Well ladies and gentlemen, he may not be talking much yet, but my 21-month-old son has now gone pee-pee in the potty. Twice.
On Thanksgiving Day, my mom sensed that Joshua needed to use the potty, so put him on just for kicks, and sure enough he did a little tinkle. I was shocked, and tried myself on other occasions, but I had not been able to replicate that until tonight.
Sure enough, he sat on the potty before bath time, and I decided to give it a try. I unzipped his pajamas, took off his diaper, sat him back down, and whee! he let it go.
I'm so proud of my little boy! He got so much attention (which he loves, as you can see from the photo above) that he spent the rest of the evening trying to sit on the potty again.
Congratulations, Joshua! Any chance you and your sister will be potty-trained within a year of each other? After all, Katie only was potty-trained in August. :-)
Hi! We're MOVING on Saturday (hopefully more about that later), so I'm super-swamped, but I couldn't resist taking a quick break from packing in order to fill you in on the kids.
JOSHUA
Joshua's vocabulary has doubled in the last few weeks. Up till now, he would say Dada (a lot), Mama (only when he wanted something, and usually in a frustrated tone), and NaNa (for "no no" when he was getting into something he knew he wasn't supposed to).
Recently he started saying "CaCa" for "cracker," and he uses this term for any snack he wants. He will hunt me down carrying whatever he finds in the pantry -- from boxes of cookies or crackers to individual Peppermint Patties, and repeat "CaCa! CaCa!" in the hopes that I'll open it for him.
He has always loved bananas; they're often what he eats for breakfast. Recently he has alternated saying "Bana" and "Nana."
His "NaNa" (no no) has become a decisive "no," which is actually a word I'm so glad he knows. Now if he wants something at mealtime, I can hold up different objects until I find something that he does say "No" and shake his head at. We've also heard "yeah" on occasion though it's not consistent yet.
He comes very close to saying Grandma and Daniel, two of his favorite family members. His tone saying "Mama" has softened too, as he's learned how to communicate in other ways.
I'm really enjoying him so much more now than I did just a few months ago. As he learns to communicate, our times together are much more enjoyable and fruitful, instead of me trying to figure out why he is angry.
I finally weaned him last week (Aug 14) (hooray! Do you know that I've been either pregnant or nursing since Fall 2006??!!!) and though he was a bit needy at first, he and I have found other ways to bond. He is much more snuggly now, and he will snuggle into my shoulder and allow me to rock him, sing to him, and pray over him. He never sat quietly in my lap before now. He also sits in my lap and we'll watch TV together -- at least until Katie asserts her right to my lap as well or he eventually gets restless and wants to run.
And run he does! He went from crawling to running very quickly, and it's so funny to see him go. I'm so thankful that we'll have a bigger home now because he'll have plenty of space to stretch his legs. He also is constantly trying to get to the highest point in the house. If I accidentally leave a chair next to the kitchen counter (which I've done a fair amount recently while packing dishes), he will get up and try to pull everything off the counter. Once I found him on the floor with my coffeepot, with coffee all over himself. I can't figure out how he pulled it down to the floor without breaking it, but thankfully he was ok! And I've learned my lesson about leaving chairs near counters!
I tried hard-soled shoes on Joshua for the first time last Thursday (8/19) before my parents took my kids to the County Fair, and it was fun to watch him navigate with the new sensation on his feet. (Please excuse the pre-move mess!)
Within the last week Joshua has learned to "blow" kisses -- which consists of simply going "mmm" in my direction, or accompanying that sound with a hand from his mouth into the air. Simply charming.
Ah yes, and one final new "first" to tell you about with Joshua. I returned from Home Depot the other day to John and the kids, and John greeted me with a laugh and a "Look what he's doing!!" I was honestly afraid to look. Here's what I found. Apparently he stole the controller out of his daddy's hands.
KATIE
Katie is as delightful as ever. Though she's had spells of being rude or too rough, she takes quickly (so far) to correction, and a timeout or even threatened timeout is usually enough to change her behavior.
After trying various bribery techniques (lollypops, Disney movies), Katie has started using the potty almost exclusively. In fact, though she's been wearing diapers all week, her diapers have been staying clean and dry; she always tells me when she needs to go! Hopefully she'll keep this up!
Initially she was registered this fall in a preschool that required her to be potty-trained, and the nearing deadline was stressing me out. Then we learned we were moving, and I couldn't imagine trying to enforce potty-training during the already stressful (for all of us) transition of packing and moving. So I'm so thankful that she's doing this herself. Plus we transferred her to a new preschool that will be minutes from our new home, and that does not require 3-year-olds to be potty-trained. So I thank God for relieving that stress from me for now!
Well, I have much more to say but it will have to wait till post-move. Thanks for caring about us!
The night of the baptism we decided it was time. For months we had been wrestling about when and where to move the kids' sleeping arrangements. So the night of Sunday, Sept. 27, we made our move.
At six months, Joshua was STILL sleeping in his bassinet. And not sleeping much, since he was too big for the bassinet. And WE weren't sleeping much either, since he was still in our room (though thankfully in our walk-in closet, which was much better than right next to our bed as he had been).
Katie wasn't trying to climb out of her crib, and she is VERY particular with her sleeping conditions, so we wrestled with whether or not to keep her in the crib in the gender-neutral nursery, or set up another crib in her pink "big-girl room", or move her up to the toddler bed already in her "big-girl room".
Or should we keep Katie in the nursery, and set up the second crib for Joshua in another room? And if we did that, should we set it up in the blue bedroom (thus taking over the guest room) or would it do irreparable damage to put him in Katie's pink "big-girl room" for the time being?
And with the two of them in rooms next to each other, would they constantly be waking each other up? You can see why we put off making a decision for six months. I was so anxious. I shouldn't have been.
Sept. 27 was the day. They were both exhausted from having truncated naps on Joshua's baptism day, so I figured we'd get minimal resistance from them as we moved their sleeping arrangements around.
While I was toddler-proofing Katie's "big-girl room", John put Joshua down to sleep in Katie's crib. No resistance there. But what if Katie refused her new bed? It's not like I could then put Katie in the bassinet. This had to work -- no going back now!
And yes, Katie did whine a bit when I first made it clear her toddler bed was not going to be just a toy this time, but rather her bed. But when I offered her the pillow, two blankets, and one stuffed puppy that she insisted on having in her crib every night (with nothing more), she didn't want any of them. She picked out two new stuffed things (an Elmo pillow and a giant frog that looks like Kermit) and put them in her new bed that was fitted with the cute new pink-and-brown-polka-dotted bedding I had bought.
My idea was to hang out with her for awhile so she wouldn't be scared to fall asleep in her new room. So I lay down on two couch pillows on the floor and waited. And waited. And waited. I tried to get up at one point and she sat up and pointed to the floor and ordered me: "Mommy, sleep! Sleep two pillows!" So like an obedient little mommy, I did that for a little while longer till it was clear she was content to sing and talk to herself and not go to sleep (I should probably mention here that I was the same way as a child -- my mom has always told stories of how I'd stay awake for hours singing to myself. I was a Broadway Baby from birth, I tell you!!). So after I realized Katie was going to be awake for awhile, I put up the baby gate and went downstairs for my nightly TV date night with John.
And yes, Katie did jump out of bed a lot that night. And the next day during naptime. And occasionally a week later. But really, it hasn't been all that bad. She knows she's in trouble if we catch her out of bed, and she usually stays put -- aside from an occasional bouncing on her bed or when she's not able to sleep unless her shoes are in a drawer and not on the floor (did I mention that she's FREAKISHLY particular about her sleeping environment?). And she still sleeps in a way that slowly kills the environment -- with a nightlight, fan, and CD player all on.
Joshua never likes being put down in general, but he seems to appreciate the space to stretch out a bit in his new crib. He now has room to flip over, but that's a double-edged sword because he can only fall asleep on his stomach, and he can only roll over from his stomach to back, not the other way. So in the middle of the night, if we hear a piercing yell, we know that one of us needs to go flip him back on his stomach.
In terms of waking each other up, it's actually been amazing. We've been letting Joshua cry it out when he wakes up in the middle of the night (unless he's flipped over, in which case we turn him over and then let him cry it out), and as far as we can tell (it's hard to hear much over the screams), Katie has been completely silent through the ordeal. I can't imagine that it DOESN'T wake her up, but she must be able to go back to sleep okay. Thank You, Lord!
The bigger beds symbolize big changes in our children. They are doing new things everyday which is so exciting to watch. Katie did her first poo-poo in the potty on Sept. 14 and Joshua is now flipping over regularly (although as I mentioned, in only one direction). I'm so proud of my growing kids! And we're so thankful to have our room back to ourselves!
Big milestone today: Katie put her pee-pee in the potty for the first time!
I'm not really sure it was on purpose (I was making her sit on the potty for awhile with a book since she'd been carrying the potty around the first floor), but she did it nonetheless.
Interestingly, she didn't seem particularly impressed by her accomplishment, even with John and I cheering for her afterwards and even though Mommy called both grandmas on speakerphone to brag.
We have 5 days till my due date, so with the impending upheaval, I expect this will be our last potty accomplishment for several months. :-)
Well I've given up trying to post Katie's funny sayings on Tuesdays like my friend Mary does. Instead, you'll get my stories while my preggie memory is still fresh, and when I have time to type them up! :-)
Today Katie and I were cleaning out the room that will become her "Big Girl Room" (actually I was cleaning; she was pulling things out of the closet). One of the things she pulled out of the closet was the top half of my gift wrap organizer (which is basically a big container that holds all your gift wrap rolls; the top pops open to allow you to store scissors, tape, etc). Here's what the top looks like:
While I cleaned, I noticed the distinctive smell of a dirty diaper, and I mentioned it to Katie. She started banging on the organizer top like a drum and saying "Pie! Pie!" I figured her actions were unrelated to our conversation, until she sat on the open organizer top and continued to say "Pie! Pie!" And suddenly I knew what she was telling me. She thought she was sitting on a potty! LOL!
I give all the credit to Katie's new DVD "Elmo's Potty Time" (thank you for the Christmas present, Stephen and Lindsey!). Katie's been watching it off and on for a month now, and now proudly talks about "pee pee", "poo poo" and "doo". It's a hysterical DVD to watch as an adult as well (at least the first time). There are songs about how everyone has accidents sometimes (my family uses that song to joke about our bouts with the stomach flu), and about how everyone uses the potty. There's also a segment where kids and Muppets discuss which words they use for pee pee and poo poo, which is where Katie is getting her new vocabulary.
Needless to say, I'm seizing this opportunity. I ordered the Baby Bjorn potty seat from Amazon tonight. Who knows, maybe we can start a bit of potty training before our son arrives -- he's due in 8 weeks.
One of Katie's favorite books these days is Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? I had never heard of this book before my friend Beth gave it to us for my baby shower, but Katie adores it because it features the sounds that all kinds of things make -- and Katie has always chosen to refer to things (esp. animals) by the noises they make rather than by their actual names.
One of the sounds Mr. Brown makes is "Dibble dibble dibble dopp" to sound like the rain. Although I've pointed out rain to Katie before, there's been no recognition that she understood what it was. So last night we were reading Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham before bed, and Sam I Am asks, "Could you eat it [Green Eggs and Ham] in the rain?" Suddenly Katie started bouncing in my lap and saying, "Dobba dobba dobba".
She had been a bit distracted during our whole reading time, so I thought she was just goofing off. But then it hit me: She's making rain noises! And I said, "Katie, that's right! It's the rain!" And you should have seen the proud expression on her face when she realized that I understood her. She literally started leaping into the air from my lap and laughing. It was adorable.
And today when we got into the shower together (which we do almost every day now -- it allows me to use her naptimes for my own naps instead of for my showers), she again started her noise: "Dobba dobba dobba". What a smart girl -- she connected the water falling in the shower to the rain that falls. She is constantly astounding me with the connections she's making. I'm sure I don't notice or understand 95% of them, but it sure is a delight when I do.
