As an infant, Reese absolutely refused pacifiers. I am partially to blame because in some of the literature I read, it said not to give breastfed infants pacifiers because it could cause nipple confustion. Eventually I decided that using a pacifier would not be confusing and attempted to get her to use a pacifier. We bought every brand, size and style available when she was an infant trying to get her to take a bink, but she would just spit them out. My mother found that she would keep one in if you tapped the front of the pacifier while it was in Reese's mouth, but the point of a pacifier is that the child can use it to calm themselves so that kind of defeated the purpose. One thing that Reese would do though is to stick her thumb in her mouth and suck if she was upset, tired or hungry. It calmed her down whereas sticking a pacifier in her mouth only upset her more. It was easy whereas keeping track of pacifiers would be a lot more difficult. Though several memebers of our families were totally against it and told me that I should wrap her hands up and force her to take the pacifier, I couldn't do it. They warned that it would be hard to take away from her, that it would ruin her teeth and countless other things, but I didn't care. I still don't care. Reese still speaks and speaks clearly, it has done no more damage and doesn't look uglier than her black tooth (which she got in a fall), I see no disadvantages or truly harmful effects. I have worried that cosmetically she has changed the shape of her nose by flattening the cartilage at the end of her nose. She kind of hooks her hand around her nose to help hold it up and in place and in the process flattens her nose. What do you think? Can you see a difference in these two pictures?

Although I truly believe that Reese's thumbsucking would go away as she ages, I did decide that at 3 years of age it would be time to just make Reese aware of when she is sucking her thumb, because it is just so natural for her to have it in her mouth. Hopefully by making her aware of when she is sucking her thumb, she will find something else to do if she is bored or seeking comfort. I have been asking her to stop and take her thumb out of her mouth for about 2 months now. Sometimes she pulls her thumb right out, other times she refuses and then I try to redirect her attention and get the thumb out of her mouth. We ordered, "The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Habit", where sister bear has a habit of nail biting. We read it nightly and substitute nail biting for thumbsucking. She loves the story and looks forward to it nightly. We also implemented a chart system where we give Reese stickers randomly throughout the day when she is not sucking her thumb and take stickers away when we catch her randomly putting her thumb in her mouth. This has been very effective as she hates to have her stickers taken away. Once she fills the chart with stickers we plan to take her to get a special toy for her accomplishment. All in all things have been going pretty well. Today she brought her hand up and dropped it down before she could get her thumb in her mouth. Hopefully making her aware of the habit now will relieve her from teasing when she starts school next year.

Sick and tired

Poor Aidan has had a fever and not been feeling well for the past 24-36 hours. He has been extra clingy and not his usual happy-go-lucky self. Thinking that he was feeling better and had broken the fever, we attempted to go out to dinner and get groceries tonight. As soon as we were seated in our booth, Aidan started to whimper. He grabbed for a rice krispy treat, so I opened it for him. He just played with it and then whined for something else. I pulled out a toy and he threw it. I grabbed some ice for him, thinking that his teeth were bothering him, but he threw that as well. I tried several other things to get him to quiet down and sit still and finally ended up pulling him into my lap and rocking him. He was pretty content like that until our food came. I tried to put him back in his chair to eat, but he was not having it. I sat him back down in my lap before he could get too upset and disrupt everyone around us. I ate one handed while he played with the food on my plate. After Randy finished eating, I handed Aidan over so that I could eat my meal. Aidan got more and more agitated, so I shovelled my food in and then grabbed him back from Randy. He calmed down some, but I was still worried about him being disruptive to others around us. I took him outside while Randy and Reese paid the bill and boxed up our leftovers. Aidan brightened up and actually got down to walk around a little while we were outside.
We packed back into the car and drove to HyVee to get some pop. Randy ran in so that we would not have to take Aidan in and out multiple times. We had not gone grocery shopping for almost 3 weeks, so it was a necessity that we get groceries, or we would have just gone home with our sick child. While Randy was gone, Reese revealed that she had to go to the bathroom. I asked her to wait until daddy was back and we went to the next store. When Randy returned without pop because they did not have any good sales, we decided to go to Target. I took the kids to the bathroom while Randy checked out the pop. Just as we were exiting the bathroom he was exiting the checkout. We got back into the car and went down the street to Sam's. Unfortunately we could not make it very quickly through the store because they had remodeled and we did not know where everything was. We got our groceries pretty quickly by spreading out and each taking 1/2 of the list. Soon we were back in the car and headed home.
While driving Reese asked me if she should sing Aidan a "Stop crying song". I said sure and she strung together this adorable little song:
"I am here
Mommy is here
she will be here forever"
He ended up falling asleep and Reese continued to sing. Then out of nowhere Reese leaned over to his carseat and yelled, "tickle, tickle!" while tickling his toes. He woke up momentarily crying, but went right back to sleep. Once we got home he woke up again. I took him into the house and gave him some motrin and we snuggled on the couch until it was time for bed. Fortunately he went right to sleep. Usually the kids are very good sleepers, hopefully he will get a good nights sleep tonight and feel better in the morning.

Sprinkler Fun

Some pics of the kids cooling off in the sprinkler yesterday:




Aidan was very tentative at first, just putting his hands into the water stream. After a few minutes he was sticking his face into the stream and drinking the water!

Jam Packed 4th

We had a very busy 4th, as I'm sure most people did. Our weekened was jumpstarted early Friday with a family lunch outing and grocery shopping. Later that afternoon we took the boat out for a few hours with Aunt Steffane. We came in by 6 so that we could clean up and prepare for a bigger outing the next day.
We spent the day Saturday boating and playing in the water. We went out rather early, about 9 am, so as to avoid the crowds at the dock trying to put their boats into the water. We had planned on coming in around 2 pm or as soon as the kids started getting crabby. They were so good that it was around 3 before we actually came in. I washed the kids up and put them to bed at my in-laws so that we could swim a little at their pool while the kids napped.




On Sunday we went out for breakfast with Great Grandma and Grandpa Winslow like usual. Afterward we stopped back at Grammy and Grampys to visit with Great Grandma and Grandpa Freeman. Soon after we made the hour long trek to Dubuque for my families 4th of July/ Family Reunion. My mom and her sisters put together a mini olympics for the kids and the adults had horseshoe tournaments after lunch. I don't know who had more fun, the kids or the adults!


The kids were so worn out from the days events that they fell asleep early. I figured I could wake Reese up to go to the fireworks, but as I talked to her trying to get her to wake up, her eyes just rolled back in her head. I was a little disappointed, but Randy reminded me that there would be more fireworks for us to attend before the end of summer.
Monday we were so worn out and the weather was kind of dismal, so we ventured out to lunch with Randy's family and rented a few movies for the afternoon. It was nice to be able to just relax after such a busy and fun filled weekend.

My little daredevil

It is amazing how much more comfortable and experienced Reese has gotten with her bike in just the past few weeks. When she first got it she needed help getting on the bike and once on would need a push to get rolling. Now she hops right on all by herself and can even get herself over bumps in the concrete. It is great to be able to sit back and watch without having to assist her every few minutes. But with her confidence she has also become a bit of a daredevil. The other day she rammed into the porch swing and sent the reflector flying. Today she sang a little song and even did the hand motions while riding her bike! This one is funny!

Favorite part of the day

Tonight while Reese was eating dinner, our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Reese what was your favorite part about today?"
Reese: "Digging in the sand with the kids."
Me: "Oh that was a good one. My favorite part was floating down the river with you and Aidan and grammy."
Reese: "Me too. What was Aidan's favorite part?"
Me: "I bet it was eating cheetos because everytime I looked at him he seemed to be eating them."

Big Helpers

I don't know what it is about my kids, but whenever I get out the vaccum cleaner or swiffer, or try to load or unload the dishwasher they are standing right there clamoring to help out. I only wish that this desire to help out will last until I can really utilize it!