Monster B-Gone

First, a quick update on the "nothing" that's happening adoption wise at this point!

One more week down and many more to go! It seems (although not told by our agency) that our time frame may be looking a little longer. Since the times for the folks waiting for infants has increased quite a bit, it looks more and more like those folks are upping their age request and are going to be in the age group of Michael and I. Since they have been waiting longer, they get in front of us in line basically. Again, this is only my own "assessment" based on recent weekly updates from the agency and referral activity. Hopefully things will begin picking up alot in the next month or so. And thank goodness all the children currently in the orphanages are finally getting their court dates and coming home!!! We are just thrilled for these families getting to travel very soon, and for the children to get the heck with their parents already!! :)

In the meantime, we are getting ready for Nick's birthday party next Sunday - 4 years old!!
And the holiday season is kicking off from there! We started purchasing some Christmas presents for him this week as we're still hoping that around Christmas we could get a referral and be crazy busy getting his/her room done, shots, travel preparedness stuff. It doesn't hurt to hold out a bit of hope, and it doesn't hurt to get some shopping done before things get nuts with the rest of the world trying to do their shopping. Realistically, we will receive our referral sometime in February -ish and travel in April.... Who knows, it's all speculation at this point.

The Monster B-Gone story:

We moved Nicholas in his Big Boy Room a few weeks ago in case you missed that post, and things were great. He's always been a wonderful and brave sleeper. When he turned eight weeks old he started sleeping through the night and never even needed a night light! It seems that a week or so after moving into his new room, everything changed. Now every night he wakes up scared that there are spiders under his bed and invisible monsters in his room. We think that Halloween, and gearing up for Halloween has made an impact on him that it hasn't in the past. Just think about it, even at your local Wal-Mart, you can't help but seeing all these tall ghoulish dead guys around the end of every end cap as display! Poor kid. It has made our nights very difficult lately as we've been so spoiled with his nigh time patterns his whole little life! I joked with Michael and told him that God is preparing us for a child that will require more attention when it comes to bed time. Of course I know that at the beginning with the new babe, things will be very different around here, they'll be sleeping in our bed, on the floor in our room, in Nick's room, who knows, we'll have to play that one by ear depending on our childs needs, but you can't blame me for hoping we get a sound sleeper!! :) We've been sleeping on the floor in Nick's room most nights since this began and then my dear husband came up (from internet research) with this wonderful idea yesterday. Mind you, I've been telling Nick that, "there are NO monsters etc." all this time, but we tried a different approach last night. We spent a few hours on the floor in his room playing games during the day hoping to make fun and safe memories in his new room. When bedtime came upon us the proverbial S*IT hit the fan all over again. A little background of events earlier yesterday; in anticipation of this happening (even though we were going to play with him alot in there), Michael made a special monster concoction. Water with a hint of orange food coloring put into a spray bottle. This is widely known as "Monster B-Gone" spray. We removed the old "Windex" label and we made a new one hand decorated by Daddy himself! If my camera wasn't broken (another Halloween story) I'd post a picture.... I can do it with my Blackberry though! Ok, will do in a bit!

Anyway, so, between the "Monster B-Gone" spray and a special "Monster B-Gone" flashlight we thought it would "save the day". Michael armed and presented these special items when Nick was really getting geared up (scared). He said, "ok Nick, I didn't want to have to give you these because they're very important, but I will because I think you can handle them"! It was so funny because all the while I'm in the background saying " no, Michael, he's not ready, he's too little"! It really made Nicholas very interested in his new stuff and confident that he was in control of his room. It didn't last very long because after about a half hour, he was calling us from his room and crying again. We finally got him to sleep but he woke up sometime in the middle of the night and tried to get into our bed.. Now, to some of you folks; you may not agree, but this is how we try to parent our son, we don't want him to sleep with us, but rather we will sleep with him in these instances. So, Michael got out of bed and tucked Nick in. He then told Nicholas that he was going to "stand guard" at Nick's door until Nick was asleep again. Michael stood there for the better part of an hour (or so I was told this morning because he let me sleep) and then came back to bed. Nicholas came in our room this morning (as per every morning) and hoped in bed with us for our morning "snuggle time" (best part of my day). He was very proud of himself and said "thanks, or "sanks" to Dad for standing guard. Then he announced that "he's not afraid of his room anymore"!

We'll see how tonight goes..... to be continued!

Lastly, The Patriots are going to kick The Colts' butts today!!!! Wooo- Hoooo! Go Brady!