Operation Binks Removal: Night 2

Well, this morning started off EARLY.  And cranky.  He has been waking up at 4:00 or so, and we've just been giving him binks and laying him back down.  Well, this morning he woke up at 4:30 and, of course, we didn't have a binks to give to him.  He SCREAMED, again, for an hour.  Finally at 5:30 we were both about to do something insane, so we let him get up.  (You thought I was going to say we let him have binks, didn't you?)  We stayed strong.  But he didn't want to come to bed with us or watch tv or anything.  He just wandered around crying, looking for binks.  We both went out and laid on the couches and put tv on in the dark, hoping to get a few extra winks before the sun came up.  I found one of the broken binks and he finally calmed down when I let him carry it around.  That's all he wanted was to hold it.  But, it was up, down, happy, sad, snack, milk, poke in the eyes, up, down, etc etc so while Dan slept soundly on the couch I dealt with the boy.  :)

Anyway, nap time went ok.  I only let Greyson scream for about 5-10 minutes before I went in and rocked him again.  He went right to sleep, binks in hand.  Seriously, its the sweetest thing.

Same thing tonight at bed time.  No crying.  At. All.  I just rocked him and he went right to sleep even before seahorse stopped singing.  Binks in hand.

My thought at this point is that if I can get him to fall asleep without binks, even if that means rocking him, we can wean the rocking off a little later.  Everything in stages, people, everything in stages.

Operation Binks Removal: Night 1

Well, folks, this is it.  We have decided that 18 months is long enough for Greyson to hang on to his pacifier (or lovingly referred to in our house as "Binks.")  You have to understand how insanely addicted he is.  Its a bit ridiculous.  Binks is only for bedtime and naptime, but he still can't live without it at those times.  Anyway, since we are done with family visits for awhile, we deemed this weekend to be THE ONE.  So tonight, we snipped the tips of of his binks' so when he sucks on them all he gets is a mouthful of air.  Yeah, we know, we're super mean.  Here's how the night went:

7:25:  Bedtime routine.  We read a book in his rocker.  He always gets binks during the book reading, so tonight was no different.  He put it in his mouth, promptly removed it, and studied it, confused.  "Uh oh!" he said and continued to study it with a worried look.  "Looks like Binks is broken.  Oh well," I responded.  We read the book and gave kisses and hugs.

7:30: Laid in his crib with blanket, seahorse, and broken binks.  He realized that he wasn't getting a real binks.  Thats when the screams began.  And I mean SCREAMING.  We left.

7:45: Still SCREAMING.  Dan went in to try and help.  Immediate quiet.  He pointed to all the items he had thrown out of his crib.  Dan picked up blanket, seahorse, and binks.  Reality set in.  More SCREAMING.

8:00: Still SCREAMING.  This time I went in to see what I could do.  Immediate quiet.  I picked up Greyson, his blanket, and turned on seahorse.  I tried rocking him.  He would have none of that.  He wanted to pick up binks too.  So we did.  **this is the best part** He didn't try to put binks in his mouth.  He just held it in his hand against his chest while we rocked.  Like a pet that had died or something.  And we rocked to sleep.

8:10: Asleep.

Not too bad for the first night.  We are hoping that it only takes a few nights of screaming before he can sleep without it.  We will see.  I'll keep you updated.  :)

Our Christmas(es) Part 2

If you haven't read Part 1, scroll on down and do that first, then come back up.

We made it to CA in 12 hours, which was less than we were planning on.  Greyson did so great the entire trip, with just a little impatience at about hour 10.  I was impatient too.  :)  We had such a great time with my family, and they blessed us so much.  We are so thankful to have such great families. We got there late the 23rd, and Amy and Chris arrived on Christmas Eve to announce they had just gotten engaged!  Yay!!  They were so excited and her ring is beautiful!

Greyson just wanted to play the piano.  :)

We had a great time on Christmas day with just my immediate family.  It was so chill and just nice to enjoy each other (and make wedding plans, haha).  This is my dad reading the Christmas story and Greyson listening intently and nodding in agreement.

The next day we celebrated with my mom's side of the family.  It was so fun to see everyone.  All the cousins were together for the first time in several years, so it was really great.  This is Greyson playing the piano with my sweet cousin Garrett.

We had such a great Christmas and were definitely reminded of what's important.  We hope your family had a great time too.  Dan's parents are here this week for his birthday and New Year's so there will be more photos coming soon.  Happy New Year everyone!

Our Christmas(es) Part 1

We had such a great Christmas this year!  It was busy, but we were definitely reminded of how blessed we are and how loved we are by our family.  This year, Greyson is at such a fun age so it was such a great time opening gifts, baking cookies, and just enjoying one another.  This year we headed up to CA to visit my family for actual Christmas, so we faked Christmas morning down here in AZ a couple of days early.  Here are some shots of our Christmas and then I will post another one of our trip to CA.

One of my favorite memories of Christmas growing up was baking treats with my sister and mom.  We always made so much yummy stuff to take to neighbors and parties.  I wanted to continue that tradition with our family, even though Greyson is still young.  Here are some shots of that fun few minutes that his attention held.  We did make an entire batch of Magic Cookies together and he LOVED eating the chocolate chips (duh!)

 Helping me wrap gifts....Well, maybe not really HELPING...

 We worked it out with Santa that he would come on the night of Tuesday the 21st so we could have Christmas morning on the 22nd at our house.  He was happy to check one house off his list early, and Greyson was not disappointed!  Here he is with his stocking...

 And the amazing photo that he actually let me pose him for.  I couldn't believe it!

 Playing with his new cars:

I am so proud of this, I might just make another post all about the car play mat so you can see it better :)  I sewed this for Greyson's cars and it has a house for each of our family members so he can drive to Grandma's house, etc.  I have since put pictures in all of the houses so he can see everyone's faces.  It was a ton of work, but I love it.  And most importantly, so does Greyson!

Greyson also loves his cute rocking moose!  Thanks "super elf" for putting it together!

All in all, we had a great time as just our little family.  It was so much fun this year.  The next day we piled in the car and made the 12-hour trek to Modesto.  More to come...

A Glimpse

Just thought I'd give you a stinkin' hilarious glimpse into Greyson's usual MO.  Pajamas, as many of my necklaces as he can find, and Dan's xbox head set.  Such a silly boy!

15 Month Update

...Even though he's already older than 16 months.  Oh well.  I have tried to keep this blog as a baby book of sorts so that I can go back and remember what he was doing at certain points.  Lately I've been kind of sucking at that.  It has nothing to do with the fact that he hasn't been doing anything cool...because he's doing tons of awesome stuff.  It's just that life with a toddler gets BEYOND busy.   Anyway, enough with the excuses.
Okiedokie, so we went to the doctor a few weeks ago and here's what he said:
Weight: 26 lbs (75th percentile)
Height: 33.5 inches (90th percentile)
Head circumference was 75th as well, not sure on the measurement.
Has 12 teeth (4 top front, 4 bottom front, and all 4 1st molars)

We counted and Greyson knows 20+ words, which the Dr. said was developmentally in the 18-24 month range, so we were happy.  Same thing with his gross and fine motor (can walk backwards and sideways, stacks 5 blocks, screws and unscrews lids, throws balls, etc.)  He also knows how to kick, hit, scream, spit, and arch his back in a fierce tantrum.  We are so proud!

I haven't yet actually written down all the words he says, so I'm going to do that here.  Please don't feel like you have to read through them, I just want to have them to look back on.  :)  As of today (16 months old) he can appropriately say
1. mama
2. dada
3. java
4. ball
5. dog
6. baba (drink)
7. snack
8. nana (banana or Nana)
9. night-night
10. duck
11. bath
12. milk
13. uh-oh
14. "side" (outside)
15. papa
16. hi
17. bye-bye
18. "pu"  (computer)
19. yeah
20. wow
21. thank you
22. welcome (you're welcome)
23. please
24. book
25. baby
26. cat (sometimes)
27. car (sometimes)
28. shoe
29. sock
30. down
31. up
32. door
33. off
34. on
35. hot
36. hat

We both have been so overwhelmed lately with how much he is looking like a little boy and less and less like our baby.  Moving into toddler-dom has (so far) been chock full of fun, energy, exhaustion, learning, frustration, fears, and so much more.  He is changing every day and every day we fall more and more in love with his growing personality.  We are so blessed and so thankful!

Phew, November Was Crazy!

I realize I haven't posted on here since Halloween, and now November is already over.  Not sure when that happened.  It's been a crazy month for us here at the DeZago house, but we made it through.  We had visits from Dan's mom and my parents, within a week of each other, so that pretty much took most of the month. In between those, we had his 15 month check-up, lots of trips to the park, some decorating projects going on and probably a ton of other stuff.  Here's November in photos:

This is a dresser we found on someone's curb just waiting for someone to come and give it new life.  Major Ugly...

And, here is its new life!  The color is bad because I took the pic at night with just the flash, but the dark is a medium gray and the yellow is a mustard color.  All distressed and pretty :)  Amazing what a little TLC can do.  Is there a life lesson in this??  

Dan's mom came for a week and even let us get away to Flagstaff for a night without the boy!  It was so great.  We stayed at the Hilton and literally did almost NOTHING the entire time.  We ate food, hung out in the hot tub, and sat at Barnes & Noble.  We felt so old, but we were so happy to have nothing on the agenda!  We took no pictures, mostly because we did nothing.  :)  Here are some cute shots of Mari's visit.

First bites of Nana's pumpkin pie 

Not too much later, my parents came down for Thanksgiving.  It was a great weekend.  Greyson is getting to where he knows people in his life, so he loved hanging out with Nana and loved spending time with Grandma and "Papa" too.  Its so cute.  Here are some shots of us at the zoo...

And just being silly

We are so blessed to have family that will travel hundreds and hundreds of miles and give up vacation time just to be a part of Greyson's life.  These moments are so priceless!  Thank you!