Tip of Week 64: Bananas make a great hair gel.

Dear Nathan,
This week, you have consistently survived happily with only one afternoon nap. I'd say after weeks of one naps and sometimes 2 naps of varying length, your schedule has somewhat settled down...for now. For the past few days you have been sleeping 8 to 8 and then you take an hour and a half nap around 1:45.

This week, you have started to play pretend with stuffed animals. I guess in the past, you would pretend "talk" with a pretend phone, but this week, you had your animals role play and give each other hugs and kisses. Your favorite stuffed animal friend is this sheep and another larger stuffed animal dog. You like to wrestle with that big guy.

Some of the new discoveries that you have made this week include:

Dipping. Everything pretty much tastes better after its dipped in something. Here, you are dipping your toast into mommy's cereal milk. You also like ketchup, bbq sauce, and curry.

Bananas make great hair gel. Exhibit A. Below.

This week, we had our end of session party at a cool place called Smudge studios. You got to play with a few of your friends from your Chinese class, eat yummy Chinese food, showed everyone your step stool climbing skills, and paint your very first painting. 

You've done a few cool things this week like spin in circles when you are happy, and tried to sign poop. You still need to fine tune it a bit, but at least we now have a working sign for poop. You are getting pretty consistent at pooping after breakfast and lunch. Sometimes you may even surprise us with a post-dinner poop. One thing for sure, the size of your poops can sometimes be pretty impressive, and to think that I've been worried about whether or not you have been eating enough. Also, you are also pretty good at telling us when you are finished, or if you have more on the way. It's kind of neat to see you finally start to understand these odd urges. Perhaps you will be able to control them soon and we will be rid of diapers sooner than the average baby.

You threw a temper tantrum this week while we were on our walk. It turns out that you wanted me to hold you while you pushed the stroller. I had to put my foot down and say no because we were going nowhere. So I strapped you in your trike and continued our walk. You were fussy and crying. I was feeling like a horrible parent, but thank God, a bus drove by, you pointed at it, and that was the end of the tantrum. We went on a nice walk, went to the playground to play and went home. If only real problems could be solved so easily.

In the past two weeks, you have been testing us, trying to figure out where the boundaries lie. When we say no to something, you'll repeat what we don't want you to do in a slightly different way to see if we are ok with that. I have a feeling that in the past few months, many precedents will be set and I really have to be mindful about what I allow you to do and how I react to your bouts of upset.

This will probably be my last post of the year. The holidays are coming around the corner and I'm sure we will be super busy visiting friends and family. I will continue to take pictures and make a post over all the exciting events.

Until next year,
Mommy

Funny Events from Week 63

Dear Nathan,
As of this week, there is nowhere in the house that is off limits to you now. You have figured out how to maneuver the step stool and reach places that you have never been able to access. Must be cool huh?

 Here, you have figured out how to reach a light switch to turn the kitchen lights on and off. You surprised yourself when the kitchen went dark.

A few days this week, we braved the weather and went out for a short afternoon walk. You look so cute bundled up in your over-sized coat and mittens.

 Here you are relieved to be back home in the warm house.

This week you are babbling a lot. It seems like you have lot to talk about. I mean, with all the new places that are accessible for you to explore, I would want to talk about it all day too. 

Last night, I had a chance to have a mother's night out and went to a cookie swap with members of my MOPS group. I pretty much left after dinner and it was just you and daddy. He said that you did great when it was time to go to sleep. His own words was, "It was easy, a bit too easy." That made me proud. 

This week we have been trying one nap a day. You seem to be doing really well with it. I guess we are not going to do one naps for sure, but as long as you are waking up late, that is what we will do. 

Next week will be a busy and exciting week! More pics to come. 

Love, 

Mommy

Back to the swing of things in Week 62

Dear Nathan,
It's good to be back into the swing of things. The weather has been perfect so we've been to the playground at least once every day. You are getting braver and braver. You like to hang off of the monkey bars, play with the steering wheel, climb through tunnels, climb up and down stairs and you can pretty much climb up the playground equipment and go down almost any slide. There were a few times where you tumbled down, or came down head first and fell into the mulch or gravel, but you quickly shook it off and before you knew it, you were sliding down once again. There was one time you decided to try the spiral slide. I had just watched you go down and very soon I heard a bump, bump, bump. Your shoes had gotten your stuck and you tumbled down half of the slide. That was my bad parent moment 1 of the week. Bad parent moment 2 happened when we were taking your new tricycle out for a spin. I pushed you down a slope and you suddenly turned the handle bar, the trike tipped over and you toppled over too.

You still have a drippy nose, but you are happy and are back to normal with your eating habbits. No new teeth yet. You are starting to say a few things like "all done," "that" "teddy" and you are able to point to more things when we are reading your books. You also now know where your head, hands, feet and belly button are.  It's pretty amazing how quickly you are learning everything.

We took advantage of the abnormally nice weather and put up the Christmas lights outside. You like the lights and was pretty helpful in cleaning a few of the bulbs in your mouth. Bulbs are not very tasty.

We will not be putting up a tree this year because the tree stand that we stored in the attic got warped by the hot Texas heat and I'm not comfortable with someone in the house who's very clumsy around an unstable tree. Sure, I may hang the stockings (which reminds me that I need to work on your felt one some more), put up some greenery around the mantle, but we will for sure put up a tree next year. 

Now that your rate of learning has slowed down significantly, I may be making monthly posts instead, with an occasional special edition when something exciting happens. That's it for now.

Love,

Mommy