March 11, 2008

I woke up this morning feeling like I am getting a sore throat. Based on how Ben has been sounding lately, I have a feeling that he and I both might be getting Nick's cold. Hopefully this will be our last for this winter, since it is starting to warm up here during the day.

Yesterday I heard the woodpecker again, for the first time this year. He was drilling on the metal thing on top of our chimney, which makes a very loud noise in our living room. I went outside and yelled at him and he flew away. I think we need to get a fake owl to put up somewhere near our chimney.

Well, so far, our potty training interest is really going nowhere. Nick wants to sit on the potty when HE wants to sit on the potty, which is usually around the time we are preparing to go down for nap or bedtime. Ben seems to think we need to get a second potty chair, so he can have one of his own. He has mentioned it to me a time or two now. Nick has yet to actually go potty in the potty chair. If he happened to do this once, he might decide he wants to try more often but, so far, it has not happened. It is not likely to happen at the rate we are going now, since he usually wants to sit after we change his diaper from already having used the bathroom in his diaper.

A couple of times around the time when I think he might need to go, I have asked him if he wants to sit on the potty but he says no. How do you get them interested in wanting to sit on the potty often enough and long enough to actually go? I certainly don't want to turn him against it by making him. What do you do to get them to want to sit on the potty when you think they might actually be ready to go?

I continue to hear new words from the boys every day and their sentences are getting longer. Ben is so funny. He walks around talking to himself a lot, which cracks me up. He also has this thing about tearing things up. His latest attack has been on the train set. Two days in a row, he has pulled up parts of the train tracks. They were glued down with a glue gun so they are not that easy to pull up but he seems to think this is a personal challenge for him. I am hoping God will show me sometime soon something positive that will come from this tendency to want to tear up things, as it can be somewhat annoying. It's a good thing he is so cute!

The latest new word I heard was 'empty', as Ben showed his empty cup to the dad at the dinner table and said 'daddy, empty'. They come up with new words so often that I frequently don't notice but I was paying attention and caught this one. I had heard them repeat this word when I said it but this was the first time one of them used it on his own. I am still in awe of how quickly and efficiently they learn new words and learn to speak....can you tell? I don't know why this amazes me so but it does.

They are both counting pretty well these days. Ben can count to 10 easily and is now in the early stages of learning 11, 12, etc. Nick is getting pretty good at counting to 10 now too, although he sometimes misses 7. They both have issues with being able to actually count 10 of something on a page in a book, such as 10 sheep. They do pretty well up to 4 or 5 but then they start missing some unless you point to each one for them. I need to see how they would do with counting things they could actually hold in their hands, such as pegs or something like that.

We are also still working on learning what each letter 'says', although I have not spent much time on this yet. So far, I am just letting them play with the phonics thing on the fridge and the new phonics game I bought for them. We'll see how much they learn from that first. I think Ben will pick it up quickly, since he plays with these things more but Nick seems to follow fairly quickly after Ben with these types of things. They still have a ton of time to learn this so we are not in any hurry.

I have been working with them on words like huge, tiny, large, small, big, little, in front of, behind, top, bottom, on top of, underneath, etc. They already knew several of these words/phrases from just playing with toys or searching for lost toys. I think they pretty much know all of these now.

I am going to take down the learning poster I had put up, as we don't really use it and Ben likes to pull it apart. We seem to be covering everything on it and more in an informal manner that is working so we don't seem to need it for now.

The other day, I made them some yogurt ice pops. I thought this would be a huge hit but it kind of fell flat. They were interested and they ate some of it but it was too cold for them to eat very much of it I think. Maybe this summer. It does make for a pretty good, fairly healthy treat though.

I really need to do more with them to develop more strength in their little fingers, as they cannot hold a pencil or crayon very well. Nick especially tends to hold it with his whole hand, rather than with his fingers. I have heard that getting safe, kid friendly tweezers for them to play with is a great way to do this but I have not found any of them yet. I may have to go on a search mission just for this purpose.

The boys had been waking up around 7:00am but now, with the time change, that means they are waking up around 8:00am again. I had kind of gotten used to them waking up earlier. They are still going to bed at 8:00 and they are taking a pretty good nap (usually 2 to 3 hours). Of course, Nick has been sick and Ben sounds like he might be getting sick so maybe they need a bit more sleep now. I was going to take them to the mall to play yesterday morning but they were so cranky I decided not too. We may go today, depending on how everyone is feeling.

They will be ready to get up soon so I had better get my act together. What I would really like to do right now is go back to sleep.