Galoshes Have Other Uses Too.

Here is a comic strip that really nailed it and I have been giggling at it for a while now. It is Baby Blues from May 30, 2010.

This has been the story of most of the last 3.5 years of my life and counting. Elijah has entered the "acrobatic nursing" stage, now that he's big stuff and can crawl and is starting to cruise. He has 2 top teeth and is cutting a third on the top left. I think there are two cutting on the bottom, but it looks a little odd, so who knows what will show up. He's saying "Dada" and "Hi Dad" and has finally started saying "Mom," though I've been consoling myself with the fact that he often says "Da" from my arms, so, really, I win. I'm straining to find baby genius here, but he was making short "ha" sounds (as in hat), and he grabbed my hair and it changed to a long "ha," like "hair." If I work hard enough, I could probably decode a secret message in his floor pounding, too.

Isaac is enjoying another bout of teething too. Every now and then he pitifully whimpers, "I need mecine for my teef." Teething tablets are great! He is on the verge of being potty trained. I didn't think it was going to stick, but I stuck underwear on him again. If I had asked him if he wanted them, he would say no, but when I brought them to his feet, he stepped in without complaint. That was after leaving his diaper off for a few days and letting him watch lots of TV on his training potty. When he woke up with a start the other morning yelling, "I want big boy underwear on!!" in protest to his night time diaper, I figured we were getting somewhere. We've even ventured out with just our brave little undies on and only filled our rain boots with urine once. The training process has caused, of course, a bit of a fixation on all things potty, above what already existed. Isaac came into the living room and looked at his dump truck that had some mud on it and blared, "My truck has yucky poop on it! I can smell it!" He and Ian play the I'm Pee, You're Poop game and battle it out. Or, on evening walks, they squat every hundred feet or so blasting, "Toooooooot!"

Ian has been practicing defiant refusals, negotiations and fake crying. Sometimes he's baby dad to his little brothers, correcting their "dangerous" behaviors. Last night, he had asked for a bath, but ran off playing and when it was time to crawl in bed, he again asked Brian for a bath. Brian said no and had him lay back down in bed, igniting a grand fit from Ian. After wailing for a while, Ian recounted the situation, "I asked Dad for a bath and he said no, and I cried and cried and Dad pushed me on the bed and said bucket-dipping words and my feelings went down the bathtub drain." Boy, he can lay it on.

Veggie Table

I've been trying the participation method of garnering the boys' interest in veggies. I find them a job to do in hopes that they will want to eat what they helped make. It's been successful with at least the first bite.

I planned some steak and veggie skewers for the grill and thought up the perfect jobs for the boys. They helped wash a bowl full of peppers and mushrooms and then I set them at the table and assigned their next job. I gave Isaac a basting brush and a small bowl of seasoned olive oil and told him to "paint" the veggies. I gave Ian a pack of wooden skewers and demonstrated how to fill them with veggies. I figured they might have that done by the time I sliced and skewered the steak. As I assembled my last steak skewer, Ian proudly announced, "Look, Mom! I made a scarecrow!" Sure enough, he had made Tinker Toys of the sticks and veggies and had built a tall stick man. I wish my hands had not been all meaty and I had caught a picture of it.

Today I gave each of the boys a baggie of crackers to crush. I figured they'd love that destructive job. I showed them how they could squeeze them and pound them into small crumbles. I put some pecans in the food processor and turned to check their progress. I saw two little boys happily munching on crackers.

They left me speechless with our snack yesterday. I sliced up some red, yellow, and orange sweet chilis and set them on the table with a bowl of hummus. I called it a rainbow snack. They actually ate it. The peppers - multiple peppers - went into their mouths and were summarily chewed and swallowed. Miracles happen.

Ian has reached a new level of independence. For some reason, now it is OK to try new foods or previously snubbed foods. He even gets up and completely dresses himself. I'm loving this phase. Well, most of it. The other evening, after our nightly insistence that he try to pee before bed, he comes bouncing back into the bedroom, looking like Pooh Bear, with nothing more than a shirt and a permanently sticky face. I requested, "Ian? Can you get some undies?" He replied, "I can bark like a dog," and "woofed" on out of the room.

Mini Mama

What an amusing sight this was:  My 19-month-old, Isaac, chasing my almost-three-year-old, bare-bottomed Ian around and around the house, with little red toddler undies, gripped by the waistband in his chubby hands, insisting, "Wuh-wear! Wuh-wear! [translated: "underwear"]"

I need to figure out how to make a photo album of "I wish I got a picture of that" snapshots.