Rocking horses a come-from-behind hit

Last xmas Max received two rocking horses -- one from gramma and grampa and one from Don and Mel.  (Imagine that.  It was like that stereotypical conundrum wherein two women show up at a party inadvertently wearing the exact same lavish dress.)  Both horses collected dust for a while and we feared that they'd be duds.  It turns out, however, that Max was just too young for the rocking horses at that time.  Now he loves them.  We keep one at gramma and grampas and the other at our house.  Here are some terrible pictures of Max on his horse this morning.

"Thanks, Don and Mel!"  This would have been a good picture if I'd been closer to Max, if I'd managed not to catch the flash reflecting in the window, and if the rack full of drying diapers were not so close to Max's head.  Other than that, I think it's an award-winner.

Max decided to dismount during my attempt to correct two of the aforementioned photographic blunders. 

Sorry no pictures on this post....please come back and look again.

So I came up stairs the other evening to my husband glaring at me over top of the telephone.  "The phone is off the hook!" he declared.  Gus is extremely power conscious and even goes to the effort of turning all power to the phone off when we are not using it (such as overnight), so this was a really serious offense.  To be honest, I'm not really sure it uses more power when it is off the hook...but I digress. 

At any rate, Gus was not impressed.  "How long has the phone been off the hook?" he inquired.

I was puzzled...usually these things are my fault, but I couldn't remember even using the phone.  "I don't know, I don't think it was me...."

"Well it wasn't me!"

The conversation continued down a similar accusatory vein until our son walked into the room.  He passed casually by our argument, quietly chanting to himself  "please hang up and call again.... please hang up and call again".

Max Reorganizes

So yesterday evening I wandered into the bathroom after we had finally put Max to sleep to discover this:

With my fatigue encumbered mind, all I could think was 'why would Gus put all of Max's bath toys in his dump truck?'  Sometimes I really wish I could get a translation of what is going on in Max's head.....

The new sleep solution

Disclaimer:  This is actually quite an old post.  I wrote it more than a month ago, but I wanted to add a picture, so I didn't post it.  I'm finally posting it with one mediocre picture.  Enjoy!  Good news...I added a second sleeping picture.

As an update on Gus's earlier post, we have now resolved the death trap that was Max's bed.  Our first attempt involved simply placing the mattress from his play pen on the floor.  Although quick and easy, this had a few downsides.  For one thing, I felt like I was sleeping my kid on the floor in the corner.  The play pen mattress is not really thick and doesn't provide the feeling of a bed.  Max also seemed to be missing having a closed in space to sleep in.  He would wake up fussing regularly in the night and need Gus and I to help him back to sleep.  

Lying awake after just such an occasion, I recalled that my sister once mentioned the benefits of sleeping children in tents.  Conveniently, this same sister had recently purchased Max a series of kid tents.  Max had played in them a few times, but got easily bored with them, so we hadn't used them much.  This tent, I decided at 3:00am, was the perfect solution to our problem.

So the next morning I set up the tent in Max's room and put his wimpy play pen mattress inside it, with all his stuffed toys and blankets.  What a transformation!  First, I felt like a better parent now that my child had more of a "bed like" structure.  Second, Max absolutely LOVED it.  His past apathy towards the tent was completely transformed.  Somehow tent + bed is MUCH cooler than tent plus other random toys.  It has been three days since we put his bed in the tent and he still can't get enough of it.  He practically lives in that thing.  He rearranges all his stuffed animals, hides under his blankets and just stares lovingly at the tent walls.  Best of all, he sleeps well in it and doesn't really try to get out of bed.  Thanks Wen!

Grandma Gutoski has a night light that plays music and displays a light show on the ceiling.  Normally it doesn't work very well (you can barely see the lights on the ceiling), but in the tent it is quite a spectacular show.  Max was so impressed that he sat in there just staring at the lights and laughing for a full half hour.  Unfortunately, our digital camera has had some recent issues, so we didn't get any good videos.

Horsey for Halloween

Initially, we had no intention of taking Max out for Halloween -- too much work, and he won't know what's going on anyway.  We changed our minds under mild pressure from family, and I'm glad we did.

Greta picked up an adorable little horsey costume from Value Village.  They gave it to her for only $4 -- a deal due in no small part to the big doe eyes and smiley face looking up at the store manager when Greta inquired about the costume's unmarked price.  Max was disgustingly adorable in his horsey costume.  (See photos below.)

He was a star.  One lady answered her door, took one look at Max and immediately said, "Oh my god.  Robert, you need to come see this!"  Another, elderly lady insisted that Max come in her house and sit on her lap.  She showered him with kisses.  (And yes, we caught it on camera.  See below.)

We taught him to say "trick or treat", though he could never summon the courage to say it to a real live neighbour on his or her doorstep.  He did, however, bust out a couple enthusiastic thank-yous when given candy.  This gratitude was very well received.

That's all I can think of for now.  I'll update this post if I recall any more interesting details.  Unfortunately, all of our photos are terrible.  Enjoy them anyway.

Max brushed his teeth before trick-or-treating.  Pretty cute.

"Light!"

Our elderly neighbour forcibly pinned Max on her lap and showered him with kisses.  She gave him enough candy to feed a whole village for a month.