it's the small things

Clean Teeth
When it's time to brush teeth, Vaughn is very willing because he knows he gets to say hi to all three of his friends, "Choo Choo, Melmo, and Babies". Interpretation: He has three different toothpaste tubes (don't ask!) which are Thomas the Train, Elmo and Fruity Animals. Once his friends come out, he gets to choose one to help him brush his teeth and then this is where it gets tricky. He typically clenches his jaw shut or keeps trying to grab the toothbrush out of my hand. For the past week, we have found a solution in which he's the one that chooses to do this - he lays on the floor while I brush his teeth. It's definitely a weird site, but I'm just excited it works!

Grammy
Grammy is here visiting from Pennsylvania. Vaughn has sort of said her name, but has definitely struggled with it until now because he has adapted it to Vaughn language. For now, Grammy is now Mammy and it's the cutest thing ever. Last night after I got home, I asked him what he did because he got to spend the day with Mammy and Molly. I said, "Did you dance?" And he responded by dancing. Then I asked, "Did you sing?" His response was belting out, "Mammyeeeeeeeee" in song. Priceless!

Prayer
We have a well-established bedtime routine. Our last thing we did was pray, but that was causing rebellion so we decided to switch that as the first thing we did. Last night, we jumped right into reading then songs and totally skipped prayer. After our last song, Patty Cake, Vaughn turned out the lights and wanted to be rocked. He has never been a baby who likes to be rocked, but sure loves it now and so do I.

The lights were off, the waves were rolling in the distance (thanks to a sound machine), and Vaughn and I sat together, heart to heart, while rocking back and forth. I began to whisper a prayer to Jesus with Vaughn's face next to mine. After almost every sentence or two, Vaughn responded in a hushed voice, "yes." I think at one time he even whispered, "Jesus." These are moments I just live for.
"And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me." ~Matthew 18:3-5

Mommy
For a while when Vaughn first started to say words, I was Mom. Just plain mom. For the past four or five months, I have been, "momma" and just love it. This morning after dropping Vaughn off at Preschool as I always do, I told Vaughn bye and that I love him. Typically, I'm totally ignored as he plays with all his (much cooler than me) mom. But this time, he responded with, "Bye, Momma,"then proceeded to blow me a kiss all without any prompting. I have such a sweet boy.

boo boo

Lately, Vaughn has been trying to find ways to hurt himself or me or Dave so that he can call it a boo boo and give it a big wet smoochy kiss. He doesn't really hurts us, he just hits our arm with a remote or drags his toes along the ground. Obviously we are discouraging him from hitting us and his favorite person to hit, himself, but the kisses that come afterward are pretty darn cute.

 

 

down dog, cat cow, half moon

Here's even more new skills Vaughn worked on tonight. It started out as yoga and turned into bear crawls. Aunt Jamie would just call it training :)

new skills

Tonight was the first night Vaughn entertained himself with his roller coaster for about an hour. It was great! Not only was it nice he had something fun to play with inside (still stinkin' hot out!), he was able to work on his hand eye coordination, balance, and some other motor skills.

I should note he only fell off once and his head and body are still in tact!

Bedtime routines

We started out having about a ten minute bedtime routine after bath. Tonight, I think we made it to a record of 40 minutes. Vaughn just LOVES to read and sing and read some more and giggle and sing and pray. Well, the praying, we're working on because he knows that's the last thing we do, which in turn, has made him not like to pray. Another lesson we learned this week is that reading and singing has to be in the glider, or to Vaughn, it doesn't count. He freaked out on Wednesday when we read and sang on the floor then tried putting him in his crib.

The books he is currently obsessed with include:
The Very Hungry Catepillar
Elmo Goes to the Zoo
Elmo On the Farm
Is There Really a Human Race?
Where Do Balloons Go? An Uplifting Mystery
B is for Bear

After looking at the list, I realized they are all from friends and family. So thank you to Ryder, Aunt Heather, Aunt Jamie and Cousin Stacy! We read the first three every single night, even a few times a night. Vaughn has a little obsession with "Melmo", which totally came from an Elmo doll at school. I'm not sure if we should encourage this obsession or try to minimize it. Right now, we're kind of embracing it and letting his imagination flourish.

After putting the last book on the shelf, Vaughn immediately does two things - starts doing the rolling motion with his fists and arms (for Wheels on the Bus) then he starts putting his index fingers and thumbs together (for Itsy Bitsy Spider). He's to the point now where if we start either song, he yells, "No! Stop." I keep starting each song until he starts doing the full moves. His newest favorite is Patty Cake. We do "V is for Vaughn" first then he begs for us to do it again so we can do "M is for Molly". And the last song we end with is Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, which I have made up motions to.

We ended up switching it up and doing prayer first so that he gets to like that part the best. It didn't work tonight, but should soon! Tonight was the first night in a long time he just wanted to keep reading and singing. He was so upset once we shut the door. Broke our hearts, but we were strong. Haha! Dave thinks he doesn't want to go to bed because he enjoys the time with us so much. I think Dave enjoys the time just as much as Vaughn.

So sweet. Goodnight!

Lights off

Our lights have not been able to stay on for long lately. This is because of a little boy who is just tall enough to reach the bottom of the light switch! He is obsessed. Lately, we have been cooking in the dark, eating in the dark and hanging out in the living room in the dark. It's almost worthless to try to turn the lights back on, because it just causes for Vaughn to sprint over to the outlets to turn them back off.

At Uncle Dusty and Aunt Jamie's this weekend, he tried his hardest to turn their lights off, but he wasn't quite tall enough.

I'm sure it'll be soon. We measured Vaughn on his Steeler's field height chart on Saturday to find out he grew over an inch in just 30 days! We sure love our curious, mischievous, growing little boy!