How has it been over 2 weeks since I posted last? I've thought of at least 47 blog topics in those 2 weeks. But finding the time to write them... *sigh* So much has happened, so I'll just recap the highlights.
POTTY TRAINING
I mentioned in a previous post that Lily is now potty trained. I started it because one Wednesday morning she told her dad, "Just a minute, I'm pottying." And later that day she told me, "Just a minute, I'm pooping." I responded, "What would it take to get you to put your potty in the potty chair?" She looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, "A movie." Without missing a beat, I responded, "I have one for you!" (When your child can tell you to wait because they're doing their business, it's time to teach them where business ought to be done...)
I had ordered a couple of new Little Einstein movies (lately her favorite kind of movie) for just such an occasion. I pulled one down from the shelf, and by Wednesday evening we had drips in the potty chair and a movie on the TV. Thursday was an emotional disaster. I spent most of the day at my mom's house with her to help. We went through at least 17 pairs of underwear (not even kidding). I literally held Lily over the potty chair as she bawled, because I knew she needed to go and needed to have success at hitting the potty chair, even if it was through tears.
By Friday afternoon, she figured it out and we not only had potty in the potty chair, but poop too! I couldn't believe it! We watched a LOT of movies over the course of the next few days. Lily's motivators were definitely movies, marshmallows and jelly beans. As life got back to normal this week, we've had minor accidents, and we're still figuring out the pooping thing (movies and chocolate seem to be the motivators lately), but I'm relieved to say that we have survived the big potty training hurdle. Just a few small ones to go. Hurray!
Probably the funniest two things related to potty training that happened were...
1) We were at Chase's parents' house, staying the night because of a horrible storm (more on that later). We took the potty chair along and set it up in the bathroom. Lily was getting pretty proficient and independent by then. I had her in her feety-zip-up jammies and ready for bed. She was playing for a few more minutes, and I wasn't really paying attention. Then she runs into the kitchen (from the bathroom where she had gone potty all by herself) stark naked, and she says to me (while shrugging her shoulders), "I just lost my clothes."
2) As we're now focused on helping Lily learn to poop in the potty, we have different things we try to encourage her or help her figure things out. Because she knows she gets to watch a movie when she poops in the potty, Lily has taken to spending a LOT of unnecessary time on the potty chair trying to poop. It can get old. Real. Fast. So if you ask her if she's done pooping, she either tell you, "No, not quite yet," OR "I'm still squeeeeeeezing the poops out."
I love her.
THE STORM
As aforementioned, we had a terrible storm that came through the Midwest last week. Thunder, lightning, heavy rains, hail, strong winds, tornadoes. Not pretty.
We went to Chase's parents well before the storm hit, because they have a big basement and we do not. Some friends who are basement-less came with us, and it was kind of a fun evening. Chase was standing outside when the temperature went from 80's and horribly humid to 60's and crisply cool in about 3 minutes. Three minutes, people. It was WEIRD.
Not long after that, we stood outside and watched 3 different layers of clouds all moving in different directions, kind of swirling about above us. It didn't turn into a tornado, at least not one that hit us. Two waves of marble-sized hail came through, and we got an inch of rain in less than 15 minutes at one point.
Poor Frazier (our dog) could hardly handle the storm. He HATES thunder. Hates. He shivers and shakes and hides under beds or in other places he feels are safe. In preparation for the storm, Chase's parents filled the bathtub with a little bit of water in case we lost power and needed to flush the toilet (clever, right!?!). Unfortunately, the bathtub is also one of Frazier's favorite hiding places during storms, so at one point in the evening, he unintentionally went for a dip in the tub. By the time I got to him, he was standing on the bathroom rug, shivering little droplets of water all over the bathroom. Poor old boy.
He also feels (and is) horribly neglected since Connor came along. He has noticed that when Connor lays on the playmat, he gets lots of attention. So Frazier decided to lay on the playmat too. He received different results. Things have gotten so bad for Frazier that you can sometimes even find him stooping to the lowest of the low - he'll go hide (when Lily is pestering him) in Lily's Hello Kitty tent for safety. A dog taking refuge behind Hello Kitty. It's gotten pretty bad for him.
THE POOL
The swimming pool opened on Memorial Day weekend here, and we bought our family pass! We live close enough to walk to the pool, so we got out the strollers and headed out:
Lily is riding in the double stroller. But the double stroller doesn't lay down flat enough for Connor to sleep, so we had to take the single one that actually lays down. He slept for a little while:
He's such a little chunk! He's actually not as fat as a lot of babies, but he's so long! He looks like a 6 month old, except that he's not developmentally that far along yet. When people see him they typically either comment on his dark hair or his size. He'll be tall and (if his daddy has anything to say about it) a basketball player.
My sister is working at the pool this summer, so we took a minute to talk to her.
Lily took a little while to warm up to the reality of the pool. (She loves the idea of the pool, and we've been talking about it since March. But actually getting in the water... that took some convincing.) Eventually, she came around and had a great time!
I love this next one:
Going to the pool will be much more complicated this summer than it was last summer when I just had Lily. It has to be hot enough for us to go, but cool enough that Connor doesn't roast. Plus, I have to keep him in the shade for the most part and somehow play in the pool and watch Lily. I'm still working it out - I think it mostly means we go after Chase gets home from work. But we love the pool and will figure out a way to make it work.
OTHER EVENTS
This weekend Connor found his fist. I remember when Lily found her fist, she would slowly bring it closer and closer to her eyes till she punched herself in the nose and went cross-eyed. It was hilarious! Connor finding his fist isn't that way. He's much more suspicious of it than she was.
Tonight he and I were laying on the living room floor and I was holding a picture book up over us for him to look at. He'd look at the giraffe on the page and then glance down to his left (he's only discovered his left fist so far) and out of the lower corner of his eye watch his fist as it hovered near his left side. He might raise the fist a little bit, but then he'd move it back down toward his side and watch it carefully as it went. When he was sure it was going to stay there for a while, he'd look back at the giraffe. All the while his right hand (not in a fist) was flailing around like crazy up and down the on his right side. Evidently the left hand is the one to worry about.
Also, he cracks me up when we read books. I have one book that is of animals and it's very simple. One animal on each page with a plain colored background. I love it for tiny ones because you can tell when they're focusing on and start to see preferences. Lily loved and would respond much more to the kitty page in the book - she'd smile and giggle and coo at that page more than any other. And now kitties are her favorite animal.
So far, Connor's favorite page is the monkey page. He was very serious for the first few pages. Then I got to the monkey page (probably 6 pages in) and all of a sudden I see his dimples. He gave the biggest grin for probably a minute while talking to the monkey. Tonight he also liked the elephant and the polar bear pages, but the monkey has been a favorite over the last week. Maybe he's a monkey boy?
OTHER THOUGHTS
I made a little art project before Connor was born to hang above his bed. It's the verse out of 1 Samuel, "For this child I prayed, and the Lord granted me my request of Him." It is so the verse I need to be reminded of with this little boy. As I bounce and sway him to sleep for naps or for night, as I try to keep the kids' room tidy, as I change his sheets from him spitting up on them *again,* I see it. And I am reminded of how often and how earnestly I begged the Lord for the blessing of this little one.
It's not that "God gave me what I was asking for" in a bad way at all. And it's not that my son is precious to me only because I asked God for him. My son is inherently precious because he, like each of us, is created in the image of God. And my son is precious to me because he is mine.
C. S. Lewis talks in his autobiography about joy and how the joy is often in the remembering even more so than in the experiencing of something. It's kind of like that with Connor, at least somewhat. Having him is so very special and wonderful. But when I get the experience of having him and I consider that in light of the time I simply yearned for him - that is when I feel the most joy. It's also when my patience increases, my stress recedes, and I'm able to look anew at the blessed life I've been given.
ONE LAST THING
Speaking of being blessed... Our landlords (bless their souls!) put in a dishwasher for us. It got hooked up a few days ago, and I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful it is! It's part of the reason I have time to sit and catch up on the last couple of weeks of life on my blog. While I've been writing this, I've also been doing 1/2 an hours' worth of dishes too! Isn't that AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!
