Potty Training

So I will confess that I have yet to read any articles or books about how to potty train. I did one internet search that had some info but I saw that Dr. Phil has some methodology where you can train them in a day or something. I think it's by staying home and just them being naked. The truth is I figure it's bound to happen so why stress out.

So I decided to go with naked baby time whenever we are home. He LOVES it and I mean LOVES it. We had a few accidents in the beginning but now when he has to go he runs to the potty yelling, "penis, penis penis!" "Look mommy I'm sitting on the potty!" Up until last night he wouldn't poo in the potty. He would scream and cry for a diaper. I didn't stress out I just kept saying if you have to make a stinky sit on your potty. So last night Coop yelled, "Stinkyyyyyy!" and sat on the potty. Nothing happened. Three minutes later he yells again, "stinkyyy!" Nothing happened. Third time was a charm. He announced it again and (while I was on the phone for JoAnn) brought me the wipes and asked me to wipe his stinky and he was SO proud!!

I was so excited. It's been a pretty painless process given our few false starts. I keep hoping Bear will watch Coop and want to try it out but he barely even acknowledges the process. Now we have to work on the whole pull up situation so we can do this stuff in public :-)

Our Backyard Adventure

Bear gets very determined to ride the tricycle. After a while he finally gets frustrated and gets us to push him around. They do fight over who gets to ride it and sometimes will ride together but they just don't get the concept of pick up your feet!

Did you notice the snow boots? Coop brought them to me and refused (and I mean refused) to take them off all day. Again it's summer time!! We have this ravine out in the back that Coop calls the Jungle. Cooper has a weed plant that is huge that he loves to pull leaves off of and he likes to throw ropes over limbs and pull with all his might. Bear on the other hand likes to throw balls down the ravine and then sit down and scoot down on his butt to get it. It tends to panic me as there is poison ivy down there and he likes to get "stuck" and have me come get him. I gave up on getting him to not go down there but when I refused to get him he figured out how to get up pretty quick and hasn't gone that far again :-)

Bear also thinks it's really funny to hide behind all the a/c units and to put sticks down them. The phrase, "Not a toy!" means nothing to him. So this is usually what ends our "backyard" time.

Nap Time?

This past week Coop has been adamant that he doesn't want to take a nap. So for two days he stayed up and kept me company while Bear napped. Interesting how different it is when it's just one of the boys. He was content to just sit near me and play with some toys while I worked. On the third day we had gone outside for a long adventure. We had to meet the mail lady and play with a neighbor's puppy, chase some geese and dance on tree stumps. (Remind me to tell you about Bear getting bit by an ant and sprinting to me so I could get the ant off of him. I have never seen him so scared.) S o we got home and had lunch and Bear had taken his nap. I finally put a show on for them and about 5 minutes later I hear Bear saying, "Hiiiiiii, hiiiiii, hiiiiiii thwap!" I come out and see Coop dead asleep and Bear is hanging over the edge of the couch in Cooper's face trying to wake him up. I put him next to Coop and laid a blanket down and they cuddled for a little while. All the while Coop never stirred!

Cover Me Up!

Blankets and being naked are Cooper's new "thing". He loves to have a blanket wrapped around him and every little part of him has to be covered. He will do a little shiver and say, "Brrrrrrrrr. It's cold."

More Headgear

Sleep Update

We did it! We transitioned Bear into Cooper's room two weeks ago. We have our bedroom back and sleep glorious sleep. Don't get me wrong there is still fussing to be had and for some reason the last 4 nights Bear has been waking up often and screaming. But not once has one of them crying set the other one off. Today I went in and Bear was screaming and Coop was sitting up just talking to Bear. If Bear is asleep before Coop he will say, "Shhhh Momma- Bear is sleeping." If Bear wakes up from a nap Coop will run and open the door to get him. I expected Cooper to be upset that Bear was in "his" room as his favorite word these days is, "MINE!" but they settled into it with flying colors. We have an overnight trip coming up this weekend so I'm curious to see how that plays out but I'm hoping the fact that they will be together will really help. All I know is we finally did it and we couldn't be more thrilled!

Porch Swing

What's Up Doc?

I Can Do It

Nothing like asserting some independence. Here's Coop attempting to put his socks on. (Can't quite put them on yet but it's fun to watch!) He loves to find them in the sock drawer and bring them for himself and Bear. It's actually very nice of him. Watching him take the socks off is even funnier because he just pulls and pulls until he falls backwards as he yanks as hard as possible.
This was the other day after we'd been outside playing. I asked Coop to go wash his hands. Up to this point he's never done it by himself so I anticipated he'd be at the sink waiting for me. Nope he's there with the water on and made his bubbles!

"Stickies"

These are called "Stickies" in our house. The boys dig for gold and for some reason like to bring them to me or wipe their noses on me. Coop likes to announce his "stickies" very loudly and will even give them to me while I'm driving. The joys of parenthood!

Fun at the Playground

The Hat

For some reason the boys have taken a liking to this ski hat. (Couldn't get them to wear it in the winter but for some reason this summer they want to wear it.) Unfortunately there is only 1 hat and that means lots of fighting over it. It doesn't help that neither of them can put it on so they are constantly bringing it to me.

COME HERE, COOPER!

Okay, so I've been wanting to post this for some time but am finally getting to it.

As Abbie has pointed out on this blog, she's been potty training Cooper...well, more like he's potty training himself and we're just giving encouragement and emptying the pee bucket for him. Ain't nothing like having an outhouse sitting in your living room. But I digress.

Anyways, this happened when Abbie and I were sleeping in the living room on the air mattress as we conditioned Bear to sleeping in his crib by himself and without us in the room. It was probably three days after Cooper had started using the potty consistently, so, this past weekend or just before I would say.

Abbie and I were over near the kitchen talking and Cooper went over to use the potty. Normally, after he's done, he'll just close the lid and move on. Sometimes, according to Abbie, he'll pull out the pee bucket and bring it to Abbie to dump, but only after she asks for it.

Well, this particular day, Cooper got an A for initiative, but an F in judgment.

I'm talking to Abbie not paying attention, when all of a sudden, her eyes get wide and she bolts past me towards the living room. I turn, and there's Cooper with the pee bucket in his hands, walking around the foot of the air mattress (no, we didn't deflate it every day and re-inflate it every night), trying to get through a narrow choke point between the mattress and the toy bins. We just watched both Cooper and Bear fall flat on their faces when trying to navigate this choke point, so Abbie is moving at a fast clip towards him saying, "Cooper, baby, give me the bucket."

But she's moving too fast at him. He gets scared. He turns around and runs.

Abbie: "Cooper, no no no no no! Come here, Cooper!"

Cooper starts to crawl on the air mattress to get away from Abbie. Mind you, he's still carrying this pee bucket.

Abbie, "STOP, COOPER! NO!"

Now, this was said very loudly and very quickly! And what did Cooper do?

He freaked and threw up the pee bucket because it scared him so much!

It looked like something from a slapstick comedy! Pee going everywhere, meaning, all over our bedding on the air mattress, Abbie trying to get to the bucket to catch it before it flings its contents all over, pee bucket flying up in the air about six feet (my boy's got an arm on him), and Abbie seething because of it.

Me, I'm struggling to keep from laughing so that Cooper doesn't think its a good thing to do. Y'know, running from his mom, throwing piss all over the living room, that sort of thing.

Man, I'm laughing just typing this story! S'cuse me...
WAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Abbie laughed about it later after I cleaned up the mess.

More Duck Fun

We have a geese infestation in our apartment complex. It's a tad annoying to have geese everywhere you turn but it is cute to see all the little baby geese waddling along. I normally don't let the boys chase the geese but today was special. (I was bored.) We were at the end of our complex playing with some sticks when Coop spotted three geese at the very other end. It's a bit of a hike. He starts yelling "Duckies mommy duckies!!" I actually wanted to see if he would run the whole way so I said, "Go get them Cooper!" This kid took off screaming, "Duckieeeeeeeeeees!" Halfway he stopped abruptly and turned around to make sure I was really letting him chase the geese. I told him to go ahead and he took off again. The two smart ones scattered but the third must have thought Coop had some food and waited anxiously for this toddler to come to him. By the time he figured out Coop didn't have any food it was too late. Coop reached out and almost made contact before the goose started running for it's life. The goose started running towards me with Coop close behind yelling, "Wait duckie!" The other two geese started running behind Coop and I thought oh no what have I gotten my son into? Suddenly the goose took flight and almost clipped me with his wing. Bear and I fell back in the grass laughing as the other two followed suit and flew over us as well. Coop jumped on top of us and I thought you know I might actually like having these geese around here!

Sticky Tape

I promise you I didn't put the tape over their mouths. Coop was fishing in our junk drawer and out comes the "sticky tape" as they call it on Dora. He proceeds to pull off a piece and hand it to me. He then says, "mouth." I'm thinking he's joking so I put it on and he is sooo happy. If it falls off he comes back for me to put it back on. He doesn't quite get that he can't talk and have it on at the same time. So Bear sees this little game going on and he wants some over his mouth. Talk about wanting to do what your brother wants to do!

Hiccups

Hiccups have become a very big thing in the Monihan household. Not because we actually have them but because it's Cooper's answer to almost anything these days that gets him out of trouble. He and Bear love this horrid little show called "Ruby and Max." It's about a toddler rabbit Max and his older sister Ruby. She basically chases him around telling him no and he just does it anyway. Cooper loves it so much the first words out of his mouth when I get him in the morning are, "Max and Ruby!!" The other day Bear was in trouble and sitting on their couch in the their room. He's screaming his little butt off but he heard Max and Ruby come on and stops crying to say, "Max!" then goes back to screaming. We even have a phantom bunny that chases us from the apartment through the tunnel. Every morning Cooper runs from it and says, "Bye bunny!"

The thing that took the cake though was Cooper last week. I can't remember what the problem was, I'd either asked him to do or not to do something and he'd done it anyway. As I asked him a question he starts saying, "hiccup!" Every time I would try to get a word out he would yell, "Hiccup!" and make this horrible breathing sound trying to mimic a hiccup and thereby cutting me off. I was so shocked and tickled it took all I had to not laugh right there about it. I'm thinking of trying that out the next time someone starts saying something to me I don't want to hear :-)