• Make it something special of course, but don’t add too much hype, otherwise they will probably feel the pressure. Be prepared to wait if they aren’t ready (i.e. don’t take the crib down too soon).
• If you have space, put the bed, with sheets/comforter/bed rails, in the room well before you actually start using it. They can get used to it being there and play on it during the day to see that it is a fun thing, not scary.
• Let them pick out fun sheets if they are able – some mommies have had great success with the new princess or Blue’s Clues sheets, for example – they may like them so much, they’ll want to sleep on them right away.
• Take down the crib while they are around, explaining that they are big boys/girls and going to sleep in a big bed now. Once the new bed was set up, have them help make the bed and choose which stuffed animals could go in their bed. One mother had success with having them pick two animals so that they can keep each other company during the day – this can avoid a giant pile of animals on the bed.
• Put a gate at the door, so they can see us, we see them and know that they aren’t getting into anything they shouldn’t. Some have had success with double gates, one atop the other.

I have a mini-Tigger this week – not that he isn’t always a busy little guy, but he’s been on some medicine for his cough that hypes him up beyond normal parameters. We are talking about literally bouncing off the walls, running from one end of the house to the other at 11pm, jumping on the bed for hours, etc. – way too energized for my taste! To add insult to all of this, it is still ten nightmares each time we try to give him medicine (three different medicines, three times a day….), as if the effects of the medicine aren’t bad enough!

Maybe I can teach him to clean the house and do errands with all that excess energy…..

On a calmer note, the Carnival of Family Life is up, lots of great submissions this week!

Lil’ Duck refused to take a paci from birth, I tried and tried but he just wanted to nurse all the time for comfort. Anyway, a lot of his friends are still trying to kick the paci habit, so here are some tips from their mommies that might help anyone else in a similar situation.

• I would recommend cold turkey, out of sight, out of mind. Yes, it will be hard the first couple of days, but it gets so much easier. You can hold him and give him lots of kisses when you do it. If you really don’t want to, you can do the Paci fairy thing. The Paci Fairy comes to get all the binkys to give to the new babies (or to take the binky back to their Binky mommies and daddies) and leaves them a toy in exchange. You can have him put the binky on the window sill and say good bye to it. When they are sleeping, take it away and put all of them in the trash can outside. You can have a hunt (like an Easter egg hunt to find all the binky’s) before you do that. You can also have a little calendar and mark off days until the binky fairy comes to visit.
• The second attempt at cold turkey went SO much better than the first. He was probably about 19-20 months old by then. He fussed a little, but did not cry unconsolably. The first several days he would ask for it repeatedly, but we just kept telling him it went bye-bye and gave him extra love to help him through. After about a week he didn’t even talk about his binky anymore.
• I cut the tip off yesterday before naptime, and then when it was time for his nap, of course he asked for his binky. I gave it to him and showed him that it must have broke. He kept syaing “binky broke” but would try to suck on it anyway. Then he would take it out of his mouth, look at it, look at me, and repeat it again. He whined for an hour or so, after which i went up and rocked him some more, and he finally wanted to lay back down, cried for 10 min. more then went to sleep with his binky in his hand.
• Cut all the binky’s and tell him to throw them in the trash. You can make a big deal out of throwing away all the broken binky’s by just clapping and telling everyone around. When he throws them away, take the trash out. Then you can say, “Yay, you are such a big boy that you don’t need  binky anymore! They are all going bye bye – can you say bye bye binky’s?” I think that will help if you are going to do cold turkey.

Have any tips to add?? Put them in comments .

We had a huge issue last time we tried to get his hair cut – screaming, flopping around like a dead fish, etc. – so he barely got a decent trim. We did make him sit there while the poor haircutter tried to trim up his hair, in the hopes that he’d realize that everything was fine and that he couldn’t get out of it by screaming, but it was still pretty scruffy. Well, that was over a month ago. I did take a beard trimmer to the back of his hair by his neck, but even that required some serious muscle .

SO…. he has to go to the haircuttery again, hopefully getting a full haircut this time. Last time Daddy also got his hair cut while he watched, so that didn’t help. We are now seeking any and all suggestions to help in this impending visit – post them in comments, please (you might even be featured in a follow-up post…). I’m getting a headache just thinking about it!

Grab the Scavenger Hunt code. Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

Still woefully behind on everything around here. Lil’ Duck was back to the doctor yesterday because he’s still got a junky cough, so now he has MORE medicine. Every time I give him medicine, he gets better at resisting, so it is becoming a much-dreaded event in our house. I also had the supreme joy of hassling with the insurance company, the doctor, and the pharmacy to actually get this new medicine – over 24 hours later, we finally got all the forms in the right places.

Anyone who wishes to bring a shovel or blowtorch to clean my house is more than welcome. As the little one still refuses to nap today (why, oh why, must all his medicine hype him up?!!!), nothing is getting done around here like it should. I have six main e-mail boxes, each containing hundreds of neglected e-mails, so if one of them is yours, I apologize. Any e-mails containing orders or money will be given priority attention, for those of you wishing prompt attention .

Now, any tips for getting the little guy to take a medicine packet of granules (mixed in food preferably, but also can be dumped down his throat) in the EVENING of all times?? I’m thinking maybe applesauce, though his refusal of food in the evening is supreme even without the addition of the much-hated medicine.

How can a baby LOVE chocolate but hate grape-flavored medicine, anyway??