Potty!!

We just had a very exciting moment at our house! N went pee in the potty!

We bought a potty seat last weekend and set it out for him to see. He has been sitting on it with his clothes on to get used to it (as reccomended by the book that came with it). We have been reading a couple books about potty training, but have not been pressing the issue. This morning N went into the bathroom and pulled out his potty and said "go pee on the potty, Mommy. " So he did! He went potty then sat there for a while as I read him some books. Then he put his potty away and went down for his nap.

I will say, I can already see that this is going to be as much of a learning experience for me as it will be for N. Teaching a boy to go to the bathroom may have it's challenges. Either we need to get a larger training seat or I need to learn how to teach him to sit on the seat so "it" doesn't squirt everywhere! We have a pair of wet pants, some wet socks and a wet floor to clean up as a result of our first time going potty, but that's not hard to fix. N got upset when he got everything wet and I said "that's okay, honey. It's just potty. We can clean it up. Don't worry about it..." I didn't want to discourage him in any way... But, in my head I am quietly thinking "Uh, how do we do this so we don't make this kind of a mess every time he goes??" If anyone has any tips please email me. :)

Art Work

N has reached the age where he will sit down and do an art project. The amount of time he will spend on a project depends on the day and his mood, but he will at least attempt any craft I present. His favorite thing right now are the paint stamps with the knobs on the top. He loves them because they are fairly easy to do and I like them because they create less of a mess than other paints. N also does craft and art projects at school that he brings home each week. Storing all this art work has presented somewhat of a challenge. I recently read in one of my Mommy magazines (okay, they could be Daddy magazines, too. Let's not exclude the Dads.) that one Mom takes pictures of her kids holding their pieces and saves the picture on the computer. That way she can eventually throw away some of the pieces and she can save the really treasured pieces. I took that Mom's advice and took pictures of N standing next to the fridge when it was covered with his art. Then I took pictures of each piece individually. Since so many of you who read my blog do not get to our house to see N's art hanging on our fridge, I thought I would post some here for you to see.

Summer Summary

It's hard to believe that summer went by and I did not post a single entry on this blog.. Time flies!! N and I spent lots of time outside, so I wasn't at my computer a whole lot. It's hard to be on the computer with a toddler around because any time I log on he wants to play games on his favorite kid websites. Therefore, I end up saving my computer usage for nap time and after the little one has gone to bed. This summer was exciting and this fall has been, too. I have posted several pictures to recap the past few months.






We got our front door painted red.







N and I passed the time by cleaning his outdoor toys with buckets of water, soap, and wash cloths. He loved it!

N also saw his first display of fireworks (or "fire spiders" as he called them) on the 4th of July, but the pictures did not turn out so good, darn it.








N's birthday! I can't believe he's another year older!








N and I ate as many lunches outside as we could. N calls them picnics. I brought his little table inside now that it's cooling off. We still eat at it quite often and N still calls them picnics even though we are eating indoors.







My sister came home for her final wedding gown fitting and her bachelorette party. Good times!!





















Unfortunately N came down with a terrible ear infection and was sick while my sister was here, so he had to stay home quite a bit. J and I tried to keep him occupied and as happy as possible by crafting with him. After twenty four long days, two rounds of antibiotics and three trips to the doctor he finnnnnallly kicked the ear infection!!!




N started a one day per week school at a local church in early September. These pictures were taken on his first day. It's funny because he insists on carrying his backpack to school every day. He does verrrry well at school. One of the best parts of the day (for me anyway) is seeing his face light up when he sees that I am there to pick him up. He always says "Mommy" with a big smile on his face and runs to me with his backpack on his back. Too cute!!




In late September my family went to The Netherlands for my sister's wedding. The trip was fantastic and the wedding was incredible. Congratulations again, Sis. You two are a wonderful couple and you were a stunning bride!!! My husband took the week off of work to stay home with my son while I was on the trip. Although I enjoyed my travels, I missed "my guys" immensely. D was good about emailing me daily updates and he took lots of pictures. They actually had a very active week. D even made a decorative cement block with their hand prints in it to commemorate the week.











































N is currently very interested in pretend play. He loves his kitchen. As I said above, I have our picnic table in our dining room which is located right by "N's kitchen." N "cooks" us pizzas, pancakes and noodles all the time. He is very good about serving me my diet coke with everyone meal!! Ha!!







N was Bob the Builder for Halloween, but I cannot find the pictures at the moment. I will post pictures when I find them.









This fall will be busy with household projects. D got a ton of stuff done outdoors while it was still warm outside. He built landscaping walls all around the house that will be ready to be filled with plants next spring. He closed in the underside of the deck and built a little shed under the deck to store our patio furniture, etc. He did a huge renovation of the creek in the back yard and was able to grow a pretty nice yard of grass... He is struggling to push the crab grass out of the yard, but it all looks great to me. Our big project this fall is finishing our basement. We've already got our belongings stored in various places of the house and D has framed in all that walls that can be framed in at this point. With some help from the professionals who built our house, we hope to have the basement finished by Christmas!

Take care,
C

Yard, Deck, Porch Posts

We have had unseasonably cool and rainy weather this year, therefore, we had to wait a while for the crew to come and level our yard (called the "final grade"). Fred, the guy who leveled our yard learned very quickly that the pile of clay laying in our yard (the dirt that was dug out of the ground to place our house on our lot) had sat long enough to get extremely hard. He tried several methods to get the dirt to break up and spread out. He even tried to convince his boss to rent a skidsteer (sp?) to do the job, but he couldn't talk his boss into it so he used the tractor he always uses, but the poor thing had to undergo a few repairs in the process. I didn't pay really close attention to how many days Fred was here, but it was long enough (on and off for two weeks) that I think N thought he was family or something. :) He was always excited to see Fred driving the tractor around our yard. He always waved at Fred as he worked and he still recognized the blue tractor when we see it around town. As soon as Fred got the yard leveled D went into full gear spreading out the see, fertilizer and hay to cover it up. It is really windy out here so D had to stake nets down over the hay in a few areas to keep it in place. The grass has come up much faster than I thought it would. I helped D with the project a little bit (when N wasn't awake). When I saw the grass starting to pop out of the ground I told D I felt like a proud Mama who had a million new little babies. (See before and after pictures below.)

Not only has D been planting grass, but he has also been working on our deck. (Pictured below). It has been so nice to have this space because it's an area where N and I can play outside while we wait for the yard to grow.

Our builder's carpenter (Dave) came over today and installed our porch column accents. They turned out really nice. I'm so glad we decided to have them added. We've seen a few houses in the area with column accents like these so we thought our builder would be able to buy them fairly easily and have them installed in no time. Well, after talking to our builder about it (and receiving one pair we didn't care for) we found out that this style has to be specially made. Once again, we learned that we have expensive taste...Our builder was persistent and found someone to make them for us and they turned out great.