Wednesday: nope, it's Tuesday

It was a rather busy day.  Isaac and I had breakfast.  He did his robot bubbles which I find hilarious.  (E-E-R-E-O (in robot sounds) then a blow blow blow.  It's hard to describe.)  Then off to Bible Study (Dusty, there's extra banana pudding in the fridge for you).

Then off to work.  Today was the first exam and it went pretty well.  I goofed one thing up but for the most part I don't think it'll be too big of a deal.  I brought the car in to have something checked out only to find out that it needed a little bit more work done too.  Kind of sad, but I trust our mechanic too.  I'm glad to have a mechanic I can trust.

I got home and finished some grading while trying to get dinner ready.  Doing both at the same time didn't really work.  But we ended up with a hot meal.  Since it was snowing out I thought Isaac could have a white themed dinner because by that time I just wanted to eat...pasta with white sauce, cottage cheese, milk, and marsh mellows.  I know...I can't believe I let him have marsh mellows for dinner.  I should have given him an apple.  But...we'll try for a healthier dinner tomorrow.  And hopefully I'll get the marsh mellows in the cupboard so I'm not tempted to give him anymore.

Saturday: a tree event

We were invited to Tuesink's pony farm for some winter activities today.  Isaac and I went, although I wasn't sure how long we were going to last.  But there were animals.

We were there for about an hour...longer than I expected, actually.  We got to feed some animals.  (It was one bag of feed per family, but there was a lot of feed in the bag...I was rather impressed.  We actually gave the last bit of ours away as Isaac was done feeding animals.)  We looked at some barn animals.  We ate some donut holes.  We looked at all of the animals again.

It was a fun morning activity.  It was snowing, so that nicely set the mood.  But I was really glad Isaac was in his snowsuit as it was also cold.

Friday: Robin Hood and Christmas music

Isaac started watching Disney's Robin Hood today.  It is the movie Nathan and I watched the most as kids...I have it memorized.  I still have it memorized, 20 years later.  And it's still a great movie.  Isaac seemed to think so too.

Isaac has also been enjoying some Christmas music lately.  (And asking for it by doing his dancing motion...one hand up and down in the air.)  So we brought him to the Christmas music show at church.  However, it turns out that I wasn't thinking.  For some reason I thought it would be more of a moving around thing, but it was a sit and listen thing.  Very nice, but it didn't work so well with an extra-active toddler.  Isaac stayed in the sanctuary for a bit and Ben and I spent some time with him in the foyer, but we left early.  Isaac enjoyed it, even if he couldn't sit still for a second.

Wednesday: where did the day go?

Isaac woke up and we did our normal morning routine with Ben.  He proceeded to take 45 minutes to eat his breakfast - Crispex are delicious apparently.  We went to see Betsy and Ethan and had lunch with them.  We took a nap.  I woke Isaac up...I don't really like to do that, but I also want him to get up early enough that he'll fall asleep at night.  I did get some very nice snuggles as he woke up though.  We...I'm not sure what we did for the next hour and a half, but we did stuff.  Ben came home.  We ate dinner.  Isaac played a little bit.  He had a bath.  He went to bed!  I always close his door and feel a little guilty about how happy I am that he's in bed.  I played some games and did some sewing.  And now it's time to go to bed and read.

And just like that, today is done.

23 months

I only got the pictures a day late this month!

Isaac has a bunch of fun words this month, and they seem to be rather themed.  We have weather themed - wet, rain, snow, brrr, boots.  We have food themed - juice, wipe.  And we have Duplo themed - broke, fix, tower.  There's also been several times where Isaac seems to be saying something (over and over) and I have no idea what it is.  It's not the gibberish that babies say, but it is another language.

He's good at realizing that his tower is broken, but hasn't realized that he can just fix it without me asking if he can fix it.  I see a lot of broken towers in a day.

Isaac can move his highchair to the correct place by himself now (from the table to the living room).  He blows kisses.  He likes doing the robot dance, and I'm pretty sure we only read some books to see the robot picture and then do the dance.

Potty training is going well, unless he's at his Grandma's house.  Then he has about 300% more accidents than normal.  He likes his "nummy-nummy" after he does his business, but I've only been giving them to him if he asks.  He often forgets.

Sleep went well this month too.  I think between a growth spurt and sickness he was sleeping a little more, which was awesome.  He has one nap in the afternoon (usually at least 2 hours) and sleeps from 8 at night to about 7 in the morning.

He also has really enjoyed magnets and bottles.  He loves having a little water in a bottle so he can take the cap off, drink, and put the cap back on...but he'll enjoy the bottle even if there isn't any water.  We haven't had too many messes.

Monday: kisses

Isaac was in a very kissy mood today...

...the little bear before we left the house.
...the water bottle before we left the house.
...the blue monkey.
...me.
...the random baby that we saw in the store.
...Ben
...the blue monkey
...the cow in the bedtime book
...the sheep in the bedtime book
...the blue monkey again.

And those are only the ones I saw.  The Duplo dog, horse, and goat often get kisses too.

Sunday: last pickup

Tomorrow is our last diaper pick-up.  Isaac now (normally) has one or no accidents a day, and is staying dry through most naps, so it is time to be done with the diaper service.  I was quite happy with them, but I'm even more happy to be done with diapers.

So that I don't forget if I'm ever curious about what I did, here's the quick summary.  I have no idea if any of these things actually helped, but it's what happened.
1) Cloth diapers almost all of the time.
2) Around 18 months I tried putting him on the toilet a lot for a week.  It didn't work all that well.
3) Between 18-21 months I tried putting him on the toilet several times a week.  If he did go to the bathroom, he got some mini M&Ms and got to wear his training pants.
4) Around 21 months he stayed dry for an entire morning, so I tried pushing toilet training hard again.  Again, M&Ms for rewards...and flushing.  I didn't use the waterproof pull-ups, although I did bring some to daycare so they could use them.  If we went out I either put him back in a diaper or made sure it was a really short trip and he had just gone to the bathroom.  I put a TV tray by the toilet so that he could play/read more easily.  (He was happy to stay on the toilet if there was something to do and I found that he had a bowel movement if he stayed on the toilet for at least 5 minutes.)  I started by putting him on the toilet about once an hour, but we're up to about once every two hours now.

So that's the quick summary...and it's not like we're done yet.  We still need to work on communication (when he does need to go) so that I don't have to remember every two hours.  We're also working on Isaac  taking his pants on and off.  But, the main thing is that most of the time Isaac goes on the toilet!



...Potty training is a lot of work.