Nerds and proud of it!?

Noah made this sketch a few months ago while waiting at the kitchen counter for dinner, but I just finally got around to scanning it tonight.  I thought it was worthy of saving and posting here.  This is a drawing of his father (hence the arrow pointing to "Carry"a.k.a "nerd."What I love here is that neither the artist or the subject was disturbed by the label of nerd, but both considered it something to be kind of abashedly proud about.  To the left are signs that are meant to read (with a little spelling help): "Genius working. Quiet!" and "No spit balls."  I like all the first place ribbons and the robot and the extra detail of the bug on the overhead light.  The bug seems particularly Richard Scarry-esque.  I have to say, though he did a decent job capturing Cary's hair, goatee, and general face shape, Cary does not have ears like Marc Brown's Arthur.  Overall though, nice job Noah.  

Potty training hopes

I hate to even put it down in words, because I'll probably jinx it, but our little one seems well on his way to being potty-trained at not quite 20 months yet. He goes on the little training toilet several times a day, usually #1 but a few times #2 as well, and has several times now indicated to me that he needs to go, without words of course in accordance with his generally speechless style; he finds ways to get his point across. He even indicated he wanted to use the toilet at the Y playcare, and today he kept his diaper dry from after nap until bedtime! I know this might be considered TMI for a blog post or not something that anyone feels the need to read about, but as my reason for this blog is to make up for their lack of baby books, those of you who happen to be reading will just have to forgive me this post!

Storytime

I was on my own this evening, and A was supposed to be in the bath while I put E to bed, but the former was screaming his head off about an owie on his leg, making it difficult to have a calm story time with the little one. So I enlisted the eldest. He did such a wonderful job, I was overwhelmed with pride. E was more focused on his favorite story, The Very Busy Spider, than ever. Of course I know that Big Brother is more than capable of reading a simple book like that, but what was so sweet was the way he slipped into that certain type of voice and style that we adults use when reading to toddlers, and embellished the pages with extra interaction just like he's seen over the years, such as "isn't that a nice web she's making," and my favorite (a new approach adopted by him), counting the shapes in the triangle as they went through the pages (18 triangles, one spiral, so many rectangles and so forth). Too sweet. E was clearly enthralled by his big brother's style.

Yippee!

Ezra just pottied on the floor a little bit before getting in the bath, stopped, sat on his little toddler toilet and peed! Let's see if we can get this one out of diapers before 2!

Mr. Determined

A.k.a. Mr. Don't Tell Me What We Don't Do

Do you think I've mentioned a time or two that the table isn't for climbing or that we don't climb on tables, or that that isn't safe? Yep. A few times.
Doesn't seem to make a difference.

Today he was hell-bent on using the electric pencil sharpener in the back the desk. Couldn't understand at all why I didn't want him to be doing that!

When Mom cleans

I gave up and did it myself. This is what it should look like unless someone is playing nicely on the window seat or the sweet yellow rug with one set of something.
How long will it stay? It depends on how quickly Cary can make me the locking doors that I've requested. One toy out one toy in rule is going to take over by force of lock and key since it seems that's what is necessary.