Meet the "calapitter"

Caterpillar, calapitter. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

Swim Lessons for Jonathon

Your 2nd day of swim lessons began identically to your first: you looked down at your feet and refused to move. Your arms circled but only because Miss Christina moved them. Unfortunately, Miss Emily (your fave) was not there and won't be back - something about family vacation and heading back to college. Such is the nature of working with teenagers, I suppose.

Anyhoo, Mommy saw you were struggling to get your mojo so she gave you what she thought was a reassuring "you can do it!"wave from afar.

You apparently saw it as more of a "ditch that swim lesson and hang with me" sort of wave and you ran over.

"No! Go back to your lesson," she called.

You grabbed her legs and hugged her. Then you ran back and began participating.

Was that all you needed-- a hug? Aww... I'm sorry, little man. My bad.

Note to self:
Never ever ever forget the hug. Ever.

The rest of swim lessons went great except for the fact that the teachers called you Jonathon the whole time. When I corrected them, the one who had been with us the day before was pretty mortified and very apologetic.

As we were leaving, your classmate, Matthew, called out, "Bye Jonathon!" Oops.

Note to Cole: When someone calls you Jonathon, tell them, No, my name is COLE. Own it!! :-)

Swim Lessons - I'm a Big Boy!

You had your first swim lesson today at the town pool. The class was enormous. It consisted of you and another little boy named Matthew.

Mommy helped you say hello to the teachers, Miss Christina and Miss Emily. You were scared.  I realized that Miss Emily was an old friend of Cecilia's so I let you in on that fact, but it had almost zero effect.  Then I swam away so you could learn all by yourself.  This did not go well.

You refused to speak to the teachers, staring down at your feet most of the time. When it was time for arm circles, you just stood there. When it was time to put your arms over your head, you didn't budge.  Like a puppeteer, Miss Emily went to work moving your sad, limp limbs. After several minutes of this, Mommy came back to help and provide some reassurance.  We all sat and did arm circles together so you could see it was okay.  You weren't buying it.

Next, Miss Christina threw some colorful weighted rings into the pool and asked you and Matthew to retrieve them.  Well, lo and behold, being assigned a task was all it took to break you out of your shell!  You scurried around collecting rings and proudly turned them in.  You didn't even notice that Mommy floated away.

The rest of the swim lesson went very well.  Matthew kept trying to swim away from the teachers,  but you were a star pupil.  You put your chin in the water, poured water on your head, made bubbles, jumped into the deep end and finished the lesson off with several runs down the twisty water slide.

It was awesome and so are you.

Extreme Yard Makeover

Now that we have a new patio, new grass and all sorts of awesomeness in our yard, we are hoping to put in a swing / play set for you and Charlie.  We have a special area near the garage picked out. Mommy spent several hours leveling it a few weeks ago. She spent even more time today trying to make it perfect. She has no idea what she is doing so it's not going well. Or maybe it's going great. Therein lies the challenge.

Here you are at the edge of the new play
area - before anything was done to it.

Doing yard work like this is hard for Mommy, but great for you and Charlie. You love, love, love being outside. In between playing in the sandbox, riding in your big plastic car and just generally running around the yard like lunatics, you and Charlie had a blast. You even helped Mommy clean up the play area. Your job: removing rocks. Here's how it went:

1. You would find rocks and put them in a bucket.  
2. Charlie would steal the bucket and dump out the rocks in random places. 
3. You would yell at him. 
4. Repeat.

Meanwhile, Daddy was pulling out roots and moving the sprinkler around to water different parts of the lawn.

Charlie in the play area holding
a container of thyme. Why not?

It was very warm day but even worse, it was humid as H - E - Double Hockey Sticks. So, when we were finished with yard work, Mommy proposed an idea: let's run through the sprinkler!!

Surprise: you were down. You and I romped, ran, walked, hopped, skipped and jumped through the sprinkler. Charlie even got in on the action a bit, but he definitely wasn't as into the idea of getting very wet.

You and I were both fully dressed (although I only had flip-flops on while you had socks and sneakers - gross!) and we were both completely soaked in no time. It was refreshing and fun. And daddy wouldn't join us. Because he's a party pooper. ;-P

Epic Potty Training Fail

On Monday, Grandmom put you in underwear for several hours. You didn't have an accident and Grandma declared you ready for potty training.  Um, okay.

So this past weekend we decided to give it a go.

Saturday, July 21: Mommy got up with you, removed your overnight diaper and put you in underwear.  Soon after you ran into the kitchen and announced happily: "Mommy, I want to make poopy on the potty!"

Wow, that was easy.  What is all the fuss about potty training, I thought.

Then I checked your underwear.  Damn.  Double damn.

Fast forward to avoid detailed descriptions of scraping poop out of underwear...

We went to the diner for lunch.  You had on clean, fresh underwear and felt like a big boy. You got your usual (grilled cheese).  Charlie got his usual (strawberry crepes).  All was right with the world.  At the end of the meal, daddy took your to the bathroom to wash your hands.  That's when he realized you were soaked with pee.  You just let it all out as if you had a diaper on.

Long story short, you spent the rest of the day soaking underwear, your clothes, anything you sat on and anyone who picked you up with urine. I believe the outfit change tally = 5. Spectacular.

Sunday, July 22: It's go time. No diaper. No underwear.

The dream: You will feel the cool breeze on your nether regions. You will see what happens when you need to go pee. You will finally connect the sensation of "the urge" with the act and then you will use the potty. It will be magical and glorious.

The reality: You will empty your bladder on the dining room floor. You will do a great job cleaning it up (great for a 3-year-old). You will pee again in the yard. You will not care. And, to quote you, you "will never use the potty!"

And we're back to diapers.

The end is nigh!

More specifically, the end of your tenure as an only child. Also, apparently, the end of the world as we know it.

To you, these events may prove to be synonymous.

It looks like you little bro will make his debut within the next day or two. This is my unofficial, non-medical estimate. From that point forward, you will no longer be the sole target of our attention. You will be forced to share the spotlight.

I have no idea how you're going to handle this.

You will be almost exactly 2 1/2 years older than your brother, which is the result of either carefully engineered family planning or utter chance. For the sake of argument let's assume the former. This 30 month gap should provide you with just enough maturity to handle the entire child-rearing process. Yes, we fully expect you to raise your brother, while your mother and I spend our days lazing about, eating bonbons and consuming alcoholic beverages. And occasionally dispensing parental advice.

I'm confident that this is a fairly bulletproof plan.

Two and a half years old!

Yesterday you turned two and half years old. Wahoo! Yes, you are still at an age where half years count. After all, we only recently stopped celebrating every single month of your life, so there's no rush to jump to an annual revelry schedule.... yet.

You saw Dr. Chen on Friday for your 2.5 year check-up.  She was majorly impressed with your language skills - full sentences and all that.  Apparently, that's something to get wowed over. You are ridiculously good at picking up new words these days and correcting mispronounced words too ("Ming-ah" became "Grandma" in about two seconds flat on Mother's Day and now you won't even accept the old name -- "No, it's Grandma!"). A thought occurred to me: you might want to slow it down a bit. Your parents are getting used to all this brilliance and, ya know, you don't want us to get jaded or have expectations that can't be met.  Just sayin'.

Speaking of Mother's Day, it was this past Sunday.  We had a good time at Uncle Mark & Aunt Melissa's house. Grandmom, Bubby, Pop-pop, Uncle Scott (formerly known as Uncle Knock) and Aunt Jaimi were all there. You and Caleb played in the tree house, ran around the yard, climbed through tents and played basketball in the driveway.

It must be nice to have a well-kept, flat, fenced yard with actual grass to play in. I really wish we had that at our house. Instead, we have this incredible steep yard, terraced in spots, with hills and valleys that have incredible ankle-breaking potential. It was all very quaint looking when we bought the house but it was never particularly toddler-friendly and many years of neglect haven't helped. We grow green stuff, but it's not grass. I'm not even sure if it's good enough to be called weeds. I was asked on Mother's Day why we don't have grass. Great question. I deferred it to Daddy. Taking care of the yard is daddy work! We also don't have a fence and you like to remind us of that regularly by running off. Awesome. 

In addition to the suckiness that is our yard, we have woods bordering one side of the property with a bunch of ivy that acts as a welcome mat to all the ticks. Hello, lyme-disease-carrying parasites, come on in, we'd love to have you! We had our first visitor about 2 weeks ago. It must have been on me because I found it in our bedroom right next to my laundry bag. Thankfully, no biting occurred.  However, our most recent guest found his way onto you... burrowed right into your head! I didn't come out easily. Nope.  It held on so tight that we pulled it apart in, like, 3 pieces. Can you imagine a creature that is so bloodthirsty (or determined?) it won't release it's grip even as it feels it's body being ripped in two??  It required lots of effort to fully remove the embedded head (yum!), but eventually we got it all out.  Hopefully it didn't transmit anything nasty to you.

It's enough to make me want to move to the city.