Jensen's Big Boy Summer

There's not much "baby" left in Jensen these days. Two major milestones have happened over the past three months. First off, the day after school got out, I tackled potty-training Jens. It went MUCH better then I had expected, considering when ever I'd mention it he'd literally FREAK out and shout things like, "Mommy, yikes (likes) to change my poop!" Guess I learn something new about myself every day, because I simply was not aware that I even remotely liked to change stinky, 2 1/2 year old boy poop! Anyhow, we had a big countdown, went and bought "big boy" underwear the day before, and completely went diaper free, except for nap and bed time. The first morning, he cried the better part of two hours and was MORTIFIED to be wearing underwear. He had a couple of full-on accidents that first day, but by day three was pretty much trained. Refused to use the little kid potty (THANK HEAVENS!) and has been a dream ever since. A few funny things about him being in underwear now:

-He calls them "my wonderwears"
-He's so stinking skinny that even the smallest ones are baggy
-Jensen prefers the boxer-briefs, like daddy, which again are too loose
-He INSIST on wearing them all backwards, so he can see the picture on them

The other big news in our house IS (insert DRUM ROLL) he's kicked the habit and is now binky-free!!! Actually, I should give a more accurate description of what really went down in our house, because that sounds a bit like Jensen woke up one morning, cheerfully threw out all of his binkies, and declared himself "clean and sober." Beautiful picture I just painted there, but not so much how it happened.

What REALLY happened was one exhausted, sleep-deprived mother found herself up nightly dealing with the binky-woes of her two precious boys. Binkies were disappearing and falling out of little mouths left and right, leaving this hear said mommy blindly searching the corners of the crib (Jacob), inside pillow cases, under the cavern of the bed (Jensen) multiple times each night, seeking out the precious, prized binkies that could be shoved in the mouths of her children and allow her to steal a few precious minutes of sleep. Running on severe sleep deprivation and loads of coffee, mommy formed herself a MAB (Mother's- Against - Binkies) group, consisting of a whopping one whole member...yes herself. When dear sweet daddy left for his hunting trip, mommy decided the time was right. See, she knew had both mommy and daddy been there they would have talked themselves into giving in. Here is how the first meeting of MAB went down.

The following events took place on September 7th 2009:

-6pm: Kelly is exhausted from the previous nights shenanigans of binky searching decided tonight Jensen is done with binkies and breaks the news to him that they are all gone. Jensen says, "we buy more morrow (tomorrow) at Meyers (Fred Meyer)." Mommy insist they are all gone. Jensen insist Jacob will share his. Mommy insist we are done with binkies. Jensen insist there has got to be one last, remaining artificial nipple in this house that he can get his hands on.
-6:17pm: Mommy realizes if the binkies are going for Jens, they've got to go for Jacob at the same time.
-6:40: Kelly finishes collecting any binky she can find, shoves them all into a plastic bag while no one is looking, and throws them high and deep onto the top shelf in the garage. Just in case. You never know what may happen at 3:00am. She just knew she'd have to be pretty desperate to get out the later, move all the junk from the ground below the shelf, rummage through God-only-knows-what on the top shelf to retrieve the binkies.
-7:30 Bedtime rolls around. Jensen cries. A lot. Really a lot. Kelly feels VERY guilty, but holds strong. Jacob goes down like a dream (and sleeps much better then the previous months).
-Fast Forward to 10:00pm. Jensen is STILL awake. Anytime mommy goes in his room, he's out of bed rummaging around and says, "go away. my yooking for sumfing."
-Jensen woke up twice in the middle of the night, but has had no problems ever since.

For being such a big boy he got to go to the store and pick out any toy he wanted. Of coarse he wanted the 12 foot long, bazooka water gun. Really. What 2 1/2 year old boy wouldn't. Luckily he was persuaded into the Light Saber. I did learn something new about Star Wars (seeing as how I'm not a fan), after 31 years of calling them Light Savers, apparently they are Light SABERS.

I do miss his sweet binky kisses every night at bed time, but am loving his new "real" kisses just as much! :)