The Bear Family

Friday, L pooped on the potty at school for the first time. Today, he peed on the potty at home for the first time. So.. apparently we're potty-training. That kinda snuck up on me unexpectedly.

Right now, he's sitting in a booster seat at the dining room table, and the water he's drinking with dinner is in a "big-boy" (read: no sippy, no straw, no lid) cup.

He goes to preschool, speaks in complete sentences (I've counted up to 10 words in a sentence, too!) - sometimes paragraphs!, knows his alphabet, how to spell his name, and how to count to 20.

In 4 months and a couple of days, he's going to be 3. Three!

I love this age (other than the indecision and occasional tantrums, particularly when he's bored), but I can't believe we've gotten here so fast. He's so big!


~ D ~

O: "What are you doing?"
L: "Just clean-upping."


O or D: "That's a fire hydrant."
L: "Hi, drant!"


And his favorite question of late: "Whats is doing?"


There are also new pics on our Flickr site, from our recent trip to NY.


(Oh, and for those who haven't heard yet - D will be starting a temp. job with the census bureau tomorrow, lasting for 8 weeks. And she applied to grad school this week, to U. of S. Florida's Library Science program.)

He is a happy and healthy little man, as we figured.  We have scripts to take to the lab for his lead screen (standard at this age) and children's allergy testing, which will include the suspected soy and strawberry allergies.  He didn't have to get any shots today because the doctor doesn't yet have his records to find out what he would need.

Unsurprisingly, he's taking after his daddy in terms of size.  He weighed in at 30 lbs., 11 oz. (between 75th-90th percentile) and is 35 1/2 inches tall (90th percentile).  So when everyone tells us how big he is... they aren't kidding!  :)

The doctor couldn't get over how smart he is, which just made O and I grin our faces off; we're just so proud of him.  :)

Click here for the favorites, or here for the entire collection!

(Sorry for those who are seeing this multiple times.  I am reposting here so that my family can see it as well.)

I can NOT believe we're at 22 months now. That number seems so small for how momentous it feels. I can't believe how he's grown and changed, and how much he grows and changes every single day. The last time I made a monthly update post (which admittedly was not last month, and may not have even been the month before...), I was listing the words and signs that he knew. I couldn't even begin to try to do that now. He talks and talks and talks. Just minutes ago, he came up to me with a piece of his shapes puzzle (the correct piece) and said, "parallelogram!" What?!

He also knows all the letters (and what words correspond with them in his letters puzzle) and numbers 1-9. (He doesn't quite get zero, referring instead to it as "o".) Sometimes he can count, as high as 6, but that's not consistent. He can identify all kinds of animals - I think he knew "rhinoceros" before he knew "dog." Also this week, he's learned to say his name, and knows that it starts with L.

His favorite things right now are his puzzles and books, balls, the water - especially at the beach, where he can play in the "booms," and Sesame Street. Oh, and climbing out of his new toddler bed, now that he's figured out that he can. He gets himself up from naps, and we have to put the baby gate up at night so that he doesn't get up in the morning and get himself into any kind of trouble before coming in to wake us up.

We go through phases of pickiness with foods, but now that he's more able to articulate what he wants (unless he is tired or otherwise cranky), it's easier to deal with than it was even a month or so ago. Favorites are macaroni & cheese, pasta, pizza, bagels, and various kinds of bread (homemade). His soy allergy seems to be fading too, though we haven't yet gotten him set up with allergy testing. We're working on that now.

He has a bunch of new teeth in the last month or so, too. Four, I think? Yeah. He's up to 14 now, and he only had 10 when we came down to Florida!

I am amazed by him, every single day.

OK, so we still have blistering hot temperatures (it's going to be in the 90s on my birthday - I can't say I've experienced that very many times!), and there are no changing leaves. But we were/are determined to have some real autumn experiences nonetheless. We bought canned pumpkin this week to make pumpkin bread, and today we went to the park's Pumpkin Patch event.



Liam played with baby pumpkins:


and bounced in a bounce-house:



... while we stood nearby and watched:


And then we went on a hayride:


As you can see, we had a great time! :)

Hi all. Posting this here because it's the easiest place to reach pretty much anyone who might be thinking about getting me a birthday present, all at once. If you weren't planning on doing anything, feel free to skip the rest of this post.

This year, all things considered, I'm wanting to keep it simple. Everything purchased while we're staying here is one more thing that needs to be moved. So instead, I'm asking for one of two things:
gift cards, or visits. Obviously visits are not going to be practical for everyone, but anyone who can... I'd love to see you! :)

As for gift cards, the best options are:

Old Navy
iTunes
Barnes & Noble
Amazon.com
Target


Hope all is well with everyone!


~ D ~

O & I arrived in FL, safe and sound, this afternoon.  We'd left L here with his Nana & Grappa while we flew back to Rochester, packed up our entire apartment (thanks go out to several of our friends for helping with this) and put most of it into storage (it took about 3 hours, all told).  The next morning, we began the long, three-day journey back down here by car.

Along the way, we stopped in Chapel Hill, NC, to visit the campus for UNC.  I managed to meet with a counselor in the MBA program and get a few questions answered. leaving me feeling very overwhelmed.  The plan had been to go from Chapel Hill to Gainesville... but we'd been delayed getting to NC in the first place, so we decided that didn't make a lot of sense.  So we missed out on seeing some friends, but we'll be planning a trip up that way in a few weeks to check out the Univ. of Florida.  

In any case, we're here now in Ft Myers.  Starting tomorrow, or early next week, we'll be figuring out our next move - school, work, etc. 


And hope not to have to travel very far for a while!  :)


~ D ~

As things currently stand, we're leaving mid-August. We fly down to Ft. Myers on 8/11, drop off the first wave of stuff (and Buggie, who is going to stay down there with Nana & Grappa for a few days), then fly back to Rochester on 8/13. We'll be packing up the remainder of our stuff and putting most of it into storage locally, then taking the rest of what we need (and will fit into our car) and driving back down. We'll be leaving here on probably 8/16, to make the journey down.

Please comment if:

A. You are local and available to help us move things from our place into a UHaul, to take to the storage unit,

or

B. You are somewhere along our route and are going to want us to stop and have a meal with you (or even better, if you can offer crash space for one night, assuming you're in a logical stopping point - we will be planning to stop twice along the way).


It's going to be busybusybusy around here in the coming weeks, as we work on both packing/getting ready, and visiting with friends and family before we go. We're spending this weekend with my dad (for his bday), next weekend with my mom & her family (for Gramma's bday), and have another bday party for our friends' son the weekend before we leave. The weekdays will be full of packing, and trying to squeeze in some fun times for Buggie before we leave.

Phew!


~ D ~

Words:
( C&Ps from previous lists, just to have them in the same place )

Apple, bubble, ball, up, cracker, bagel, yogurt, bum balm (heh), elbow, me (nee nee nee!), beep/ding (ning ning ning, always 3 times), la la la (if you ask him to sing), hand, hat, okay, yuck/yucky, hot, cookie, uh oh
(39, that I can think of anyway)

Animal noises: baa, moo (ooo!), oink (oh oh oh!), woof (oo oo oo!), grrrr (for lions and tigers), ssss (for snakes), neigh, quack
(if those count, it makes 47)

General report:
OMG is he picky about food these days! We have a terrible time getting vegetables into him, a lot of the time. We've taken to giving him a cup of V8 Fusion once a day because he loves that and it has veggies in it. Not ideal, but whatever works. He's also decided to be a vegetarian, it seems. Except hot dogs, apparently. He ate one of those (uncured, antibiotic-free, etc.) last night. Let me just tell you, it is NOT an easy job, feeding a picky toddler with a food allergy. But we get by. He's definitely eating enough, so we must be doing something right! :)

Sleep has gotten SO much better. In fact, he sleeps all night a lot of the time now. Not every night, but probably more than half of the time. The flip side of this, unfortunately, is that it's taking longer to get him to /go/ to sleep at night. But that's just been a few days, so we're waiting it out to see if it changes on its own. If not, we'll try something new.

He loves to be on the move, but he also loves TV (oh no!). We let him watch an episode of Sesame Street every day, if he asks for it. And he still watches his Baby Signing Time DVDs before bed at night. We're thinking of getting some of the regular Signing Time ones for variety, soon. Other than those times, and when we go for walks in his stroller, he's on the go ALL the time! You'd never know he was a late walker. :)

He loves building with blocks, reading books, listening to music, and playing with his new (to him) Little People sets (we have the house and the farm).

We're still nursing, generally twice a day, which means we've earned this:

He was nursing just once, at night. But then he decided to night-wean (via the first night he slept all night), so the "plan" got switched around. I probably could've just stopped nursing altogether at that point, and I considered it. But I really wanted to get to 18 months. Of course, now that it's a daytime thing again, he's asking for it more and more, so weaning may be more difficult. But we'll figure it out.

He's still a very happy, charming little boy. We can always tell something is wrong with him because his disposition totally changes. If he's suddenly in "brat" mode, or just generally less happy, we know he's not feeling well.

I can't believe he's a year and a half old already!