Working for a "Big Boy Bed"

Brayton is transition.

We decided it's about time we get him out of the crib and into a "big boy bed." For the last two weeks he has been difficult to get to bed, for both naps and at night time. He would scream and cry, kick and flail about, and use any type of stall tactic his little mind could think of.

Grandma Cindy suggested that she thought he was big enough for a new bed, and Colette and I agreed.

We were orginally going to wait until his 3rd birthday, but with the recent spate of tantrums we knew we could not put him in a bed without rails until we fixed the tantrum problem.

Colette is so good at finding positive solutions to problems like this. She suggested we create a chart that every night B goes to bed with out fussing and throwing a tantrum, he gets to put a sticker on his chart. Once his chart is filled up, he gets his Big Boy Bed. I thought it was a great idea. We talked about how long it should be, I thought shorter was best. But we ended up doing 28 days. By that point hopefully the tantrums habit will be broken and it's a long enough time he can see his progress while working for the Big Boy Bed.

Well, as you can see by the picture of the chart, we are two nights into the stickers and Brayton has been doing quite well.

We have been making it a point to really talk up the stickers and chart to get to the end goal of getting a Big Boy Bed. Brayton's little mind is like his fathers (or so Colette says). He is already trying to scheme ways to skip all the days and put his sticker on the 28th day. He wanted to do that after day one.

Part of the ritual is he gets to pick a "bug" sticker. Colette bought these little bug stickers that Brayton just loves. So far, this chart idea is working well.

As I am writing this, it's 11pm, and when Brayton wakes up tomorrow morning he will get to add his 3rd bug sticker. Not a peep out of him when I put him down for bed tonight. I made sure to remind him when we were reading books.

"P" is for "Puppy"

Today is Independence Day, the 4th of July 2008. Today, Uncle Matt and Aunt Audra invited us to attend the Urbandale parade with them and some other friends. We arrived at the spot where we would watch the parade at about 10 AM. It was a nice and shady spot that Uncle Matt had staked out some time before we arrived. He couldn't have pick a better spot. We were at the very end of the parade though so we didn't see any actual parade until about 10:30 or so. The fact that there was no action going on for almost a half hour was more than Brayton could bear. Good thing Matt and Audra were there to entertain him until the parade got to us.

Once the parade stared going by, it was okay for about the first couple of floats and cars that drove by. Brayton was quickly getting bored with the entire parade thing, and Uncle Matt and I were getting physicall tired of tossing him in the air.

That is UNTIL, they started throwing candy. Then we stayed for the next hour and watched every float go by with Brayton wondering if they were going to toss candy. Brayton did so well, he picked up enough candy to last well into the fall, and was such a good boy sharing all of his candy with Lauren and the other kids at the parade. It was lots of fun watching him get so excited about the candy.

Lauren on the other hand, couldn't have cared less about the candy (except when I gave her a little Dum Dum sucker). The most exciting part of the entire parade was any time someone with a dog would walk by she'd immediately say "puppy" and point her finger. There was a whole float dedicated to dogs, I don't recall if it was the animal shelter or some animal boarding house, but a float with about 25 dogs went by. Lauren was bouncing on my lap she was so excited.

I have to admit, I had a good time too.