Karl and Angela Rees

What a difference a few weeks make!  As of the Thursday morning before last, we weren’t even trying to potty train Thomas (on account of our Christmas frustrations).  But that morning, he was at his “ABC” class, and wanted to use the bathroom when all of the other kids did.  Thomas wasn’t successful, but his diaper was wet, and Angela hadn’t left any diapers there, so the parent in charge (Sherry) let Thomas wear her kids’ underwear (shhhh, don’t tell anybody that Sherry only has daughters).    When Thomas came home, Angela sat Thomas on the toilet, and to her surprise, Thomas peed in the potty!

Long story short, Thomas is now mostly potty-trained.  Which is not to say the next few days after the first day weren’t filled with accidents.  But he now pees standing up, tells us when he needs to go, and will even get up and do it all by himself.  He’s worn diapers for bedtime and naptime, but he hasn’t actually peed in them for days now—and he even has woken us up in the middle of the night to help him go pee.  We’re not sure why Thomas caught on this time.  Perhaps it was Angela’s idea (inspired by the Yuen’s) to buy a pack of 10 matchbox cars and give one out whenever Thomas was successful, but take one away when he had an accident.  Perhaps it was the more laid-back approach we took.  Or perhaps, Thomas was just ready.

Notice we haven’t said anything about #2.  Up until yesterday, Thomas was pooping in his underwear once a day.  We literally sat him on the toilet for an hour on a couple of days with books and toys hoping he’d figure it out.  Inevitably, he’d poop just after getting off the toilet.  But late last night, we had our first success.  Since day 1, Karl had been promising Thomas that he’d stop whatever he was doing and take Thomas out to the hot dog store for hot dogs and ice cream when Thomas figured it out.  So even though it was way past Thomas’ bedtime, that’s what the two of them did (minus the hot dogs—Thomas gave Karl a rain check on that one).

Meanwhile, Jonah is a climbing and standing machine.  He moves back and forth along the table and our new shoe bench with ease.  For some reason, every now and then, he loves to hold up one hand high in the sky and look at it.  He knows how Thomas’ toy car garage works, in that he grabs cars, lets them go from the top of the ramp, picks them up at the bottom, and repeats (we were amazed that he could comprehend the concept).  He loves Thomas’ orange basketball and “little people” horse.  He also has two new front teeth (on top).  He sure has been cranky the last few days, though.  Karl had to sleep with him on the couch last night.  We’re hoping now that the second tooth broke through, that Jonah will get back to being jolly.

Not much else of interest going on.  We can now see the light at the end of the tunnel on the sprinkler project, and should be done this week.  Hopefully we’ll find time for putting down some sod shortly thereafter.  We found a nice small pub table that fits perfectly in the little extra space we have in our kitchen.  We talked to a general contractor about bids for our future master bedroom/bath.  We went on a 5k jog yesterday morning (no, not all at once) to grab some breakfast and eat it in the park.  Angela got a nice hair cut with some highlights.