Taisei Buffet

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Sleep and Scissors

Taisei has a pretty set routine for getting ready for bed:
  1. Normally, we have a shower or bath.
  2. We dry him off and put lotion on him.
  3. We put on his diaper.
  4. We put on his PJs.
  5. We give him his gummy bear vitamin.
  6. We brush his teeth.
  7. We go to his room and lie down on the futon to read a book.
  8. Then we turn off the lights and baba (me) says a prayer.
  9. Then mama picks him up, gives him one last drink of water. I give him a kiss and mama puts him in the crib.
  10. Lastly, I cover him with blankets and we leave the room.
The last part has always been non-negotiable. I pray, and mom puts him to put. In the past few months, here is how things have evolved:
  1. We have a shower or bath. Now he washes himself with soap.
  2. We wrap a towel around him and he dries off his own hair with his favorite Totoro towel.
  3. He takes off naked and runs around til we catch him. Then we put on his diaper.
  4. We try to put on lotion, but he usually wants to do it himself.
  5. He grabs his favorite flavor of gummy bear.
  6. He brushes his own teeth and sometimes will let us help.
  7. He then proceeds to run around, jump off the bed, and stall bedtime as much as possible.
  8. We finally get him into his room and he continues to run around.
  9. I threaten to skip the book by turning off the lights and he finally lies down.
  10. We finish one book and turn off the lights before he can protest.
  11. I pray.
  12. Mom picks him up and lets him have one last drink of water. Tonight was the first night he ever let me pick him up and put him in the crib.
  13. We kiss him goodnight and leave the room.
It's slightly more time, but still not too bad. Once the book reading starts, he's in his crib within 5 or 10 minutes, depending how generous we are with the book reading. Usually, bedtime has been around 8-8:30. Once he's in bed, we finally have our free time!! woohoo!

A random picture at Snowbird

In other news, things that Taisei's been up to:
  • He likes to pretend read. He'll grab something and start going "blee-blah-poo-ka-ka"
  • He has a concept of numbers, but the concept isn't quite right. It usually goes like this: One, three, five, ex, seven, EIGHT! Sometimes he'll throw a two and a four in there, but usually not.
  • He hasn't been behaving well in nursery lately, but has been totally fine in his pre-school class. I think it's partly because of an unstructured nursery combined with little to no consistency in leadership or discipline. The bad thing is that Taisei is misbehaves the most out of all the kids. Part of that is probably our fault. We haven't found a punishment that truly works in teaching him yet. (Any good ideas? We've tried taking away favorite toys, time out, etc. He doesn't seem to care.) He pushes and takes things from other kids. The other parents don't like it and the nursery leaders complain (although they don't exercise any discipline). I don't want to be in there even though I'm one of the leaders because I don't want Taisei to be dependent on me. But on the other hand, it doesn't seem like anyone knows how to deal with him, nor run the nursery in general. When can we move on to primary??
  • If he sees a monster or spiderman or something on TV, even if it's a commercial, we have to endure crazy Taisei pretending to be a monster or spiderman until he forgets about it, which sometimes is not until the next day. One time he saw a power ranger commercial and he was jumping around, posing in ninja positions, throwing punches for days. From ONE commercial!?! I don't know why these things stick in his brain so well, except that he's a boy.
  • He has been so interesting in cutting things with scissors that we finally bought him a pair of his own. I thought it would be a little safer. He LOVES them, especially in this Halloween season. Every time we need to open a snack or something something, he runs to get his scissors. With all the Halloween costume ads showing up in the mail, he always insists on cutting out the scary ones. I have to say that he's fairly adept with his scissors, although he hasn't yet figured out that he can turn the paper to guide the scissors, instead of trying to turn his body and the scissors. :)


We kept looking for a new Halloween costume, but in the end decided to just use his monkey again from last year. He's thrilled to wear it and it still fits. So what the heck. He's already used it twice. Once at the Gardner's Village Witch Week. And twice today, at our ward Halloween party, and then Trick-Or-Treating at Hogle Zoo. Wami said they had a really great time at all the parties. I had to be in class for all the fun. :( Next year, Wami wants to have me babysit while she goes with some of the girls to the Gardner's Village Witch Week. Apparently, it's kind of a girl's night out where they all dress up as witches.

posted by Jerin at 9:03 PM

3 comment(s):

Woah, that picture is scary. Taisei looks like he is going to fall off a cliff.

I've seen little kids run around when they get nude. It's pretty funny how they go on a joy run.

I'm bummed because you just reminded me ... I bought a discounted costume for Taisei after Halloween last year and have been saving it to give him cuz it's for his age now. I got it out in Sept but just haven't made it up to see you yet. Dang it!! His monkey costume is cooler but at the least, I thought it'd be fun. It's a little ninja costume. Really, nothing fancy but still ... I would have given it to him earlier but I put it away with all the Halloween decorations.

By Blogger Esther, at 10/27/2008 5:28 PM  

First of all, I can't believe how many of those things Adele does. She STILL takes off running naked through the house whenever she has the chance. Rarely lets me help her brush teeth. We always have to threaten to skip the book. She always insists on one last drink of water. They MUST be related, they have the exact same bedtime routines, and the exact same bedtime excuses!

Adele LOVES to cut too. I also bought her own scissors, and she helps me cut everything open.

About the discipline. I found that time-outs don't work for her either. In fact, I don't think taking away a toy is the most successful, although it sometimes works if I threaten it. Threatening time out NEVER works for us. The angrier I get, the less effective I am. I found that positive reinforcement is the best thing. Hard if the kid is misbehaving... and hard as a parent when your kid is driving you UP THE WALL which she often does. I found that the more positive I am, the better she behaves. We have "discussions" about her behavior and talk about WHY alot, and that seems to work. I tell her to put herself in the other kid's shoes. "Would you like it Dawna pushed you or grabbed that toy?"

Sometimes her misbehaving comes from not enough attention. So maybe nursery is just hard for him because no one pays attention to him. Maybe if the nursery leader gave him more attention, some one-on one a little, he would be more responsive to his leader. I worked as a nursery leader, and there were 2 "always misbehaving" kids. Aaron and i would give these 2 boys more responsibility. They were the older kids, too. (2, not 1 1/2). We would always ask them to be our "big helper." They would help with everything. The more they helped, the less trouble they got in. I found the same thing worked in primary with the rowdy boys. The more they helped and were looked upon as "helpers" the better behaved they were. The more the got in trouble, the more they got in MORE trouble! So they helped set up the snacks at snack time, etc. Being a helper also gave them more attention. And it helped us out too, because they really did help with things, and they behaved better.

I hope that helped a little? I know most people do time-outs, and I am sure it helps with lots of kids. But I don't think it taught Adele the long-term WHY of her behavior. It was more of a quick-fix. So mainly I try to just always compliment her and tell her when she is behaving well and sharing. I can tell she really feels good about herself when I mention it.

Taisei gets stuck on monsters and spiderman the way Adele gets stuck on princesses. If Es gives you that ninja costume, it sounds like he will love it but go crazy with the ninja moves!

By Blogger Aaron and Emily, at 10/27/2008 8:01 PM  

Yeah Es, a few people looked nervous when they saw Taisei running around on the edge. But really, it's not all that steep. It is a double black, but I've been down it many times before. haha

Hey Am, that's pretty good advice. I noticed that all the nursery kids behave better when I'm in there - but I'm also the only leader that runs around trying to appease all the kids. I think you're right. I helps them to know that there is someone there playing with them, or at least watching.

The only problem with the ninja costume is that he probably wouldn't be excited to wear it unless he knew what it was. If he knew what it was, then we wouldn't want him to wear it (because he'd be going crazy, jumping off walls and trying to punch and kick everyone). Catch-22, you know what I mean?

By Blogger Jerin, at 10/27/2008 8:07 PM  

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