.

When I got pregnant with Ryan, my mom warned that we probably wouldn't take as many pictures of Ryan as we did Sophia. Well, in his first 24 hours of life, we took more than 200 pictures of our new little guy. The only difference between having one and two children is that I don't have as much time to share as many pictures as often with my family.

Over the weekend, we got a new camera, so we took this opportunity to back up the photos on our computer. We have more than 3,000 pictures chronicling the lives of our children.

Our pictures range from playing at the park to "photo shoots" at the dinner table. If Ryan is playing on the floor looking particularly cute, we pull out the camera. Sophia has a cute outfit on or she lets me put barrettes in her hair, out pops the camera.

From the day Sophia was born , that is about 5 pictures per day … of the kids. Sophia runs up to the camera every time it comes out and says "Cheese." She loves the camera and is always performing for it. Ryan is still little, but we're working on him.

Every single morning, we dress Sophia and she models her outfit for her Daddy. Little boy clothes are not nearly as cute as little girl's, but we make sure Ryan knows that he looks super cute too.

Am I training my children to be vain and narcissistic, or just proud of how they look? We're going for proud.

I think my own parents have maybe 500 pictures of our entire family. My mom is always "mentioning" that we don't have any studio pictures of the kids. The only "professional" photo I have of Sophia is her school photo and it's cute, but not the best. She looks … concerned. When you take so many pictures, you are bound to get a really great picture. A picture, in my opinion, that's better than Sears or the Picture People could ever take.

Play time all the time

Yesterday afternoon, my husband turned to me and said, "You know, we don't do anything but play with our kids all day long."

Ugh, I know.

That got me to thinking about our lifestyle and what it means for our kids. He's absolutely 100 percent right that we spend a lot of time playing with our kids, but I'm not exactly sure what else I'm supposed to be doing.

I don't think Sophia is old enough to be left to her own devices yet and Ryan still needs protection from his big sister's advances. So else is there?

We did the laundry. Our house is relatively clean and the dishes are done. Doing housework isn't exactly what I call a good time, so if it doesn't have to be done, it probably won't. It's the middle of the winter, so we can't really play outside. If there is a random nice day, I'll bring Sophia outside to play for a bit while Ryan sleeps or we'll take the kids for a walk around the neighborhood, but all of these activities involve me and my husband interacting with the kids.
All day long we are playing with the kids, whether we're coloring, playing hide and seek, feeding the baby or playing dress up, we are our kids constant playmates.

Our basement has been converted to a playroom/bedroom for my stepson, but I can't leave Ryan and Sophia done there alone. I think once Ryan is 2 and Sophia is 3, maybe I'll be able to let them play without my supervision, but until then I am the referee and team captain.

And for now, I don't think it's such a bad thing. There will be a time when my kids won't want to be near me, so I guess we should take advantage of this while we can.

The flip side of rolling over

Last night was the worst night in weeks.

We have a cat. We have a hungry and somewhat annoying cat. Most cats will graze all day on a bowl of food. If I left a bowl of food out for my cat she would eat and eat and eat until she threw up. So, we feed her like a dog, two meals: one in the morning and at night.

Last night, she decided that morning was 3 a.m., so to let us know she was hungry, she sat in front of the kids’ rooms and meowed as loud as she could until we got up and fed her.

I should note that we have a cat feeding timer and last night it was set to open at 4 a.m. but the cat decided 3 a.m. would be better.

This is not an isolated incident, so Sophia has gotten pretty used to this routine and can now sleep through it. Ryan, however, has not fully development that ability yet.

Recently, Ryan’s been waking up and soothing himself back to sleep, but now that he’s getting to be a pro at rolling over, when the cat started meowing last night, Ryan woke up, rolled over and freaked out. This happened five times between 3 and 4 a.m.

For the first and second roll over I went to his room and rolled him back and he fell back to sleep. The third time I thought if I gave him a bottle he’d really fall back to sleep and we could get through the rest of the night.

Two ounces later he was a sleep and I was back to bed, but not for long. He woke up two more times by rolling himself over before he finally settled back to sleep.

Anybody want a cat?

My funny Valentine

This year's Valentine's Day was even better with two!

Happy Valentine's Day

This is my favorite Valentine

Last Valentine's Day, I was working late. I'm not sure why, but I was there and it was a lot later than I wanted to be there. During this particularly frustrating night, this photo appeared in my e-mail inbox. It made my day. Sophia is 7-months-old in this picture.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The cult of Elmo

Elmo rules my house. This silly red Sesame Street puppet has the ability to calm the most wound up toddler. Elmo (a.k.a "Sesame Street," "Elmo's World") is the only TV Sophia asks to watch. Elmo is teaching Sophia how to use the potty. Elmo tells Sophia in her Valentine's Day book that he loves her. Elmo talks to her on the phone. My aunt even made an Elmo book about cutting Sophia's nails. Sophia will do almost anything Elmo tells her to do. Elmo is my hero.

He is also my archnemesis. If she glimpses Elmo any where, in any place, she immediately reacts and needs to see it. We avoid the toy aisle like the plague.

Sophia went to day care today dressed head-to-toe in Elmo. From her Elmo sneakers to her Elmo track suit, this child was decked out. She was so proud of her outfit, and she did look cute, but it's also a little disturbing.

She has red Elmo slippers and Elmo sneakers, an Elmo towel and washcloth, Elmo books and videos, Elmo dolls, Elmo telephones, Elmo music, Elmo sippy cups, an Elmo fork and spoon, an Elmo chair, I even have two Elmo videos in my iPod for those particularly bad car rides. It's gotten so overwhelming that if Sophia sees something red, she'll point to it and say, "Melmo, Melmo."

What is it about that furry red monster? Sometimes when Sophia has a particularly rotten day I pop in an Elmo video or turn on Sesame Street On Demand and she is happy as a lark for about an hour. She exercises with Elmo and dances with Elmo.

But there is only so much Elmo an adult can take.

I've tried to play up Big Bird, Cookie Monster even Grover, but none of those characters hold a candle to Elmo. I'm sure Ryan will soon be inducted into the Elmo fan club, and at that point I might as well paint my house red and wave the white flag.

Elmo's Potty Time: Sesame Street

No punishment harsh enough

Toilet training is hard, there's no argument about that. We are introducing Sophia to the potty and she thinks the whole purpose of the toilet is to say bye-bye to the water as it flushes. She'll sit on it for a bit, get up and says, "Bye-bye pee-pee," with no actual pee-pee in the potty.

It's frustration, yes, but she's only 1 so I'm just glad she's sitting on the potty. So, I was shocked after reading a recent Associated Press article about an 18-year-old man who was sentenced to life in prison for killing girlfriend's 1-year-old over toilet training frustration.

According to the article, "A judge has sentenced a teenager to life in prison for killing an 1-year-old boy by repeatedly swinging him against a wall because he was frustrated with the child's toilet training." Authorities said the man, the mother's boyfriend, repeatedly slammed the boy against the wall when he became frustrated while trying to toilet train him. The impact left drywall stuck to the boy's head and cracked a wooden door.

I am completely speechless. Violence against the innocent is inexcusable. As far as I'm concerned there isn't a harsh enough punishment for this man.

New top dog in town

Last week, Sophia moved from the 13 to 18 month old room at daycare to the 19 to 24 month old room. It was a big move because now she is playing with the big kids.

After only one week in the room, she is already in a fight for the alpha dog position, and I'm afraid she is going to win it.

On top of being strong-willed and extremely independent, she can be a little aggressive. She's a biter.

We've been dealing with the biting problem since Sophia cut her first couple of teeth. Until last week, I wasn't exactly sure why she was biting. Some of the reasons for her biting I came up with were pain from cutting teeth, sleepiness and jealousy. Now, I'm pretty sure it's status.
At almost 35 inches tall and maybe 22 pounds, Sophia is lean and mean. Teachers tell me how she corrects the other children, picks up after them and keeps an eye on empty sippy cups. If she notices a child is running low on juice, she will take it to a teacher and get it refilled. When a child cries, she goes over to them and pats their shoulder and tries to comfort them.

Apparently, she can be a kind and generous leader, but if one of her friends gets out of line by taking a toy from her, playing with something she wants or defies her in anyway, she will bite them. When I picked her up from school last Thursday, the teachers had just stopped her from biting another child.

I don't want her to hurt another child. I would say 95 percent of the time she is wonderful at school and plays nicely with her friends. It's that 5 percent of the time that I worry she is going to really hurt someone.

Babysitter blues

With Valentine's Day only a week away, my thoughts turn to baby sitting. I recently recruited one of Sophia and Ryan's part-time daycare teachers to baby sit for me. I last spoke with her in January before she went back to college. During that phone call we chatted about her work at the daycare, how she loves kids and wants to be a teacher and … how much she charges to baby sit: $10 an hour.

Like many girls, I did a lot baby sitting during college. It was a good way to make a couple extra bucks, and in some cases, a lot of extra money. I enjoyed the extra money, but now that I'm looking for my own baby sitter, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around $10 an hour.

Not that my kids aren't worth it, but the thought of paying someone $10 an hour to sit in my house while my kids are sleeping is a bit hard to swallow. I think if my kids were older and she had to give them dinner and get them to bed, the responsibilities would be greater and I would feel better about them cost.

So, here's what I've been thinking. I could ask the girl to come to my house during the day so my husband and I could have a midday date. This way the kids would be awake and she would have more responsibilities and I would feel better about parting with $10 an hour. We could go to a nice place for lunch, but somehow ordering a bottle of wine and having a romantic LUNCH doesn't exactly sound, well, romantic.

We could just bite the bullet and pay the girl to sit at our house, but most likely we will put the kids to bed early, open a nice bottle of wine and cook dinner for ourselves. Our kitchen table may not be the most romantic setting, but we'll make due.

It's playtime ... finally

Over the last couple of weeks an amazing thing has been happening in the Hoffman house, my kids have begun playing together.

It only happens once in a while and only for brief amounts of time, but it does happen and I have never been happier. For some reason, Ryan finds Sophia hysterical, and it is absolutely adorable. She will get in his face and crack him up with some kind of nonsensical noise. It is so adorable that I want to cry when I watch them.

When Ryan starts laughing, Sophia takes that as a cue to keep going and they will just look at each other and make noises and laugh for up to 5 minutes. At that point, Ryan gets a little over stimulated and I need to step in and give him a little space. I know their play time will slowly increase as Ryan gets older.

There are many days I wish I had my kids a little more than 14 months apart. When I found out I was pregnant with Ryan, I cried. It was not expected and not immediately a joyous occasion. I was terrified of having them so close.

However, during my pregnancy, I met a lot of women who had children very close in age. It turned out to be more common than I first realized. Every single woman I met told me that at first it was going to be very hard, but as they got older it would get easier. And they were all right.

I am now thrilled that my children are close in age. My daughter simply loves her little brother. She has been anxiously waiting for him to react positively to her for four long months and now that it's happening, she is even more in love. You can see it in her eyes, and slowly that same excitement is brewing in Ryan's eyes.

It is wonderful to see them want to play with each other. I can't think of anything better.

Nights and weekends

Last week I reported that Ryan had slept through the night. He slept pretty well almost every night last week, that is, until the weekend.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, Ryan was up at least once in the middle of the night. Friday night he woke at 11:45 p.m., Saturday night it was 1:30 a.m. and Sunday night it was 4 a.m. I don't know what we are doing different at home that makes it so hard for him to sleep at night.

Sophia is the same way with her afternoon nap. At school, she naps from 12:30 to 3 p.m. She sleeps on a mat with a blanket. They eat lunch around 11:30 a.m. and everyone lays down for naps at 12:30. According to the teachers, she is a great sleeper and often they have to wake her at the end of nap time. Over the weekend, we have lunch at 11:30 and nap at 12:30, but she will only sleep for 45 minutes. If I'm really, really lucky and she is really, really tired, she will sleep for an hour and a half, but that hardly ever happens. Oh, and I've tried to let her sleep on the floor instead of her crib at home; that didn't work AT ALL.

As far as Ryan is concerned, he takes two pretty good naps during the day and goes to bed with the same routine every day. Maybe he is sleeping too much during the day and that's why he wakes during the night? I really don't know. Maybe he just loves being home with Mommy and Daddy so much that he can't wait to wake up in the middle of the night to see us. Yeah, that's it.

I wonder if other parent's have this same problem, or if this is unique to my family?

Not ready for 2

On Sunday, Sophia turned 19 months. It may not seem like a big deal, but she is now more than half way to 2 and I am totally not ready.

She has already started to test her boundaries. Last week, I took Sophia and Ryan to our friend’s house to meet her new baby and Sophia was as good as could be expected. Of course, we had a little behavioral breakdown right before we left because she wanted to stand up on the kitchen chairs and, silly me, I didn’t think that was a safe activity for my little girl. So, a little temper tantrum occurred, but it was mild and I didn’t even really think about it until my friend and I started talking about how Sophia was “strong willed and very independent.”

I kind of laughed when I said that Sophia is so strong-willed that most times my husband and I give in well before she gives up. In fact, we try to be very consistent in our discipline, but the truth is that Sophia rules the house. The worst is when I’m correcting her and she starts laughing. I can’t help but laugh. She is so cute that I have to turn my head and make sure she doesn’t see me smile. Somehow, I’m sure my, “Sophia, this is not funny,” isn’t getting through to her.

At the suggestion of my friend, I went online and found a ton of web sites devoted to disciplining the strong-willed child. I’d like to say I will read every one of them so that I can be completely educated on the subject, but the truth is that I don’t really have time to devote to this research, especially since I don’t believe Sophia is a problem.

I think it’s good for Sophia to be strong-willed and independent and to really know what she wants and what she doesn’t want. I like that in her and I think it’s a quality that will be very useful to her as an adult. I love the fact that she is speaking in full sentences at 19 months and I attribute that to her being determined to let us know exactly what she wants. Sometimes it’s a little tough for us to figure out what she wants and she gets frustrated, but she doesn’t freak out or yell at us or get angry, she throws a little tantrum and what 2-year-old doesn’t.

So I say to Sophia, we will continue to set boundaries for you and I’m sure you will continue to test them. It’s only the beginning.