Difficult

That sums up our lives with Robbie at the moment. He's testing his boundaries and when he doesn't like the rules we've set in place he definitely makes it known to everyone that he's not happy.

Something as little as changing his bum has turned into a game for him, instead of lying down for us he chooses to run in the opposite direction so that we'll chase after him. What's the big deal, right? He's a toddler. With me being the pregnant state I'm in I can't run after him and refuse to make it into a game... if I chase him around the kitchen table he thinks that I can chase him around parked cars in the parking lot. So we've given him choices: a) get bum changed and go back to playing or b) time out. The tricky thing is that he knows what a time out is and what it entails... some times he chooses to go lay on the mat in a time out where he just sits there and talks to himself. When the time is over and we go to take him out of the time out he doesn't want to leave!! Do you leave him in there until he's ready to say sorry (which has gone as long as about 5mins)? If we leave him in there then the question is: who's in control at that point?

We went to the park today and he didn't want to hold our hand on the way there or on the way back. Thankfully Colin was there and carried him home, if he doesn't hold a hand then he doesn't get to walk like a big boy. I can't be chasing after a toddler out on the streets in my state, it's just physically impossible now.

He's trying so hard to be Mr. Independent and we try to give him as much of it as we can. He wants to read his bed time story to me know, I have mixed feelings about this. I love when he reads to me during the day but at night he tends to drag things on and to prolong story time for as much as possible (when I give him a hug/kiss goodnight I have to give his water bottle a kiss, Pooh Bear, his shark, the sharks eye, the sharks mouth, the sharks nose, etc) So I've had to make the call that Mommy & Daddy are the ones that read the bed time stories, this afternoon he didn't like my decision so he went to bed without a story.

I'm hoping his recent behavioral issues are due to his teeth. He still has bum rashes which have been kept under control thanks to Grammie and Grampie's recent replenishment of Nelda's Paste. This afternoon he peed in his diaper followed by him saying "doo doo" and then he started to cry as he spread his legs apart and got onto his tippy toes. It was obvious that his pee was stinging his bum, during the diaper change we found a little bit of blood on his diaper - but oddly enough, no red bum, just a tiny blood dot under his scrotum.

On the positive side of things, Colin and I were able to go on a little trip to Vancouver and we had a wonderful time! We got to re-connect and spend some well needed quality time together. Colin was in heaven walking down Robson St with his Starbucks in hand while walking into the Lacoste store... and all the sushi the town had to offer. Janet Jackson did not disappoint, we had AMAZING seats and we were literally an arms reach away from her. She had a catwalk that encompassed the pit area (where we were) and she spent a lot of time on it looking into the crowd - I froze when she looked at me, what do you do when your childhood idol looks at you and smiles?! I cried several times throughout her show, she sang a lot of her classics which brought back so many emotions from my past. It was almost therapeutic to see/sing with her.