Tyler: 32 Months

January 24, 2013-February 23, 2013 (31 to 32 months old)

Tyler's life this month in bullet points:

• For the first time, he didn't cry when we dropped him off at MDO. What ended up finally working was creating a little routine where I give him 3 big hugs and kisses and park outside the window so he can wave to me as I pull away. It only took 3.5 months!
• He loves making everything he wants to do sound like it was our idea. For example he'll ask us if we want to play cars with him. We'll say, "you want to play cars?" and he give an enthusiastic "okay!!!". 
• He wrote his first letter, the letter T. He always says "down and across" every time he writes it.
• He started adding "y" to many of his words. Bug became buggy, etc. 

Frequent things he's saying this month:

• Let's go daddy-o!
  
• You're silly mommy!
• Okay!
• I think that's a good deal!
• I want lots of hugs and kisses!

Things that made us smile or cracked us up this month:

• He stood on the coffee table and stared at me. When I didn't say anything he said "aren't you going to tell Tyler to get down off the table?".
  
• He started snorting when he laughs. He'll say "Oh, Tyler snorted!".
  
• At gymnastics, each child has to bring the coach the felt square they are sitting on when their name is called and tell the coach what color it is. On his turn, he handed the coach a pale pink felt square and the coach said "Tyler, what color is this?" He said "gray", she said "this is pink" and he said very seriously "actually it's gray".
  
• At Wholefoods, Tyler walked up to the bins of nuts and said "look mama, it's nuts!", I said "yeah, those are cashews" and he said "actually they're nuts mommy".
  
• I took him to the potty at the park restroom. On the way out, he was walking backwards saying "fix it mama, fix it mama". I had no idea what I was supposed to fix, then I found that I had pulled up his pants but not his underwear, oops!
  
• I looked at the monitor and didn't see him. I moved the camera around and found him sitting on his potty in front of his door gate. Kerry went up and found he was sleeping on the potty! He's so quiet in the morning that I must not have heard him get up.
  
• Tyler looked at Kerry and randomly said "Dada, you have a big ear and big hair!".
  
• He demanded "I want it!". I said "How do you ask me nicely?". He said "Can I please want it?".
  
• While going down the stairs I asked him if he wanted me to make him lunch and he said "I think that is a good deal". When Mimi asked him if he wanted to go to the kitchen, he said "I think that is a great deal".
  
• I went up to get Tyler from his bedroom in the morning. I asked him if he had any accidents last night and he said "I had 1 accident, not 2, just 1".
  
• I bought a used iPad off of eBay to use as a DVD player in the car. I told Tyler I had a surprise for him as I held the iPad behind my back. He jumped up and down in circles and exclaimed "Alright! Tyler do the happy dance!". He then closed his eyes and held out his hands. I put the iPad in his hands and he exclaimed "iPad!!!!" then he tossed it aside and said "Mommy, get a car car instead?". I know he's obsessed with cars, but this takes it to a whole nuther level.
  
• Mimi had Ty help her make meatloaf. She plunged his hands into it and he yelled "Wash hands! Wash hands!". This kid does not like getting his hands dirty.
• Kadi asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up, he said "I want to be a policeman so I can ride around in a police car with black wheels and turn it on and go WeeeRrrr WeeeRrrr".
  
• He sees daddy wear a tie to work every morning. One day I put his little tie on before going into a party and he said "Tyler go to work?".
• Papa gave him a new car. It had two screws holding it in place. Papa said he had to go get a screw driver. Ty dug in his toy tool box and ran his toy screw driver over to Papa.
  
• Tyler pretended to fly his cars to the moon and when I asked him what they saw from the moon he said "oh just some planets".
  
• I was looking for his water and asked him if it was upstairs and he said "ummm, I bet it is!".
• In the past I had taught him how to eat scrambled eggs by poking the big pieces with a fork and scooping the smaller pieces. One day we were eating scrambled eggs together and he said "let's poke and scoop mommy!".
  
• He put his noodle in time out for 2 mins! When Austin asked him what for, he said "I don't know".
  
• He grabbed daddy's electric shaver and said "Tyler shave, shave all my whiskers off?". I told him he was too young to shave and doesn't have any whiskers. He said "I shave my whiskers when I get big like daddy and wear big pants and big shirts just like daddy?".
• Whenever I let Tyler watch his youtube videos, I say "skip ad!" and click the skip ad link as soon as it lets me. He eventually learned how to skip ads by himself on my iPhone. The other day we had the tv on and he was watching Busytown. When a commercial came on, he ran over and grabbed the remote, pointed it at the tv and started yelling "skip ad!... skip ad!... SKIP AD!!!".
  
• I peed right after Tyler, he came running in and said "hey mommy, you're peeing on Tyler's pee!" and when I stood up he said "hey mommy, your pee is yellow!".
  
• Kerry lifted his shirt, grabbed his belly and said "Tyler, this is lots of fat!". Tyler said "and hair!".
  
• Tyler noticed an old phone in Mimi's living room. He stared at it for a bit and asked "what's that?" as he pointed at the curly cord attached to it.

This month in photos:

New Years - These belong in the previous post but I forgot them.

Valentines Day:

Hot tea and a book with Daddy every Saturday morning:

He always says "Cheers, to a great day!".

Muscles!

This kiddo loves glasses!

Mr. Potato Head:

Saying goodbye to Gpa/Gma:

This month in video:

Video:  What do you want to be when you grow up?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fArkURSNSrI

The big 40!

I turned the big dreaded 40 this month. I say dreaded because I was really hoping to be one of those women that everyone tells me about, the ones that unexpectedly conceive naturally after a major struggle with infertility. We contemplated IVF again but just couldn't get peace about going through all that again given the enormous cost with no guarantees. If it was guaranteed to work, we would have done it in a heartbeat... but the guilt would have been enormous had it not worked, knowing that I could have used that money for something like Tyler's college fund. Being in limbo, hoping it would happen on its own but not knowing if it would ever happen hasn't been super fun. I told myself that I would let it go if it hadn't happened by time I hit 40, and so I have now let it go. If it was to happen, we would be overjoyed, but I'm done wishing and hoping for it because apparently that's just a waste of my time and I have too much to be thankful for. Tyler has made me the luckiest mom in the world and if he's all I ever have, he is more than enough. Sorry little man that we weren't able to give you a little sibling to grow up with. I'm sure you are thrilled with that now because you like having mommy and daddy all to yourself, but someday, if you ever wish differently, I'm so sorry, we tried.

Anyway, Kerry gave me the best birthday ever! First he surprised me with a brand new 2013 Toyota Highlander, in white because he said there would be nothing black or over the hill for his gal. I had been driving a 96' Grand Am for about 16 years, with crank windows and no remote anything and now I'm like "what do I do with this remote?". All of a sudden turning 40 wasn't so bad! As if that wasn't enough, he surprised me with a limo filled with friends and family, chocolate covered strawberries and a night out dancing. I think I got a keeper in that husband of mine!

Tyler: 31 Months

December 24, 2012-January 23, 2013 (30 to 31 months old)

Tyler's life this month in bullet points:

• He thoroughly enjoyed Christmas this year. Every present he opened was preceded with "what's inside mommy, what's inside daddy?".
• He can count backwards from 10 to 1. It always ends with "blast off!".
• He shocked us at the car dealership. He was sitting in the backseat while the service guy was showing us how to pair our phone to the car's audio system. All of a sudden he said really fast "sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday". The service guy said "how old is he???", we just stood there dumbfounded.
  
• He cut his 2nd 2yr molar. This wasn't near as bad as the 1st one and only gave us one day of grief vs 2 weeks on the 1st one.
• The kid knows how to get my phone, go to youtube, find his videos, play them and skip the ads. I always know when he has gotten ahold of my phone because I hear "Skip ad!!!!". He despises those ads and has his finger ready to click "skip ad" as soon as it lets him.
• He is soooo sweet! He's always asking for hugs and kisses, tells me night night, I wuv you, I wuv you more, sweet dreams mommy, more hugs and kisses?
• He's starting to read by phonic. We had a bunch of wooden letter outs and put a few words in front of him and he started sounding them out. Fffffff oooo xxxx, Fff oo xxx, Fox!!!!!

Frequent things he's saying this month:

• Hi my daddy!
• Punk a$$ (aka pump gas, aka gas pump, glad I figured this one out as I didn't like being called a punk a$$, lol!)
  
• Hugs and kisses? Hugs and kisses?
• I wuv it so much! (usually referring to his cars)
• Good job! (while giving 2 thumbs up)

Things that made us smile or cracked us up this month:

• Mimi and Tyler were eating some soup. Mimi picked up her bowl and drank from it to finish it off. Tyler said "Mimi drinks food like I drink water!".
• I was pretending to drink orange juice from his wooden orange juice carton and Tyler said "don't drink too much mommy!".
  
• Tyler was at Mimi's all day. They usually don't turn the tv on, but he was getting restless so they turned it on, went to cartoons and tried to find something age appropriate. Mimi said "can you believe Alvin and the chipmunks is for age 6?". Papa looked at Tyler and said "are you 6 yet?" Tyler said "no, I'm 2, goodbye TV".
  
• Mimi held Tyler over the big potty and he said "don't let me fall in Mimi!".
  
• Kerry fell asleep on Tyler's bedroom floor. Tyler went over, shook him and yelled "wake up you silly stuff!".
• Kerry was going up the stairs growling and when he got to the top, Tyler giggled hysterically and said "that's so cute!".
  
• Kerry went pee and when he came out of the bathroom Tyler said "good job daddy, I'm so proud of you for peeing in the potty".
  
• We were sitting on the couch when all of a sudden Tyler went running across the living room yelling "pee, hurry Tyler, pee, hurry Tyler!!!".
  
• I said to Tyler after he went potty, "wow that's a lot of pee Tyler", he chuckled and said "you're silly mommy!".
  
• I was singing to Tyler's music video, he looked at me and said no, stop singing! Then he went over to Kerry and asked him to dance. Yeah, my singing is that bad!
  
• Tyler was playing in his play kitchen and said "ouch that is hot, I need a glove". I gave him a rather old (had it since I was a teen) oven glove and he said "that's icky mommy, you need to get a new one".
  
• Austin stopped by and asked Tyler if he could have a hug and Tyler said "yes, you sure can Austin".
• Tyler looked at Gpa's hair and said "what's my (aka your) hair doing? Is it messy?".
  
• Kerry missed his turn and slid, Ty said from his carseat "be careful daddy!".
  
• Tyler had the following conversation between 2 Tow Maters; "Hi, do you want to be friends?", "Yes, my name's Tow Mater", "My name is Tow Mater too!!!". He even changed his voice for each car.
  
• Tyler tooted at Sam's and said "I'm farting in my butt!". I made the mistake of chuckling. He then proceeding to yell this over and over throughout the entire store.

And for the final 2 that left us laughing for days.....

• While holding Tyler as he was drifting off to sleep, I tooted, wait... no, that's putting it too mild after having bean soup 2 nights in a row, I farted (if that bothers you, get over it, you fart too) and Tyler said "I just heard a monster come out your booty!". 
• Kerry walked in the door from work and Tyler went running towards him yelling "Daddy, what's wrong with my teetee?". He then pulled his pants down and showed Kerry. Kerry (with a deer in the headlights look) said "it's ok son, it's just full and it will go down after you pee", and that was their first father-son talk.

Potty Training:

I haven't really blogged about this much as I had planned on putting it in a separate post. It really helped me when we started potty training to read of other's trial and errors and I wanted to provide that for others following us. My hope is to still put that together, but since I'm getting pretty far behind, I thought I would provide a quick review and update.

We attempted the 3 Day Potty Training method at 21.5 months because the book said the magic age was 22 months. After 21 days of my child peeing all over the place, I broke and put him back in diapers. I will go into more details on this method in a separate post.

At 25 months, he decided he was done with diapers. Within a few days, he was day and outing trained pretty effortlessly. Now I don't think that would have been the case had we not gone through the 21 days mentioned above, so maybe it wasn't in vain.

He doesn't look too thrilled here but this is always followed by him clapping and yelling "yeah, I did it!".

Pooping took a little longer to get down but was pooped trained by 27-28 months. Night time is hit or miss and has been the biggest hurdle. Some nights he remains dry all night, other nights he wets the bed twice.

Here's where we are today. I left him sleeping on his couch one time and was shocked to find him on the video monitor peeing all by himself after he woke.

After a few days of observing this, I realized it was time to convert his crib to the next stage so that he could get out of bed and go to the potty. Bye bye crib, sniff sniff!

Hello big boy bed!

Success!

Well, sorta, still working on night time. When he's not in a deep sleep, he gets up and goes by himself and then we go up and help him get his pants back up. But when he is in a deep sleep, he pees and continues sleeping soaking wet without missing a beat. We've tried many many different things to help with this, which again, I'll provide more details in a separate post.

Here he is about to get a reward. I love how he says "I better close my eyes and hold out my hands!" while giggling with pure excitement.

He had fun teaching Scout how to go potty:

Getting wipes

Wiping his booty

 Throwing away the dirty wipes

He was really loving taking care of Scout. He was talking to him, hugging him, saying "I wuv you so much Scout, I wuv you", taking him to the potty (asked me where's his teetee?), putting him to bed, covering him with a blanket, asking him if he wants to play cars, taking him down the slide and reading to him. It was so adorable for the one day it lasted.


This month in photos:

Mr. Potato Head glasses

His new trike from Mimi (love how he wears sunglasses upside down!)

Mmmm, spinach smoothie!

He loves to do dishes!

We couldn't find our small pan, little man had taken it to wash it in his own sink.

A visit from Gpa and Gma:

You know Gma's in the house when you see these on his cheeks!

Winter Family Photos 2012

As you could have probably guessed, this is Kerry's side of the family.  He looks like just his mom, dad and sister. I'm blessed with the best in-laws ever!

For some reason the photos are displaying quite blurry, not sure why as they are much clearer on my computer.