Grandmommy and Granddougie

Grandmommy and Granddougie came to visit this weekend!  We had so much fun.  Mommy and daddy got some much needed adult time.  And the kids got special time with the grandparents.  On the day of their arrival I had told Nicky they might pick him up from school.  The drive took longer than planned though so I picked Nicky up instead.  He took one look at me and just started crying.  “I don’t want you to pick me up, I want grandmommy!”  He didn’t have to wait long and he was so excited when they finally showed up.

We spent some time in Monterey while they were here.  I didn’t get any pictures at the aquarium because there were so many people there and we were all just focused on not losing either of the kids.  We also went to a local park and on the way home Nicky treated us to a nice 15 minute made up song all about spiders.

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Potty Training Update

Spoiler alert: this post contains potty talk…read at your own risk.

Nicky has been on the potty training wagon for a couple weeks now. He is doing SO well with peeing in the potty. He’s had accidents, but for the most part he’s really good at “listening to his body” and letting us know when he has to go. Number two is an entirely different story. For whatever reason, he’s really nervous about pooping on the potty and even when he sits on the toilet and tries he can’t make it happen.

On Friday morning I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. I got a big, new, mechanized dump truck and put it on the shelf in the bathroom and told Nicky that he could have the dump truck when he pooped on the potty 3 times. I figured it would take all weekend to earn that dump truck, but I totally underestimated my little smarty pants. He immediately took the bait and sat down on the toilet. After squeezing out a tiny specimen, washing his hands and getting his first of three stickers he IMMEDIATELY announces, “I want to try again.” This cycle was repeated three times and within 15 minutes he had “earned” his truck.

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After being foiled with my first trick I pulled out another. This time I put out a bunch of Matchbox cars on the shelf and changed the rules so that Nicky would earn one car if he pooped on the potty all day with no accidents. He hasn’t succeeded yet but I’m still hopeful that the drive to earn a car will prevail soon. Nicky seems to think it will take a bit longer: at dinner last night he announced “If I poop on the potty all day I will get to pick a car. And I will get to pick the tow truck car. My tow truck car is very patient.”  I hope not too patient!

Writing

Nicky loves his workbooks and is doing really well with learning how to write his letters (yep, he’s left handed!). Kate likes to congratulate him and herself on their hard work writing/coloring.

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Exercisers

When you have a boy who is the definition of kinetic energy, you enroll him in the weekly exercise class at school. Can’t hurt to get a burn off a bit more energy, right? Well Nicky loves his “Pal-ercise” class and gave us a nice demonstration of some of their activities the other night:

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