Bye bye soother, hello happier (but less sleepy) boy!

So we are living the soother-less life now! It took a few days for him to learn to fall asleep without it, but it didn't take long. The daytime was harder than the night - he started having these absolute freakouts and since I used to just plug him up with the soother at the first sign of a whine, he had a bit of a hard time adjusting. Monday and Tuesday were tough - I will admit that I was starting to think I may have made a small mistake in taking the soother away at this juncture. However, things started getting better by the end of the week and he's actually had some really good days recently! He's been a lot happier, and when he does start crying, he is more easily consoled by just being picked up and held for a brief time, or given a snack or drink. He also seems to need less sleep these days - we are going to experiment this week with taking away his morning nap. For two days in a row, it's taken him a really long time to fall asleep in the morning, resulting in a later afternoon nap and later night, and yet still, an early morning. I don't know - he must not be growing right now, because there was a time not too long ago where he slept AT LEAST 12 hours at night, and had a good three hours worth of naps during the day. Hopefully we can recapture a nice long nap by going down to one - we'll have to wait and see!

On Tuesday, I was telling Lynsey "go go go" up the stairs, and he imitated me! It was the first time I noticed him definitively mimicking what I was saying. He now always imitates that particular word, but not anything else - can I call this his first word, even though he's not saying it on his own in the proper context? Anyway, it was exciting:). He is the most single-minded child you've ever met. He can sit with Lynsey's GloDoodle on his lap for an hour or more - it's really quite amazing. We've learned that if you can figure out what he wants and supply that particular item (in the church nursery, it's the Little Tykes car), he can be content for hours - literally! With Lynsey, we always had to keep changing things up so she would be happy. Once again, I'm struck by the differences. The downside to him being this single-minded is that if you can't find out what he wants, you're in big trouble because he will not be distracted. We are going to have to move our Little Tykes car off our deck because he sees it through the window and whines for it all the time - and we really don't have room for it in the house. He just keeps going back there. What a guy!

We took the kids swimming at Village Square Leisure Centre on Saturday. Adam absolutely loved it, but Lynsey wanted to spend most of her time in the hot tub again. I am quite seriously going to look for a full body wetsuit for her - she gets so cold in the pool, and I am so tired of her wimping out all the time and just wanting to go to the hot tub! If anyone knows where I can find something like this, please let me know!

Lynsey got a haircut today. This morning I wanted to put a braid in her hair. I haven't done anything with her hair for a long time because I know how much she hates it (she looks homeless half the time because I never even comb it in the morning - this is how much I hate this particular battle!). However, I decided today that at the very least on Sundays she should look somewhat put together. Her reaction was just as bad as always, and she refused to let me put a braid in. Not wanting to be defeated completely, I managed to get a messy sort of ponytail into her hair that hardly looked any better than her hair being all tangled and in her face, but at least it was something. Since Brian doesn't really seem to think that I should fight this battle with her anymore, I decided I would just chop it off again. It's very cute in a little bob, but it does make me sad that I still can't do her hair without the world coming to an end. Hopefully soon!