The Gardner's Blog: December 2008

Everyone always tells you that your kids grow up so fast and I now find myself saying the same thing. I swear that the next time I blink, the boys will be in college. Aiden is almost 9-months old and needs a lot of attention. I don't remember Calvin going through this stage... I think he was a lot more independent than Aiden. Someone always has to be in sight... ALWAYS! He is starting to have major separation anxiety... guess he's at that age. He is crawling at lightening speed and cruising all around. He absolutely adores his big brother and wants to do everything that he does. Tonight as I was getting them ready for bed, I was singing with Aiden and doing some motions with his arms and Calvin said "me too, mommy", so I did the same with him. Calvin loved it and was laughing histerically, at which time Aiden started laughing histerically also. It was one of the happiest times I have seen them together. Don't get me wrong... the sibling rivalry has already begun. My parents always used to tell me "one day your brother will be bigger than you"... wow, how that was true!

Calvin is now our "big boy". He has moved up to the Pre-School 1 class and is back with his original classmates. He is the youngest in the class, which is sometimes a challenge for him. He has become much more independent (when he wants to be) and that is often frustrating for me. We took the pacifier away a few weeks ago and he has done very well with the transition. The first night it took him about 2 hours to fall asleep and he woke up once during the night, but after that he was okay. Thank goodness we're done with that germ-infested, stinky thing!

Calvin is about 75% of the way potty-trained. I'm so proud of him and almost cried last week when the teacher said "we're ready to start trying underwear if you are." How can my baby already be ready for underwear?!?! So, that evening we loaded up the car and headed to Target to buy Calvin some "big boy undies." He chose some Spiderman & friends, Thomas the Train, and Elmo ones and the first morning he put them on came running downstairs to proclaim "Look mommy, I wearing big boy undies!!!!" He now tells me that they are not "undies", but are rather "underwear"... sorry, buddy! We are so proud of our big boy and can't believe the accomplishments he has made already.

We have been talking to Calvin about Christmas and that we're going to Canada to play in the snow. He is so funny because when we ask who we are going to see his first response is Mark (Ashley's boyfriend). Guess he really made an impression on him! We just bought him some snow boots and some gloves so we can play outside in the snow. It "snowed" (I'll use that word loosely) yesterday and he was so excited... hopefully he'll like the snow more this year.