Adventures with Nater

Oh, where do I begin.

So, every day is an adventure with Nate. As many of you know Nate is a very sweet, sensitive, smart little boy, yet also very stubborn and strong-willed! Put all of these traits together and there is never a dull moment in the Dulin household. Let me just share a few recent stories with you.

We have been having some struggles at night with Nater. He is a GREAT sleeper and once he is asleep he is out, BUT, lately it has been very difficult to get him to GO to sleep! He will come out of his room 10-15 times at night without giving us any reason as to why he doesn't want to go to sleep. So, we have had a tough time trying to figure what is going on besides the fact that I have heard from many moms that this is a normal phase for his age. However, it certainly does not take the frustration away trying to deal with this constant night-time routine.

I received MANY wonderful comments and wise advice from other moms so I decided to try some of it out. One mom said, "maybe he is scared of the dark". Then my mom said, "get something to spray and say that he can spray all of the bad stuff away before going to bed". Both good thoughts so I went out and bought a nightlight and covered up our Febreeze bottle and wrote "Bye Bye Bad Stuff" on it. So, that night we gave him his new nightlight and I introduced the BYE BYE BAD STUFF spray. Nate was SUPER excited about his rocket nightlight and loved spraying the 'bad stuff' away. It all worked. At least for 10 minutes.

Not only was his room a VERY POTENT smell of Febreeze, he still came out of his room that night SEVERAL times. At one point I heard him come out of his room and go across into our room. I headed upstairs to see what he was doing and found that he had disassembled his nightlight, had the nightlight bulb IN HIS MOUTH, and was playing with daddy's ab-roller. Only Nate.

So, the next night, we had the same struggles. He continued coming out of his room and finally at 11:00 p.m. I was REALLY annoyed. I heard him come out of his room and I met him at the door. I was about to tell him to get into that bed when I saw that he was covered in something. I was totally confused...it looked like lotion but it wasn't. Turns out he had taken the whole tube of BUTT PASTE and had put it in his hair, all over his PJ's and on his face and arms. Yes, you read that right...BUTT PASTE! Jeremy and I were rolling. We laughed sooo hard and I had Jeremy run and get the camera. The above picture shows how we found him and I asked him if his face was frozen because he stood like that for about 5 minutes!!! We quickly put him in the shower but after 30 minutes it still was not all out. So, thankfully, one of my friends mentioned using baking soda with the shampoo and Jeremy got most of it out the next morning. Only Nate.

So, tonight. We have been working on potty-training for quite some time but like everything else...it is all in NATE'S timing. Some days he is great with the potty, other days he could careless, and yet other days he will tell us...but after the fact. Which is exactly what happened tonight. We were getting him ready for a bath and he ran into our room. I found him in our closet and he told me that he had peed. I thought he had peed in the closet but the closet just ended up being his hiding place because I found the pee...ON OUR BED. Again, ONLY NATE. I will be making a trip to the dry cleaners very soon.

I tell you all of these stories as I chuckle. Parenting can be sooo frustrating but it is the greatest adventure in the world.