Growth Stats, Age 2 and 3 yr Edition

Andrew is 3 years old.  He loves to build very elaborate castles out of any building material he can get his hands on.  Highly creative.  Highly frustrated when things fall over.  He makes up his own songs.  He plays pretend with cars and planes figures.  He has some serious pre-reading skills.  He dropped his nap a couple weeks ago.  He now wears a sleek buzzed haircut, having lost all patience with the scissors.

At 3 years and 2 months:

your child is 38.5 pounds, and that is
at the 92nd percentile for weight.

your child is 40.25 inches, and that is
at the 92nd percentile for height.

Clara is 2 years old.  She loves being "Mommy's helper" with cooking and cleaning.  She is constantly singing, and loves to sing along to songs she knows.  She took to daytime potty training like she'd been doing it her whole life.  She's in the middle of transitioning to her big girl bed from her crib, and she said bye to the pacifier in the last few weeks.  She refused to let me brush her long hair or put it up, but she loved the idea of a haircut, so she's rocking a cute crop.  She's really good at snuggling.

At 24 months:

your child is 28 pounds, and that is
at the 66th percentile for weight.

your child is 33.5 inches, and that is
at the 37th percentile for height.

your child has a head circumference of 20 inches, and that is
at greater than the 97th percentile for head circumference.

Pants II

Andrew just went to his dresser to fetch his own pants.  Then with minimal help from me, he laid them out on the floor and put them on by himself.

I'm having a "he'll eventually be able to go to college" moment.

(Of course, the reason he needed to go fetch new pants at 4:30 in the afternoon was because he was too involved in play to bother going to the potty.  But you know.  Baby steps.)

He also performed his first Class III scramble up some awesome red rock (The Golden Pyramid) down at South Valley Park down the road here.  So he had a big day.

Incidentally, Clara made about 90% of this climb too - I just didn't feel comfortable with her on the summit pitch.  They both were incredible, and I see much rock climbing and hiking in our future.

Climbing and Sliding

The kids have really been enjoying the elephant slide that Grandpa built for Travis when he was a baby.  Andrew is getting very good at taking turns, and loves to take turns with all of his stuffed animals: "Tigey turn!  Tow truck turn!  Andrew turn!"

Clara likes to crawl underneath it and watch brother go up the steps, but recently she has made it to the top, both by climbing the steps and climbing the sliding board.  She is quite the climber these days, climbing anywhere she can find a foothold.  She can make it from the main level upstairs in approximately 8.2 seconds.  And it's faster if you've walked into the other room and aren't paying attention...

Potty Training

You may remember that we had kicked around the concept of elimination communication starting around when Andrew was about 10 months old.  We put him on the potty occasionally and caught a few poops and some more pees, but mostly we were just pretty laid back about the whole thing. Then Clara was born and EC dropped way down on the priority list.  Then we hit the 18-month sleep all-around regression, and it dropped off the list entirely.

Well, I started to think about it a little bit around January/February time frame (21-ish months old), mostly because (a) I was starting to get over having two in diapers, and (b) Andrew's #2 diapers were super intense to change and clean.  Blech.  I was surfing one of the parenting forums that I frequent and ran across a plug for Oh Crap. Potty Training.  Her basic premises made a lot of sense to me: that there is no "ready, there is only "capable;"  that you just have to take away the diapers and see what happens; and that there's a window of opportunity between 20-30 months - after they have gained the coordination to go on the potty, but before they have reached the defiant, rebelliously independent stage.  Maybe more importantly, we had a couple of windows with no travel coming up, so that we could slide potty training in and not be on an airplane while learning how to hold it.

He was also showing some signs of "readiness":

• awareness of going/having gone and announcing either pee or poop by saying "stink"
• discomfort with having poop in the diaper and wanting to be changed promptly
• upset when poop makes a mess on the floor or in pants
• seeking privacy to poop

And so it was that we began on Friday, 8 March, so that I could be home with him for four whole days before handing him over to Maggie.  He was 22 months of age.  We took off the pants, took off the diaper and went naked bottomed on Day 1.  We "gave" all the diapers to Clara.  We caught a few pees midstream and said, "Oh you're peeing.  Pee goes in the potty, not on the floor."  By the end of the day he was getting the pee in the potty thing, and able to go when prompted and able to ask for the potty.  

On day 2, we went commando in pants.  A big thing with this method is that underpants feel too diaper-like and so they confuse the issue.  We had a few pee accidents, but mostly got the hang of it pretty quickly.  He didn't have a real poop until the third day, but we saw the grunting, and caught it in the potty - yay!  Everything seemed to be progressing.

After that, he seemed to get the peeing down really well.  Very few accidents.  Very good at responding to prompting, and even doing some self-initiating.  He did wet during nap every day, but I didn't want to confuse the issue by putting him in a diaper (even though he was still in a diaper at night), so we just decided to wash the sheets daily.  He didn't have any trouble peeing on public toilets - we had outings to Walmart, Costco, the grocery store, the park... no problem at all.

Poop, however, was another thing all together.  He just didn't want to seem to do it on the potty.  A few times he tried to get to the potty but ended up pooping on the floor right next to it.  Many times, he just didn't want to take a break from playing to go (in spite of watching the potty episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood every single day: "If you have to go potty, STOP and go right away....").  That is, until Friday, 22 March - two weeks in.  

Clara had her 9 month well child checkup at the pediatrician, so we went to a park on that side of town.  We had never been to this park before - it was HUGE and had, like, 15 slides (Andrew's favorite!).  Andrew was so excited!  I got Clara settled on a picnic blanket with a snack while Andrew started to climb the nearest structure.  Before he could go down the first slide, he did his characteristic hunch-over-and-grunt.  "Andrew!" I said, "Hold it, hold it!!!"  But it was too late.  Full poop in the pants.  

I hefted both kids and limped with my still-weak broken ankle to the restroom, which was quite the hike.  We got him all cleaned up.  I told him, "You aren't in trouble, buddy.  But we need to go home.  When you poop in your pants, we have to go home.  If you put your poop in the potty, we can stay longer at the park." He was extremely upset.  He cried all the way home, "Slide! Slide!  Park - okay!!"  I calmly reiterated that we had to go home because he pooped in his pants.  

Finally it was like something clicked in his head and he screamed, "Potty!!!"  I was carrying the little Baby Bjorn potty chair in the back of the car just in case of emergency, so I pulled over and put it out.  He sat on it and squeezed out two little drops of pee.  I said, "It looks like you're finished," and tried to put him back in the car.  He arched his back and yelled, "NO!!!  Potty! Sit down!!!!" and sat back down, as if he was going to sit there until he could put some poop in the potty so we could go back to the park.  

The next day, it took four false alarms, but he put his poop in the potty.  Self-initiated, too.  He did not have any accidents other than naptime for the rest of the week.  

The big test came when we went to the zoo on Friday, 29 March.  He had no accidents.  I prompted him to pee twice and one time he asked to go and successfully held it until we could get to the potty.  Then the moment of truth - just after lunch, he gave me that sort of desperate, tense look and said, "Potty potty!"  I knew this was it.  We hurried to the nearest restroom, but it still took a couple minutes to walk there, and then we had to wait for a stall to free up.  When he sat down on the potty, he wasn't sure he could go.  I started to recite One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and it helped him relax enough.... for success!  A poop on a public potty!  

With that, I declared him daytime potty trained.  It was the day after he turned 23 months old.  

We are choosing not to night train at this time.  He wears a pull up to bed, and that's okay with everyone.  I'm sure the time will come when we're all ready to tackle that hurdle.  For now I'm just really proud of my big boy.

Stairs

It's the day before she turns seven months, and Clara climbed up two stairs this evening.

Guess it's time to put the gate back up.  Now taking bets on what age she'll be when she figures out how to defeat it. For reference, Andrew started climbing stairs at 10 months and was 15 months old when he started to do this:

This girl.  Seriously.

Pulling up

After a week of climbing up to standing by crawling onto people's laps, I'm officially calling it: Clara is pulling up.  On the couch.  And attempting to stand without holding on.  And attempting a very slow, awkward cruise.  This is, apparently, a nine-month skill.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we're in trouble.

Some Andrew Stuff

About two weeks ago, we finished up the 18-month sleep regression.  (At least, I hope it was the 18 month sleep regression, because if we have another 6 week period of non-sleep and screaming in the near future, I might have to quit my job.)  But as Frans Plooij can tell you, after regression comes a leap.  And this weekend I am seeing Andrew think with a whole new level of complexity, it's really incredible

Today in the bath, I unplugged the drain and told him that when the water was gone, it was time to get out.  He looked at the drain, looked at me, and then re-plugged the drain.  When I unplugged the drain again, he tried to turn on the faucet to run more water in the tub.  Creative!

We bought some new snow boots, in celebration of the first real snow of the year:

Andrew brings them to me and wants to wear them around the house.  He's brought shoes before, when he wants to go outside.  But this somehow seems different, like he's really attached to these boots.  Like he thinks they are really cool.

Today, we made snickerdoodles.  I rolled the dough into balls and handed them to him, and he coated them with cinnamon and sugar.  He experimented with many different ways of doing this.  First, he rolled them in the bowl, like I showed him.  Next he let the dough ball sit in the bowl and sprinkled the mixture over them with a spoon.  Then he put the dough ball in the spoon and tossed it up in the air, like he was throwing a pizza.  Near the end he pressed the ball into the mixture, changing its shape.

He has done experimentation before, but this seemed more creative, more varied, and more consistently effective than in the past.  It was pretty fascinating.  Also, he stayed on task incredibly well.  He complained if I didn't hand him new dough balls fast enough, and wanted to "trade" me when he felt he had them sufficiently coated.

After his regression, he's back to giving hugs and kisses, and seems to give them more liberally than before.  He's always keeping an eye out for his sister.  He likes to wake her up from naps, helps to feed her (when mommy's not around and she gets a bottle), and always says "hello" to her when he wakes up from sleep.  He actually asks to have a bath with her - they both go in the baby tub together, and she kicks his chest the whole time - which is the cutest thing.

He's getting more words, and he's using the words he has more often and with more precision.  His new words this weekend are "egg" (favorite breakfast item) and "shh" (used specifically to indicate quiet or to calm Clara down).  His favorite words are "up" (to be picked up, to stand at the kitchen counter and help cook, to go upstairs), "yuck" (for the trash can, the diaper pail, anything with a weird texture, and just because he likes the sound of the word), and "done" (which he alternates with the "all done" sign).  By my count he has about 16 words, although a handful of those are animal sounds, which may or may not actually count.

He'll be 18 months old tomorrow, my little man.

THIS CHILD

OMG YOU GUYS.

Clara just rolled over back to front.  It is the day before her 4 months birthday.  She's been rolling front to back since 2.5 months.

I swear this kid is going to walk tomorrow.

Items of note

Somethings worth recording, in no particular order:

(1) TMI about potties, perhaps, but whatever.  Last night while getting ready for bed, Andrew signed "potty."  I figured he was just stalling (he's been doing that lately), but I want to be consistent about reinforcing the potty so that we can get on with that business as soon as possible.  Plus, I had to go, so I thought we may as well.  We headed into the bathroom and Andrew sat down on his potty while I sat on mine.  I said, "Listen!  Mommy is going pee pee.  Can you go pee pee in the potty?"  And he said, "Yeah," and then proceeded to go!!  I was stunned!  He hasn't been too much interested in the potty, other than a place to read books while mommy or daddy goes.  But now that I think about it, he's been making the potty sign after he poops his diaper, so maybe all the little pieces of awareness are starting to come together.  Maybe we're closer to big boy pants than I thought!

(2) After getting a little frustrated by the newborn schedule of eat-wake-sleep-change-repeat that I've been following with Clara, I decided to feed her twice before trying to put her down for naps.  Almost instantaneously we've had longer naps (1.5-2hrs instead of 20 minutes) and a earlier bedtime (thank goodness!).  Hopefully this will continue and we can ride through the four month sleep regression.  I think we're in it because she's dropped her long block at night.  But if this is as bad as it gets, we can handle it.

(3) Today, Clara discovered how to pull the ring on her bouncy chair that plays the music, and now she won't let go of that ring!  She just pulls it over and over.  My little girl is growing up already!

(4) I've been obsessed with searching out the details of my family tree, now that Clara was so honored as to be the 7th generation to receive this beautiful China doll while we were in Michigan earlier this month:

In tracing the doll's history through the generations, making fascinating discoveries: a doctor (not just farmers), Canadians (oh my!), and a branch of the family that can be traced to colonial Connecticut.  I can't seem to stop searching for this information - to the detriment of my bedtime.  Oh the things you can find on the internet!

Finding all of this family information and records of times past make me feel a little silly about recording potty awareness and bouncy chair rings for posterity.  But I do hope that 200 years in the future, my descendants might find the minutiae of having kids still hasn't changed all that much, and maybe they'll enjoy having that in common with me.

Little man

So this evening I said, "Let's go upstairs and get our jammies on."  And Andrew got down off the couch (and daddy's lap - his favorite spot!) and walked up the stairs with me. No cries of protest, no demand that he be carried.  After changing, he walked back downstairs to brush his teeth, picked out his own storybooks, and walked back to the office to give daddy a hug and kiss goodnight.

I am absolutely floored.  And pleased.  And in love with this big kid.

A First Birthday Party

Andrew's birthday started off more like Christmas - a pile of presents awaiting him when he woke up.

Among a few other things, he got this device, which allows him to walk behind it (and it saves mommy's back) or ride on it.  We are wondering how this is less likely to roll down the stairs than the "death-trap" walkers that we grew up with, but shhh... nevermind.

The walking position

The riding position

He also got his own barbeque grill, which we are hoping will allow him to "help" us grill without changing the heat settings on daddy's big boy grill.  *Ahem.*  He thrilled us by being really excited to play on it, and he made us some burgers and hot dogs.

Very soon it was time to put out the sign for the party at the bottom of our driveway and welcome our guests.

Andrew enjoyed playing with the paper lantern decorations on the porch.

 We had an awesome spread of food, about half of which represented some of Andrew's favorite things to eat, and the other half were things that mommy splurged on for having a bunch of people over.  I made two cakes - a vanilla-vanilla classic two-layer birthday cake, and a healthy, whole-grain, fruit-sweetened cake for the birthday boy (the Blueberry-Banana Cake found here).  In hindsight, about the cake, though it was enjoyed and complimented by many guests, I wish I hadn't tried to be quite so health-conscious of a mom.  The texture of the cake came out to be pretty dense like banana bread, and it didn't lend itself well to a spectacular "cake smash."  What's so bad about a sugar-and-butter-laden birthday cake, anyway?  You're only one once!!  Lessons for next time... which of course is coming sooner rather than later.

"Andrew recommends"

Cake table

A decoration I made out of monthly Andrew pictures.

Photo garland close-up

 Before we knew it, we had a houseful of 18 adults and kids, having lots of fun and filling our house with love.  We chatted, played with toys, and ate lots of food.

Then came the big moment:

Blowing out the candle, with help

Brick o' cake

Here are a couple videos of all the action:

It was an awesome party, made wonderful by the awesome people who came over to help us celebrate our big boy!

In other one-year-old news, the stats are in, and they are looking good:

Weight - 23 lb, 8 oz; 65%ile
Height - 29 3/4"; 50%ile
Head circumerence - 19 cm; 90%ile (braaaaaaaaiiiins....)

We are so relieved and amazed that he has basically recovered all of his weight from our low-milk-supply time.  At his 9 month appointment, he was in the 35%ile.  It is as we have suspected - he does indeed eat like a horse.

Also, he walks!

Mommy's Developmental Milestones

Today, I installed the convertible car seat in the Jeep....  the one that has been sitting in our house for about six months, but which I have been reluctant to use because I am so attached to being able to leave him sleeping in the infant bucket and just unclip the bucket and go about my business.  He did end up falling asleep in the car on the way home... and then I successfully transferred him sleeping from the seat in the car to his bed for the duration of his nap.  I conquered a fear today, and maybe I'm growing as a parent.  I did it!

Also today, we went to "Baby Time" for kids 0-2 at the library for the second time (we went last week with Gma Joyce).  Last week I was very paranoid about him tackling other kids and taking their toys away, and so I hovered over him the whole time, watching like a hawk.  I tried to reign myself in a little bit this week, telling myself that if he's ever going to functional properly in social situations, I should probably let him figure it out a little bit.  Not to mention that he's such a social kid -- it's not like I should be terribly worried.

So today I hung back and watched him tear off crawling across the floor.  And when he got to a smaller baby... he pulled up short and sat next to her!  I was sure he was just going to crawl right over her head.  But he didn't!

Then he spied a toy he wanted and a little one-year-old girl who was smaller than him was playing with it.  He crawled up to her and took it away... and then she took it right back!  He looked at her an blinked, then looked at me across the room, then looked back at her.  Then he crawled to another toy that no one was playing with.

It's funny because I have no real trouble letting him do or try physical things on his own without too much over-worrying interference (climbing stairs, reorganizing my kitchen cabinets, etc.), but when it comes to interacting with other kids, perhaps I project my own introversion onto him and want him to be more cautious?  I guess I have to learn to let him be himself.  One step at a time.

In brief

Crawling - for real, on the knees.  None of this Army Crawl stuff.
Pulling himself up without help on any piece of furniture or freestanding structure he can find.
Cruising the furniture to get where he wants to go (and usually to get into something he's not allowed to be into, like say, the power cords of the laptops).  This activity is new as of tonight.
Falling on his butt and not being phased by it at all.
Gestures grandly and speaks with purpose, as if he's giving a speech of tremendous import.
Eating solids like a football player.

Seems like he's about two seconds away from both walking and talking.

Greek-style scallops with tomatoes, leeks, and feta with sides of couscous and broccoli 

Do you want to share some?

Grand gestures

Peekaboo!

teeth!

All of a sudden, we have three! The first to come in, the top right in the front, appeared on 12/3/11.  The second one, right bottom front, snuck in without us realizing it on Friday, 12/9/11.  And the top left front has been showing the telltale dark spot on the gum for a couple days, and finally made it's appearance today.

The funny thing is that the one I was sure was coming in at Halloween was the bottom front left... which is the last one of this set to show up.  Shows what I know.

A Weekend of Firsts, part I

Earlier this week, daddy was enjoying some asparagus. Andrew wanted to enjoy some too.  He didn't end up having too much of that or the banana we offered the next night, but he did enjoy some of a waffle this morning.

 On Saturday, we headed down to Colorado Springs to meet up with Uncle Tyler, who is on TDY in Pueblo.  We met at Colorado Mountain Brewery to watch the Falcons take on the Broncos at Boise State.  The game wasn't a W, but we kept it close enough that if our defense had been healthy (like having ANY starters at all on the D-line) we just might have been able to pull it out.  Uncle Tyler told us about his rigorous pilot training - sounds stressful and exciting.  We are very proud of you!

We then took the opportunity to earn some "hits" in the US Airway Grand Slam mileage earning promotion and crashed at the Comfort Inn in Colorado Springs.  We took advantage of the indoor pool and Andrew went swimming for the first time (in his zoogie cloth swim diaper).

At first he was not too sure at all...

...but in no time he was kick-kicking away.  He has a great flutter kick and a great froggie kick, and I could feel him pushing himself around against my chest.

We are right in the middle of the 26 week sleep regression (thank you Wonder Weeks for making us feel not crazy!), and so the past few nights have been really challenging.  His body wants to keep practicing rolling over, which he has been doing more and more - didn't think that was possible! - even stringing multiple rolls together to move around the room.  He's also been scooting, especially on his back, attempting to sit up by himself, and he looks like he could take off crawling any second.  To top all of that off, I think his first tooth is just about ready to break through (it has not broken the skin yet, but is bulging up in his gum).  So there are a lot of physical changes and developmental leaps going on for our guy right now... and his sleep is suffering for it.  Hopefully it'll only be another week or so and we'll be back into normalcy.

Andrew also supervised the carving of his first pumpkin this weekend, but that gets a post all to itself in Part II....