Weekend update

No real news here, except that the poor boy is heading into his 3rd cold since Christmas. Ugh. Winter is too long. It is the hardest thing, to have a sick toddler. There is so little we can do to help him really feel better-- and when he does not feel well, he does not sleep well, thus neither do we. He's all slathered in Vicks, humidifier on, Tylenol in, and we are hoping for the best night possible. Sigh.

In the face of this cold, Jack has been in amazingly good spirits. He's generally in good spirits, actually. A happy kid, and such a talker these days! He using very nice sentences with very unique grammar, and is constantly making neat connections. The other night on a walk, Jack noted that the "moon turned off!" when some clouds passed over the moon... And then a few nights later he remarked upon getting out of the car in Lakewood that the "moon followed us!". He really likes the moon these days.

Another recent development is that he is moving towards representational drawing. He will make a very purposful line or shape on the paper and then tell us what it is. Yesterday he drew a door (and it really did look like a nice, arched doorway) and then, after telling me it was a door, proceeded to make a doorknob in just the right spot. I was blown away. He also drew what he called a mountain on that same page. I didn't know that he even knew the word mountain, much less how to draw a roughly triangular shape to represent one. It's so fun to watch him learn and develop.

We are also very impressed by how polite and rather compassionate he can be, all of a sudden. When Nat bumped his head on Saturday, Jack offered to kiss it for him to make him feel better. He not only uses please and thank you on a regular basis, he now says he is sorry. When he does something wrong and we snap at him a bit-- he does an amazing job of making us feel bad with his "I'm torry, mommy. I'll try it again!". He also says he is sorry when we are upset, as though he had done something! Today he apologized for not feeling well!

Thinking of things that get me choked up- yesterday over breakfast Jack and I had a full conversation about his future sister. He actually brought it up (I found out later that Nat had been talking about his sister with him the night before, on the way home from visiting Melinda, Will and their little babies). All of a sudden he looks at me and says "my tister! My tister in your tummy!" We proceeded to talk about how she was not yet ready to come out and play (he asked if she was "ready to come out now? Can I play with her?) He also expressed intersest in "checking" her when she gets bigger. Judging by how he held his hands out when saying this, I interpreted "check" to mean something like checking on, touching, or holding. I think this came from Friday night when he wanted to "check" on baby Lillian ( who I got to hold!) and I told him maybe he could when she got bigger. So now I think he imagines he'll have to wait a while to hold his sister, too. I assured him that even though she won't play, he could hold her and kiss her just as soon as possible after she's born. This seemed to satisfy him. I can't wait to see him hold her for the first time, see what kind of a big brother he'll be. Judging by the surprising kindness and empathy he's been showing recently, I'm hopeful for a pretty good relationship!

A poopy tale

So I went in to get Jack up from his nap today and was greeted by a tell-tale smell in the nursery. I began to gird myself for a diaper clean-up. I look into the crib and Jack looks up at me and remarks "I have a tissue". I reply, "You sure do." And then I notice he is very purposefully wiping the tissue on his crib sheet. He says, "I'm just using my tissue to clean up this poop." Oh dear. Sure enough. He was very studiously wiping at a brown smudge on the sheet. OK. So I get him out of the crib. "Let's clean you up," I say. "It looks like you have some poop on your finger. And my perfect son replies: "Yes, this poop (pointing at his bum)...(pause)...(looks up and brandishes the kleenex)...Good thing I have a tissue!" And he carefully wiped off his own hand while I changed his bum. Laughing the whole time.

You know you're a mother when... this story is not gross at all, but rather makes you think your son is more adorable than ever!!

Times they are a changing....

I have spent most of my few blogging minutes recently talking about the minutiae of Jack's daily winter life, but have neglected to write about how much this little kid living in our house has changed ...into a real KID. He really has, you know. It's not just that he is taller, slimmer, not a trace of that "baby round" to his face these days. It's also the way he talks with us, the fact that he can answer a "why" question and ask a few of his own, that he can now wheel and deal and come up with 101 excuses not to go to bed. That he enunciates his words now-- "I'm noT reaDy yeT." He likes to train his dog and invite friends over to play and he is just so grown up. Just such a kid.

I am, as you can tell, a little in awe of how this process has somehow, mysteriously happened even with me watching every day. But it was bound to happen, wasn't it. And really the timing is right. There are so many changes coming up in Jack's life that he'd better be changing a bit himself, to keep up.

First and foremost, I suppose it is about time to officially introduce Jack's little sister, who will make her arrival somewhere around May 9th. Here's her most recent "head shot", taken at 20 weeks. All continues to go smoothly with the pregnancy and we are looking forward to this little girl being a WONDERFUL sleeper (we deserve it, right?) and I am looking forward very much to the purchasing of many flowery, embroidered outfits at the baby resales this spring. This unassuming little fetus is the reason for the other impending changes in Jack's life, but the loss of "only child" status may be the hardest hit of all for him. We are certainly hoping that in the long run, having a sibling will add joy and richness to his life. But I am preparing myself for many many moments in the interim where we wonder why in the world we had to go and mess with our perfect family of 3!

The first change for Jack with this pregnancy was the loss of my milk supply when I was about 10 weeks along. Jack had already been toying with weaning himself from nursing; after about a month of somewhat painful, rather fruitless nursing sessions 1-2 times a day, Jack decided to let go of the "numahs" habit, at about 26 months of age. Very bittersweet for me. I have always been committed to letting him self-wean but I have to admit that with the onset of pregnancy and less-than-comfortable nursing, I did help it along a bit, with a few pointed talks about "being a big boy" and "numahs are empty right now". And it's true, he IS a big boy. It's a perfectly fine time for him to move on from nursing. BUT, this meant my little baby really was grown up. That tiny little dependent nursling really is all gone now. Sigh. It is nice, though, to have a few months off before welcoming the next one...

The other changes are still "en route"-- we have our work cut out for us this spring.

We have been busy since Christmas with readying Jack's big boy room upstairs, as well as rehabbing and cleaning up the upstairs bathroom for his future use. The bedroom's been a snap-- we chose a color we adore with relative ease, got a cute toddler bed, Nat is working on built in bookshelves. Coming along nicely. The bathroom-- well, it was not a very nice bathroom to begin with and it has suffered from a few years of neglect on my part as it was used by our bachelor boarders. After working on the bathroom for a few days I now feel really, really bad about subjecting those poor gentlemen to such a horrid place for hygiene. A few coats of paint and some bleach spray later and the bathroom is no longer nearly such a blight on the house. But there is a long way to go before my son gets to use this for his daily ablutions.

That may be beside the point as it may also be a while before Jack is actually using his new room as anything more than a play space. He loves his room and loves his bed and happily pretends to sleep on it, but we are really clueless with how to get him to actually sleep there. I would really like for it to be his decision, for it to come very naturally and easily and have him just make his decision, march up there, and sleep through the night. And I am definitely NOT wanting to push him towards it at the risk of disturbing the precious balance by which we are actually getting a full night's sleep 3/5 nights recently. Any advice? We are biding our time right now, finishing bookshelves and bathrooms and waiting for the magic solution to appear. Sometime before May, please. Worse come to worse we'll move his crib upstairs for him. Baby sister can have a pack'n'play, or a moses basket, or a cardboard box or something. Poor second child. Sidelined already.

Thinking of that tangent on bathrooms... the other change that is coming, whether Jack knows it or not, is potty training. I think it would be really nice to only have one in diapers and so I spend a lot of time telepathically encouraging Jack to decide to use the potty sometime before May. But again, we don't want to push him, want it to be his decision. So that means we get to be really impatient and worry a lot about whether we are doing the right thing, whether he actually is ready, etc. He will sit on the potty more often these days, and has had a few successes, wherein he has managed to squeeze and squeeze and produce a raisin-sized poop so that he can flush the toilet. His desire to use the potty also coincides most often with bedtime-- as in, another excuse to not go to bed. About to lay him down and then: "Can I go poop on the potty???" How does the parent of a toddler in potty-training-age range say no to that? With great difficulty, as it turns out. He has no real desire to use the toilet 90% of the time and we have no desire to fall for his stalling tactics. Hopefully we're not ruining our shot at potty training. Especially as he has a real deadline now-- as of today the boy is officially enrolled in a preschool! He will start in the fall, 2 days per week in the "Young 3's" class at a local co-op preschool, and he needs to be potty trained to attend. Perhaps we'll end up trying that "run around naked" technique this summer. In the meantime we'll continue to let him unproductively sit on the potty looking at catalogs, and hope he gets the idea on his own






.

And more snow!

Sadly, today has ushered in a thaw and we hear that by tomorrow Cleveland will be back to its usual slushy, rainy January self. I will truly miss our winter wonderland. Until it comes back in February. Or March. Or May. Gotta love Cleveland.

However, as far as Jack is concerned, the return of temperatures above 25 has brought two wonderful things: Icicles and snowmen.

Jack simply adores banging icicles together and watching them break. And banging them on the driveway and watching them break. Really anything to get them to break. When did he become such a BOY!??

Today he got to build his first snowmen with daddy in the 39 degree sunshine. Mommy was sorry to miss the fun. Work. Ugh.

Here's a little video of icicle fun. Click on it to view.

From 2010-01-14 january 2010 snow fun

Train Ride!!

Today we rode the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad for the first time. What a hidden treasure it is! I can't believe I have lived in Cleveland my entire life and never made it out for a ride. It took a train-obsessed 2 year old to get us there, I guess!
Jack' response was interesting-- he was very excited to get to the train, and about the idea of a train ride, but once we were on the train he kept asking "where is the train? Where train tracks are?" It was a very abstract notion for him that we were ON the train, thus could not SEE the train. He had a good time, though, and Nat and I were simply charmed by the ride and the wonderful retirees volunteering on the train. Our conductor was a retired Hiram prof--small world!
We tood the train to the Peninsula station and explored there for a while. Jack really liked watching the train pull out of the station.... to make the day even more wonderful, there was a bike shop right there next to the train station-- trains and bikes both in the space of a few hours! :)
It turned out to be a lovely sunny day to walk around Peinsula, eat at Fishers, and enjoy the scnery on the way home. We topped the day off with a walk through our own snow convered neightborhood, to Starbucks. It was delightful to be outdoors in the crispy-cold night.

A Snowy New Year....

This January has been ushered in by a blast of true winter for Northeast Ohio: temperatures in the teens, and mounds of perfect, glittering snow. It's been lovely. The snow day today, extending my break by a glorious extra 24 hours, didn't hurt either. :)

We celebrated the snow day with a breakfast at Ihop and lots of sitting around in the warm house, playing with iPods and monster trucks. Yesterday, however, we did get out to play in the snow. The pictures above show some of our fun. It was bitterly cold so our time at the park was short-lived... and we were most deserving of cocoa when we got home. Jack, as you can see, enjoyed the cocoa experience quite a bit!

Today's snow was even more impressive. Imagine about 10 more inches piled up. We'll have to try to get some more snowy-Jack pictures tomorrow for your viewing pleasure.

The video below shows our main event of this evening-- Playing with Jack and Cor in the hallway. The first 15 minutes or so consisted of Jack launching himself at Daddy while Corydon got her first real game of fetch-the-toy in what's probably been months. Then, Jack decided HE needed to play fetch with Cor. We watched, and laughed at, the two of them for a good 10 minutes more. All I can say is, we have a very patient, very good dog! And, a cute boy, too.