Whee!

Time continues to rush by in a whirlwind that is hard to express. I feel like I've been thinking about things I want to post a lot lately, but there always seems to be at least a few higher priority things on my to do list. And next thing you know it is the end of the day or an hour past the time I wanted to go to bed...

To get myself back in the swing of posting, I'm going to try to do quick snippets (kind of like my FB status updates), just to get something up here again. I hate to even suggest this...but when the new iPhones come out, R is getting one and I'm getting his old one, so maybe the ability to do quick posts from my phone will help me develop some new habits. (And bonus, I'm counting the new phone as his Father's Day present! :-) Not sure if he knows that...)

My random list from March is still pretty accurate. But there are a few new tidbits.

- Todd's favorite foods are fruit, meat, pizza and bread. He'll tolerate other stuff, but lately I'm noticing that he is much less willing to try anything that goes on his tray. Sometimes he'll try new things after a few bites of fruit or he'll let some noodles in while he chows down on the meat sauce...but some times he is clearly NOT willing to each some of the food being offered. I tried to enjoy his openness to food while it lasted. Looks like we've got two picky eaters in the house now.

- Todd is all about pointing - this started soon after his birthday. Wait, what? You say. Yes, he had a birthday and I haven't documented it in the least. And here we are more than a month past. Ahem.

Anyway, he's been pointing a ton, which is helping to curb some of his new toddler behavior. We've entertained the frustration territory where he knows.what.he.wants and can't tell us. Some use of pointing and signing "more" helps, but there is definitely some toddler angst brewing in our formerly "always easy going" guy.

- Todd's words: kitty was first and he still calls all animals kitty, but it's a process. :-) Other new words include ball, duck, mama, dada and uh-oh. I get the sense that there are probably a few more, but as a second child you just don't get the same kind of undivided attention and child #1. But you do have a constant source of entertainment and much more TV access than your older sibling did at your age, so I think it all evens out in the end.

- Since we were feeling like things were going smoothly (!) and we had a lot of busy weekends coming up, a few weekends ago we took away Heather's diapers. It was clear from her experiences in underwear that she had the ability to 'hold it' until she got a diaper on and could keep her underwear dry for hours at a time. For fear of significantly embarrassing my future teenage daughter and because I don't want to rehash all of our struggles...I'll just say that Heather is wearing underwear at home and putting all of her pee in the potty when she's with mommy and daddy. Why she refuses to use the potty at daycare or do #2 in the potty is something we can't quite comprehend or bribe her into doing. With busy weekends, we're currently playing the waiting game and hoping that she decides to go the rest of the way on her own. And I'm thankful that there was at least some positive result to our weekend of struggle.

Her tenacity and stubbornness is certainly inherited and will serve her well as an adult. No matter how frustrating it is as a 3 year old.

- We've added a new movie into the obsession rotation - one of my favorites. The Sound of Music. Awesome. And we continue to look forward to taking her to see Toy Story 3 in the theater. Though we still need to figure out who will watch Todd while we go...

- My knitting and crochet mojo has returned full force. I'm trying to use any evening time I have for sewing/mending projects and project finishing to avoid having any more projects that are 95% finished. I need to make some evening time for photography while we still have a little light after the kids go to bed. Or to let Heather help me on the weekend during on of Todd's naps.

- Speaking of Todd sleep, the improvements continue. 3 nights of the past week he has slept the entire (and I mean entire) night in his crib from bedtime to wake-up. And most of the other nights, the wake-ups have been minimal or short-lived. Bedtime has been a little bit of a mixed bag, but since the generally trend is all about improvements, I'm not complaining. I just need to go to bed earlier once we get through the yard sale this weekend.