pictures

Luke workin' his bunsThe day after Christmas ... ready for church

All of a sudden Luke loves holding Tiberias.
Yesterday he wanted to hold Ty and I helped him hold Ty while he was standing...thinking he'd only want to hold him for two seconds anyway.
This morning Sterling got up with the kids and Luke held Ty on the couch for half an hour! He watched cartoons and held his brother on his lap. Ster said he kept doing cute things like holding Ty's hand.

Then when I was watching the kids later today Luke told me he wanted to hold Ty. So I had him sit on the couch and he held the baby.

I video recorded the two of them on the couch today. This weekend is Christmas so I know I'll be video recording the boys again this week.

December 2010 Changes

LACHONEUS

1. Lachoneus loves oranges but has never been able to swallow them well. He'd end up throwing up. So I stopped allowing him to eat oranges. But recently he was given a Clementine orange and I decided to let him eat some after he begged for a few days.

I cut the small orange pieces to half the size and Luke was able to swallow them fine. When the orange was all gone Luke asked for more. "There is no more" I said, "we'll have to go buy some more." So Luke, in his excitement, went upstaires to get clothes. He wanted to go shopping immediately. I had to laugh.

2. Lachoneus does not play with Ty yet but he likes to give things to Ty. Even when Tiberias is sleeping sometimes Luke will give him things...only then he puts them in front of his face. Whether it's a toy or blanket...or yes, even food. I made pumpkin bread this week and was surprised to find some sitting near Ty's mouth as he slept in the living room. Why that still surprises me? I don't know!

TIBERIAS

1. Ty turns 4 months this week! For about a week he's been doing something I thought him too young to do. If I put him down to play in his sit and play baby toy and start cleaning while he wants me he will reach out one arm toward me. He looks at me and reaches for me, letting me know he doesn't want to be away from me. He still cries more often than that to let me know he wants to be held.
And I was not completely sure if he was really reaching for me or if it just seemed that way. But then we went over to a friends house and I let my friend hold Ty. She sat on the opposite side of the couch from me. I was close enough for Ty to see me and realize I was not the one holding him. He then lifted his arm and reached for me with a look in his eyes that told me he would prefer I hold him. lol. It is so cute!!

2. Last night after Ty's first nightime feeding I put him back in bed. It seemed he was going to just fall right back asleep as he normally does. But as I laid back down in my own bed he started whining. When I went into his room and approached the crib I was really surprised to see he was out of his blanket and opposite the angle I laid him down at. Almost in the same spot but his feet were now where his head had been.
It happened again later when after another feeding.

I guess Tiberias is now a rolly and movy baby. Cute! :)

Lachoneus 2yrs 5mos old

Luke loves tents. Ever since the beginning of October he always wants me to make him a tent. Sometimes it's even a house out of the couch cushions.

Lachoneus doesn't try something too hard until he feels ready. If I want him to do something like eat with a fork he will give it a try for a few seconds. As soon as it gets hard he throws whatever he has and throws a fit. He looks at me as if he were trying to say "I tried and I failed! Now do it for me."

Today he put on his underwear and pants correctly all by himself for the first time!
He still cannot take off or put on shirts. Kids have big heads and some of his shirts are hard to get over his head...so it's understandable.

He still has not perfected eating with utensils. I think that most of his friends know how to but Luke doesn't like to try. He likes to eat PB&J sandwhiches more than anything...maybe because it doesn't require utensils.

I give him utensils for dinners, pancakes and macaroni and cheese. He tries to use his utensils but quickly decides his fingers are easier. With mac and cheese he makes me stab them on the fork. But lately I won't do it for him until the end...I make him try.

He is doing wonderful with potty training! Yesterday when I put him down for his nap (in a diaper) he took off the diaper and came out of his room saying he needed to poop. And he did. But then he tried to use that as an excuse to not have to sleep. Every 20minutes or less he'd come out saying he had to pee. lol

He did not take a nap yesterday! His friends had come over for a play date; Sam and Sara Lazenby along with Jazy Leach. At 2pm when his friends were gone and I was putting him to bed I could tell he was not sleepy. He usually goes down for a nap by 1:30p and sleeps for two hours.

Yesterday I tried for over an hour to get him to sleep and he still did not appear tired. So I let him get up. He didn't fall asleep until after dinner watching tv on the couch with daddy. He slept 20 minutes on daddy's lap and then we made him get up. He went to bed fine that night.

9pm is his bedtime. Some people I know put their kids to bed as early as 7pm! I don't know how they do that. Luke gets up by 7am usually when he goes to bed at 9pm.

Another thing that Luke has started doing recently is quoting movies...or attempting to. He does it when a movie is on and it's about to play a line he knows. He'll say the line right before they say it on tv, or after they say it. He has even started trying to sing songs on movies. It's so cute!! The one I love is the Barnaby song that is originally from Hello Dolly but plays over and over again on WallE. Luke likes to sing that one now. :)

It all started though with mine and Ster's tv show "Chuck"s theme song. It has no words. But a few weeks ago Ster and I were watching episode after episode. Every day we were watching Chuck and we both started "nah"ing to the music of the theme song. Pretty soon Luke was trying to do it.

Potty Training

Around Lachoneus' 2nd birthday we tried to potty train him. We bought a frog potty and checked out encouraging books and dvd from the library for him. He used the potty right and it was wonderful. So we went out and bought him some fun underwear. When we tried to get him to wear the underwear he realized we wanted to trade his diapers for them. That was not going to happen. He decided to refuse to use the potty and wear underwear. So Sterling and I left him alone.

We kept the frog potty on the floor in the downstaires bathroom in case Luke ever decided he want to use it. Every few months we'd ask him if he wanted to use the potty but he would refuse.

We decided to wait until Luke could tell us that he was about to poop in his diaper or even that he needed a diaper change. But at 2yrs 4months old he started sticking his finger into his poopy diapers and pulling out poop to show me he was stinky. He'd walk up to me with poopy fingers and hold them up at me without saying a word.

After three days of that I decided he needed to potty train.

We started potty training on a Monday at the end of November. Luke did well. The first two days were very hard on me...wore me out. The third day was better and I was losing my stress over it. The fourth day was wonderful. It just kept getting better.

We would put a diaper on his to sleep and to leave the house. And around day 4 he started "holding it" when he wore a diaper. Even when he slept at night he would wake up with a clean/dry diaper. I guess he was getting use to the nice feeling of being dry and so he doesn't want to wet in his diaper.

The first weekend of his training he got on the potty once by himself, saying he needed to poop. He didn't do anything in the potty but I was proud he tried.

Day 8 (Monday) he told me he needed to poop and I helped him get on the potty. So he is progressing very well.

Sometimes he refuses to sit on the potty and he gets in trouble because i know he has to pee. A few times he has started doing a pee pee dance and refused to go sit on the potty. But most of the time I trust his judgement when he says he doesn't need to sit on the potty.
I just make him sit on the potty periodically.

We don't want to introduce him to the big toilet too soon and scare him. But we do hope to take him to church in underwear on day 14 of potty training. So we will introduce him to the toilet a few days before that and hope he does well.