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