Ch-ch-ch-changes.

And not all of them good.

I will forever remember this weekend as an idyllic break between when Josh woke up multiple times a night, and the real Hell started.

We'll start with the good first. After exactly 16 months of waking up at minimum 4 times a night we decided to implement Operation Cry It Out. It's never easy to try this strategy but I couldn't keep deluding myself that he would 'magically grow out of it'.

That kid loves his dee-dee's too much. And the snuggle time with mommy and daddy.

It went shockingly well. I say that because he's the most stubborn out of the 3 boys by a long shot so I thought this would be a battle. One I was expecting to lose. But no, he loves to keep me on my toes and only put up not much more than a token fuss. Friday was a bit of crying, Saturday was a bit of whining, and last night was...

...nothing? For real? How come I didn't do this 6 months ago?

Anyway, it's really nice and I'm probably jinx-ing myself by announcing it publicly - Jeff is knocking on wood right now. But even if he decides to regress tonight and get me up every hour on the hour, it would be only fitting. And that would be because the Terrible Two's have arrived.

Oh yes my friends. I have the bitchiest 16 month old on the planet right now. He's satisfied for a maximum of 3 minutes before he's screaming about something else.

He can't get his boot on? Horrors.

I ghetto-rigged the door to his room so he can't slam it shut? He's flat on the ground wailing.

I won't give him another cookie? Ope, overturned kitchen chair.

He wants my undivided attention and claws at my legs if I'm standing, dolphin rolls on my lap if I'm sitting, and just generally makes himself known in the most annoying.way.possible.

You'd think that this stage would have creeped up on us a bit. But no, other than the usual occasionally cranky toddler episode, this pretty much smacked us across the face with a 2x4.

Silver lining? He knows what time outs mean, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Better call Paranormal State, stat!

Hoooo boy am I going to have fun with this one, on SO many different levels.

As much as he likes to insist otherwise, Jeff thinks evil and unexplainable things lurk around every corner. When we bought this house he and a friend found some weird pentagram based candle sticks in the ceiling of our basement. After quickly stuffing them back up there and boarding it up he told me that if anything "off" happened then we were outta here.

Nothing happened.

I could go on, the examples are endless. But I would get off track and I really want to tell you what we discovered yesterday.

Nicky has an imaginary friend! Let me introduce you to Max.

As far as we can tell, Max is a "nice boy" who "runs super fast" and likes to smell stinky poo's. That's all we really know about him so far, that and the fact that the very idea of an imaginary friend has Jeff's imagination going into o-v-e-r-d-r-i-v-e.

He wants to research our house to see if there was ever a little boy called Max who lived here and died. Because a ghost is OBVIOUSLY the natural answer to our son having an overactive imagination.

Oh wait. Maybe he got that from his dad? It's a stretch, I know.

Imaginary friends are bred into his genes. I had one, his dad probably had 50, my sister had a couple. No biggie, as long as Max doesn't start flushing toys down the toilet, pouring a 4 litre jug of milk on the floor, or causing general destruction.

Seriously, my children are hurricanes enough as it is without added interference.

But. BUT. This is going to be highly entertaining just for the Jeff value alone. He's already so skeeved out by the thought that our house is haunted by a ghost that I anticipate endless hours of hilarity. I like to exploit his weaknesses and I can't leave this one alone.

Thank you Nicholas, for being such an awesome kid!