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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Wow. Just Wow.

Ummm... this video was posted on a mommy message board I read. The woman who posted it was remarking on how inappropriate it is, so I clicked to see what all the fuss was about. OHMAHGAH... Just in case you don't feel like clicking, I'll summarize. It's two little girls, ages six and nine, dancing in a VERY adult manner on their parents' kitchen counter to the Pussycat Dolls song "Buttons". (as in "loosen up my buttons baby") What the HECK is WRONG with the parents that they would let their kids do this?!?!?

It scares me to death that one day (possibly in the quite near future) I could have a daughter. I realize I'll have a say over how she dresses and what else she is influenced by. And my hope is to have a little girl who is actually a LITTLE GIRL, not a very small adult. But when she gets to school, I won't be able to shelter her from the OTHER girls... ones who, like these girls, already know enough to dance this provocatively... (AT AGE SIX!!!!!) It's really REALLY scary. I'm starting to think my mother-in-law hit the jackpot by having three boys.

The Hazards of Having a Boy...

I really thought I was well beyond the stage of getting peed on by my son.

Apparently not.

I took Ben to the bathroom this morning and while AIMING AT THE TOILET (he even had my help, so I know he was pointing the right direction) he managed to pee in my eye.

?!

He also got the wall, the floor, and the toilet paper holder. Again, all while actually aiming at the potty.

Sheesh.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Today, on Nesting Gone Wild...

I cleaned out the fridge and the freezer. Now I'm making a list so I can go to the store and stock both. Next up is the pantry.

I also cleaned out Benjamin's clothes... pulled out what was too small to put in the Ebay/charity pile... put shorts and tees in the top drawer, jeans and sweatshirts and long sleeve shirts in the bottom drawer... and cut tags off the bigger stuff I bought at the end of last season and added that stuff to the summer drawer. Go me.

Also on the docket today, I have to work on my notes for Ben's godmother. They have to be thorough since I have no idea how long she'll be here or what time of day she'll have to arrive! ;) Plus, I hate to take for granted that people know where things are in my house. I have actually entertained the idea of going out go get a label maker and labeling all the cabinets and Ben's drawers. I restrained myself. ;) I have an equally long note for Tom's parents for when they get Ben... I'm sure they will all laugh at me. But that's okay.

Someone stop me. Please.

Ben is being surprisingly tolerant of all of this boring stuff. He "helped" me put the clothes away and now he's playing with his light sabers. ;)

Monday, April 23, 2007

Nesting...Continued...

Since Benjamin has been napping, I have completely packed his overnight bag (except for his shorts and tshirts since I'm doing laundry), addressed all of the birth announcement envelopes, and ordered a part for the Pack-n-Play that has mysteriously walked off. Gosh, I love the end-of-pregnancy adrenaline rush! ;)

Yep. He Was *That* Kid...

Benjamin woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Going to bed late two nights in a row obviously caught up with him. He burst into tears three times before 10a.m... once because we wanted water in the green cup NOT the red cup, once because he wanted goldfish, not oatmeal for breakfast and once because he wanted "The Anakin Outfit".

I knew better, but I decided to try to run errands anyway. We got as far as Target before the tantrum happened. Oh yes, the people, they were staring and judging completely unabashedly as my ginormous belly and I lugged the screaming, snotting, 30-pound child through the parking lot to the tune of "I want the ANAKIN OUTFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and "I want my binkie and froggie!!!!"

Several comments:
a) I have NO idea what the Anakin outfit is or why he thought we were going to get one at Target. We've been trying to decipher the Anakin outfit thing for three days now, to no avail. All we can get out of him is that it is black, and apparently it is nowhere in our house.

b) The way he was acting, I wouldn't even have bought him a bottle of water, much less an Anakin outfit even if we HAD found one.

c) It's really embarassing to have your child tantruming and have each sentence start with "I want". I just KNOW people hear those two words and think he's only screaming because he's spoiled. (Which, being our first child, he is in many ways, but not in the "He gets something at the store every time we go" bratty way. Most times, I can take him to Target, we can wander through the toy aisles and he couldn't care less that we don't buy anything)

d) Yeah, I probably care too much about what other people think.

e) I have never seen a more tired child. He doesn't throw tantrums unless he has not gotten enough sleep.

Soooo....yeah...

He is currently sleeping on the couch, like I knew he would. He fell asleep about three minutes after we got home. (sigh) I'm enjoying the quiet and hoping when he wakes up, he's normal again.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

You'd Think We Spoon Fed him Sugar...

Yesterday, we had my two brothers-in-law, my sister-in-law and my youngest brother in law's girlfriend (did you catch all that?) over for dinner and to play some board games.

Ben LOVE LOVE LOVES our extended family. (his uncles in particular, who have energy and enthusiasm on par with daddy's) He waited anxiously at the door for them to arrive. He hung with us the whole time and played and colored and went from one lap to the other, occassionally running in and out of the room to get various toys.

Then he got tired.

Tired Ben isn't what you might imagine. He usually doesn't get QUIETER. He doesn't even really get cranky. He just gets INSANE... and progressively more so the more tired he gets. It took us a long time to catch on to this pattern, but now that we're aware of it, it's pretty obvious.

Last night, he started running circles in the living room. And then running from one end of the room to the other, bouncing off the front door and then the back door, yelling and squeeling. You'd really have thought we gave him an espresso or two. It's a little embarassing when this happens because it really looks like our kid is completely out of control when in fact, he just needs to go to bed.

And sure enough, after everyone left and we put him in bed? He was out in two minutes. He didn't even MOVE from the position we originally put him in.

Does anyone else's child act this way when they're tired? Or is it just my crazy kid?

Friday, April 20, 2007

Because it Makes Me Laugh...

I'm getting this as part of Benjamin's "big brother" gift from the new baby...



Artoo Potatoo... how funny is that?!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

School...

I have been having second thoughts about not signing Benjamin up for preschool in the fall... he has SO much fun at his little one day a week Gymboree "preschool" and he does so well with participating that I really think real preschool (2-3 days a week) would be a great thing for him. Of course now I'll be lucky to find him a spot anywhere since they all started enrolling in January... but we'll see. I could just stick with Gymbo school, but it's centered around a "letter of the day" curriculum and once they get to Z, they start all over. Once we get to "R" (the week we started with), it will all get a little repetitive.

Here's a couple of pics I snuck today while I was peeking through the door. I normally don't get to watch the action, but the teacher needed some help because the other teacher wasn't there today and I had just been in there helping to wrangle the kiddies while she set up another activity. They were playing at a tactile table... this week, it was filled with cornmeal. Frankly, I'm not sure CORNMEAL was the best choice of materials, but the kids were having fun, sooooooooo.... ;) You'll notice his class is ALL boys, except one. (and she was just doing a makeup from another class) Don't you pity the teacher? ;)



Just Over Here Working The List(s)....

Slowly working my way through the mountain of pre-baby to-do lists. Today I have to run around and buy some things for the hospital bag (pajamas and a nursing bra) and some things for Ben's overnight bag. (so it can actually be packed in advance and I don't have be throwing things in at the last minute). A hundred other places to go too... Luckily, Ben is amiable about all the running around, provided it includes a trip to Target to ogle the Star Wars figures. ;)

Today is also basement cleaning day. (I know, exciting!) I finally started setting aside days for various chores. Seems to make cleaning the house a little less overwhelming because I don't feel like I have to do it all at once. Yesterday was bathroom day. Kitchen/first floor day was Tuesday. I have to tell you, I think bathroom day has to be my least favorite. WHY do we have more bathrooms than bedrooms in this house?! Two of them we don't even really use but I have to clean anyway because they still manage to get ring-around-the-toilet and dusty. Ew. Gag. I think if I still worked, I'd hire a cleaning service just to clean my bathrooms.

I'm tired after just writing all that. Guess I better get started! Ben and I are off to Panera to treat ourselves to breakfast before all the running around. :D

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The More I Think About it...

The more I try to plan for who is going to be where when I go into labor (mostly with regard to Benjamin), the more I think I might want to be induced again. It would just be SO nice and so easy to wake up early one morning, have Ben's aunt Debbie come over to watch him and then head off to the hospital to have a baby. Afterward, she can bring him to the hospital to meet Too and to hand him off to his grandparents for his big two-night grandparent-palooza.

Is it crazy to want to be induced again?

I don't even know if my doctor would do it... other than convenience, I don't have any reason to have to be...

(sigh) Having another child at home really complicates this whole event more than I ever really gave much thought to!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Happy Birthday, Benjamin's Daddy!

It's Tom's birthday today. (he's 30 too, finally!!) ;) This means that he is home from work since his company gives everyone off on their birthdays. While it's nice having him home on a non-weekend day, I am having to restrain myself from asking him to get things done while he is here. Instead, I am just trying to go about my day as if he is *not* actually here, work my to-do list and not expecft him be the sole Ben supervisor. It only seems fair since he is home for his BIRTHDAY and all. ;) But geesh, it's hard. Actually, at the moment, he's downstairs with Ben. But he's watching ESPN while Ben plays with Star Wars figures, so that hardly counts as supervising, right?

This morning, we went to breakfast at his parents' house and tonight we're going out to dinner. He wants sushi, so sushi it is. Me? I'll be eating tempura. I've never met a deep-fried veggie I didn't like.

His grandparents should be here any minute to deliver the annual birthday pie. :) Tom is VERY excited... the man loves his birthday pie. He doesn't even really like to share, though he always does. ;)

Off to finish some things up... next on the list is the hospital bag packing I've been procrastinating. Blehh...don't want to...

Townhouse Living...

Yeah, Mrs. Flinger sums it up pretty well. Now, if I can just manage to get one of those video monitors Mandy's sister has, I can track down all the babies close to Too's age within a three-mile radius! It's way too hard to find them when all you have is the regular monitor to listen in on and no visual to go by! ;)

Monday, April 16, 2007

He Definitely Can't Say THIS isn't a Leak...



The 60mph winds seem to have blown off a piece of our roof... I was walking home from the neighbor's house this afternoon and noticed a 20-foot piece of something sticking straight up off the roof, obviously displaced by the wind. Later, I walked by the attic door and just thought I'd take a peek, to see if I could tell what was going on. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted with a view, not of the top of the attic, but of the heavens. (insert angel choir sound effect here)

Now it is raining again... and there is a 20-foot hole in my roof. (sigh)

Is This a Turkey?!

My mom just emailed me this picture she took of a bird that was on their deck this morning... is it not a turkey? And if it IS a turkey, I thought they were flightless birds? How did it get there?

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Okay, I Must Just Be a Snob...Because I Don't Get It...

After running some errands this morning, I suggested we take Benjamin to Chuck E. Cheese. I thought maybe he could play in the maze and run around a little, wear himself out and maybe grace us with a nap later before we head over to Nanee and Pap's for Tom's birthday dinner.

Yeeeeeeeah.

So, Chuck E. Cheese is NASTY.

Not only does it smell like a combination of wet dog and feet, but it was packed with one of my biggest pet peeves: unsupervised 10-12-year-old boys. They were everywhere. They were dirty. They were mean. And they were climbing all over the stuff in the toddler area, which did NOT make me feel good about letting Ben play over there. He wanted to go up into the big maze, but I couldn't let him go up there either because I was afraid one of the big kids would bully him and we wouldn't be able to get up there.

We stayed about 20 minutes, let Ben play a few toddler games and then hightailed it out of there, dumping Purell all over ourselves on the way out.

Am I missing something?

Saturday, April 14, 2007

A Lame Post, Wherein I Just Link to Someone Else...

...but it's funny! And aside from #1 on the list (no one has taught Benjamin to pee pee in the shower, thank goodness), I could have written this. ;)

Observations on Potty Training

Friday, April 13, 2007

Perhaps I Watch Too Many Baby Shows....

Sometimes, when Benjamin is playing happily in the afternoon, or sometimes in the morning while I'm making beds and straightening the upstairs, I have TLC or Discovery Health on. It seems like all they ever air during the day are shows with people having babies.

Benjamin has apparently absorbed more from these shows than I give him credit for. Now, granted, sometimes, given the fact that I myself am about to birth a child, I point out things... the mommy's belly that looks like mine, the baby being born, the new baby crying (I'm trying to get him used to what Baby Too might look like and to the idea that Baby Too is probably going to cry a lot... yada yada).

So yeah.... yesterday, we were having "quiet time" on the couch together since he seemed to want to maybe nap. I turned on a rerun of A Baby Story or that other one... can't remember which. Out of nowhere, Benjamin popped his head up and said,
"I have a baby in MY tummy!"

I replied, "DO you?"

He answered, "Yes!" and proceeded to shove his froggie blanket up his shirt. "Now we BOTH have babies in our tummies!" he excitedly exclaimed, pointing to his bump, then mine.

Then he put his head back down. A few minutes later, he informed me that the woman on the show wanted to push, which nearly made me fall off the couch.

THEN? He said, "I need to push MY baby out of my tummy!" After a series of VERY funny pushing faces and noises, he "pushed" froggie out from under his shirt and announced, "It's a baby!!"

He did this over and over again the rest of the day. I really need to try to get this on video, because it's *hysterically* funny in person.... I'm STILL laughing... ;)


p.s. While we're on the topic of kids and television, do check this kid show review site out. It's VERY funny. ;) I love that they rate shows based on the number of brain cells lost while watching.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

"Little" Brother is at it Again...

My brother was interviewed by the BBC a couple days ago... pretty cool, eh?
(strong language warning)

Please tell him the goatee needs to go! Yick! ;)

Learn from Me, for I Am an Idiot...

If you take your 3-year-old along with you to buy his daddy's birthday present, don't make a big deal out of it.

For instance, don't say things to him like, "Ooo!! Let's go get daddy a new _____!" or "Look! It's a new ______! It's a surprise for daddy's BIRTHDAY!!!"

He WILL repeat it. To Daddy. And when he is not understood the FIRST time, he will repeat it once again. Several times, perfectly clearly. (sigh) :(

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

My Morning So Far...

I had barely opened my eyes at 7a.m. this morning when I heard Benjamin in his room:
"It's warm outside! We can go outside!!!"

You see, I've been telling him since it got cold last week that we'd go outside when it got warm again. He also got a bubble gun from his godmother for Easter that I told him we could play with outside when it got warm.

Every single day, he has asked if it is warm out yet and I make him go touch the window to see that it's still freezing out. Well, I guess today, his window was warm... at 7a.m....

I told him we could go out after we'd gotten dressed, eaten breakfast and finished our chores. (just making the beds, doing the dishes and straightening up a little) Well, he let me get as far as the dishes before the incessant asking began...

"How about we go outside?"
"After I'm finished with the dishes."
"Okay, how about we go outside NOW?"
"After I'm finished with the dishes."
(at this point, it's 8:30 a.m., just by the way)

"How about we put batteries in my bubble gun and THEN we go outside?"
"After I'm finished with the dishes."
"How about you fix my bubble fun and put bubbles in it and take it outside?"
"After I'm finished with the dishes."
"How about we go outside?"
"After I'm finished with the dishes."
"I want to go outside.""After I'm finished with the dishes."
"Let's go outside!!!"

Finally, I told him to go put his shoes and coat on, figuring that would buy me at least a half hour because, well, he's three and he usually doesn't usually have an easy time of putting his shoes and coat on. Cruel, I know. But have mercy on me, it was only 8:30 in the morning!!! I did NOT want to go outside.

Darned if the kid didn't get both his shoes on (the right feet!!) and his coat on in two minutes.

Crap.

So out we went. Fifteen minutes it lasted before he said...

"How about we go inside?"

(sigh)

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Hey Locals!!!

Hey all you people I went to high school with... I'm sure you remember our good friend Reggie Aqui, no? Well, since graduation, he has bounced all over the country as a tv news reporter. Greenbay, Chicago, Houston... (and I'm sure I missed one or two cities) and now? CNN!

How cool to see one of our own on the national news! Anyway, thought you'd all be interested... :)

The Worm Makes a Comeback...

When Benjamin was just a wee thing, I used to take pictures of him with a little inchworm stuffed toy we had.
Just shy of four months old...


Seven monthish old...


It didn't last long because a) the worm is only 24 inches long. and b) Shortly after that second worm picture, he started standing and then walking and that was the end of laying on his back to have any pictures taken with the worm.

Worm recently came out of the attic in preparation for Baby Too. Ben thinks it's a hysterically funny toy... (along with all the other itty bitty baby toys that have now reappeared) I showed him the pictures of him with it and we decided to take a new one.
I'd say he's grown a little, no?



He is also having a grand old time playing with the Baby Einstein floor gym... (sigh)

Could it Be True? Are we 100% There?

The past two nights, Benjamin has woken up out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night and yelled that he has to go pee pee. Tom has gotten up and taken him and sure enough, he went. He is also waking up dry in the morning.

Now, Ben is daytime trained entirely and has been for about a month now. (Baby Too unceremoniously inherited the Diaper Genie a couple of weeks ago) But I wasn't pushing the night-training thing in the least, having read that kids his age often aren't conscious enough at night to be able to recognize the need to get up and go and that that "skill" comes a little later. So we were putting him in a diaper at night.

Obviously, I didn't give him enough credit. I'm still not brave enough to put him in underwear overnight just yet. My sleep is too precious these days to be changing sheets in the middle of the night. But when the diapers are gone, we'll move on to a pack of overnight Pullups for awhile. If he keeps waking up and using the potty, we'll switch to the underwear when the Pullsups are gone. How exciting!

Hey, it's a mommy blog. What did you expect for excitement? ;)

To Be Loved So Easily...

I just recently discovered Mari was still blogging. This recent post is my instant new favorite.

The best line of the whole post, and one which I am both happy and overwhelemd to be able to say is true for my children as well (thanks to four healthy grandparents, four great grandmothers, a great grandfather, uncles, aunts and an extended family that may not share genes, but are our family nonetheless.)...

"I'm most grateful that Matthew and Maddie will grow up thinking this is ordinary-- to be loved so easily. By so many."

Monday, April 09, 2007

Just Monday...

Benjamin and I did some running around this morning... out to the mall to get Tom's birthday present. I treated my little shopping buddy to a slice of pizza and two chocolate chip cookies. He was pretty content. :)

The lady at the store where we bought Tom's present asked when I was due and I told her. She's the fourth person in two days to tell me I don't look that far along. Someone at church yesterday guessed I was due in the summer. (?!)

Ummm yeah. I suspect the four people who have said this to me (all women, all mothers) just know how to be nice to a whale of a pregnant girl, because I'm not in any kind of denial that I look like I'm due any minute now. Then again, no one ever said these kinds of things to me when I was pregnant with Ben. So maybe my belly IS actually smaller than I think it is. HAHAHAHAHAHA... just kidding...no, it's not. ;)

The woman at the store also had some other interesting comments like, "I'll bet you are having another boy. Everyone I know who is having a baby in the Chinese year of the Golden Pig is having the same as what they already have!" Oooookay! Interesting! No, I didn't divulge Too's gender to her. It was more fun to let her wonder.

In preschooler news, Benjamin has become obsessed with bandaids. He used to be deathly afraid of them, but he got a paper cut on his thumb two days ago and has been ALL about the bandaids ever since. It's not even on his thumb anymore. It has migrated to his index finger... but god forbid it fall off. It's like the world is ending! ;)

That's pretty much it for our day so far! I'm off... Ben is having some sort of light saber crisis. (sigh)

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Early Easter Egg Hunt...

We have a Good Friday dinner tradition with my family and some family friends. This was the first year Ben was old enough to really "get" the whole egghunt idea. His godmother took it and ran with it, creating an elaborate path of string, eggs and little presents all over my parents' front and backyards. (don't even get my started on how over the top she went... but it is her right, being the godmother and all... ) ;) Benjamin had a blast and at the end found a whole basket filled with Star Wars figures, books and various other preschooler treasures.



As an aside, I am SO very glad he will soon *not* be an only child because really, it is a little silly (and embarassing) to see nine adults watching ONE little kid hunt eggs. Observe: (here are four of them)


But then again, I guess this is what my parents did witih me for nine years before my brother came along...

Thursday, April 05, 2007

My Nesting is Being Thwarted....

...by the three-year-old. ;) Two days ago, my kitchen was so darn clean, it was actually making that *ding!* sparkling noise you hear in commercials. But about six Benjamin meals later, the floor is filthy again.

No wonder I'm so tired lately (aside from the six-pound bowling ball I'm hauling around in my internal Baby Bjorn) I've been frantically trying to keep up with little Mr. Messy AND keep him entertained simultaneously. Just ONCE I'd like to have the entire house clean at once AND have a child who isn't bored out of his mind because Mommy can't put down the Magic Eraser.

That is all... off to try to make a fun preschooler game out of "Let's make the beds and vacuum!!!"

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

File Under: Things I Want to Remember...

Benjamin woke up this morning when Tom's alarm clock went off at the painful hour of 5a.m. Tom ran in and got him before he woke up completely and put him in bed with me...

Before he fell back to sleep, he snuggled up against me and whispered, "I nuv you too!" (he always says that instead of "I love you". How cute is that?)

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Tales from the Playground...

Jen and I decided to have kind of an inpromptu playdate at a nearby playground yesterday. I wasn't sure it was going to work out for them to get there, but Lily's nap schedule cooperated :) At any rate, we ended up getting there about an hour before them because I had told Ben what we were doing and he asked me a hundred times, "Can we go to the playground NOW?"

In the course of being there (and it was CROWDED yesterday because the weather was so nice), I ran into three people I knew.


First, it was a mom from Gymboree and her little boy... she was busy chasing him AND a 1-1/2 year old though, so the conversation was intermittent. Whenever she had to run off in one direction or the other, I had time to ponder just how challenging life with two small children is going to be. I'm officially freaked.

They left... enter stage right another little boy. He had a wild look in his eye and he was headed right for me. The next thing I knew, this child was slapping my stomach. TWICE! I looked around for his mother so I could shoot daggers at her, then realized... oops...I knew her from my old church. And then I put two and two together and remembered she had a four-year-old with autism whom I had never met. Until now. What a strange situation! She came running up, "Ohmygosh, did he HIT YOU???" I'm so sorry!!" Since I had realized what the story was, I was not at all annoyed, and was very happy to see her and chat for awhile. Though, she too, had her hands quite full... she had to chase him up through the giant play structure the whole time because apparently, "he hits". Oy.

After my two encounters, I was starting to feel like I really had it easy with my just plain old super-active ONE three-year-old. (who apparently has figured out how to mostly safely play on the "big kid" stuff... it's a little scary)

Jen, Ryan and Lily showed up and of course, the boys mostly went in seperate directions, though they did see saw together for awhile and at one point held hands as they went from one spot to another. (too cute!!!)

Since Ben had decided to play on the smaller, safer, little kid stuff for a minute or two, I sat down on a bench while Jen pushed Lily on the baby swings. It was then that I looked up and saw her chatting with another girl (also pushing a baby) who looked strangely familiar. I wandered over and sure enough it was a girl from high school who I hadn't seen in ohhh... about 12 years or so. We never hung out during high school (she was way cooler than me at that time), but apparently babies are the great equalizer, because she instantly recognized me and we all chatted for awhile. (Mandy, Becky, Val, Janelle, remind me to tell you who this was!)

At that point, we'd been there a little over two hours and Ben was actually ASKING to go home he was so tired. I thought for sure there would be at least a car nap, but NADA. Oh well, at least we took advantage of the pretty weather and he burned off some energy.

I have to wonder how many more people we would have run into though had we hung out awhile longer!! Sheesh... I live in a pretty big suburb, but sometimes, it feels like such a small town!

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Allergy Season Underway... and Perhaps a Full Moon...

We started Benjamin on the Zyrtec today. He took it last year and I don't remember there being any side effects at all.

This year, we picked up the prescription and it said to give it at bedtime, which I assume means it can cause drowsiness. Knowing what MOST "drowsy" drugs do to my child (Benadryl makes him Cah-RAZEEEEE), I decided to give it to him in the late morning. The logic was if it made him drowsy, he'd nap, and that wasn't a bad thing... and if it made him manic, then it was the middle of the day not the middle of the night and THAT wasn't a bad thing.

At first, I thought it was making him tired... we went to church with my inlaws this morning and he was acting kind of sleepy through the first half of the service. But then he perked up and seemed relatively normal the rest of the day... EXCEPT...

Suddenly I realized I had this child who was playing with his toys... he spent 45 minutes today just running trains on his train table. Then he asked for some playdough and played with it for AN HOUR at the kitchen table. Oh, and he spent another hour or so drawing and coloring (I just learned he can draw circles and crosses... who knew?) This is NOT my child, I tell you. It was downright strange. Usually, if he does things like drawing or playdough, it's for 5-10 minutes tops before he moves on to something else.

I guess it could be coincidence and not the medicine at all... he has been very sleepy and out of it lately anyway because of the allergies, so he could have just been tired. Or maybe he grew an attention span over the last 24 hours? We'll try it again at the same time tomorrow... I can't decide if the effect is good or bad, frankly. I guess if he acts differently tomorrow, I'll start giving it to him at bedtime. I dunno... anyone else's child react this way to Zyrtec?