IT’S BEEN AWHILEWell my most diligent attempts at keeping this journal updated and recent have once again fallen flat. Nothing ground breaking has happened over the last month – which is good, but little events that I want to hold onto happen daily, and regretfully slip through my swiss cheese memory and out of my head. So here’s a few rambling paragraphs about my boys…
Landon and Colt became cousins for the first time last Tuesday, May 8th. After seven long months, the last two of which were spent in the hospital, Andrea finally gave birth, via C-section to her triplets that Rena and I affectionately refer to as the “Trio”. Caden weighed in at 4 lbs, and his identical twin sisters Regan and Riley weighed in at just over three lbs each. Considering the fact that they were seven weeks early they are doing exceptionally well. Rhiannon and I spent the day at the hospital when they arrived for moral support. We got to meet our new nieces and nephew briefly – they are very small and skinny as one might expect, but looked like regular, cute, little, future rugrats albeit in a more miniature package. The family went down to spend Mother’s Day in San Diego with Andrea and her brood and we got to visit the new additions again. Landon wanted desperately to see the babies, unfortunately hospital policy restricted any person younger than 10 years old from the NICU so he won’t get to meet his cousins until they come home from the hospital sometime next month. He struggled understanding this age restriction, luckily Colt had just filled up his diaper, and when I explained to Landon that we couldn’t go into the hospital with a poopy diaper, he seemed to grasp that line of reasoning much better.
As mentioned, last Sunday was Mother’s Day, so the boys and I did our best to make Rena feel at least fractionally as special as we know she is. Rena is our family’s glue, heartbeat and soul, she keeps us grounded and focused, while still allowing our heads to peek through the clouds on occasion. I honestly can’t imagine raising a family with anyone else. The boys are so lucky to have her in their lives, as I am as well. Since we knew we were journeying to San Diego the following morning we had a quiet dinner in the backyard on Saturday and actually sat down as a family for the evening, a rare event with two young boys. One of the presents Rena received was a framed pair of the boy’s footprints that we painted the week before. Getting Colt to paint his foot and then leave an impression on some paper was easy, however Landon refused to cooperate, and only after severe bribery was he willing to comply. Thank God for gummy bears.
As he grows older, Landon’s manipulation skills continue to improve – luckily he can be bought. Recently Landon was getting out of his bed several times a night, with random, often irrelevant excuses. Now as a part of his night-time, tuck-in ritual, we inform him that if he takes a big nap and doesn’t get out of his bed he will be rewarded with one whole gummy bear in the morning, we even let him pick the color. Much to our amazement, Landon hasn’t got out of bed once in the last two weeks (knock on wood).
That being said, the more complex issue we are facing at the house with Landon is potty training. Although a few sporadic and unrelated deposits, both liquid and solid, have been made in the plastic potty (which sucks to clean by the way), no consistent progress has been made. It’s been over two weeks since the plastic potty has collected anything but dust. We again have tried to bribe Landon to encourage his potty training but to no avail. We have upped the ante considerably basically telling him that if he uses the potty for five consecutive days he can go out and purchase any toy train he might desire. He has repeatedly shown us all of the different trains he wants, even selecting trains for his uncles and grandparents to purchase for him once he graduates from diapers (I’m not sure they are aware of their involvement), but when we ask him if he’s ready to start earning those toys, his reply is a matter of fact, “No…not yet.” The pressure here is that at the end of summer Landon hopefully will be attending pre-school, only one of the prerequisites for his enrollment is that he must be potty trained, it could be an interesting couple of months in the bathroom. Stay tuned.
Colt still refuses to take his first steps, although by all accounts he is more than ready. He rolls throughout the house using various walkers, proclaiming, “Go, go, go, go….” until his progress is halted by a wall or other obstacle. He scoots around the furniture and the walls often only holding on with one hand. He will stand, unaided in the middle of a room for close to a minute before he decides to crawl away to check something out. But as of yet, no actual steps have been witnessed. Landon began walking at fifteen months, and I refused any bipedal locomotion until I was twenty-two months; Colt is currently fourteen months old, so we may have a few more months before we hear the pitter-patter of his footsteps across our hardwood floors.
Colt’s vocabulary is beginning to increase. He has added several new words to his previous repertoire of mama and dada, including uh-oh (his favorite), go, Landon, fishy, Dakota and see-see. He often combines a word or two with hand gestures to communicate his intentions. For example, the other night we were standing by the bath tub watching it fill up with water. He began to pull on his shirt and then point to the water and say, “See-see?” after I removed his clothes and plopped him in the tub he beamed with accomplishment that I had understood what he wanted. Colt’s incoherent babbling is constant, and I imagine he generates a good deal of frustration when we fail to comprehend what, “gigglee googlee ga ga dibble dibble” means.
Our boys have very different eating habits. Colt is a chow hound, He gets noticeably excited upon placement in his high chair and will slowly grind away on just about any edible material placed in front of him for a good deal of time, sometimes I wonder if he will ever fill up. He has begun to put on a few pounds recently, I’m curious to see where he weighs in at his doctor’s appointment next month. Landon on the other hand rarely eats three meals a day, and often only eats one large meal complimented by small snacks throughout the day. He is insanely picky at times, and has definitely inherited his mother’s sweet tooth. Again the bribery of potential dessert often is the only way we can get him to eat his more nutritious food selections, I am beginning to think that this is how the post-dinner dessert historically evolved. For all of his lack of eating though, Landon continues to grow and is becoming more of a boy and less of a toddler with each passing day.
No other big events to report currently - jobs, home and family all are doing well. Hopefully I’ll be back within a week with a timelier update.
