Lex has entered a weird, though probably
normal, hitting phase. He does it more out of curiosity than
anger, it seems. And he frequently announces his intentions
before actually doing anything. “I’m going to hit Eve,” he’ll
say. Or “Mommy, sit down so I can hit you.” Ummm…. right. He
also likes to throw things and has started doing weird role
playing sometimes, like this morning when he put Snoopy Dog in
a bucket and then put the school bus on top of him and told me,
“I’m hitting Snoopy Dog with the school bus.” All very
experimental and not angry, but I still don’t like it. I need
to reread the Love & Logic books because we are definitely
getting into new territory here. We were visiting with friends
tonight and Lex picked up a plastic snake and flicked it at
Tallis, not knowing how much it would hurt. Poor Tal ended up
with a welt on his neck and we headed home. Oddly enough, at
that same moment, Mike (Tallis’s dad) and I were talking about
the book Raising
Cain and another similar book they had read, both of
which discuss the nature of boys. I’m definitely going to have
to work on my parenting skills in this department. Sometimes I
miss the tiny boy he used to be. Sometimes he’s still a tiny
boy that curls up in my lap for stories and says, “I love you
mommy.”

This is super dorky to post, but I’m going
to anyway :) Lex and I had a great time this morning playing
with the K’Nex toys he got from his friends Luca and Tallis for
his birthday. We made lots of things, but these are what we are
most proud of. Lex made the car with the red bumper and helped
with the garage. I made the “creature,” but he made it do
Tae-bo. We had fun.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK65lw61rP4]

Lex hasn’t had a nap since Monday, which
was a nap on me on the couch. I decided this week to stop
forcing the issue and see how he does. Lesson learned: still
not ready to give up naps! He has been falling asleep between
6:00-6:30 each night and usually half asleep all day. He’s also
been getting up at 5:30am all week, possibly because of the
early bedtimes. These past few days he even takes pretend naps
and tells me that he’s sooo tired. But when I offer to let lay
down in his bed and listen to some music (code for take a nap)
he always says no. We are going out tonight (bringing dinner to
the Diehn’s with their new little bundle) and I decided that a
nap is a requirement. I figured I’d fight the fight if
necessary. Instead he was taking play naps all morning and went
upstairs about a half hour ago and went right to sleep. It
would be nice to think he’s starting to appreciate the value of
a nap, but we’ll see.

Along the lines of
sleep (or lack thereof) we are moving him into a twin bed this
weekend. He’s been coming into our bed a lot lately and I often
find him sleeping in his bed with his legs hanging off the
side, or hear him bumping into the wall a lot. He started
coming into our room in the morning a few months ago and it was
sweet, then he came in earlier and slept with me for a bit
before we got up, now he comes in several times a night. He
just crawls into the bed next to me and keeps sleeping, but it
wakes me up. Then I have to decided if I should bring him back
to his bed (knowing he’ll be back again anyway) or just let him
sleep with us for the rest of the night. I think a bigger bed
is definitely in order. He’s very excited about it too. We got
new sheets this week and I was going to set the bed up
yesterday, but it’s so buried in the storage room I decided to
wait for Alan’s help this weekend. Maybe we’ll all get a little
more sleep after that.