Sunday, February 7, 2010

Ethan (Monthly Update)

Three days ago, Ethan turned 22-months-old. I waited until today to write this post because potty training has been going so well, and I wanted to give it a full week before I jinxed it with a blog post. (Some people would say that one week wasn't long enough to avoid a jinx, and they may be right, but I earned my reputation of impatience fairly and honestly.) I put him in big boy underwear on Monday, seven days ago. I decided to go for full emersion, so I didn't even buy any Pull-ups...it has been underwear all day every day and a diaper at night. He is doing GREAT! From the first day, he has had 1 or 2 pee pee accidents each day, and yesterday he had no accidents at all: he stayed dry the whole day! I have to prompt him to go potty about once every hour, but as long as I do that, he stays dry. We may be very close to having #1 taken care of. #2 is my goal for this week. I am SO excited that we may possibly be done with buying diapers! Perhaps this was a preemptive move (I'm rather notorious for those), but I returned a $45 dollar box of diapers to the store on Friday. (We still have 85-100 diapers laying around from opened boxes, but I wanted to return that one before someone opened it.)

In addition to potty training, these have been a very good two months in Ethan-land. I've already shared several cute stories about him in other posts this month (He Forgive Me!, Bare Feet, Bugs, Anything But the Crib, etc.), so I'll let you check the archives for those if interested. Something that didn't make any of those posts, but Marcus keeps asking me to put on the blog, is Ethan's response to the name-calling stage that Caleb is in. Caleb frequently says something silly to Ethan like, "You're a Doo-Dee-Doo!" Ethan immediately responds with, "I not Doo-Dee-Doo! I ME!" He says this in response to any percieved name-calling as well. Like if Caleb says, "You're a smart boy," Ethan says, "I not smart boy! I ME!" The finality of his pronouncement and the confidence with which it is delivered is something else.

Ethan is very into books right now, and new the past couple of months, he is finally letting us read all of the words and turn the pages at appropriate times. Always before, I couldn't get through the words before he was ready to turn the page, and he wanted to hold the book, flipping backwards and forwards through the book as he pleased. Now, he will sit in my lap or beside me and read a board book straight through (as long as there aren't too many words on each page). He loves books with repetitive phrases that he can join in with, like The Very Busy Spider. He still likes doing puzzles, though he is over the chunky ones...he likes jigsaw puzzles now, even though they are really too hard for him. He dumps out a 24-piece or 48-piece jigsaw and I sit beside him, giving him the pieces in the order they go. He turns the pieces around and figures out how they fit, as long as he has two pieces that will fit together. He's not yet able to figure out which pieces will and won't go together.

Daily, we are amazed by Ethan's cognitive awareness and ability to learn new things. He is quite the bright little guy, and I love watching him grow!

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