Photo post again

This is mostly another picture post, but I figured that was ok with everyone.

Stephen discovered a few days ago how easy it is to climb onto the ottoman. He is just in LOVE with Dora the Explorer - he even picked out his own electric toothbrush that has her on it. He sometimes says, "Oh-ah, o-en!" (Dora, open!) when it's time to brush teeth. One minute, he was standing in the family room watching her show, and the next minute, we saw this!

The two boys have matching summer haircuts!

We went to the Zoo on Sunday with Valerie and Jarrett. No, your eyes do not deceive you - Jarrett is MUCH taller than Stephen. Here, they are investigating the Zoo Key kiosk.

And here they are posing with a statue of a giraffe. This one was a pretty good one, I think!

The potty training continues to go well. We have moved on to working on using the potty when we aren't at home. I got a travel potty seat that folds up to go in my purse, since we discovered at the zoo that Stephen is afraid of the big potty, so I hope that we will get over this issue soon. It has been very nice, though, not having to change diapers! He still wears the one at night, but that's all. He still isn't telling us with words when he NEEDS to go, but he will tell us yes or no when we ask him if he needs to go. It's nice doing this now, instead of waiting until it's a pressure situation, like when he starts preschool.

Potty training update

Stephen is continuing to progress with his potty training! He isn't "telling" us yet when he has to go, but he is starting to give us verbal cues, which for a kid who doesn't communicate well to begin with, is a HUGE deal! He had very few accidents today, and used the potty pretty frequently. We were even able to go for a short walk down the street while Stephen was in his underwear, and it was a total success. Stephen is acutely aware of the fact that he isn't wearing a diaper anymore, and he was VEERRRRRRRRY nervous to go out of the house, and away from the safety of his potty, but he did it.

As my friend Carol said to me today, "What a ton of milestones that boy has torn up!" He may be a little behind with his speech, and a little bit with some of his motor skills, and Stephen may not have figured out how to transition from climbing up to the platform to going DOWN his slide, but he is hitting all of the other balls out of the park. We are incredibly proud of our little bear!

Bang, Bang!

My bullet post!

*Stephen started potty training this week. Yesterday (Wednesday), after his nap we put underwear on him. He had PT that morning, so we had to wait. There is no therapy next week, so it seemed the ideal time. After 4 or 5 accidents, he used the potty successfully until bedtime.

*He woke up almost dry this morning, but didn't make it to the potty in time, setting us up for a FULL morning of accidents. After his nap, however, he only had one accident, and used the potty twice more.

*We FINALLY heard back from the ENT about the sleep study. Stephen has mild, obstructive sleep apnea, and we are giving his adenoids and tonsils their pink slips. I convinced the nurse to move his follow-up appointment up, so we are now going in on June 8, instead of the 22nd. We will schedule surgery at that time. Since he is only 2, it will be an overnight stay, but it is technically considered an outpatient surgery. While we are not anxious for another operation for our little man, we are hopeful that this will help him to finally get some good rest. Poor guy just seems tired ALL the time.

That's it for today!

The Great Outdoors

This is mainly a photo post... I'll apologize in advance for the fact that they are sideways - I thought I had fixed it, and it turns out that I didn't, and it takes too long to upload pictures to go back and fix them all! Sorry!
Here is our garden. This is a Beefsteak Tomato plant:
Two varieties of Basil:

Green Beans!

A tomato hybrid (they will be cherry tomato sized, and yellow!):

Carrots

More carrots (and some weeds):

Habanero Pepper (Erik's choice, of course):

Green onions (NOT weeds):

Blackberry

Hydrangea

The other Hydrangea

Barberry

And now, some pictures of Stephen and Erik at the zoo last week:

And for fun... Stephen decided to throw almost ALL of his bath toys into the tub the other day. He actually does this pretty frequently, and just loves it!

Mother's Day!

We had a great Mother's Day over here! The best one yet! We didn't do much, but it was great to have the family here at home together for the day. Erik had been so busy with work stuff that we hadn't gotten to spend a lot of time together as a family, so it was great having him home with us. Also, Stephen climbed up on the bed and planted several morning kisses on me for Mother's Day, which was all I needed.

Not too much going on here, really. Stephen had his first physical therapy session in about 6 weeks today. His therapist had a family emergency, and was off for all of that time. She was super impressed with all of Stephen's progress that he has made over these past few weeks. We came up with a plan for the next 7 months, but overall, Stephen is pretty well caught up. We are going to work really hard on using the stairs (he goes up well, but down is another ball of wax), and make sure his fine motor skills are up to speed. He is mostly at age-level with his fine motor skills, so we don't have too much work to do there! We are so proud of our little man, though...

This is Stephen's new favorite position for watching TV. You can see he is watching his favorite show...
Stephen was reading Cosmopolitan Magazine, and decided that he wanted his book instead...

And then he was reading the book...

Nothing else to report, really! We are just awaiting the arrival of Stephen's new cousin in the next few days - Adam and Erin, we are just so thrilled for you! I know it's been a tough week, with the waiting, but having a supremely stubborn son isn't that bad, really. Once he sets his mind to something, he won't give up easily, and that's a good thing. We love you guys, and are very much looking forward to meeting Baby Rausch!

Busy days!

We have been extremely busy these past few days! Stephen has been doing really well with using his potty before bathtime, so I decided that we would see how well he was really grasping the concept of the potty. On Thursday, when Stephen woke up, I told him that we were going to try using the potty all day like a big boy. That day, he went 5 times out of the 7 times he sat on his potty, and was DRY from waking until lunchtime. He did MUCH better than I could have even hoped!! Friday did not go as well. He went twice in the morning, but then refused to use the potty again for the rest of the day. In the evening, when we asked him if he was going to use the potty, he responded by yelling, "NOOOOOO!" And that was that. He hasn't used it since. Oh well. We don't want to push him on it - he clearly understands what he is supposed to do, and where, but he is very young to be potty training (most boys don't train now until 3 or even later!). We'll give it a shot again starting either tomorrow or Monday, depending on how we are all feeling about it.

On Thursday, I got the call to schedule Stephen's Sleep Study. The first available date they had was 5/17, and I also asked to be placed on the cancellation list. Yesterday, someone called to say that they had a cancellation for that night, and would we like to come? YES!! So we were set up to go at 8:30 pm. We thought that would be good because then he would be nice and tired, and would hopefully fall asleep more quickly. Ha! They started hooking him up to all of the monitors and wires after 9pm, and once we turned on an episode of Stephen's favorite show on the portable DVD player (THANK YOU Rick and Deb!!!), he settled down and let them do what they needed to do. He was pretty good about not pulling things off, except for the one monitor called the Mustache:

The monitor piece that George is wearing in the photo was actually ON Stephen at one point. It was a little too big for his face, so he pulled it down and was sucking on it instead. The purpose of the piece is to monitor breathing out of the nostrils and mouth... We waited to put the second one on after he was asleep, and then they also put on a canula to give him a little oxygen while he was sleeping (SOP at the Sleep Lab).

He managed to get tangled up in the wires about half a dozen times during the night, and of course did his normal night-waking activities. I was reminded why we have almost never slept in the same room as Stephen - he is LOUD!!! Between the snoring, the crying, the moving around, and the hooting as he is falling back asleep, I am almost positive I didn't make it into REM sleep the whole night. The technicians were extraordinarily kind and helpful, and said that Stephen's activities were very typical of the kids that go in there for the studies, so we are sure that we have done the right thing in putting him through the study. We should hear in about 2 weeks what the next step is!

Oh, and for anyone wondering, our brave little dinosaur-lover seemed to be the most well-behaved and calm child there last night. The little guy next door was screaming for almost an hour AFTER Stephen fell asleep, and woke up screaming multiple times during the night. Maybe THAT contributed to my sleep issues last night too??

Here are some pictures from this week. I don't remember when I took the first one, but the second one was on Day one of Potty Camp, and Stephen was watching his show in the morning. Also, that shirt did not make it through the whole day of the great potty experiment.