Monday, April 13, 2009

Easter Sunday

We spent the day at the Jawdy's house and I posted all of our pictures here. Enjoy!

I hope you all had a blessed Easter. I only have three more weeks of class at Master's Monday and six more weeks of work! Expect more blog posts then....

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Nanny visits and Easter Eggs

Helping Daddy in the garden!
So my Nanny came to visit this week and we had so much fun! Last Saturday Ethan helped Philip and I in the garden and then we dyed eggs! I figured I would not try to stop him from making a mess. I just gave him two eggs and set the two least-stainable colors in front of him. He had a great time and this fingers were yellow until that night when he took a bath.



Then our neighbor Abbey helped him hide eggs in the backyard. I took video of his hunt but they are on my camcorder and they are not easy to download. I've uploaded pictures from my Nanny's visit onto our Shutterfly site, so you can see more pictures there! What was really sweet about her visit was that she got to stay home with him a few times while I worked or when Philip and I went on a date. Since Ethan has a Nanny Sara, we were telling him to call my Nanny "Nan Michelle" (just like I call my Dad's Nanny "Nan Ruby"). I haven't gotten it on tape but what he says comes out more like "She-shell". It is really cute!

Potty Report: We have gone #2 in the potty once and for that he got a Cars notepad that he can use to collect future #2 stickers (Thank you Allison for the sticker idea). We also peepee in the potty about twice a day and he is still enjoying getting M&Ms for that.

Monday, April 6, 2009

P in the Potty!

Well, we are yet again moving on to another step towards becoming a grown up boy! This all started when we had my pediatrician Dr.Brice in to talk to our MOPS group. He mentioned that a lot of the milestones that we take for granted (walk by 1, potty train by 2 or 3) are very culturally influenced. He mentioned that his last practice was located in a real rural town and that there babies were expected to walk by 8-10 months and potty train by 1.5! Then, two Sundays ago on my "run around town with out a kid" trip I picked up a potty ring at Target for about five dollars. I figured that we had talked about the potty for long enough, let's actually potty!

For the first couple of days whenever I was changing his diaper or clothes I would offer him two mini M&Ms if he would just sit on the potty. "Mnms?" Anything for those! So for a couple of days we just sat on the potty, talked about peepeeing, got our two "mnms" and grunted a little bit. Then I went to Duck Duck Goose on Wednesday and I got a Baby Bjorn Potty Chair for $5.00! When I got home Ethan was really excited to sit on his new potty and low and behold he actually went peepee. For this he recieved five whole mini M&Ms. Since then he has gone on the potty about once a day at least and I have transitioned so that M&Ms are only earned if something is produced. I don't consider this potty training yet, I like to think of this stage as more of a training for our training! Until the actual traingin begins I will continue asking and rewarding (I figure this part can't hurt) and when we are home in the mornings I will especially try to catch a number 2 in the potty (#2 in the potty = great)!

Here is what I have in mind for the actual training: PLAN A (I guess I'll call this one ambitious.) I will have a free week at the beginning of the summer and I think we can use that week to start our ambitious plan! Here are the keys to my plan: I have about a package and a half left of regular diapers to use up and then I plan to transition to g-diapers whenever he is not at preschool. These allow Ethan to feel wetter right when he goes and they have cloth exteriors so they seem like a logical tranistion tool. Then on May 30th Ethan will put on big boy underwear and I suppose we will hang out at the house for that week! My friend Allison just posted about her progress and I think I will steal her stickers idea for the actual training. I see some Cars stickers (or temporary tattoos for #2s) in my son's future! We could even get some bonuses for accident free days or half days!

I'll keep everyone posted on our progress....this could get really interesting!