My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

Becky loves to wake up early and be able to eat breakfast by herself or with me alone (I don’t blame the child for wanting some peace and quiet to go with her Eggo waffles!).  We’re both so happy when it works out that we are able to spend those few moments together before the wonderful chaos begins.   

Jimmy has made some significant strides in the potty training department lately!  For months, he’s gone about once or twice a day, but always wore diapers or pull-ups the rest of the day.  Well, I decided to raise the stakes a little and told him that if he wore big boy underwear and went in the potty, I’d reward him with a pick out of our candy bowl after every 3 bathroom trips.  He agreed, and I’m excited to say that in his first three days of wearing underwear (except for naps and night), he has had zero accidents!  I ask him about every 30-60 minutes if he has go to, and he always obliges (the candy incentive is strong!).  We also did a sticker chart the first day – the girls were eager to help him with it.  They’re very good cheerleaders and teachers – Susie’s already exasperated by her brother leaving the seat up: “Jimmy, you left the thing up!  I almost fell in!”  It’s hard to believe it was exactly two years ago that the roles were reversed and it was Jimmy watching as the girls potty trained!

We’ll see how he progresses – he’s still very much doing this for the candy, but I’ll happily rot his teeth if it means I don’t have to change his diapers!

The kids received a fun new game for Christmas called Headbanz.  Each player wears a card on their head describing an object and has to ask questions of the other players to discover what that object is.  It’s a little old for the girls right now (most of their questions consisted of “Am I a spoon?”  “Am I turkey?”, rather than descriptive questions to narrow down the options) but it was a great game and they were starting to get the hang of it by the end.    

The one who was NOT getting it, though, was Jimmy.  As soon as someone put a card on their head, he blurted out what he saw, thus giving away the answer!  No matter how hard we tried to convince Jimmy he was missing the point of the game, he just couldn’t contain his glee at announcing the surprise object.  It reminded me of a few weeks ago when we went to the mall to buy Jim a bean bag chair/pillow for a Christmas present.  I coached and coached and coached the kids that they were not supposed to tell their daddy what we got him.  I told them just to tell their daddy we got him a “surprise.”  Well, we weren’t home from the mall for five minutes before Jimmy ran up to Jim and excitedly hollered, “We got you a SURPRISE PILLOW!!!” 

I suppose I ought to be glad he’s such a guileless young man – I just hope he gets a little better at holding his tongue!

I keep forgetting to announce that Becky lost her first tooth on Sunday, December 23rd!  The poor thing was very feverish with an as-yet-undiagnosed ear infection, but as she was staggering downstairs that morning, she stopped and exclaimed, “Oh!” and proudly produced her bottom left center tooth (the same one that Susie lost a few weeks prior).  Even though she was too sick that night to care, I gently tucked her tooth inside the pocket of a pillow that my mom had sewn for my sister and me when we were children.  The next morning, she rallied enough to get excited over the sparkly coins that replaced the lost tooth, but it wasn’t until Christmas a few days later that she finally felt like herself again.  Because I didn’t get any in-the-moment pictures of the big event, I had her smile for the camera this week so I could document the occasion (you can see Susie’s finger helpfully identifying the new gap).  Congratulations on entering the big-kid land of gap-toothed grins, sweet Becky!     

You know you’re experiencing post-holiday fatigue when you let your son eat straight from the popcorn tin and your daughter lap her water like a dog!