Adventures in potty training

About a month ago Reed sat on the potty and peed for the first time. He's been interested in the frog potty since I brought it down from the attic a few months ago, but now he is starting to recognize when he has to pee and will go over and sit on it. I'm trying to make it tolerable just to sit on it, so we try to catch the pee when it comes, but he's often on and then off it right away. But Friday morning he brought the potty in to the bedroom in the morning and said POOP POOP! So I took off his diaper. He hasn't mastered the sitting down while pooping yet but he definitely knew that he needed to go poop and pushed some out, resulting in a messy potty but lots of clapping and cheering from those of us awake at that time--Beckett, Daddy and me.

Our lives these days

Wherein I reflect upon our many months now of running in different directions, but ultimately toward the same goal. Our children demonstrate.

Reed's 18 month check up

Today Daddy took Reed to his 18 month checkup. He weighed in at 24 lbs, 8oz and was 30.8 inches long. He has some fluid in his ears but we are hoping it clears before it gets infected.

I thought it was interesting to compare the big boys with Reed at this age. Reed apparently has SO MANY MORE WORDS! Probably because the tubes in his ears allow him to hear so much better than they could.

http://teamlovebo.blogspot.com/2012/12/18-month-checkup.html

Trick-or-treating with the horses

The day before Halloween we were invited to the Halloween party of a local riding stable. The boys got to trick-or-treat in the warm, dry barn with all the horses and regular riders. They were very generous with the candy as well as a huge dinner bar with chili and macaroni and cheese and lots of snacks.

More fun with Auntie Alexis

After Reed kept insisting MORE MORE MORE when I put whipped cream on his plate with his brownie and only ate the whipped cream, I decided to introduce him to the expert technique for maximizing whipped cream consumption.

Halloween

Monday Grandpa Stu and Grandma Joanie came up to take care of Reed and trick-or-treat with us and help us with handing out candy in our very busy neighborhood. I signed up to help the kids in Theo's class put on their costumes and get ready for the school parade, which was so fun. The kids in his class are so sweet and interesting and have such great sparks. It's a great feeling to have, knowing your kid is surrounded by good people in his classroom.

 

After an absolutely fabulous dinner of chicken pot pie made by Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu, everyone but Grandma Joanie headed out. It was a chilly evening and Reed wasn't feeling well but I think the cool air and proximity to Mama helped him. The boys gathered LOTS of candy from our great neighbors and we saw lots of friends out and about. Grandma Joanie held down the fort and, including help from Theo and Beckett when we got home, handed out 450 pieces of candy! (We still ran out by 7:30.)

Reed developmental update-almost 18 months!

Reed is saying so many words now that I've lost track. He knows so many animals and can name lots of them. The cutest thing he does is when you ask him a question, he smiles and says "I don't know!"

He's much less stable on his feet than I remember the boys being when they were 18 months, and he falls over a lot. He has a funny little stumble-waddle, where he barely picks his feet up when he walks. When I was home with him Wednesday this week he had a major mouth-bleed twice in a matter of hours. It looks like he split his frenulum. I actually had to pick out chunks of his own flesh from between his bottom teeth. There was blood everywhere!

The 45 minutes between when the big boys arrive home on the bus and when we sit down to eat dinner is a crazy, crazy time, especially (as has often been the case lately) when Jeff is out campaigning and I'm by myself. Even if Reed has been home with me all day, and especially if he's been at daycare, he needs time with me. But the big boys have to come in, drop their school stuff, use the bathroom, and then find and do their homework. It's not yet been a struggle to have them do their homework, because they seem to find it interesting and fun, but because they can't read the instructions (and even those of us who can read the instructions still find the Common Core instructions inscrutable sometimes), an adult needs to be hands-on pretty much the entire time. Then there are multiple papers that a parent needs to sign every night, and dinner needing to be prepared. So lately I've been putting Reed in his highchair with a crayon or pencil and paper so that he can do his "homework" just like his brothers. He is so happy to be doing what they are doing that he will scribble on the paper or eat the crayons for a good while.

About six weeks ago I was reading the blog about Theo and Beckett when they were about this age, and I was stunned that I had reported that they loved reading, that they pulled books out to have read to them, and that Beckett in particular would often sit reading to himself for 20-30 minutes. Reed wasn't doing any of that six weeks ago, and I was a bit alarmed about how deprived of reading he has been, how it was all our fault for not reading to him as much as we did with his brothers, etc. And then within a week, maybe partly because I did start making a concerted effort to take opportunities to read to him, and maybe partly because he became developmentally ready, he became very interested in books. He's not spending 20-30 minutes looking at books like Beckett did, at least not yet, but he's spending 5 or 10 minutes, and he's sitting still to turn the pages and look at several books at a time.

Friday Reed and I finally got to spend the day visiting Auntie Alexis and the boys' first cousin, Mary Kate!