Cassie Sassafrass

It’s another hot day here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We didn’t go swimming though. We decided it wasn’t that hot. We did let Jacky play in his sand box. Which he just loves. He was wanting me to get in it with him today. Let me start this story by explaining how we do things in our family. If we want Jack to do something and he doesn’t want to we’ll encourage him by telling him how well he’s doing it even before he starts. Like this “Jack can you put away your books? Oh, good job putting the books away.” Sometimes we even clap while we’re praising him. And he’s so happy that he’s doing a good job already that he actually starts doing what we want him to do. Or if something minor happens to him and we don’t want him to cry we’ll clap and praise him for whatever it was that happened. “Oh wow! Jacky fell down! Good job Jacky!” and he gets all excited and does it a couple of more times because he’s just so happy about it.

Ok, so this is how it went today.

Jacky: “Mama, I want need help. Come on. I want need help!”

Mama: “No, I’m just going to watch you. You’re doing a good job all by yourself.”

Jacky: “Mama, I want need help. Come on. I want need help!”

Mama: “No, no Jacky. You’re doing fine by yourself.”

Jack: “Come on Mama, do good by self. Come in sandbox by self. Come on. All by self, Mama.”

I thought I was going to pee my pants it was so funny. Little does he know that it doesn’t work as well on parents as on children.

Speaking of Jacky. He’s been doing great at daycare. Last week and this week his main teacher has been on vacation. So the assistant teacher, Anna, has been in charge. Anna’s sister came to hang out with them on Friday and apparently Jack was a good helper. He got a “Wow!” award for using his listening ears. And when Anna asked her sister which kid she liked the best she said she liked Jack the best because he always listens and he does a really good job with housekeeping, washing hands and the other things that other kids his age have a hard time with. It makes me feel a little like “Supermom”. But as I was telling my friend earlier today, it’s not about me being a good mom, it’s about Jacky being such a good little boy.

My friend told me that she’s trying to break her son of the bottle and he’s turning two tomorrow. She asked if Jack still takes a bottle. I told her that no, he hasn’t since he was around 13-14 months old. It was fairly easy to break that habit because he was happy to use a cup with a straw that he didn’t miss the bottle. And he wasn’t like some kids who had to carry the bottle around all over the place either. He only had it while being held for the most part. He just gave it up by himself. It wasn’t something we had to work at very hard.

It was the same with sleeping through the night. Jack just did that himself when he was around 4 months old. He started sleeping around 6-7 (5.5 is considered “all night” for infants) hours at night by himself. And it just got longer as he got older. He now sleeps at least 12 hours a night which is down from the 13 he was doing from 12 to 24 months of age. I think he’d still be doing 13 hours a night if he didn’t have to get up to go to daycare every day.

We’ve tried to shorten his sleeping time but whenever he goes to bed over an hour or two past his normal bedtime he has night terrors. I think he just needs his sleep.

Mom, Steve, you can keep your ruder comments to yourself.

Well I have to get going. I need to get out of this hot computer room.

Ciao. Ciao. Ciao.