Adventures with B Man

We are somehow surviving winter this year; it is most likely due to my four year olds imagination and desire to be constantly entertained.  I think I am finally understanding why people have kids so close together; so that on days when you just need a few minutes you have someone else for them to play with!  Brilliant!

Four is a new and exciting age; it has come with its challenges of constant attitude, screaming when in trouble and defiance of time outs, it has also brought out a lot of personality.  I want to record some or my recent favorite things about Berkeley before they leave my mind forever.

Berke now hates bed time, it finally happened, I knew it would.  The other night this was our conversation:

Me: It's time for bed

B: No Mom!  You're ruining our family!

Me: Ok....how am I doing that?

B: You are ruining my life by putting me to bed!

Just tonight he told me that I lost my privilege to go to bed (can you see what parenting technique we use a lot at our house?), that we would have to stay awake all night.  (see what I mean by attitude?)

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Berke loves the weekends because it is family time.  Every morning he wakes up he is told if it is a daddy day, a mommy day a preschool day or a family day.  He loves family days!  We have a new Saturday tradition that when he wakes up he gets to come snuggle with mom and dad in our bed and watch Netflix on the IPad.  This my friends, is the new Saturday morning cartoon.  This situation equals Berkeley paradise.  I love when he says, "Is this family time?" When I say yes, he giggles and smiles and gives me a big hug.  

Just this morning I got Berke his breakfast, as I sat down his cheerios he said, "Thanks for being a nice mom."  This stuff just melts my heart.

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Berkeley and his imaginary friends, yes there is more than one now, are non stop fun.  So far we have John, which I previously blogged about.  Then there is Jail and Tom who are his skateboarding friends;   keep in mind that Tom lives in prison (I credit his knowledge for jail and prison to Auntie G who works in a woman's prison, thus B hears these words).  Then there is Hawkeye, no brainer here, he is an Avenger and plays with B on a regular basis.  This week we got a new friend named Bingo.  Berkeley not only has these guys as friends, but at times he also turns into them.  Our conversations often go like this:

Me: Berke

B: Berkeley went to work with his skateboarding friends

Me: so who are you?

B: call me Bingo

Me : Ok Bingo, so what does Berkeley do for work?

B: He works with his skateboarding friends

Me: I know, but what does he do.

B: Pause.....finger to chin......"I don't know!"

Berke also uses his friends as excuses to do things he shouldn't be doing or as people who tell him to do the opposite thing his parents tell him to do.  

B: Can I watch Transformers?

Me: No, its for big kids

B: John says I can watch Transformers

Me: Please tell John that I'm in charge

B: Yeah, but John likes Transformers and he says they are really good guys!

Me: That's nice, but you still cannot watch that show.

B: John, my mom said no.

Yes, this does provide endless amount of fun at our house.

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Berkeley is not what I like to call "naturally brave." He gets nervous or afraid of things very easily.  He also struggles with some sensory problems, which doesn't help him in many situations.  Lately, he has really overcome some serious fears and become what we call SUPER HERO BRAVE, like Hawkeye! The first area is ice skating; Berke always gives up if something is too hard.  B had his third ice skating lesson last weekend; it had been 3 weeks since the last lesson due to weather and the holiday.  I was nervous he would be back at square one, but he got on the ice, no tears, and was even able to stand on his own, touch his knees and skate a foot or two on his own.  A lady came up to me and asked if he was my son, I replied that he was.  She said, "He was the boy who was on his back crying the entire first day?"  I replied, "Yes, that is him." She said, "Wow, good for him."  

I really am so ridiculously proud of him.  There are kids his age doing far better with the lessons than he is, but the fact that he is doing something that terrified him in the first place makes me the proudest mom!

Secondly, my son HATES getting his hair cut.  It is a traumatic event every time it happens.  This past weekend, we talked about it, I really worked to mentally prepare him for it and we went to the barber.  We talked about being super hero brave and I didn't even offer a bribe this time.  He got in the chair, was brave and didn't cry at all.  It was a first and it was awesome!!!

He really is coming leaps and bounds in the courage department.  Such a big four year old I have.

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Berkeley has been more interested in helping me in the kitchen lately.  The last few weeks we made pizza, Valentine's chocolate suckers and brownies together.  He loves to stir and help in ways that he can keeps his hands clean.  It is fun to finally have him help out with some of the food he eats.

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Berkeley is currently OBSESSED with story telling.  He likes to tell stories, but he LOVES for us to tell him stories.  Any time he watches a movie with either Christian or I, the next meal the parent has to recap the entire story of the movie.  The amount of joy this brings to my boy is sort of ridiculous, but he loves it so we do it.  Cause if we don't we have a melt down, seriously, mass hysteria, you would think there was a major injury or something.  If there is no new movie or show to talk about one parent has to make up stories.  This usually falls on Christian, because he is a much funnier and entertaining story teller.  We have found this as a very useful tool in getting Berkeley to eat; Christian will start a story, pause, and not continue until Berke takes a bite  of his food.  This works like a charm, genius really!  There is nothing this kid wants more than to hear the story, so it speeds up the eating process greatly. We are full of stories around here, and at times, I have to admit, it is a bit exhausting to always be telling or hearing stories.  I find myself racking my head for silly ideas.  As soon as I finish one story he is begging for another.  I know there are worse things that constantly being begged to tell non stop stories, so I will try to enjoy the endless storytelling we are doing around here.

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Berke's imagination is fierce! As you can tell he loves his imaginary friends, stories and playing games with his mom and his dad.  Some recent favorites are house, where I play a "real" mom, he is the dad and Christian is the kid.  Basically he enacts what Christian and I do and has Christian being babysat by the Autobots.  He also loves to "sight see Boston." We have a book about Boston and we pretend to be tourists and go around seeing the different sights; we use his book as our map. 

I am really enjoying playing with him in this very imaginative stage; he is constantly making me giggle and roll my eyes with the things he comes up with and says.

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Berke is also quite thoughtful and sweet at this age.  He is always asking for kisses and hugs.  He has gotten quite good at saying Thank you if anyone does something for him or gives him something, even if its a stranger.  The other day B had 3 dum dums which are his favorite thing right now.  He grabbed all three out of his treat bowl and gave one to me and one to his dad and kept one for himself, it was adorable!  He is constantly asking to snuggle on the couch and always wants to be with us.  He still loves to hold our hands (most of the time) and is just a sweet, sensitive love bug (he takes after his father). 

Four years old is a whole new fun world; it is the toughest stage thus far, but it is also the most entertaining and rewarding.

Boston Blizzard 2013

We have had a pretty mild winter, we had a little storm just before the New Year, but the rest of the snow storms we have had this year have been but mere dustings.  It was shaping up to be another mild winter on the East Coast and I was not complaining.  I knew my family out west was not as lucky and I was grateful for just cold days.  Clearly Mother Nature was just laughing at me; she had something very special planned for Boston, something very special indeed.  

This is the view across the street from our house on Thursday; as you can see there is barely any snow and some blueish grey skies.  

Friday, most people got a snow day.  I had to work a half day but was home at Noon as to respect the Governors request to be off the roads by noon. The lines to the groceries stores was INSANE!!  Some friends posted pictures on Facebook of empty shelves.  No milk or water could be found.  The Governor  then made a driving ban, stating anyone on the roads after 4 p.m. that was not an emergency vehicle would be fined and put into jail.  

My small family snuggled indoors and braced for the storm.  We made chili in the crock pot; Berke assisted me in making chocolate chip banana bread and we had food to last us a week, possibly more.  

The snow started sticking around 7 p.m. on Friday night and the wind started.  When we went to bed at midnight the cars were covered and the wind was howling.  We heard 300,000 customers throughout the state were without power, but we were lucky enough to still have ours.

When we woke up, this is what we found at 6:30 p.m.  Two feet of snow had fallen in twelve hours, and it was still windy and snowing.

We tried to open our front door, to find that this was as much as it would open.  McDuff could not get out to go potty, so he chose to do his business on our welcome mat, poor doggie.

 Our neighbors upstairs shoveled us out from the basement door and as you can see, this was why would couldn't use our front door.

 We all bundled up to play in the snow.  The little man had never seen anything like this!  He had a lot of fun before, "My arm got freezing!"

 The whole scene is pretty overwhelming.  As you walk out this is what you find.  How do you even start to know what to do with all of this snow.

 Can you see how deep this stuff is.  The bottom is heavy wet snow and the top is white fluffy stuff.

 I found the perfect spot for a snow angel.  I don't usually love the snow, but how often do you a storm like this?  You have no choice but to play in it?  See our care behind me?  No idea how to even get to it!!  Two feet of snow all the way too it and around it.  The Acura is in front of it and may be stuck for a few days.

 Snow Angel!

 All the cars are parked on this side of the road, so the plows can put the snow on the other side of the road.  There are no garages in the city, so this creates its own crazy now mess.   Since there is a driving ban, we got to play in the middle of the street.  McDuff and Berke got to run up and down the street having lots of fun!

 We busted out the boogy board B got for Christmas and used it as a sled.  Christian pulled him down this street which was pretty adorable.  We tried to train McDuff to be a sled dog, but he was having no part of it.  

We had our fun in the snow, now we plan to stay in doors and stay warm today.  Tomorrow we will try to figure out how to get the car out.

For our friends and family, we are fine, we have power, we are warm, we are stuck.  

My oh my, what a difference a day can make.

Try

The little man had a rough week.  After a rough start to ice skating, he then had his four year check up which sadly included FOUR terribly icky shots in the legs (this was indeed much more painful for his parents who were also crying during the ordeal).  Two days after that he had an eye appointment where he received eye drops in his eyes; this is pretty much my four year old worst nightmare.  We go to great lengths to keep the water out of his eyes during bath time, so to have to hold him down to purposely  put water in the eyes is traumatic to the little man.  It was pretty sad and I felt so helpless when little man wanted to play with my phone while we waited for his eyes to dilate and he couldn't get his eyes to focus.  Try explaining why your eyes stop working when water gets into your eyes to a four year old, yep impossible. 

So after a tough week I really want to make this whole ice skating situation much more positive for my little man.  We discussed all week about how he was going to be brave and not give up and keep trying.  I set up a special 1:1 lesson with my friend Diana who used to skate competitively.  She met us at an indoor rink in Cambridge and took B on a little skate.  I gave B a big prep talk about how he was going to be brave like  a superhero.  Clearly, I also used bribery (don't judge, it works!) that if he could go through this lesson and his next lesson without crying and try his best we could go to Toys R Us. 

Diana was so wonderful with Berkeley; he was super duper brave like a superhero and had a good time.  When he got off the ice after 20 minutes of trying he said, "That was fun!" What, the what?! 

 

After his lesson from Diana we were listening to the radio and P!nk came on the radio with her song "You gotta get up and Try" and B (who always listens to the words of songs) said, "Mom, this song is about me and how I keep trying at ice skating!"  This kid is ridiculously smart and adorable!!  So we have been playing and singing the song all week, it is our new theme song! 

Berke has his next lesson, and his beginner class went from three crying kids to just a Berkeley.  The owner stated many parents give up after the first lesson and the kid doesn't like it, he praised us for bringing B back.  Berke was a TOTALLY different kid on the ice.  It helped that it wasn't as cold outside, that it was lightly snowing and that B had his teacher all to himself.  Berke was trying, he would fall down and get back up.  He was even fascinated by the ice when he fell and did a few snow angels on the rink. He still cannot do anything on his own, but he tried for 30 minutes straight, he kept getting up and he never cried or kicked his legs in the air.  

I have to say I have never been more proud of my little man for trying at something that was so terrifying for him when he first began.  He didn't give up and he even enjoys it now. 

I am also proud of my parenting skills on this one; I'm gonna go ahead and chalk this one up as a proud parenting moment.  It was a wonderful and exciting way to end the week.  I think the high light for Berke man was going to Toys R Us.  The kid earned two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle this week.  Turtle Power indeed.