Well it seems someone has caught the ACTING BUG at the house these days. Sullivan’s new movie of choice this week has been Disney’s TOY STORY and in usual Sullivan style he watches it an obscene amount of times each day. For those of you who’ve never seen the flick OR forget the movie Tom Hank’s plays a toy cowboy named Woody who numerous times throughout the story gets into some unfortunate situations. Well, at the end of the movie it seems our hero Woody has come to the end of his journey and is not able to reunite with his owner and in classic Hanks style throws a comical fit. Those of us who have seen Hanks in such movies as CAST AWAY, BIG, and THE MONEY PIT are familiar with this silly bit he does. So last night when we finished watching the movie for the THIRD time of the day Sullivan got up from the foof grabbed his cowboy hat and dropped to the ground saying “No, No,….No, No, No, No, No.” and at first I thought he was upset the movie was over and then I thought he was upset because we mentioned that it was time for Night Night and then as I watched him repeat the same drop and recite I realized he was re-enacting the Tom Hanks fit scene from the end of the movie. Well needless to say he re-enacted this scene about a hundred times last night….and then as we put him to bed we heard the scene played out another hundred or so times and then this morning when he woke up at 6am he acted it out another dozen times in his bed before he went back to his play room to watch the movie and then act the entire scene out in front of the mirrors once again. Now for the past couple of hours he has been back in the playroom acting and recreating scenes all by himself. And if Damon and I try to go back there he says “Bye Bye”. He wants to be all by himself today and has his tub of toy animals out and toy characters and is playing scenes with them. Is is a day of THEATRICS for sure 🙂

Damon and I took Sullivan to the pool today. We have a new membership to the northwest Austin YMCA and they have one of the neatest outdoor pools with giant fountains and slides and a beach style entrance. I have wanted to get Sullivan over there for the last several weeks and as you saw in my earlier posts we bought all the training swim gear so we were ready to go.

He was a bit overwhelmed at first. He loves the water and has been in small kiddie pools before but just didn’t know what to do at the sight of the giant “bath”. The entrance to the pool was sloped and slanted like a beach so we took our time and walked in slowly as he was a bit confused. He was doing his typical excited shake. Shaking not because he was frightened but because he was so intense with focus and enthusiasm trying to figure all of it out. I finally picked him up and took him out to the deep end (only 4 ft. ) and let him float and bounce in the water and he looked so surprised. I mean we had him in a real pool last summer but I doubt he remembered it so he just had this look like “how did you get a bath so BIG”. Well before I knew it he was wanting to swim on his own and dunk his head under the water. I pulled him around and around like a speed boat by his arms and under his chest and he had a blast. Damon was on the poolside documenting the entire experience and captured some great shots. Sullivan would have made his uncle Jimmy proud today with his natural take to swimming and putting his head under water. He still had a few moments that made him worried and when his Nemo wetsuit rolled him over and dunked his head he would get a bit started but as soon as he was up and safe he’d wade back into the deep end and try and repeat the stunt again. And once he gained confidence maneuvering in the water he moved about quite freely exploring and splashing and frolicking in the pool.
Anyway, looking forward to more pool time this summer and teaching Sullivan how to paddle and kick and hold his breath under water. I mean he has about 11 more months to go to beat his mothers record for jumping off a diving board at the age of 3.

Sullivan woke up a few moments ago from his afternoon nap and Damon and I went into his room to see what was wrong. There were a few tears in his eyes and he seemed to be comforted quickly by our speedy response so we assumed it was just a bad dream or something that woke him up. So Damon put on his music that he likes to hear and I gave him a hug and sat down on the rocking chair beside his bed and just sat there with him for a bit. You could tell he was still in a sleepy daze by the rhythmic sucking beat of his fafel (pacifier)and the soft stroking of his beetit (blanket) with his fingers all the time starring blankly at the spindles of his crib. After a short while he said “Bye Bye Mommy” which these days always seems to signal that he is alright now and okay for us to leave. So I echoed a good bye back and followed it with an “I Love You”. And as I got up from the chair my sweet little Sullivan responded back with an “I wuv you Mommy” something he has gotten into a habit of doing these days. Damon and I usually put Sullivan to bed together at night. We put on a new diaper and jammies, read a story, turn the light off, turn the fan on and then Sullivan always asks us both to sit in our chairs. “Daddy chair” and he points to the rocking chair….”Mommy chair” and he points to the overstuffed chair where we read stories and we all sit together and wind down our day. Now of course there are times when I am not back there when the wind down routine begins but I always know when lights are out cause I’ll hear Sullivan yell out to me “Mommy Chair” and I best get back there soon so as not to disturb the night time ritual. Then Sullivan flops and gets a little silly in the bed…rolling and bouncing up and down….saying “Night Night” a dozen or so times until finally he says “Bye Bye” which is our signal to leave the room. And lately as I have been leaving the room I’ll say I Love you and he has quickly picked it up and chimes in repeating the phrase. But hearing him say it today just seemed so much a part of his routine and filled me with this enormous feeling of joy and pride. Over the past several weeks it seems all that I have been filled with is frustration and fear over all the bad things I may be teaching my son. All the bad behavior he must see on a day to day basis having an overly expressive mom who is juggling 3 part-time jobs. And the reality is that he probably is observing some not so perfect behavior from time to time but at least once a day (if not 20 times a day) he hears me say I love you and he gets a hug and a kiss and often some cuddle time that he usually tries to wiggle out of cause there are just far too many things to explore and experience to stop for snuggle time. But he hears us both say it and has learned at his young two year old life to say it back. I just wanted to stop and celebrate that today. I am an expert at beating myself up and I often waste valuable time reprimanding and scolding myself for not living up to my own personal expectations. But I wonder today if maybe my son is teaching me that there are alternative expectations to consider in this parenting scenario. Different perspectives that have nothing to do with achieving perfection and everything to do with living in the moment and making sure that those you care about most know that you love them and that they are valued. So for now Sullivan has ventured back to the land of sweet dreams and I’m sure when he wakes he will get back to his full time job of boundary testing and expressing the intense frustrations at the limitations of his age which I hope to respond to with LOVE. If LOVE is my only response to him than I imagine everything will be alright 🙂
Oops, I spoke too soon….I hear some cries from the other room….guess there is no napping today for our little Sullivan. No nap equals major crankiness…Lord give me strength to remember the beautiful lesson you just taught me.

Daddy gave Sullivan a violin lesson yesterday. Sullivan has had it out before and has tinkered with it but Damon took the time to teach him some basics. We worked on how to hold the violin and the bow and how to bow gently and not pull the strings hard. Sullivan was thrilled to hear the sound he made with the strings and he did fairly well making music with it. He wanted to hold it and bow by himself of course which we allowed but he would get too excited or forgetful and pick the the violin up by it’s strings or bang the violin with the bow. Well it has been his favorite thing to do these past few days (aside from putting things in the toilet which is also a new favorite past time ….grrr) But he really can be quite focused and attentive with stuff like this. He is far more careful and gentle than some boys I have seen and glad that Damon takes the time to give him opportunities to explore in a watchful enviornment. I don’t often think to try things like this and I always learn a lot from Damon when he includes Sullivan in activities that I may not think he is ready for. I am learning day by day and the two of them always surprise me in their natural pursuits to understand how things work.
Oh and PS…if you are wondering why Sullivan always seems to have green dirt around his mouth in his pictures…it’s his juice. We give Sullivan the naked brand green machine drinks that are made with spinach, broccoli, barley and wheat grass, blue green algae, and parsley. He loves the drink and this is the only way we can get veggies into this kid so everyone is just going to have to deal with our green mouthed boy 🙂

Well we are gearing up for summer swim time down here. It has been a hot start to the summer and Mommy is getting excited to start teaching Sullivan a favorite Leberknight family past time…SWIMMING of course! He’s already been enjoying the small kiddie pools as you have seen in earlier posts but we have not ventured out to the big pool for some serious swimming yet. That begins tomorrow. But I wanted to get him fitted for some training gear before we went. Last year we bought him a small floating device that he sat in and could paddle his feet. Now he is bigger and more coordinated and time to step it up a notch. So here are the two swim suit looks that we have chosen for Summer 2008. Suit ONE is a Nemo themed wet suit of sorts lined with football style chest and shoulder pads. Bound to have some serious fun in this one if he is able to menuever in the pool with all that extra padding. Whew…that is some serious padding there. Then we have suit TWO…his European suit direct from France. As if I had to tell you where it was from…where else in the word do boys/men wear such skimpy shorts. Sullivan gets lots of hand me down clothes from our good friend Melinda and she receives the hand me down clothes for her three boys from a family member who buys clothes for her boy in France. Lots of passing around of clothes going on I know but they are all still in great shape. So Sullivan now has three patterns of lovely skimpy shorts to show off at the pool (along with a bunch of other French clothing much of it too small for him as I think French boys might be smaller over there because he doesn’t even fit into the 36 month clothing..hmm) I am thinking that if Sullivan is not successful at the swimming thing he can at least please the ladies in style number two……not the 2 year old ladies of course cause they won’t give a darn what he is wearing but I think it will be a hit with the mommies and grandmas poolside. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow and let you know how lesson one goes.