Golden Pig Tales

Ezra is 19 months old as of today. And as of today we are beginning the process of weening him from the pacifier. -v- and I have both made the commitment of beginning to let it be known to Ezra that the pacifier is not something that 20 month old kids use, which Ezra will be in one month. AND in one month we will take the pacifier away.

We are also very excited with the fact EZRA IS 1.583333333 YEARS OLD! Yay! Ezra is speaking more words like today when he was babbling words that we knew and didn’t know. He is beginning to name types of cars. He is wanting to have daddy included in more things like his chase-around game and taking him to bed and going for walks with him. The walks have been good to great because he likes to grab my finger when we walk and holds on until he needs to point at a car, a plane or a train.

Ezra and I went for a walk after I got home from work. We walked to the park where he cycled around the merry-go-round once. Then he climbed and slid down the slide twice. Then we walked along the main street to his favorite intersection and then we walked along the four-lane road as we watched cars pass. He stopped every time we heard a plane above. He would look up. We would stand and look up try to find the plane, and we would point at it once it was found. A couple times during the walk Ezra said, ,,Wow,” at the planes.

We heard a train and seen part of a train. As happens when he hears trains honk their loud horns during the past weeks, Ezra said, ,,Beep, beep.” We walked on. We seen semi-trucks, cars, vans, motor cycles and buses. We walk until it was too cold and wet then we went home.

He didn’t want to go, but he didn’t give to much a fight. I did have to carry him which wasn’t bad because he did walk most the time. And when he walks with me he always wants to hold on to my index finger which makes me smile, and it makes any back pain I may feel when carrying him less painful.

Trying to put Ezra to bed tonight was….trying. It all started when I tried to brush his teeth after his bath. Bad Idea. Nothing would go right after that. He didn’t want me to put his clothes on, but was too frustrated to try to put them on himself, and too cold not to put them on. Finally he calmed down and we got the PJs on, and then he let me pick him up, and then we listened to some johnny cash for a while…Hopefully this was just a tired tantrum and nothing is wrong…

Ezra once liked the idea of brushing teeth. He even use to go into the bathroom and want to brush his teeth. Unforturnatly his idea of brushing teeth was him sucking off the toothpaste from toothbrush then tossing his tooth brush in the sink.

We tried singing and smiling about brushing teeth. We tried showing him how to brush teeth by brushing our teeth and how it is fun by smiling and dancing while we brushed our teeth. Nothing worked. He would suck the toothbrush clean of toothpaste and hold it up. If we didn’t put anymore toothpaste on the toothbrush he would toss it into the sink.

What has worked is holding Ezra while one of us brushes his teeth, so he doesn’t hurt himself. He fusses and shouts. He squirms. He shifts and moves. He shouts, which only helps us clean the teeth in the back of his mouth. He doesn’t like it at any time, but his teeth are getting clean, and what else are going to do? Let his teeth rot? No, then he really would be in pain, and that would be bad.

Ezra had a booster seat strapped to a dinner table chair for a few months to make eating at the dinner table easy. This booster seat was strapped to the dinning table chair for a few months between now and the time he stopped using his high-chair. Ezra did like eating in his booster seat, but after a while he seemed to hate being belted down and after a while we stopped belting him down, and then he seemed to hate sitting in a molded seat, so then he just sat on a different seat, and now there is no more booster seat strapped to a chair.

We had friends over and there was not enough seats to seat everyone if we left the booster seat on a dinning table chair, and Ezra hasn’t used the booster seat in some time, and he wouldn’t sit in it, and I wasn’t going to sit in it, so I removed it from chair once and for all.Ezra sat, as he has for a few months, on a dinning table chair. When he was tired of sitting, he kneeled.

We are okay with him kneeling on a dinning table chair because some times he probably wants to be a little more above his food when eating. Once in a while he does try to stand on his chair, but this is rare now because we lower our tone and ask him to please sit, and he does, so there is no more need for a booster seat.