Some News. . .

This may help to explain my blogging laziness of late. More information to follow tomorrow.

Too Busy Changing Diapers To Post

I just realized my last post was almost a week ago. One week without cute pictures of Nick? We can't have that. Here are a few cute ones that show what happened when Nick found my winter boots. Yes, he was actually able to walk in them (all over the house, in fact). I'll intersperse these photos with my topic for today, which is far less pleasant and (lucky for you) for which I did not take pictures.

I've been trying to post at least three times a week, and this week I failed miserably. It's not that I don't have anything to post about, my hands have just been too busy changing diapers. Nick, who just got over a cold, now has some kind of tummy bug that requires me to change his diaper and replace his pants every hour or two. I do believe Nick has had at least seven baths since Wednesday night. I had to stay home from work to be with him Thursday and Friday. I hate missing work, because it gets my students all discombobulated, but there wasn't much choice, in this case.

The doctor's office said not to worry unless it went on for over seven days. It has already been three full days and four nights of this, and I cannot imagine this lasting longer. We're hoping it will end very soon. The good news is that Nick has been in a pretty good mood, except of course for when we're changing his diapers. Understandably, he gets upset then.

Nick seemed a little better today, thank goodness. As long as I'm not still constantly changing diapers, I'll post again tomorrow about how Nick made my first physical therapy appointment more, ahem, interesting.

Way Too Cold.

So what did we do this weekend? Christmas shopping? Santa visits? Wrapping Christmas gifts? Grading papers? Playing in the snow? Nope. The picture above illustrates our weekend perfectly well.

We did nothing. Literally we did not leave the house from Friday evening on, and nothing of value was accomplished. Why? Because it was way too cold.

All I felt like doing this weekend was curling up on the couch with a book. All of us still have colds, and the idea of walking outside in this miserable weather was just too much to handle. I've survived by taking benedryl every night so that I can breathe while I sleep. Nick just gets extra crabby and needy. Plus, he took a five hour nap on Saturday. He must feel like hibernating, too.

Usually, we do not watch much tv. But this weekend, we indulged in anything sedentary. We watched the weather channel, as you can see. Greg even let Nick watch some of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when I wasn't paying attention.  He seemed very concerned about the snakes. "I see snakes!" and then, later, "Snakes in there. Uh-oh." Like any male, though, my little boy was glued to the action movie for at least 20 minutes. Must be a guy thing.

I hope that this weather does not continue. It is way too cold.

Blocks? Sure, these can be blocks.

In fact, Nick seemed to think that these blocks were way more fun than the regular kind, since they stack up so high. Shopping at Costco means I have lots of stackable boxes, especially Kleenex, since all of us are suffering from nasty colds.

As I was putting away a considerable number of boxes, Nick passed the time by creating his own towers. He looks rather pleased with himself, I think.

Cold Weather = Bacon?

Why does cold weather make me crave bacon? It must be something about putting on a layer of fat to help keep me warm. I absolutely hate cold weather, and lately I just can't seem to get warm. The picture above is actually from a few weeks ago, on another very cold day when I took Nick out to eat at a little diner near our house. He's showing us all how much he loves bacon, too.

As I was driving home from work today, in the cold, in the dark, I suddenly had a thought. "Bacon." As I drove further, it became all consuming, so much so that I decided to run into the grocery store and get some so that I could incorporate it into dinner. After all, it isn't really normal to have bacon for a snack.

So tonight I made breakfast for dinner. All of us have bad colds, so we had orange juice for the Vitamin C. I made scrambled eggs with spinach, peppers, and goat cheese. We had english muffins, and, of course, bacon on the side. Something about a cholesterol-filled dinner is extremely appealing on a cold winter day.

Nick must have the same cravings. He stood near me the entire time I cooked, begging for bits to eat. It's funny how as soon as the smell starts to fill the kitchen, he comes, drawn to the meat. "Bacon!" he announced. "Want bacon please. Please! Bacon!" Then, when he'd eaten a slice, he'd insist. "More bacon!"  He reminded me of that old commercial for bacon-flavored dog treats, where the dog keeps saying "Bacon!"

By the time dinner was actually served, he'd eaten at least half of an orange pepper, plus a slice or two of bacon. Then he ate his whole dinner. I guess I'm not the only one craving fatty foods this winter.

And So It Begins. . .

What, you say? What begins? Well, the joys of potty training. Last weekend Greg and I bought Nick his own little potty. He's been talking about using the potty for awhile, but I don't really believe in pushing kids into potty training too early. (Even though my mother insists I was potty trained at 18 months.)

However, since Nicholas is now two, I figured it wouldn't hurt to get him confortable with the idea of using a potty. He became incredibly excited when we were in the Target and he saw the potties. The store had conveniently put them on the bottom shelf, easily accessible to toddlers. So Nick tried sitting on each of them, insisting, "I go poopy on the potty!" Here's what we decided on:

We chose this model for ease of cleaning rather than style. The fancy ones with the buttons and sound effects were cute in the store, but I could imagine them being rather gross to clean out. This one had fewer crevices. Plus, Nick liked it. He kept pointing to it in the back of the cart as we shopped, exclaiming, "That's my potty!" to anyone who walked past. We figured he was enthusiastic enough to at least give it a try.

I do have more experience than your average mom in this challenging endeavor called potty training. You see, I supported myself through most of my high school and college years by working in daycare centers. I even spent an entire summer working in the "2s" room, along with another adult plus sixteen two-year-olds. Our goals were 1.) to potty train them, 2.) to prevent them from biting one another, and 3.) to try to get them to take afternoon naps. Sound easy? Let's just say they were like a game of whack-a-mole: you get most of them to take a nap, and then somebody pees on the floor. As you're cleaning up that mess, somebody bites somebody else and the resulting cries wake up three more children, one of whom has a dirty diaper. While you're cleaning up that stinky mess, the other two bite one another, leading to more crying, and, ultimately, more peeing on the floor. I remember spending a lot of time with bleach water, and even more time writing up "biting reports." There is a very good reason I did not even consider having children before age 30. Anyhow, whenever I get frustrated with Nick, I just remember that summer and try to think of what it would be like with fifteen more of him. Then I smile and give my boy a hug.

Anyhow, back to our ill-fated first potty training attempt. I should warn sensitive readers that this is not a story to read while eating a snack. In fact, if you are at all grossed out by potty-type talk, please just stop reading right here.

***Warning*** Gross but funny story ahead

From my considerable potty training experience, I did learn that for very young little boys, they need to connect the dots and figure out when they are peeing. You have to be lucky enough to catch them peeing and get some in the potty. Then a lightbulb goes on and they start to get what to do (hopefully). We started out by giving Nick a nice big cup of orange juice. We hardly ever give Nick juice of any kind, but since we all have colds I figured the Vitamin C would be good for us. Over the course of about an hour, Nick drank about 14 ounces of orange juice. He told us "I go potty!" so Greg took him into the bathroom and showed him how to sit on his new potty.

Nicholas was super-excited about the potty, though he didn't really want to sit on it much. He was more interested in pulling out the bowl, touching the froggy's eyes, and even wearing it like a hat. I suggested to Greg that perhaps we should just leave Nick sans diaper for awhile, and try to catch him peeing. Nick certainly was happy enough wandering around naked, and we have hardwood floors. I decided that after all of that orange juice, something was sure to happen soon.

Fast forward about an hour. Not only has no pee decided to appear, Nick has determined that the potty is the greatest toy ever. He especially likes to sit on it with one foot in the bowl, and put toys into it. Since it was nearly dinnertime, we were about ready to give up and put the diaper back on. Then comes the gross part.

I'm sure you've guessed it by now. #2. All over the floor in a giant pile, about a foot from the potty. Nick announced immediately afterward, "I go poopy!" Never have I seen such a look of horror on my husband's face. Indeed, the look on his face alone made me start laughing hysterically as we tried to stop Nick from spreading it around the living room. Greg cleaned up the worst of the mess as I scrubbed Nick the tub. I laughed the entire time, because, at that point, what else can you do? It was my own fault for leaving the diaper off for so long. My daycare experience served me well after that, when I remembered how to make a 10:1 bleach water solution to sanitize both the floor and the potty.

As for Nick, he didn't seem to care at all about the mess he had made. But he was really, really ticked off when I had to wrestle him into a diaper after his bath. Nick wanted naked time to go on forever. He never did pee, at least not that night. However, when Greg woke him up this morning, he had soaked through his pajamas, blankets, and sheets. My boy must have a super bladder to have held it that long.

We'll try again this week, but I am not in a hurry. I know that this process can take a long time, and I will make it into a power struggle if we try to push it too soon. A power struggle with a two-year-old is one that will definitely be lost. Nick is still excited about his potty, so we'll go slowly and try periodically as our patience allows. Most importantly, I know I have to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Block Towers of Fun

And now I present, for your viewing pleasure, videos of Nick building with blocks. There are also some nice snippets of conversation. It's interesting how parents each have their own special thing that they play with their kid. Greg likes to look through art books (the big coffee table ones) with Nick and look at the pictures. He also does wrestling and they play basketball together with Nick's little hoop.

Me? I read tons of stories with Nick, both fiction and nonfiction. He likes the stories I've read over and over. He likes to say "I read it," and then he tells me the story by pointing to the pictures. But something I do with Nick just about every day is building with blocks. He has a decent attention span for it--the day I took these two videos, Nick and I built towers and such for at least 40 minutes. He loves knocking them down, but I also have noticed that he gets excited when he's able to add blocks to the towers.

If you haven't figured it out, "No Say You" means play with me, or come here. I'm not sure what that actually stands for, but he says it constantly. I need to take more videos of Nick, if for no other reason than to track his linguistic development. As an ELL teacher, I've had lots of training in linguistics and in how people learn language. I am constantly reading books about the evolution of languages and how people learn them, whether they're first or second languages. Every day I work with kids learning English as a second or even a third or fourth language. But it's amazing to me how quickly little ones learn their first language.

Nick has gone, in about eight months, from having only two or three words to speaking in short sentences. If you had to ask me how many words he knows, I wouldn't even know where to start. I would guess it's into the thousands. He already knows how to add 's to show ownership. (I'm still working on this one with my 5th grade ELL students who've spoken English since 1st grade! There's a big difference between learning a first and a second language.) Nick already mostly gets the concepts of over/under, up/down, in/out, etc. Every couple of days he blows me away with something he says.

I'm not saying Nick is advanced for his age. I think he's about where he should be, with speaking. I just love watching the process unfold each day. Today, for example, Nick was looking at the Christmas tree, and he saw this snowman ornament, pointed to it, and said "See snowman over there, by moon? It's breakable. No touch." Now, this ornament was right next to a moon ornament, and I had been talking to him the other day about not touching that one because it was breakable. I may or not have used the word breakable a bunch of times. Anyway, I was astounded that he remembered.