Two and a Quarter

I felt like the monthly posts were getting a little too much, but I know you all still want to know what the little fella is up to, so I think quarterly updates for now. =)

He walks up and down the stairs like a "big, big, big, big boy" now. It takes a while, but it's so crazy impressive. Each step comes up to his knee. Can you imagine walking up and down stairs if they came all the way up to your knee?
He is getting better at dressing himself and can do his pants entirely on his own if I just lay them out with the front side up. And help him get the waist band over his diaper in the back. Next step, potty training!

Two pieces of chalk is better than one!

Speaking of potty training, I've decided we're just going to go cold turkey. I'm planning on doing it when we've got 3-4 days in a row where we don't have to go anywhere and just putting him in "big boy pants." I'm also planning on cleaning a lot of messes the first day, but I'm optimistic that I'll clean less messes on the second day. Who knows how it will work, but he's pretty much an all or nothing kind of kid, so I'm hopeful. All of you parents who have potty trained before can quietly chuckle to yourselves at my blind optimism. =)
I got a new phone about a month ago and Luca has totally figured it out. He has one game on there, and he swipes to unlock the screen, swipes over to the game (needs a little help getting through the opening screens so he doesn't try to buy anything) and then plays. He has also found the camera. Apparently the phone saves every picture to the cloud, and I only delete them from the photo stream on my phone. So there are something like 60 pictures on my phone and 350+ in the cloud. A lot of them are very fuzzy or are of his finger, but there's a good 20-30 that I think are actually pretty good! If I knew how to put them on the computer I would, a task for another day. But he's big into the close-ups, so I've got pictures of Jude's fur, the a/c register, his toys, and a surprising amount of selfies. Kid needs a myspace account. Isn't that where you dump a million self pictures?

The neighborhood watch community

He is loving the swing set. He's gotten really good at climbing the rock wall (no rocks, he just sticks his hands and feet in the gaps in the wood and gets up that way. He can also go part way up and back down the ladder without any help. Once he gets up in the eagle's nest, though, he's stuck. He went down the slide a bunch of times the first day, but because he doesn't have any weight to him and the slide is a little steep, he was catching air on the second bump. We're guessing he bruised his tailbone or something, because the next day he said his tushy hurt and now he won't go down it. My guess is he'll be back at it before summer is over though. He also loves swinging and loves to push us on the swing.
Funny story, we use time-out as punishment. So I ask him to correct his behavior. If he refuses I ask him to correct his behavior or go to time out. And sometimes he takes forever deciding which one to do. So one day I tried to introduce the "I'm counting to three." Except explaining that to him didn't go so well. He was so excited to count to three with me, he forgot about the behave or time out thing and now he asks to count to three with me often. Always when he's standing in the same spot as he was when I first explained it to him. Kid has a memory like an elephant.

Helping Dayuh water

 He loves routines and knowing what to expect next. We feed the birds on the rug by the front door. I bring in the feeder and take the top off of it, he uses a measuring cup to scoop in the bird seed, and then I carry him and the feeder to the post and he hangs it up. When we get back inside he goes to the guest bedroom where we keep the vac, wheels it out, tells me to plug it in, disconnects the hose, and says "ready, go" to turn it on. After he helps me vacuum up the extra seed he tells me to wrap the cord back up and pushes it back into the bedroom. All of this, in exactly this order, every single day when we feed the birds.

Cheese!!