My Man Marcus

Big things are happening in Marcus's little world. At the top of the list - no more naps. I really don't know for sure how long this has been going on. "Nap time" at our house generally consists of two hours the kids are in their rooms alone. They can take toys to bed and I know neither of them naps for the whole two hours. I need the time alone and I know they can still use the downtime as well. I started noticing that on days when I knew for sure Marcus caught a nap, when we put him to bed at night it was taking him a really long time to fall asleep. I told him a couple months ago that if he wanted to get out of bed at nap and play with toys quietly, he could. He never did, probably afraid he was going to get in trouble. Sometimes that kid is obedient to a fault. About two weeks ago I told him that he could play with toys on the floor during nap time, took in a new assortment of quiet toys for him to play with, and even read him his nap time story while on the floor. He asked me about 10 times if he could really play on the floor. When I left the room he told me he was going to take a nap on the floor and laid down. I think he still thought maybe he was going to get in trouble. All is going well with his quiet alone time. He was a total mess one day so I did tell him he had to take a nap and couldn't get out of bed that day. One other day he was sleeping when I went in to get him. It is working out great.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that during my parent/teacher conference with Marcus's teacher, she showed me some "self portraits" that Marcus made that looked more like blobs of scribbles. The other night while we were drawing on the easel (a Christmas gift from Aunt Bethany that the kids love) I wanted to see for myself what kind of artistic skills my kid has outside of school. This is what I got when I told him to draw a picture of himself.

I love that there is no body and the arms are coming out of his non-existent ears. I knew he could do more than scribble.

Not just pertaining to Marcus's world, but the world in general in these parts has been slightly less miserable. The sun was out for a day or two and the temperatures even reached the 40's. I was itching to get outside so over the weekend we went for a little walk at Mingo park. We had our one snow. It was cold. I am over winter now and ready for spring.