Weekend Fun & New Pics Posted

Howdy from Washington! It's been a beautiful last couple of days here - we have gotten a break from the rain and it's actually been sunny. Last Thursday Brooke, Jill and I took our kiddies to the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah. We had a great time running around and seeing all the animals, including the baby tigers (I think they're about 6 months old), which are adorable! I got an e-mail from Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle that they have a new baby Gorilla, so we'll probably be taking a trip over there when it goes on display!

Things have been okay, the last week has been really tough with Sam pretty much fighting everything. He doesn't like getting put in the car and I have to physically hold him down and struggle with him to get him bucked. He doesn't like having his diaper changed or getting dressed. And he especially doesn't like bedtime. There's been a lot of lying on the floor throwing little fits and it's tiring. We put a CD player in his room yesterday and played one of the Backyardigans CDs when he was going to sleep, which seemed to help a little bit. It also seems to help to play some music to distract him during diaper changes.

Yesterday we went to the 'Fall Fun Festival' at church, and Sam ran amok in his totally cute peacock costume. He had a little bit of a meltdown because he hadn't had his nap yet, but all in all he did well. Today was Brooke & Dave's annual kiddie Halloween party. He played a ton and we had a great time. Check out my photo album for pictures of these events!

I also finally posted photos from my Baptism and a few other events in September and October, plus some random pictures from those months. Enjoy!

Bedtime Bummers

In the last week, bedtime and naptime have become real bummers around our house. For months, Sam was going down to bed every night with no crying - we'd just put him in his crib and he laid down and sometimes he would be awake for up to an hour in there, but he'd just be hanging out, cooing once in a while, and eventually drift off. Well, that's not the case anymore. Every night he starts fighting as soon as he realizes we're walking towards his bedroom to put him to bed. He starts flailing around if I try to sit down in the rocking chair with him and crying. If we stand up and hold him and sing to him (Baa Baa Black Sheep seems to be a current favorite for some reason), he'll calm down and lay his head down, but as soon as we move to put him in the crib he get upset and starts crying again. It's not a whining cry either, it's a full on 'you're abandoning me forever when you put me in this crib, aren't you?' kind of cry. Every night. Even on the nights he only cries for 5 minutes, it sucks. It really sucks putting him to bed and listening to him cry. He's in there crying right now. He cried for a few minutes and stopped, but now he's started again. Sigh... I just want to run in there and pick him up and let him stay up and be with me. But I know that won't help him learn to be okay with bedtime. So I just sit and listen to him cry and hope that I'm not sending him to therapy in 20 years.

My Amazing Son

Oh jeez, I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted any news of the Heiner clan. Wow, I suck! But I'm back now and have tons to report, and hopefully I will get a little more discipline and update for you to read much more often! I'm going to work on getting pictures from the last month up too, and we have some very cute videos to upload once we get them converted.

So, Sam is almost 18 months old! Can you believe it? I can barely believe it. He's gotten so big and so old, it seems like every couple of days he does something amazing and impresses us.

Sam's favorite thing to do is just to GO! He loves to walk and run and I think he would just go for hours and hours. Mom and Paul took him to the arboretum in Seattle last Saturday and he walked and ran around for 2 hours straight. He has so much energy!

He still loves Blue's Clues, but he's also into Dora, Go Diego Go, and The Backyardigans. He loves balls and he likes his trucks and toy cars. I got him a sorting toy the other day with a circle, square and triangle so he can play with that, but mostly he just opens up the bottom of the drum and puts things in and out that way!

We had to put locks on all of his dresser drawers because he started opening them and taking his clothes out and spreading them all around the house! I couldn't put them away because there was no point since he'd just take them out again. So, now that problem is solved. He's in 18 month clothes now, the shirts fit, but the pants are still falling off him and too long of course. He's sort of in between sizes for pants, so there's a lot of rolling them up. He's also having to get used to wearing regular hard soled shoes. We love Robeez, but now that the weather has started to morph into the Washington Winter aka the monsoon season, he needs to wear regular shoes that don't get soaked with water. We have a little pair of tennis shoes that he wears most of the time, and he's gotten very good at walking and running in them!

Sam's still not talking with words all that much. He bables a lot and makes sounds. Every once in a while, he says words and then doesn't repeat them for a while. The other day while looking at one of his Blue's Clues books, he said 'Blue' several times. While watching Dora the other day, he said 'moo' a bunch of times when they were mooing and talking about cows on the TV, then said 'ball' when they started playing with a ball. He says 'go' a lot, but I don't think he knows what it means.

I am surprised every day by the things he understands. He now understands 'Do you want a bath' and runs to the bathroom and pulls on the gate. If you say 'Are you hungry'? He runs to his high chair. And at night when we let him watch a tv show to wind down before bed, when it's over he knows that it's bedtime and stealthily tries to sneak off down the hallway towards the living room. The other day, he indicated that he was ready for bed for the first time. For some reason he didn't take a nap that day, so he was tired. When his Blue's Clues episode ended at 8:30, he took Justin's hand and led him in to his bedroom and grabbed his crib and looked up at Justin. I just couldn't believe it when Justin told me about it!

He is starting to try and climb a little bit. The other day he somehow climbed up onto the bed frame and then pulled himself all the way up onto the bed! That's pretty impressive since the bed is several feet off the floor! He also likes to lead us around now, he grabs your hand and pulls on it and then when you get up he leads you to where he wants to go.

He's still such a great baby. He does throw some tantrums and when he doesn't get his way he goes down on the floor and kicks his legs, but it just comes with the territory. It could definitely be a lot worse! Hopefully he's starting to get it out of his system a little so that he won't be as terrible in the twos, but we'll see.

Sam's doing really well at the church nursery and also the nursery at the gym. He usually cries right away when we leave him there, but by the time we get back he's normally playing. He really likes to play with cars and trucks and to play with the play kitchens.

Another semi-big change for our family is that I'm working again! About six weeks ago my old boss and good friend called me to see if I might be interested in basically doing my old job again part time and working from home. I thought about it and figured out that I can get in at least 3-4 hours of work every day without really disrupting Sam and Justin's schedule too much. So, I've been back to work for a little over a month. I work during Sam's naps and after he goes to bed, and on Tuesdays I go in to the office in Seattle for 4 hours, from 11-3 so I can avoid the traffic. Some days Justin has to take care of Sam more because I have to do phone interviews, but I'll tell ya, the extra paycheck is nice! I've been working 22-25 hours a week. The first couple of weeks were hard, partly because things were so disorderly since they hadn't had an HR person in for several months. But things are back on track now and it's going well. It's nice to be using my brain a little bit again!

Well, I'll go for now, but I'll try to make it back a lot sooner this time!