My Little Van Goghs

Lately I've been feeling like the Pied Piper of the 3 and Under set.  Anywhere I go, I lead a parade.  So if I need to buy myself a few minutes to get dinner ready, the latest trick I've found is coloring.

One day I had to run out to the garage to grab something out of the refrigerator and left the kids in the kitchen coloring.  I was gone approximately 60 seconds.  This is what I came back to:



Purple marker makes good lipstick, apparently

Audrey thought the red went better with her complexion

Audrey was quite upset that I didn't give her my phone as I was taking this picture.  "Mine, Mine!" she was yelling.

Barrett's self portrait.  He was pretty funny.  He did this all unprompted and as I was looking at it, he said "Oh, I need to draw my belly."  So he drew the circle in the middle and added a belly button.  I think it's actually pretty good!  Tim is a good artist, so it'd be nice if Barrett got some of his skill. 

Uncanny resemblance!

The theme of last weekend

I'll give you a hint...

Yes, that's right, we started POTTYTRAINING!

So when I make a decision to do something, I go all out.  Clearly evidenced by the above picture.  I get mildly obsessive and determined and potty training is no different.  Enough so that I was still singing Elmo's potty songs in my head the rest of the week "You can do it, you'll use the potty!"  And every single one of my dreams the night following involved potty chairs, peeing, accidents, etc.  I'm surprised I didn't wet the bed with all that I was thinking about urine.

My mom swore by Potty Training in One Day.   She swears it worked for me and so I decided to give it a try.  We had bought Barrett some underwear a few months ago and talked to him about going in the potty.  He sat on it every day at daycare when the other kids did, would jump up and say "I did it!" but he hadn't done anything.  We backed off a little and set a date for when we would try.  I got the book about one day potty training from the library, along with a bunch of other children's books and dvds.  So we had a plan.  I was really nervous leading up to it, since I hadn't done it before and wasn't sure I knew what I was really doing.  Barrett is super smart but can also be quite strong-willed so it could be either a hit or a bust. 

What I did:  I bought juice, fun straws, multiple packs of stickers, balloons and streamers to decorate the bathroom and make it a fun experience, and m&ms.  I also bought a Potty Scotty doll.  This is an anatomically correct wet-and-drink doll; I cringed while ordering it due to the hefty price tag (like $40) but I figured with Barrett not really understanding what was supposed to happen on the toilet, the doll would help.  Plus that's the price of a pack of diapers, so if it worked, we'd be saving money in the long run, right?

But thankfully it's all paying off because Barrett is doing AMAZING.   The gist is that the morning is spent concentrating on "potty training" the doll.  So Scotty had accidents, went in the potty and got stickers and treats all morning.  Meanwhile I pumped Barrett full of juice.  Just before lunch, Barrett started saying he wanted to go so sure enough, he did!  The first time I saw him go on the potty, I almost cried. Yes, seriously.  And he has continued to go since then.

Now, a week later, he has gone without an accident for the last few days.  I am so proud.  I really think we did this at exactly the right time, that the doll was key and that he's just a smart little cookie who wants to please us (sometimes). 

We're not there yet but are on the right track and I'm thrilled with his progress.  I really never thought he'd take to it so easily so I am relieved.  I'm sure I'm jinxing it by saying this, of course.  Hoping he keeps this great progress up!

Packrat

Barrett's packrat tendencies have hit an all-time low. 

Barrett lately

Not to be outdone with all Audrey's monthly updates, I want to make sure I write about what's going on with our other kiddo these days too.  He is in the midst of being two and a little dynamo!

Barrett is soaking up words non-stop.  He will whip out these words that I didn't even know he knew, like pointing out geese to me the other day.  I didn't even know he knew the difference between birds and geese.  He really is speaking in sentences lately of about 2 to 4 words.  He still loves to point out what belongs to whom and what's his.  He is definitely exerting his independence by requesting "I hold it" when he wants to carry something and wanting to pull his wagon down the sidewalk instead of being pulled by us. 

Food is still an annoying issue, for our little picky one.  His latest loves are doughnuts and bagels (pronounced do-notes and baay-gahs) and jellybeans. Healthy, right?  He continues to drink a ton of milk and would eat only fruit if I let him.  He loves cereal and his favorite activity is taking all the cereal boxes out of the pantry, opening them, and pulling out the bags.  His favorite color is blue and he's always requesting a blue cup or blue plate.  No more toddler silverware, now he must have the regular forks and spoons. 

He is learning his letters and numbers.  He can point out the letter B and we're working on some other letters, like E and M. He's so cute singing the alphabet song, which he probably half knows.  He can count somewhat when prompted and is very good with pointing out two of things.  But if you ask him to count other numbers, he often says "seven, eight, nine, ten," so he's no pro yet.  He also knows his shapes.  I love hearing him say diamond and oval, with his little baby voice. 

He loves books and his favorite now is "Big Elmo bookie."  He still loves Elmo and The Wiggles.  He loves to dance and is really into music lately.  He has zero interest in his old bear Baby and hasn't for months now.  But he's still obsessed with his blanket "Blue Body" and lugs it around to daycare and back every day and refuses to sleep without it. 

His favorite games are flying through the house "I fy!", being chased "Run, mommy!" and collapsing onto the sofa to be tickled and hugged.  He still lets me give him hugs and cuddles but sometimes squirms away.  He is good at holding my hand when we walk.  I think he misses our time together when I was on leave because he's always trying to get my attention in the evenings and weekends. 

Barrett is into EVERYTHING these days.  He's up on the table, up on the island, pulling open drawers.  Thank goodness he hasn't figured out doorknobs yet.  His teacher told me he's her little Curious George and I can't say I disagree!  She told me that last week she turned her back to hand a parent a sheet of paper and in that time, Barrett managed to find the paint and spill it all over himself.  She said in all her years teaching no child's ever found the hiding spot for the paint but wouldn't you know that our little Bear would?  He's such a monkey!

He makes us laugh, he drives us crazy, he's such a silly little boy!

Pottytraining Time?

Are we ready for potty training in this house?

Well let's see...

Underwear is a good hat.

It can be worn by all!

Underwear is fun to carry around the house

But underwear instead of diapers?  No thanks!

We are definitely not pushing Barrett into potty training.  But we are starting to talk about it and spent about 20 minutes on Sunday in the bathroom where he happily sat on the toilet and we read books.  So I'm hoping that it'll click at some point and we'll be able to say goodbye to diapers for one of the kids. 

However, I'm predicting that B is much more likely to be wearing his new Thomas the Train underwear on his head than anywhere else for a little while longer. 

Barrett lately

Now that I've been home on maternity leave with Barrett these last two months, I am really spending quality time with him in a way that I haven't been able to before.  He is a little tornado of energy and I just try to keep up!

He is adjusting well to having a little sister.  He does steal her toys - who knew that newborn toys were so interesting?  Apparently they are very interesting when little sister is looking at them.  He has had just a few little jealous moments, when I'm busy feeding her or holding her and he wants attention.  But most of the time I try to balance attention between the two so it hasn't been too bad yet.  I sometimes channel this jealousy for my own benefit: any time we change her diaper, he lays down and wants his changed instead of her.  So if I need to change his and he won't come to me, I pretend I'm about to change her and he comes running over and lays down.  Win!  I don't know how long he'll be fooled by this but it's working so far!

Barrett competing for diaper-changing time.  Notice the blue in his hair - he decided to give himself a dye job with fingerpaint

Expecting me to be as amazed by his tummy time as I am for Audrey

He is obsessed with trains and carries them all around the house with him.  He sleeps with them in his bed.  I was singing goodnight to him the other night, put my arms around him, and felt a half dozen little trains under him.  I don't know how that's comfortable!  When we go downstairs in the morning, he insists on us carrying them all down, so our arms are overflowing, and then it's the same story at night bringing them back up.  Tim keeps wanting to buy him more and sets up elaborate tracks, so I think these trains are really toys for both my boys!

A sample of some of the trains in Barrett's bed.  Including an empty toothpaste box that has trains on it.

He is still my baby in a lot of ways.  He likes to be picked up and carried.  This was tough while I was recovering from my c-section and he didn't understand why he was holding up his arms to me and I wasn't picking him up.  Now though, I can't resist picking him up and cuddling him whenever he'll let me.  Who knows how much longer I'll be able to do it, so I want to take advantage of it whenever possible.

watching the Superbowl together in our Bears gear

He is still very good at going to bed.  He loves when we lay down in his bed next to him and sing him songs.  At the end, he'll clap and say "yay!  more!"  It's very encouraging.  He goes to be between 8-8:30 these days (depending on when his Daddy gets home from work) and wakes between 7:30-8:30 usually.  He still hasn't figured out doorknobs but gets our attention by kicking the door.  Loudly.

He still loves the Wiggles and Elmo and can name other Sesame Street characters too.  He knows his colors, some shapes, can identify the letter B and likes to sing some of the alphabet song.  He knows a zillion words and loves books.  His current favorites are the lift-the-flap Noah's ark book, a lift-the-flap Little people farm book and he's still loving the read-along books my parents gave him.

always the attention-stealer!

Barrett isn't always a day at the park though.  He's definitely a two year old boy and into testing limits these days.  He takes advantage of time I'm incapacitated with Audrey or pumping and will act out.  When he gets sent to time-out, I'll hear him inching out and seeing how far he can sneak out of time out before I catch him.  He runs away from me sometimes in parking lots, which makes me crazy from the danger so that definitely gets him in trouble.  And the food throwing at meals is still going on and driving me crazy!  I really struggle with discipline with my high-spirited two year old and we haven't found what exactly works yet.  Time-outs do work, but are hard to do 100% of the time since I can't always force him there and to stay in it when I'm preoccupied with other things.

He is silly and crazy, boisterous and loud, naughty and sweet and all kinds of fun!  I love my little two year old tornado!

Fun in the snow - or not

We had our first significant snowfall of the year a week or so ago and introduced Barrett to the fun of outdoor winter play.  Only I'm not so sure he thought it was fun....

It didn't start out on a good foot.  We pulled on the new snowpants, which I'd bought a long time ago and was happy we finally got a chance to use.  We talked up the fun in the snow and the new snowpants and boots.  But Barrett wasn't buying it.

Yes, I'm the mean mom taking pictures while her son is screaming. 

I finally got a smile from him and thought maybe it might turn out well after all!

Yeah, not so much.

Needless to say, this did not go well and the snowpants saw about 3 minutes of snow.  Oh well!  I am absolutely sure that we'll have more than one opportunity in the future to try them out again and I bet Barrett will end up learning to love playing in the snow.  As a Chicago boy, he'll have to!

A look back - Barrett's first birthday party

With the craziness at work that is always January for me and Tim, I never got a chance to write about Barrett's first birthday party.  So, much belatedly, here are the highlights of the first birthday party.

The theme was Winter One-derland and I used the colors turquoise and red.  I think it turned out pretty well!  With a December 23 birthday, it wasn't easy to come up with a date for the party, especially since all our family had to come in from out of town.  I didn't want to ask everyone to come in in December, with all the Christmas business, so we postponed it until New Year's Day, figuring that's usually a pretty quiet day for everyone.  Of course it meant Tim and I spent New Year's Eve taking down Christmas decor and hanging birthday garland, but oh well!

Food

I made potato soup in the slow-cooker, ham and cheese grilled sandwiches (recipe here), meatballs in the slow-cooker, a veggie plate and dip, cheese and crackers, bread and hummus and the below penguins and igloo dip. We also had a hot chocolate bar, which was absolutely awesome.  We got both regular and white hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts and set up a topping bar with chopped andes mints, crushed peppermint, marshmallows and wafer cookies.   It was turned out to be a highlight of the party for the guests and absolutely delicious!

Aren't these adorable?  Our little army of penguins and their igloo.  The penguins are olives with carrot noses and feet and stuffed with cream cheese.  The igloo is  a blue cheese/cream cheese dip, decorated with a cream cheese exterior.

 The cake - half chocolate/half vanilla with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting.  Yum!

And the smash cake for Barrett

Decor

I made these snowflakes that we had hanging around the house.

 and here's a close up

The month-by-month banner I made of our little boy.  It really showed his growth each month.  This was taken after he got a hold of it and ripped of the bottom 2 pictures.  

 And the banner I made and a few of the generous gifts he received!  I was in love with this banner and we kept it up to celebrate his birthday for a month or so afterward!

I also made some garland out of red, light blue, white and turquoise felt circles and had this hanging with ribbon over the windows and doorway, but didn't get a picture.  You can kind of see it in the kitchen window in the background of some of the other photos. 


Here's my new one year-old. 

 And to show off his shirt a little more!  Notice the snowman in the shape of a "1"!

Unfortunately half way through the party Barrett started to get really flushed and cranky.  After not being much better the next day, we took him to the doctor and he was diagnosed with RSV. Fun!  It took a really long time for him to recover.  I was sad that he got sick during his own party.

sad and sick birthday boy

We ended up doing his cake a little later in the week, after he started to feel better. He hadn't really had any sugar before his birthday, so he wasn't quite sure what to think of it.

Trying to figure out what this thing is in front of him

Trying it and clearly liking it!

The beginning of the end.  We had to pull the rest of the cake away before he either ate or wore the entire thing.

So there you have it!  It took a lot of planning and he won't remember a moment of it, but we had fun and it was a great celebration of his first year of life!

Barrett - 21 months

Barrett is a heart-stopping 21 months old. He's become such a little monkey and makes me laugh all the time.

He went through a trying phase a few months ago but seems to have gotten better lately.  He still gets that mischievous look in his eyes and little smirk where you know nothing good is about to take place, but he's been a lot more easygoing and less cranky these days. We are working on discipline and how we want to do it and being consistent with him.  I hate hate hate disciplining him, but I know it needs to be done, so I struggle through it. 

He understands what we're saying so often. Even though he may not speak in full conversations, I know he understands a lot.  One night on a walk Tim pointed out the moon.  A few nights later, he kept pointing at the sky and saying "moon."  The way he remembered surprised me and made me smile. And now it means his favorite book is "Goodnight Moon," so he can point out the moon on all the pages to me.  He says a million things, it seems like, and I can't even begin to list all the words he says.  He tells us he loves us,

He loves walks and gets excited to put his shoes on and head out the door.  He sits in his little red wagon and just looks all around.  He likes going to the park and has gotten so daring, I can barely keep up.  This past weekend he made me climb with him up the plastic rock wall over and over again.  That wasn't such a pretty picture, a 7+ month pregnant woman climbing up the playset and going down the slide, but it made him happy, so I'll look like the fool for him.

He has an entourage. It consists of two blankets, his bear Baby and his bear Juneau.  He insists on sitting in his chair to read books with all of his friends and it barely leaves room for me!

He knows body parts including nose, mouth, eyes (he blinks when you ask him where his eyes are), ears, hair, knees, foot, hand, chin, belly and belly button.

His favorite color is still yellow.  His new favorite animals are elephants, which he pronounces "eh-phant."  I guess he's moved on from the little ducks to the great big elephant!  We do a little dance and sing a song about elephants and sway our arms like elephant trunks, which he loves.

He is just hilarious these days and constantly cracks us up.  He will just bust out little dances, sometimes with music he gets going from his toys, sometimes without music at all.  He likes to pretend sleep in his crib when we come to get him.  He likes to put blankets over our heads and hide under there with us in the dark.  He loves being flipped upside down.  If we tickle him or make him laugh, he'll say "funny, mommy!"

He is all boy.  If there's a tiny puddle in a parking lot, you better believe that his little feet are going to find their way there to stomp in it.  He wants to be a big kid and wants to gravitate towards what the bigger kids are doing and imitate them.  He'll just sit and watch all the older kids playing with a smile on his face.

He is still incredibly stubborn and determined.  He gets so frustrated if his toys won't work the way he wants them to or he can't figure out a puzzle or something right away and flings himself on the floor crying or throws the toy.  I try not to laugh, but it's kind of funny!  I try to prompt him to ask for help, but he has yet to say the word.  I think he doesn't want to admit he needs help with anything.  Things around him must be just so.  There are little paper birds that hang from the ceiling of the daycare and one day one of the birds was missing, and he was quite perturbed by this, I was told.

He cracks us up all the time.  I don't know how we got such a fun little boy, but we lucked out.  He's just the best little thing and we have so much fun with him all the time!

Bouncing baby boy

A few weekends ago we had my annual company picnic. It's definitely geared towards families/kids so we've never attended before - bouncy houses and alcohol-free mingling with co-workers on a Saturday afternoon? Um, no thanks!

But now that we've joined the With Child Club, we figured we'd try it out and see how it went. It was pretty fun - but sweltering hot. It made socializing difficult with our little adventurer running all over the place, bringing us ice out of the drink buckets and trying to snatch cookies off the table. Once he figured out where the cookie tray was, the little fingers inched up over the edge to try to swipe a cookie, so he needed constant supervision.

Anyway, despite the heat, he had fun in the bounce house. He wasn't sure what to make of it at first - he watched all the other kids, wanted in, then scrambled out as soon as we let him in. But he got the hang of it and eventually had a great time running around the house. Here are the pictures, red-faced, sweaty and all!

Barrett - 19 months (Our Little Contradiction)

See, wouldn't you know that I write a post about how exhausting it is to parent a 19 month old and how naughty he can be and then he turns around and is the sweetest little thing in the world immediately after? The next day I visited him at lunch and all he wanted to do was hug his momma. There, in the daycare classroom, with all the other kids running around, he sat on my lap, facing me, and wouldn't let me go. It was hug after hug, kiss after kiss, pronouncing "momma, momma" repeatedly. He filled my soul with love in those 10 minutes. How can I love one little person so much?

He is a walking contradiction. He is a little tornado of energy and fire and craziness and yet a sweet little cuddling lovebug. He is stubborn and demanding but gives the best kisses, cuddles, hugs and sweet words. He is screechy and whiny and then tells you thank you over and over and makes your heart melt just by saying your name. He runs away from you at stores and tries to get into as much mischief as he can find before you catch him and then he squeezes his chubby little arms around your neck and clings to you and nuzzles his little face into your shoulder with the fear you'll set him down and leave.

This is 19 months.

Oh, my little Barrett has so much personality and fire these days. He is playful and silly and oh so much adventure.

He has a plethora of new words and phrases, including:
I stuck
I get down
buggy
water
please (hooray, the child has manners at last!)
thank you
sentences - "byebye Momma" "thank you Momma"
cookie
Mimi
hat
night-night
yellow
roar
cracker
cookie
walk

We are always kept on our toes by this little guy. He loves his parents, his doggy, playing games, splashing water, crackers, cookies, milk, going for walks, climbing into his chair and reading books. He is still in the Momma-phase, which I adore, but does make daycare drop-offs very tough. He loves playing games with Payton - he'll grab a dog toy and run away with it, looking behind him with laughter to make sure the dog is chasing him. He loves hiding and being found, especially in his closet. He keeps me on my toes, both with his stubbornness and mischief and his silliness! Oh what a crazy time it is with a 19 month old!