Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, Shawn!

Shawn's a great dad, and lately Max wants to spend as much time with him as possible. This morning Shawn slipped away to the coffee shop for some quiet and reading, or so he thought...after he left Max tearfully asked if he'd gone to work for the whole day. When I told him Shawn was over at Lighthouse Max insisted on going to meet him. Sorry you only got 20 minutes of quiet time, Shawn! Then we went up to the park where Max only wanted to play with his dad, and now he is putting him down for a nap (something I usually do).

You're a great dad and we love you, Napu!

Big Steps

About a week ago I bought a training toilet for Max, just like the one his friend Jasper has. Jasper has amazingly been toilet training himself for several weeks and this last week Max has really gotten interested in watching Jasper use the toilet. Tonight in the bath he announced that he wanted to use a toilet like Jasper, and wear underwear like Jasper. So, after his bath he climbed up on the big toilet (conveniently not using the $30 training toilet) and told his body to go pee. He was pretty proud of himself for sitting on the toilet and got on and off of it several times. He didn't want us to put on his diaper, saying he wants to wear underwear. So, I told him tomorrow we'd go shopping for some. I'm thinking of disposable pull-ups as he's not ready for real underwear, but it will be underwear to him. We are excitedly wondering, could this be toilet training, this early? We sure hope so.

The other big Saturday night news is that Max decided he liked zucchini tonight, grabbing it off of Shawn's plate with glee. I need to saute it in olive oil more often! This was a welcome change as he's become more picky about vegetables lately.

Right now he's crying in bed, and Shawn's in there trying to get him to sleep. His 2 year molars are still antagonizing him, and he's also very 2 with much willfulness and tantrums. He's growing and changing so fast. Just an inch shy of 3 feet, and a sturdy 31 pounds. Ah yes, a few other things of note: he's getting down how pedaling works on his trike, counting to 11, and yesterday he wowed me by "reading" the EXIT sign downstairs. Neither Shawn or I remember telling him what it said. He called out "Letter I". I asked him what the sign said and he replied "Hexit!". Stunned, I asked him what other letters he saw and he said "X and T". Wow! Maybe he'll be an early reader?!

Tomorrow is Father's Day and we'll likely saunter over to our local park for a little solstice potluck in the morning and take Shawn out for dinner in the evening, and let him slip away for a movie. We are hopeful that we are close to securing a regular babysitter, I miss dates with my husband!

Summer is here!

Summer has been here for about three weeks now. We've been enjoying lovely temperatures in the 70's and nice cool evenings. Tonight after dinner we walked to Molly Moon's, a popular ice cream shop we'd been curious to try out. I had the tamarind orange sorbet, really tasty. Max enjoyed a few bites and really liked munching on the cone most of the way home.

We've been all over town lately, mostly due do the fact that we acquired a car very cheaply a few weeks ago from good friends. They sold/gifted us their old '91 Honda Accord for $100! What a deal. With a little work on the battery and an oil change the car is running great and I must say Max and I have been enjoying getting around the city at a quicker pace. Wednesday we drove the 20 minutes (usually 45+ on the bus) out to where my brother works at Sandpoint and checked out a new playground and Pete met us for lunch and took us on a little hike up and over kite hill to Lake Washington. Max enjoyed playing in the water, trying to skip rocks. Thursday we went down to the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union for a story time on a tugboat. Max immediately decided the boat was much too crowded (they were doing story time with 25 kids in the galley!) and walked out. He enjoyed running around on the docks, watching prop planes land in the water. This morning I decided we needed a peaceful, solo outing so we stopped by a toy store and picked up a neat little sandtoy set and went to our closest beach, Golden Gardens. A lovely beach along the Puget Sound. We played in the sand and spent a lot of time at a marsh watching ducks and turtles. This was a delightful respite from the temper tantrums that set in yesterday, it's been three a day. Two of the tantrums were thirty minutes each and included yelling, door slamming, trying to remove a dirty diaper, throwing toys, and the list goes on. The challenging two's are really here in a big way. I'm resisting calling it the terrible two's as really, Max is a delight most of the time. His strong will is really surfacing and small things such as a routine morning diaper change, or having to get out of the car are setting him off. It's been a challenge and we're doing our best to nurture and love him through this phase.

We fly to Santa Cruz in three weeks for a friends wedding. Shawn's a groomsmen and will be pretty busy with the wedding festivities. We are looking forward to spending nine days there and are hoping to have plenty of time to relax and visit with friends and family. I'm looking forward to one last get away before baby comes. I'm almost in the third trimester, my due date is three months from tomorrow. Time is whizzing by, I'm trying to slow down this summer and savor some time with just the three of us before we rise to the challenge and joy of welcoming the little one. Max has been saying that he is ready for the baby to come out, and that it will come out of my belly button. He likes to pat my belly and say "Hi, baby". Cute. He'll be such a good big brother.