October 2010 - what a month!

Wow.

It is incredible how much can change over the course of a month. At the beginning of October, both were still getting nightly bottles, Lily was crying before preschool every day, Lukasz was napping for 2-3 hrs a day, had a soother, was still in diapers.

Now? Lily LOVES school and sometimes is impatient to say goodbye to me so she can go in already. The kids no longer have bottles at all. Lukasz no longer has a soother. He no longer naps. And he's potty trained.

I'm still adjusting to being home with 2 children who don't nap. It's a major change. I think it's been a big hard on Lily because she always used to have this one on one time with me every afternoon and now she doesn't. But Lukasz does when she's in school and I think it's been great for both him and I. Lily and I get our time together when we go to her keyboard class on Saturdays, but it's not the same as just hanging out quietly for a couple of hours, which is what we used to do.

I had no idea that taking Lukasz's soother away would suddenly cause him to stop napping. Warning to moms and future moms! :o)

And he's talking in pretty complete sentences. He's at the stage where his vocabulary is exploding and I LOVE IT. The learning to talk phase has been my absolute favourite so far. His pronunciation is pretty good with most things he says, but I love how anything hot is still "hock" and one of his very favourite foods is still "blocklees". Yes, my son loves broccoli. Tonight he ate three huge helpings of it and refused to eat his chicken.

Lily's interests are blossoming and I'm having a hard time keeping up with her creativity. She loves to draw, paint, dance and sing. I have a huge stack of her artwork and am at a loss as to what to do with it all! I could cover all the walls in our apartment with her work, I'm pretty sure. :) It's amazing to hear what she has learned in school - she knows the continents, the days of the week, the months of the year, can count to 100. I only found out she knew the continents because she sang a song and named them all. I made sure to put up a little world map on the wall where she can look at it whenever she wants, and I pointed out to her all the continents and where we live. They seem to be introducing the kids to some pretty advanced stuff, and I know the kids are still sponges and just eat it all up, but I hope they are giving the kids enough visuals and examples and activities to make all these big words real to them. I watch how discouraged and difficult Lily can get when she doesn't get something about her keyboard class, and I don't want her feeling that way with anything she's learning in school.

Here are captioned photos from all of October. There are 180, so I'm not going to put them up here... click on "Show Info" at the top right and the captions I've written will drop down.

Slideshow of October 2010 photos

Enjoy!

BYE-BYE DIAPERS! You will NOT be missed

Guess who is wearing underwear?

Guess who has the cutest little bum covered in cranes, diggers, and bulldozers?

Lukasz is!

Hoorah!

The end of another phase... I wonder what will be next...

Leading by example

This morning while I was showering, of course Lily had to go to the bathroom. What I didn't notice was that Lukasz carried his potty from the living room to the bathroom to sit and go just like she was.

Two good starts. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday Lily had her first day (again) of preschool. I don't know if I wrote about it last year, but I tried to start her in preschool last September, and it did not go well at all. She just wasn't ready, and since I'm able to stay at home with the kids, it was no big deal. We tried again this year. This preschool does a gradual entry, so the first two days I get to come with her. That's led to a bit of a scramble to find babysitters for Lukasz, but my friends are saving my bacon (thanks Marta and Lisa!!!).

Yesterday she was fine and excited to be going to school until we got there and she saw all the unfamiliar kids. Then she was a bit upset. She did not want to wear a name tag at first, but then decided she liked it, and she didn't want to tell everyone her name, so I did. She wanted me to stay with her while she and the other kids got a tour from one of the other teachers, and I figured that's why I was there, so I stuck by her. She really wanted to do some cutting with scissors, and since she knows how to do that safely, the teacher set her up at a table with other kids who were colouring, and she snipped away. After 5 minutes of sitting with her I told her I was going to the other side of the room to listen to the other teacher who was talking to the other moms and dads. She was fine with me going over there, and she stayed with the other kids happily doing her thing and showing the teachers what she can do. I was SO relieved and impressed with her!!! She sat and had a snack with the other kids no problem and seemed pretty content with it over all.

Tomorrow is the second day of gradual entry and then on Monday she's going in by herself. I hope that will go okay.


* * *

So of course on top of Lily starting preschool, dance and keyboard classes, Lukasz is starting potty training. Today I bought him some slightly padded big boy underwear. He wasn't impressed with the underwear, so I left him without a diaper, and while I was in the other room he sat on his potty and went a bit! He loves the part where he gets to flush the toilet. He was halfway to the bathroom with the potty by the time I realized what had happened. And later on this afternoon he did it again! Yay Lukasz!!!

Catching up

Where to begin?

This past week Lukasz made the journey from crib to "big boy bed" (aka his crib mattress placed on the floor) without a hiccup. We stored Lily's bed frame at my parents' house for the time being so there are no hard or sharp edges for him to hit himself on. He is a very active sleeper. The first or second day of being in his "new" bed, he rolled right off of it and napped on the floor all tangled up in his blanket.

This is how he fell asleep the first big night:

This past week I called many preschools and we toured three, and yesterday we registered Lily in the one that was by far my favourite. They were all Montessori schools, and it's interesting to see how differently people present the space. The first one was, well, filthy, with old food left lying on a bookshelf, and the lady told us not to bother taking our shoes off when we came in, and there was a daycare of pretty rowdy kids in the adjoining room that were welcome to join in the preschool at any time. The preschool we registered Lily for last year was a very quiet, calm space and the kids weren't running around willy-nilly. I may sound like a snob now, but I just have a feeling for what type of environment Lily would be most comfortable in, and that one wasn't it.

I loved the second preschool we toured. I walked in and the space totally made me wish I could go to school there. :o) It was a big, bright and very clean room, and the four teachers were there and they all seemed like very sweet ladies.

The third preschool we toured was by far the most expensive (and closest to us) and the required that we buy our child a uniform. As Lily will likely only be attending preschool for one year before she goes to full-day kindergarten (also Montessori but through the school board), buying a uniform seems pretty pointless. I got the feeling that the uniforms were to prepare the children for the private schools they would be attending.

So she is registered at the second preschool for part-time afternoons. I'm a bit disappointed that the morning slots were full because sometimes she does seem tired in the afternoons, especially when she gets up at 7 a.m. or earlier. But I hope that in another 3 months she'll have enough energy and stamina that an afternoon class will not completely tire her out.

(And as I write this, she has fallen asleep beside me.)

Lily was pretty nervous going in to these different classrooms and was not too receptive to the teachers. I know she well remembers our try at preschool last year, and she is constantly reminding me not to leave her. This summer we will have to call on favours from friends, I think, to let Lily spend an hour or two with them away from me, to get used to being apart from me.


Lukasz, on the other hand, seems totally ready for preschool. He'd march right in and start checking out the things on the shelves, and bring me what he'd found. He amazed the teachers at the preschool Lily will be attending by stacking 8 or 10 blocks one on top of each other without them tumbling down. They marveled at his tower, but he was quick to correct them that it was a ROCKET. Then there were coloured squares on a sheet on the table that matched the sides of the square and rectangular blocks and he got busy piling the correct blocks on the correct spots by matching the colour and sizes of the sides to the colour and sizes of the squares on the page. That impressed them, too. :o)

When we went back on Friday and parked in the parking lot, Lily asked if this was her school and I told her it was, and that we were just going to visit and pick up our (enrollment) package that day. Lukasz chimed in "School? Me, too?" and I said, "Yes, you are coming, too", and his response was an enthusiastic "Ok! Cool!"

He's in the midst of potty training right now, and when he's trained I don't see any reason why he couldn't go, as long as we can afford it and he really wants to. Speaking of potty training, I have to say I think summer is the best time for it, because the easiest way (I've found) for potty training a kid is to just let them go bare-bottomed at all times when at home. Keep the potty in the same room they are in, and remind them every so often that it's there. They will have accidents, but it can all be cleaned up, and Lily caught on pretty quickly that it's good to go on the potty because they she gets to pour it into the toilet and flush the toilet.

Lukasz LOVES to flush the toilet. He waves "bye bye" to whatever is there, and will say "Bye poopie, see you soon!"

Moving on from potty talk, Lily is huge on helping now. They both help me with the laundry whenever their is enough room in the laundry room, and now one of Lily's jobs is to set the table. I pass her dishes, cutlery and napkins and tell her which spots to put them at, and she does it really well.

Lukasz is talking up a storm. He recognizes many shapes, circle, triangle, square, star, oval, and colours, green, yellow, black, red, blue, and he knows the difference between a digger and a bulldozer and recognizes cranes and trucks. There is a lot of construction going on around our place on the highway so we always drive by these big machines and he names them all. He can also all of a sudden count to TWELVE. After that, he goes back to eight and mixes them up a bit.

Our days lately have fallen in to a pattern like this:

7:00-7:30 - Kids wake up.
9:30 or 10:00 - We go on an outing to a playgroup or to one of the many fantastic parks nearby.
12:00 - Come home, have lunch, Lukasz goes down for a nap.
1:00-4:00 - Lily and I do activities together, crafts, stencils, letters, memory games, painting, read books, etc. She also has a little JumpStart Preschool computer game that she's allowed to play 1/2 hour each day. I can't believe how quickly she caught on to using the mouse and navigating around the game!
4:00 - Depending on Lukasz's nap, we go out again or I start dinner and then we got out again after dinner.
7:30 - Baths, stories and songs and in bed by 8:30.

Having a "picnic" - Lily supplied the food:

When we go out I tend to gravitate towards the parks where we can go for a nice walk/run followed by some time spent at a playground. If we go to the local park across the street (which I love.... I think it was top reason I wanted to buy this apartment) we bring sandbox toys, sidewalk chalk, bubble soap and lately, baseball gear (2 bats, 2 balls and a tee). When we walk around the nearby lake/pond, the kids now both run most of the way. Lukasz has yet to say this, but I can almost hear him yelling "Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom!!!" as he kicks his feet into high gear. :o)

We also make weekly trips to the library, and Lily is very good about always reminding us we have to whisper while we are inside. I love books and I love to read, and it makes me happy that so far they seem to enjoy books as much as I do. Sometimes when things get really hairy around here, I stop harping at them to stop picking at each other, or whatever they are doing and I sit down on the floor, open a book and start reading it aloud. By the time I'm done the first page, they are both sitting down, one on either side of me. It's magic.

Oh, the glamour!

While helping Lily wipe after a trip to the potty, my hair (long over due for a cut) managed to dip itself in the not-yet-flushed toilet water.

Believe me, as soon as Lukasz is down for his nap, Lily will be joining me in the bathroom while I have a shower. She's awesome about sitting on her stool and reading while I shower. : o)

Toe fuzzies

I sat Lily on the toilet to have a pee before having her nap, and while she was sitting there, I took her socks off (who likes to nap with socks on? not me!). She immediately lifted one foot up so it was resting on the seat and began digging between her toes. I said, "Lily, put your foot down so you can pee." And she replied, "But I have to get the fuzzies out." And she did. And then she put them on my arm.

And you know what? It didn't even gross me out. I must REALLY love this kid. :)

Ew. poopie

Lily just gave me a blow-by-blow account of her recent diaper deposit.

Her: oh… poopie
Me: You’re having a poopie?
Her: *gets that certain smile on her face*
Me: Want to go on your potty?
Her: No.
Her: All done poopie. All by myself.

As she’s being changed: EW. MUD!

Potty training: story #2

Potty training Lily isn't going very well. She went through a good phase for about a week, once she even peed 3x in one day on the potty... but since that week, nothing. I'm partly to blame, I know because I'm running around so much each day between feeding, changing, playing with and soothing both kids that to get time to sit with Lily and read to her while she sits on the potty is proving difficult. It would be a lot easier if she sat on it alone, but that's not going to happen right now.

This evening, Tatus sat with Lily for a long time while she was on the potty, reading to her, singing to her... ... and eventually trying to encourage her to get back on the potty by sitting on it himself.
All to no avail, but all we can do is keep trying and trust that she'll let us know when she's ready. I'm sure this is one of those things you can't force a kid to do, especially a 2 year old. But I am open to any and all suggestions on how to sneakily encourage her to sit on her potty. We have a potty book that she enjoys... I think next I'm going to find a little dvd that might show a girl going potty and liking it. Hm.

Letter to Lily: month 25

Dear Lily,

My method of disciplining you has come into question a couple of times, and that made me think that now might be a good time to explain it all to you, so later you might understand my reasons for raising you (and Lukasz) as I am. And maybe this will help you in some way when you have children of your own.

The essence of it all comes from The Way to Happiness, a book I read and studied when I was younger. There are two precepts I follow in particular with you: Treat others as you would like to be treated and Set a good example. Simple, really. Sure you are a child, but as much as I can I treat you as an equal. You are a person just like me, after all. And I do believe that all children are born brilliant. You continually amaze us with the speed in which you pick up new skills and new words, and how you react to certain situations using something you noticed or learned at a previous time. I try to let you experience life and everything in it with as little obstruction as possible. If there is something you want to touch that you shouldn't play with, such as one of my figurines, I let you hold it and tell you to be gentle. Once you are done looking at it, i'll put it back on it's shelf and tell you that it belongs to Mommy. This worked for my mom, and so far it is working well for me, too. Rather than telling you things are off-limits and saying NO! all the time, letting you look and touch seems to diminish your curiosity and you move on to more appropriate things, like your toys.

This isn't to say that there aren't times I have to discipline you. You started throwing dirt at the park and this was something I don't think you should do under any circumstances. It could get in people's eyes, and it makes everyone around you dirty. This was something I said "No" to, and also explained why, and then told you that dirt stays on the ground, or we can put it in your pail. You tried throwing it a few more times, but I repeated myself and then showed you how we can put dirt in your pail to make a castle. You haven't thrown it since. Now every time we go to the sandbox at the park you want me to help you build sand castles.

You also went through a phase of hitting me. I could tell by your face that you were curious to see what sort of reaction this would bring, and each time it was the same. I said "NO. Don't hit Mommy." Then I told you it hurts me. You've stopped hitting, and now when I hurt myself and say "ouch!" you come running and asked me what happened. I tell you how I hurt myself, and you often try to make it feel better. Lately, you blow on my owie and if I ask, you'll give it a kiss.

Speaking of hitting, your Tatus and I both agree that we will never hit or spank either of you as a disciplinary measure. I think that getting you to understand why what you did is wrong, and then fix it or apologize for it or somehow make up for what you did is a much better, more productive approach. When you spill something, I get you to help me clean it up. If you make a mess of folded laundry, I get you to help me put it all back on the couch or the bed. If you treat Tatus or I in a way that is not nice, I tell you it wasn't nice and get you to apologize and give us a hug & kiss.


This all has worked really well for you so far. There are times of course when you have a little spaz or tantrum, mainly when I turn the TV off after a certain amount of time (usually 1/2 hour) has passed. But distraction works wonders for you in these situations. I always try to have a plan of what we are going to do next, so the TV quickly leaves your mind and you follow me to the next activity or outing. Just now, for example, I turned the TV off and you asked "again?". I picked up one of your dolls and said, "oh, it looks like Madeline is getting sleepy" and rocked her a bit. I asked you if you wanted to put her down for a nap, and you held out your arms for me to give Madeline to you. Then you carried her down the hall to your bed.

Tatus calls this my "low-conflict" method. :) And I guess it's true. I am proud of the days when you do not get upset at all, when you treat Lukasz and I well, and we all have fun.

When you ask for help, I help you. If I'm in the middle of washing dishes or changing Lukasz at the moment I tell you I'll help in a minute and that I'm just doing something else. Then I always go help you with what ever it is. I've seen this come full circle more and more lately. You don't like the vacuum, but as soon as I'm done, you come running saying "help me! help me! cord" which means you want to help me wrap the cord up. The same thing happens when I'm doing the laundry. You love to sit on the dryer and help me throw clothes into the washing machine.

All in all, each day presents new situations, new challenges and new scenarios. Every day is a day of learning for me as I try to keep up with how much you are learning and trying to do and consistently stretching every limit you can. But I love you all the more for it, and I hope that my love, understanding, explanations and "low-conflict" discipline will guide you more effectively than a finger being shook in your face, or a spank across the bum would.

Potty training has been difficult, to say the least. I tried to ease you into it by putting you in cloth diapers so you'd feel when you were wet. It seemed to have no effect on you. You'd sit in a wet diaper until it soaked through the liner with no complaints. Then I tried letting you run around with no diaper on, watching you carefully and hoping that you'd complain when your pee ran down your leg. At first, I thought you'd held your pee until you couldn't take it anymore, at which time you peed while standing right next to me. I couldn't get you to your potty fast enough. Later that evening I discovered you had peed elsewhere, twice. Both times on your bed. I tried asking you every 10 minutes if you need to pee, but the answer was always "no". So within the last couple of days, I have started sitting you down on your potty when you wake up from your nap and before and after we go out. I'm going to start doing it more frequently than that in the coming week. So far this is working pretty well. When we first started trying to get you to just sit on your potty, you refused outright. If we sat you down on it regardless, you cried and flexed and wiggled and ran as soon as you could. I didn't want to force you because I figured if the potty became something you hated because we made you sit on it, potty training would take even longer. So I went the roundabout route with the above-mention tactics. Then, someone mentioned to me that giving you something while you sit on your potty can work wonders for getting you to stay put. So I bring small toys and books into the bathroom when I sit you on the potty, and I read you books and play with the toys with you while you sit there. This is working great so far. On Friday (the 5th) you peed on your potty twice. Yesterday you peed once, and so far today you've peed once (although I'm wondering if that was because you asked me to tickle you and I obliged so you were laughing pretty hard). :)


One thing I'm still worried about is that you haven't figured out yet how to pull your pants and diaper down. I'm going to have to practice that a lot with you in the coming days.

This has been a very busy month of changes for you. Not only have we started potty-training, but we are also trying to break you of your thumb-sucking habit. I read up on this and apparently it's acceptable until a child reaches the age of 3-5. For a young child, thumb-sucking is often a comfort. I certainly see that in you. And I understand completely--I still have my baby blanket and there are times I bring it out and knead it between my fingers for comfort as I did when I was a child.

Our reasons for getting you to stop now are two-fold. One, you started sucking your thumb so vigorously that the skin started cracking, peeling and bleeding. Two, we've noticed that your teeth are getting pushed outward by your thumb. You have an adorable, slightly buck-toothed grin that I love... but I'm thinking long-term and hoping you won't have to have a lot of work done to fix your bite.

So first I bought a soother that was supposedly appropriate for your age, although it is bigger than your thumb so I didn't know how you'd take to it. I think it was a novelty for you at first, having a soother just like Lukasz (you love to give him his soother when he loses it). But when it came time to sleep, the soother was nothing compared to your thumb. Then we noticed how cracked the skin was getting on your thumb, so I put a "sticker" (band-aid) on it along with some vitamin E to help it heal. You didn't seem too upset by this, you love stickers after all. But you did stop using your left hand almost entirely and always kept your thumb well out of the way of whatever you were doing. I've seen that you favour your left hand when eating and drawing and playing, so I hoped tht you'd soon see you could still use your hand even with a band-aid on it.

It's been a couple of weeks now that we've been putting "stickers" on your thumb, and while sometimes you do get upset when we are putting it on (and my heart goes out to you each time... I know how hard it must be to watch a thing of such comfort get taken away), you are fine afterwards and proudly show us your "sticker". And since I use the Elastoplast brand (super-sticky) you haven't been trying too much to peel the band-aids off. You did get one off once, but that's because it was peeling and needed to be changed.I have to say that even with the daily challenges, you are SO much fun to be with. Your level of understanding increases each day, as does your vocabulary, and not a day goes by that Tatus and I don't marvel at how clever you are, and laugh at all the ways you surprised us that day.

The skills you suddenly show us just blow us away some days. For example, we were at the park a few weeks ago, and you were playing on the slide and then you grabbed the sides of it and just walked all the way up it on your own without our help. I think your Tatus' jaw hit the floor when he saw you do that! And you've started playing catch with us, too! You have such an arm on you already--maybe you'll play softball like I used to!

We're really really lucky to have you for a daughter, and not a day goes by that I don't check on you after you've gone to bed, brushing your hair back from your forehead, pulling the sheet up that you've kicked off, and just looking, marvelling at what a beautiful talented daugher I have. The love I have for you is so strong it brings me to tears sometimes. And no matter how tough a day we've had, when I watch you sleep, part of me is anxious for it to be the next day again so I can hear you call me, and run to me and we can begin a new day of learning, adventures and fun.

Love,
Mommy

Potty training: story #1

This afternoon, after Lily's bath, I decided to leave her without a diaper on to see if she'd go to her potty if she needed to pee. I asked her every few minutes, "Lily do you need to pee?" Most of the time she said no, and a few times she went to her potty and sat down on it without a fuss. I followed her lead, sitting with her when she sat on the potty and telling her she was a good girl when she got off the potty, even though she never actually peed in it.

At the 2-hour mark of her being without a diaper, I was in the bathroom getting ready so we could go and meet Tatus in Vancouver. She came in and asked me what I was doing. I said "putting on make-up."

And that's when she peed on my foot.