potty trained

Since my three and a half update post on October 1st Doodle has made great strides in using the toilet like a big boy. Dare I say he's potty trained! He rarely has accidents and when he does they really are accidents rather than purposefully peeing in his underwear. I still put him in a pull-up for sleep at night (not for naps any more) but it is almost always dry in the morning so I probably don't need them any more. It's just so much easier to change a pull up then change his full size sheets and pajamas in the middle of the night.

First Tooth

I thought this news deserved its own post. Pancake got her first tooth today. She is the exact same age that Doodle was when his first tooth poked through the gums (October 29, 2006). Pancake and Doodle are incredibly similar babies in so many ways and this coincidence is pretty amazing.

This picture was not taken today, but on our trip to Hilton Head.

Hilton Head

We were in Hilton Head, SC for a week with Mr. D's parents. We left on the 15th after Mr. D got out of work, sat in traffic for the first four hours of the trip, drove to Rocky Mount, NC where we stayed in a pretty nice motel for $40! and that included breakfast (fresh made waffles, bagels, cereal, juice, coffee and donuts). We drove for another five to six hours the next morning/afternoon before we finally arrived at my in-laws' time share in Hilton Head at 4:00 p.m., just in time for the Phillies playoff game against the Dodgers, which they lost. Not a great way to start our second vacation of the year, but it ended well with the Phillies going to the World Series and a much more pleasant drive home. Before we planned this trip I really had no idea how far south Hilton Head is. It's down there.

While in HH (the initials on the Euro-stickers down there) we biked on the beach and the great bike trails, swam in the heated pool and soaked in the hot tub right outside our building, ate good food and drank good wine (a few fruity tropical drinks too), played tennis and ping pong, and took a day trip to Savannah, Georgia, which is only 20-some miles from HH. The downside was that our family of four slept in one bedroom the size of a small hotel room. Doodle was in the double bed next to ours and Pancake was in a pack-n-play at the food of Doodle's bed. Doodle had a cough which woke me up when I wasn't being woken up by my restless baby girl. I don't know if it was the new surroundings, Doodle's incessant coughing or her teething, but Pancake slept like crap while we were away. Not only did she sleep fitfully but she took FOREVER to fall asleep -- screaming in my arms until she finally passed out.

One morning I slept in -- one, out of seven. Our week away made me appreciate our house where everyone sleeps in their own rooms and there are lots of places to put Pancake down. Overall, though, the vacation was great and there is something to be said for appreciating your daily life.

Since we've been back we carved pumpkins, Doodle went to school, which he really seems to like now, and we went to gymnastics class today where both kids wore their Halloween costumes (Doodle was a firefighter and Pancake was an alligator (same costume as Doodle three years ago)).

A few pictures:

That is the sock that she pulled off laying across her chest. She's in the bike trailer.

Doodle is in a phase where he doesn't like to look at the camera, let alone smile for it, when I'm trying to take his picture. So this is the only close up I have of him from the trip.

birthday highlights

For my birthday (yesterday) Mr. D gave me a new digital camera, a bottle of wine and some dark chocolate candy. Doodle made me a beautiful card with watercolors and pen. The inside said HELLO MOMMY and the back said LOVE DOODLE (except it was his real name). My friend brought over a delicious vegetable stromboli from our local pizza place and we ate and drank wine and had birthday cake. The kids played and mostly stayed out of our hair. After they left I swept and mopped the kitchen floor and folded two loads of laundry while watching a portion of the previous night's Phillies play off game (they won that game and again last night!). Mr. D came home from work about 10 minutes early, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but it made a huge difference in terms of how much I could get done without children hanging on me. We fed the children and put them to bed. Our wonderfully generous neighbor came over and watched them (and the Phillies game) while we went out to dinner.

Here are a few pictures from the new camera:

waking up

I realize that an alarming number of my recent posts have been about or mention my extreme lack of sleep. I apologize for the monotony of it, but that's my life right now - endlessly tired and somewhat bored with my responsibilities as a homemaker.

Now that Pancake is six months old and doesn't NEED to eat in the middle of the night -- or several times a night -- Mr. D and I are pulling the old bait and switch on her. Last night when she woke up at 11:00 (after having gone to sleep at 8:00) Mr. D went downstairs and rocked her back to sleep, which didn't take long. When she woke up again at 1:30 I went down and nursed her. Mr. D went down at 5:15 a.m. and rocked her back to sleep AGAIN. She woke up at 5:30 and Mr. D brought her back to our room. I nursed her and got her back to sleep again in our bed. She woke up at 6:30 for the day.

Before last night I would feed her for all of those wake ups. Now I'm cutting it down to once per night (I'm not counting the 5:30 feeding). We'll try this for a week and hope that she stops waking up so often. If it continues then next week Mr. D isn't going to take her out of her crib. He'll rub her back and put her pacifier back in her mouth. Eventually, I'll cut out the one feeding and Mr. D will have to go down for every wake up.

I really hope she gets the hint and realizes that she's not going to get milk so she might as well stay asleep. It worked with Doodle, but then again they're different kids.

Here's hoping!

Three and a half

Today, Doodle is three and a half. I can't believe that on his next birthday he'll be four. Four is old. Four is pre-K. Four is big kid. Anyway, he's not four yet. He's only half way between three and four so I've got some time to get used to the idea of having a big kid.

Advancements that Doodle has made thus far:

• He can write all of his letters, though they are often not in a line -- they're all over the paper and sometimes on top of each other.
• He is very interested in how to spell words. He asks how to spell random items that catch his eye. How do you spell CHAIR? How do you spell CEREAL? How do you spell MILK?
• He started nursery school after Labor Day and has been doing really well. He goes Tuesdays and Thursdays in the mornings. He cried most every day that I dropped him off except the first day and today. Mr. D and I went to back to school night earlier this week and his teachers told us that he is very smart, plays well with the other kids and is doing great.
• He is getting quite good at staying in the lines when he's coloring.
• He occasionally wants to go to the bathroom by himself and does a good job when he does.
• He pees in the toilet 99% of the time and poops in the toilet 2% of the time. We're trying a new approach with the pooping -- he can poop in his pull up but he has to go into the bathroom to do it. Once he does that routinely we'll add that he has to sit on the toilet with his pull up on. Then we'll take the pull up away and hopefully that will do the trick. A friend of mine did this approach and it worked for her three-year old.
  
• He's getting better at not winning, but still isn't great about it. He doesn't like to lose Candy Land or any of the other board games we have. He doesn't really mind not getting hits at baseball though.
  
• He's into comparing everything. I'm a faster runner than you are. When I'm five I will be almost as tall as you are. I'm a better hitter than you are (at baseball, not hitting people!).
  
• And because of watching baseball with Mr. D, he's thinks there has to be a winner and a loser to most things. Races, reality tv shows (I watch Top Chef and Project Runway when I run), board games. Well, he might have something here.

He loves playing baseball and watching it with his dad. He really enjoys making his sister laugh. And he still spends a lot of time playing trains and building with lincoln logs.

He's a good boy and I feel so lucky that he is a sweet good person.