Monday, June 14, 2010

Camping

First off...just wanted to clarify that we are not potty training Koen. He goes to the bathroom door and says `Pee! Pee!' several times a day. So, we put him on just because he likes it and sometimes he actually pees. We waited until Kai was 2.5 years old and that worked very well! I think this age, 17 months, is where they stop being a baby and start being little boys. He just seems so grown up and is such a joy. Except for camping, but I'll get to that:)
Koen has been having a word explosion lately. It's adorable and he even says `cheese!' when he sees a camera. When we were camping, he said two words together, `No daddy' (when we told him to lay down). He's 26lbs and nice and chunky. People ask if I'm going to cut off the curl on top of his head...I'm not. I want to grow his hair longer in hopes that it will be curly:)
Koen loves kissing daddy because of the facial hair...he likes the tickles.
On Friday night, we tried camping. By camping I mean we set up our tent in my in laws back yard. Koen is the lightest sleeper in the world, if I open his door at night to check on him, he wakes up. So, I thought we would all go to bed at 8pm and Gary and I would just read. Didn't work. Kai was up until 10pm (latest he has ever been up) and Koen held on until 11:15pm. He just kept throwing his blankie out of the playpen and then crying for it. If we told him to lay down, he just said `No!'. I ended up singing`Take me out the the ballgame' over and over and just holding him until he fell asleep. One hour later, he woke up screaming. He was confused and freezing. Gary and Koen went into the house.
At 3am Kai woke up coughing and cold and said he wanted to go into the house. So, not a very good sleep! We have decided that instead of camping this summer, we will stay in cabins. That way, I can put Koen and Kai to bed and walk out of the door and let Koen cry a bit. Happy medium. Must book them. We don't really have time to `practice' camping again:)
Benefit of `camping' at the in laws is that they have a hot tub! I'm not sure how safe it is for Koen so we tried to keep his torso out of the water even though he kept trying to dive in...he LOVED it. It's not kept at a super hot temperature so I wasn't too worried.
The next day, Saturday, we had our final football game. We played against the first place team and it was close until the second half. Oh well, I felt like we all played well so that's a good way to end! Love my flag football team. I would say that we are very encouraging and supportive of each other and play at a perfectly competitive level. We're also the only team with a cooler full of baking rather than beer, although I would've loved a beer after the game!

Sunday was church, photo shoot at Williams Park, and then bbq at Dad and Joanne's. Good times.

Question of the day: I did not grow up with toy guns. I actually don't like them at all. Kai will grab a stick and say, `Ha, I killed you! You're dead!'. I don't think pretending to kill someone is a fun game to play and death is so serious. We don't joke about other serious matters with kids. Do four year old girls let their barbies have affairs or even have sex? Probably not. No matter how many times I talk to him, kids are doing it everywhere. Do I need to relax? Is there a better way to approach it?

Have a good day!
Love, Louise

6 comments:

  1. sorry the camping trial didn't go so well. the one thing about actual camping is that it REALLY wears kids out, plus the warmth, sunshine and usually swimming too, that they sleep better. we also always have a fan for white noise while camping (this will be our first year without, as all of our camping will be in areas without hook ups...but i'm relying on the sun and water to tire the kids out so they sleep good).
    as for gun playing, i'm with you - we haven't come across this yet, but to us, there are just things that we'd prefer our kids not to joke about. other people might think we're being too uptight or whatever, but it's how we feel, so we'll enforce it. :)

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  2. Good for you guys for attempting the tent! I don't think Mikayla would do well either as she prefers to sleep on her own and likes quiet.
    We have just started to come across the whole "gun" thing. We don't allow Aiden to use guns and have explained to him what guns do and why they are inappropriate. It seems though, like you said, that they can find anything and pretend. If he is playing "police" I will allow him to pretend to tranquilize the bad guy so he can safely escort him to jail. I don't know if this is the correct thing to do but it seems to satisfy his need to "get the bad guys." I struggle because he has so many questions about wars etc. and we talk about how God commands us to not kill, yet the bible is full of battles that were fought for God.
    Aye, aye aye, this parenting thing just keeps getting harder each year!!

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  3. Anonymous2:45 PM

    maybe you could tell him not to shoot people and still let him play with sticks&stuff to satisfy his "fighting"-will?
    i'm not totally against the whole sword/gun/stick thing as long as they (mostly the boys) don't shoot/fight each other but against some imaginary bad guys.

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  4. I have wondered about the whole gun thing myself. Boys i think naturally turn everything into guns, I think it is naturally in them. My boys have used sticks as guns and swords and ben builds guns out of lego. Living in the north, I have encouraged my boys to 'shoot' animals. Moose, cougars, bears etc. I do try to discourage shooting at people. If they start pointing at eachother, I will look out the window and say, "hey, i see a moose, and right away they try and get it. Seems to work!

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  5. The gun thing is a battle that I am willing to take on. We have no guns, I also don't think it's funny to pretend to kill someone so instead we 'laser' or 'zap' people and he's not allowed to make guns out of things. But I can't rip his fingers out so I guess I'll just have to keep at it. It's constant with my 5 year old. I'm hoping that eventually he'll get sick of my nagging and just stop.

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  6. we've dealt with the gun thing a bit already, although not a whole lot. When they joke about killing someone, we just say that's not something funny or to joke about, and try not to make a big deal out of it. A while back I threw out a little toy tank that Max got from somewhere, thinking he wouldn't miss it. Well, he came home from Oma's house this weekend with two "army trucks", and asked me where the other one was. She just has a big huge bucket of toy cars that he picks from when we visit. Paul has a more tolerant approach to it than I do, which I think speaks to the nature of boys being boys (and his upbringing out in the boonies where guns were not uncommon for hunting and such), but we still want to make sure we know what kind of play is going on and that they know the boundaries. Especially now that Max is playing a lot with neighbour boys. Today they were playing army with Max's new trucks. Your post makes me want to talk to him about how exactly they play army.

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