A Day in the Life…

The approaching (impending?!) arrival of our baby girl, and the complete havoc that I know she will wreck upon our daily schedule, makes me realize how easy and low-key our days usually are at this stage of Nathan's life.  So I wanted to record a snapshot of how our days usually run (all times are either goals or very general approximations).

7:01 Most mornings these days I awake to a cheerful voice calling “Clock GREEN!  Hooray clock GREEN!”.  I go in and greet Nathan with a sippy cup of milk and he tells me “Mor-ning!”.  I fix some hot chocolate for myself and bring it back into his room while he guzzles down his milk.  We brush the cats, give Oreo his hairball medicine and generally have a slow start to the day.

7:30-7:45 Its time for breakfast.  I cut up two prunes for Nathan and he selects his morning cereal from “Dada wheat” (frosted mini wheats) and “Mama’s cereal” (cracklin’ oat bran).  Both of these are placed on Dada’s chair and promptly get ignored by Nathan.  (I have recently decided that Nathan is channeling his Papaw in that he likes his cereal sogged to mush before he eats it!)

8:00-8:30 My goal most days is to be in the shower by 8:00.  I like to hand over the Ipod to Nathan before I hop in (great incentive for a peaceful shower for Mama), but my rule is ‘no Ipod until Nathan’s breakfast is all gone.’  So, usually with some cajoling (meaning I practically force-feed him), Nathan finishes his breakfast and takes command of the Ipod.  He reminds me of my rules for him “No yell.  No bang on door”, we hug and I go shower.  I finish with all my stuff in the bathroom, and set out both our toothbrushes (if I brush my teeth now, I’ll forget to do Nathan’s at all, so I use my yucky mouth taste as a reminder/motivation to get both our teeth brushed within the next little bit). 

8:30 I’m out of the shower and Nathan always comments “Mama shower out.  Mama hair wet.”  I agree and let him touch my wet hair to confirm. 

8:30-9:00 I get dressed and do my hair and make-up.  Nathan usually joins me for some part of the hair/make-up, sitting on the counter in the master bedroom.  I also try to have Nathan dressed and teeth brushed by 9:00 as well.

9:00-9:30 Nathan helps me unload the dishwasher and we usually sweep at least one room.  I may also do some additional cleaning or baking with Nathan's "help", depending on when I want/need to get out the door for errands, playgroup, etc.  Some days we go downstairs to play while I do a load of laundry or two.

9:30-11:15 Always different, depending on the day.  We may spend the morning playing upstairs, downstairs or outside, helping Mommy clean, baking bread, running errands or at playgroup.

11:15-12:00 Somewhere in here we have lunch.  Nathan can be a VERY slow eater, so it usually is a half an hour long process from the time we sit down to eat until he’s done.  Then Nathan plays while  I clear the table, clean the high chair, load the dishwasher and put away any remaining clean dishes that were finishing drying on the counter.  By this point, I try to have decided what I’m making for dinner so I can start thawing meat, etc.

12:20-12:30 Nathan gives the cats hugs, we round up his sippy cup of milk, Rara and Kitty Cat (his two favorite stuffed animals that always join us on the loveseat for is pre-sleep routine) and we close ourselves in Nathan’s room.  We read a few books, then turn out the light and sing 2 songs and put Nathan in his crib for naptime.

12:45-1:00  Nathan is in his room with the door closed for his nap and generally gets quiet pretty quickly.  I’ll usually putter around for 10-15 minutes tidying up, checking my email, etc. before I lay down for a nap as well (before I got pregnant again, this would be my computer/project/down time, but these days I’m always more then ready for a nap myself!)

3:00-3:15  Nathan and I both get up from our nap and Nathan gets another sippy cup of milk. 

3:15-5:30  I try to stay home in the afternoons (because more often then not we've gone out of the house for some reason in the morning) and we both just putter around the house or outside.  Hopefully Dada gets home during this time. 

5:30-6:30 Dinner prep, eat dinner and clean up the kitchen.

6:30-7:10 More play/free time.  If Dada’s home, this is usually his and Nathan’s special time to play while Mama hangs out in the room with them. 

7:10-7:45 Get Nathan ready for bed, including picking up his room, bath (some nights), brush teeth, diaper change and pjs, say goodnight to Oreo, Princess and Mama.  Dada and Nathan head to his room armed with the sippy cup of milk, Rara and Kitty Cat for books, songs and bed.

7:45-10:30 Free time for Mommy and Daddy (which mostly consists of us sitting on opposite ends of the couch staring at our respective laptops).

Somehow It's Genetic…

Rainy Day

Nathan has loved clomping around the house in his boots since they were bought for him this past spring, but this is the first time they’ve actually been put to their intended purpose.  It was also a first for his bright yellow rain jacket (love, love, love!).  We certainly needed both (and probably more) when we ran out of Wal-Mart during a downpour today!

Prayers and Photos

I love that Nathan is so into praying these days. He LOVES to pray before meals, sometimes starting before we even get seated. He also tends to jump right into the prayer, forgetting to say "Dear God" and "thank you" before he starts into his list of things he's thankful for. This video is really audio-only, although you get a beautiful shot of the brass and faux-wood fan over our table!

One of Nathan's favorite features of my IPod is the camera app. He loves watching movies that we've taken and sometimes ends up taking his own movies and pictures. Today as I was cleaning out the folder of his self-portraits (there were hundreds), I decided to try and make a little movie out of a series of photos. Success! So this is a series of 59 photos Nathan took. I thought this one was fun because I tried to interrupt him as he clicked-clicked-clicked, but as you can see it didn't really stop him! (No audio on this one.)

These Days…

1. Nathan loves to say “excuse me”, especially to inanimate objects.  This cracks me up!!  For example, the other morning he decided he wanted to sit on one of the dining chairs, but on it were the remains of his breakfast (sippy cup, plate of prunes and bowl of milk from his cereal).  I heard him say, “ ‘Scuse me milk.  ’Scuse me prunes.  ‘Scuse me bowl.” as he picked up each item and placed it on the table.  He also does this for people and the cats.  If I’m in the way of a kitchen cabinet he wants to open, I hear “ ‘Scuse me Mama!” or if the cats are in the way of his lawn mower, he’ll say “ ‘Scuse me Oreo.”    So adorable!!  It makes me smile every time!

2.  As of yesterday, Nathan’s lawn mower doesn’t “pop” anymore and thankfully he hasn’t noticed that anything is different.  This just shows to me how much he's been using it over the past weeks and months.  It is a win for Mommy because it means The Sound of Independent Play is just a tiny bit quieter!

3. We bought a new alarm clock for Nathan’s room.  It’s one that lights up yellow during the night (to act as a nightlight) and then turns green at a preset time to let him know when its ok to get up.  I heard about it from a friend at playgroup and decided to give it a try for Nathan and I think its going to be a wonderful success!!  Its actually been put to the test a lot during the past week and a half since we got it because Nathan’s on one of his “wake up early” phases.  Right now I have to go into his room and remind him that when the clock is yellow, it means he needs to stay in his crib and go back to sleep.  But I love hearing his excited exclamation of “Green!” when he’s been awake, patiently awaiting the color change.  Hopefully by the time the baby comes, I won’t have to go into his room at all in the mornings if he wakes up early.  What a wonderful thing that would be! 

Our Smokey Mountain Stream Adventure

While we were in Knoxville a few weeks ago, Nathan and I reserved one morning to visit the mountains with Grandmother and Granddaddy and had a wonderful time!! Although the weather had been pretty hot in Knoxville, I was actually worried that I didn't pack any kind of light-weight coat for Nathan because of the cooler mountain temperatures. But the day's weather turned out beautifully!

Granddaddy and Grandmother decided to take us to Metcalf Bottoms picnic area, and we were able to get a prime table next to little crescent beach that gently sloped into the stream. Perfect for a little boy to enjoy hours of fun at the water's edge!

Nathan began by splashing in the water...

...then quickly moved on to tossing rocks.

Granddaddy walked down to join us, prompting Nathan to become a little show-off!

Then we decided to set our shoes afloat!

That was fun until the current carried them too far too fast for Nathan to retrieve and I got to get my pants wet chasing after them!

But of course we stayed cheerful - we were in the mountains with Grandmother and Granddaddy after all!

Next we turned to our trusty shovel and bucket for some fun. Nathan quickly got his shorts soaked by crouching down in the water, so off they came to dry in the sun while the fun continued. Nathan loves to "stir, stir".

And then I sent him off to haul water!

What a beautiful spot to spend the day with family!

It was just about time to call it quits and head up to the table for lunch when Nathan slipped and went face down in the water. Unfortunately our shovel ended up floating away, but thankfully Nathan wasn't hurt, he just got sopping wet which necessitated an outfit change (Grandmother had thankfully reminded me about the advisability of bringing a complete change of clothes!). We had a yummy lunch of sandwiches, carrot sticks, grapes, muffins and cookies - the perfect meal for a trip to the mountains! As naptime was quickly approaching, we took a few final photos and headed home.

Grandmother took the scenic drive back through the park as Nathan slumbered in the backseat the whole ride home. What a perfect end to a lovely morning!

The Sound of Independent Play

Ahhhh, so peaceful for Mommy!



BTW, Nathan does not discriminate between cats.  Plenty of times it's Oreo that he chases around the house.  Princess was just in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time today! Also, when the camera is not out, Nathan just makes a loop from his bedroom, through the nursery and kitchen to the sun porch, around the sun porch, then back through the living room to his bedroom.

Baby Steps to Potty Training

For a while I've had this beautiful vision of getting Nathan potty trained before the new baby comes.  I found a post back in April where I document my wishful thinking on the subject.  Then in July, I celebrated him peeing in his potty for the first time, but I'm not sure it happened more then once or twice and then I got lazy about having him sit on the potty during the day.  July turned into August and there was always some reason that I didn't try any further steps towards potty training, besides reading a book or two.  After our week in Knoxville I knew that we would have a stretch of time at home without anything too disruptive happening.  And I also knew that if I wanted anything to happen further with potty training, I was going to have to get myself on the ball.  Plus I realized that since I'm heading to the restroom on the hour, every hour (hooray for pregnancy!), taking Nathan often actually fits in well with my current lifestyle.

We got home from Knoxville last weekend and I jumped into action on Monday.  And to my great surprise, the first time I sat him down on the potty and told him to "push his pee-pee out", he did!  I was thrilled!!  We called Nana and Gran to tell them "Hooray Pee-Pee!" and then celebrated again with Daddy once he got home.  Nathan actually went in his potty quite a few times on Monday, and I quickly realized that he actually knows the feelings/muscles needed to control his bladder and that the first time wasn't a fluke.  I'm wondering if it had anything to do with him peeing on the floor multiple times before/after bath with Nana the week before...

We continued the success on Tuesday.  And this amazed me: before getting into the bath tub Tuesday night, I had him sit on the potty and then asked him to tell me if he needed to go while he was in the bath tub and not to go pee-pee in the water... and he did!  Twice, in fact, he had me get him out of the tub and both times he made a tiny bit of pee in the potty!

By Wednesday morning, I decided to do a little experiment and took Nathan to the bathroom every 30 minutes to see if his diaper would stay dry between potty breaks.  He actually stayed dry for about 90 minutes until we had leave to run some errands, but I was pretty pumped about that as well. 

At this point I realized that it was realistic to think about putting him in "big boy underwear" when we were home, with constant bathroom breaks.  But I also realized that the whole #2 issue was going to be a whole other bridge to cross, one probably not as easily conquered (he went once in the bathroom when he had his diaper off... it was pretty traumatic for him!)

Last Friday I put Nathan in underwear for the first time.  We had just gone potty and were planning to head outside to play, but Nathan DID NOT want to have his diaper put back on.  So I offered him underwear as an alternative, not really knowing how he would react.  He was actually pretty excited and ended up wearing underwear outside for about 10 minutes, just long enough to get a few pictures and say "hi" to the mailman (of course!).  But once the newness wore off, he decided that he didn't like the different feeling of underwear and REALLY wanted his diaper back on.  And that's the point we were at for most of the weekend.  When Nathan would actually agree to put the underwear on, he would immediately (I'm talking 2 seconds later) start pulling on it and wanting it OFF.  I thought we may have hit a major roadblock.

Monday afternoon came and for the first time Nathan put his underwear when Brian was at home (I wasn't pushing him at all to wear it over the weekend, I figured he would come around sooner or later).  So as soon at I put it on, I said excitedly "Go show Daddy your big boy underwear!"  So he raced out of the bathroom and Brian reacted with appropriate excitement as well... then he asked "are you going to let him wear those in the house?"  Since Nathan had been tolerating underwear so poorly over the past few days, I said yes thinking it would last 5 minutes max.  But I set my timer to remind us to take Nathan to the bathroom after 20 minutes, just in case.

The timer went off and Nathan was still happily living in his underwear... but he was not interested in going to the bathroom again.  And in the few minutes that it took to convince him to go sit on the potty, he wet his underwear.  I think this was due to him thinking about going to the potty and just going too soon rather then actually waiting too long to take him.  But he sat down on the potty, made a little pee-pee and put a new pair of big boy underwear back on.  20-30 minutes later, the whole process repeated itself, even though I reminded him not to push his pee-pee out before he sat down on the potty.  This time time his bladder was a little more full and he ended up with some drips down his leg, which I think got his attention a little more then just some wet underwear.  After another 30 minutes, we were able to successfully make it to the potty with dry underwear!

Since then, we've been on and off about wearing underwear at home.  Brian keeps reminding me that Nathan is REALLY young to be potty trained especially as a boy, and I know that we have made some HUGE progress in the past 10 days whether he actually gets fully potty trained soon or not.  So if we're at home, I'll take him to the potty with me and then give him the option of putting on a diaper or big boy underwear.  I try to encourage him to wear the big boy underwear, but whatever he chooses is actually fine with me.  He has decided this week that if the diaper he took off was even a little wet, he would want a new, dry diaper put back on (but a soaking wet diaper first thing in the morning or after nap doesn't seem to faze him yet).  Anyway, I've decided to try to keep potty training low stress and just make baby steps whenever we can, but there's no reason to turn this training into a huge battle of wills between me and Nathan.

Some updates from today as I'm finishing up this post started a few nights ago... tonight Nathan stayed dry in underwear for almost an hour!  Neither Brian nor I heard the bathroom reminder timer go off and it read 26 minutes (counting upward) after Brian took Nathan to the bathroom.  But then on the flip side, I took him to the bathroom later in the evening and he only peed a very small amount and then about 5 minutes later said "oops" and he was wet.  I've been having this feeling lately that he gets so excited when he starts to pee and jumps up so quickly to check the contents of the potty that he's not actually emptying his bladder in the process... and that feeling was justified with those wet underwear this evening.

So that's the progress we've made to date.  Who knows how fast or slow it may go from here??

A Teaser...

Yes, big boy underwear! Its a work in progress and I promise to post more details soon.

Nat Cat. Nat Sat on Cat...

NO NAT NO don't sit on that! (Bonus points if you know what children's book I'm paraphrasing!)

I'm not sure why Nathan finds it so amusing to try to sit on the cats, but Princess typically puts up with it.  Oreo, on the other hand, does not!

(Post originally drafted at the beginning of June.  Looking at the picture makes me realize that Nathan's hair has gotten a lot thicker in the past few months!)