Belly Driving

One of Andrew's trademark behaviors right now is his belly driving.  Whenever he sees a toy car the first (and many times only) thing he wants to do is drive it back and forth across his tummy. 

I always thought he liked to do that since it made for easy inspection of the turning wheels, but what happened last week has given me a better glimpse into Andrew's motivation.  When he picked up a car after nap time and started to drive it across his (clothed) belly, he immediately tried to raise his shirt up but then decided he just wanted it off and pulled on it to show me what he wanted.  So I helped him out of the shirt and he happily started driving the car on his bare skin.  This incident also made me realize how much of the time he spends without a shirt on, due to the fact that his shirt always comes off at mealtimes and rarely gets put back on in a timely fashion (he won't keep a bib on but is still WAY too messy to eat with a shirt on).  And also after swimming in the afternoons I don't usually put a shirt on him again until he gets in his pajamas.

The other amusing story related to this is when I dropped him off in the church nursery a few weeks ago, he started fussing as soon as I set him down.  The nursery worker that day happened to be our next door neighbor, and the first thing she said was "Let me get a car for him to drive on his tummy.  I know the trick with this one!"  And of course she was completely correct!

Andrew’s Bedtime Reminders

Andrew’s bedtime routine has gotten much easier over the past few months. Not too long ago I was nursing/bouncing him on the exercise ball until he was almost asleep, making sure he had a paci in his hand to play with, then carefully placing him in his crib and tiptoeing out of the room hoping that he would not fuss. These days Daddy is in charge of Andrew’s bedtime routine: Brian reads some books, Andrew picks out books to look at in his crib, then he's put in bed wide awake to fall asleep on his own.  We usually don’t hear a peep from him after Brian leaves the room. (We did have some regression during our week at the beach, but we got back on track after the first week back home.)

One night last week though Andrew just couldn’t settle down to sleep and Brian had to go back in to talk to him. If I remember correctly, Brian and I had both been in at least once, so when Brian went in a second time and Andrew still wouldn’t get quiet Brian told him “Andrew, you have to go to sleep if you want to ride in the Oldsmobile!” Andrew quit fussing right away and reached towards his crib with an “Unhh”, and that was the last thing we heard out of him for the night!

Then last night Andrew wouldn’t settle again, and this time Brian’s encouragement to Andrew was “You need to go to sleep so you can go to Nana’s house tomorrow!” Once again it worked like a charm and Andrew didn’t make another sound. And this morning after asking for “Dad-EEEE?” his second question was “Nana?” It still surprises me sometimes how much he already understands and remembers!

Beach Trip 2016

Well, we took a beach trip. Please notice that I said "trip" and not "vacation", because it was a few relaxing moments in the midst of overwhelming crazyness.  If Gran and Pawpaw hadn't had the idea for us all to rent a house together, Brian and I would have never attempted the trip with Andrew at this age  But at least we got a few good photos as a consolation prize. 

Things I want to remember:

• We went to Holden Beach, NC and it was so crazy windy ALL WEEK LONG.  The wind never stopped blowing and the waves were BIG.  
• Nathan was a boogie-boarding phenom!  The adults would take turns with him out in the water, and he would wear out Gran, Daddy and Pawpaw and still be raring to ride more waves.
• Sarah had fun boogie-boarding too, but she was also really into digging pools and making walls and towers in the sand.  
• Andrew liked the beach, although his attitude mostly depended on his proximity to me.  The further away from him I was, the more likely he was to be having a melt-down.  Usually he's more of a Daddy's boy, but this week it was all about Mama.  
• We boiled shrimp on 4 out of the 6 days we were at the beach, had burgers once and fried fresh-caught red snapper once.  We ate GOOD! 
• Gran and Pawpaw were angels and got up with the kids at 6am every morning and took them out to the beach so that Brian and I could sleep in until an extravagantly late 8am (all the kids needed a real breakfast by then). 
• Because we don't have enough excitement in our lives. the AC on the van gave out about 2 hours into our 7.5 hour drive to the beach.  The highs were in the mid-90s that day.  So at lunch Brian dropped the kids and me off at Chick-fil-a and drove to the auto parts store to buy some tools so he could figure out the problem.  He did (of course!), but we needed to order new parts to fix it.  So the rest of the 5.5 hours to the beach was crazy awful: 95 degrees + humidity, Andrew only took a 20 minute nap with an hour of screaming on either side of the nap, we were running low on water so Brian and I basically had nothing to drink for the last 2-3 hours so we could save the water for the kids (we were not stopping until we got there!).  That night after we finally made it to the beach, Brian and I both admitted that during the drive we thought this might be a glimpse into what hell might be like.  Then Brian did some research and figured out the parts and tools he needed to fix the AC, overnighted them from Amazon to the beach house, but they were delayed due to the 4th of July and then we found out that the post office doesn't deliver on the beach road and therefore send our packages back to Amazon.  Plan B was for Brian to drive into Wilmington to buy what he needed, then he stayed up until 12am fixing the van so we would have AC on the way home.  Some people might have just taken their car to the repair shop, but that's only a last-ditch option if your a Kornrumpf.  (Brian did save us a bunch of money on the repair, which was nice.)