Love between siblings... And Trilingual baby?

To begin with I saw the Ab-SO-LUTELY cutest thing today. Miss M was in her exersaucer playing innocently and W came out of nowhere and starts saying "hug." He leans over and gives her a big hug with the "uhhhh" sound effect like he is squeezing her really tight (but really isn't). He then straightens up, smiles, and says "Lub you." Melt my heart! It just about brought tears to my eyes!!

As far as the whole trilingual thing goes I have caught W, in the last couple of days, saying words in both Spanish and Chinese. He watches Ni Hao, Kai Lan, Dora and Diego on a regular basis when his Grandma is here watching them during the day. I have to say we are guilty of leaving the tv on as background noise in a lot of cases.. :blush:. Anyway, he has one of those starlight turtles that puts constellations on his ceiling at night. He loves that little guy. Well he kept saying "Tortuga" and pointing at it. I couldn't help but laugh since La Tortuga is the spanish word for turtle. Lately his newest thing when he hears something is to point at his ear and saying "listen" or "hear" and whatever he hears. Like "Hear train." Well, last night we were grocery shopping and were in the process of checking out and I kept hearing him say "Ting" over and over. I turn around and he is pointing at his ear. After many, many reruns of one particular Kai Lan episode I have, as well, learned that Ting is the word in Chinese for listen. I would love for him to have a better grasp on languagues that I do. Maybe this is a good start?

Quick note on me!

I forgot to post but the 9th was J's birthday! His 33rd! Happy birthday, babe! But, on a quick note about me on that day I got my Praxis scores back. I passed them both with flying colors! YAY! One more to go!

W 23 Months *updated

Oh my! His birthday is next month! I can hardly believe it. He is growing sooooo much and I can't believe how fast the time has gone. He is working on potty training and we have had some successes on that front. Usually out of the 3 hours he goes without a diaper we can get him to go on the potty about 2 out of 3 times. I am SO proud of him. We don't really have a set goal to try to be daytime potty trained by but by the time we go on vacation in mid-June would be nice. We are still having some food issues. The kid doesn't really care for meat so I have been trying to get him protein through eggs and peanut butter. sigh.... Other than that things are great. I am about half way through planning his birthday party. He is going to love it this year because he actually gets the present thing now and is going to have some really good ones to open =).. I can't wait!

I forgot to mention some of the really neat things he is doing right now. He almost always speaks in 2-3 word sentences now days. "ex. Mommy, baby sister's cryin'". Or cry-nin if you want to pronounce it like he does. He also knows many of his shapes: triangle, square, rectangle, circle, star, crescent (or moon). He knows some of his colors but still confuses them sometimes. Most of the time he gets green, orange, blue and purple correct but yellow, black and white are always a toss-up. He also recognizes all of his capital letters and some high frequency little letters like a and b. He, of course, knows the little letters that look just like the big letters.. LOL.. He also loooves to show all these things off for anyone who will sit still long enough to listen. He likes to count to 10.. over.. and over.. AND OVER.. my little goofy boy!

Love Your Heart by Tim McGraw & Tom Douglas. Illustrations by Abigail Marble

Tim McGraw and Tom Douglas have done an amazing job in this lovely book about a little girl and her selfless act and her father who is there to support her every step of the way. The vibrant illustrations by Abigail Marble almost leap off the page and tell the story right along with the beautiful wording.

The book follows little Katie in making her decision of which of her many talents to showcase in the talent show. She tries many but ends up showing something she didn't consider in the beginning; her selflessness. I think the book is great for little girls of all ages. I read it to my six month old daughter and she couldn't take her eyes away from the illustrations and sat quite still for the entire book.

I am really happy to see a book that details the relationship between a father and his daughter. There just are not very many that venture away from the mother/child or father/son relationship. It is a very nice change. I can't wait to see what comes next from this series.

I was given a complimentary copy of this book to review by Thomas Nelson and was asked to give my honest opinion about the book.

Great Weekend!

So this weekend has been very eventful in our household. Well, not really that eventful, per say, but the events were really exciting.

We have not been actively potty training Wy but have introduced him to his little potty and have him sit on it any time he is in the bathroom. Sometimes with clothes on, sometimes sans diaper. It just depends on his mood and the situation. On Saturday he got up from about a three hour nap and his diaper was dry. So we thought, "hey, let's sit him on the potty." Off the diaper comes and he sits down on the potty and is looking at a four-wheeler magazine while J sat on the edge of the tub.

I was taking care of Miss M while this was going on and about 15 minutes later J asked for me to get him some juice. Wy was really enjoying the whole process so we figured we should take advantage of it. After a few minutes he still hadn't peed so we decided to bring the potty into the kitchen and let him run without a diaper. He drug the potty in the living room and sat down on it watching cartoons. J went outside to clean off the 4 wheeler because he was going to take Wy outside to play in the snow and while he was gone Wy just sat and watched his show. A couple of minutes later he got up and tried to take the little soft ring off and I stood up to put it back and tell him it needed to stay on there and there was pee in the potty!! I was so excited! I made a huge deal over it and got him a little dum dum sucker for it. That, of course, made him excited.

I let him run without a diaper for a bit longer and after a couple of accidents that didn't make it into the potty we put it back on. Sunday was about the same. One pee in the potty, on his own while he was watching his cartoon and a couple of accidents that prompted his diaper being put on. We are still not going to try to go full time potty training for about another month but we are going to try a few hours of non-diaper time a day until then. At least we know he knows what the potty is for! YAY, Wy.

Miss M's 6 month well visit is tomorrow so I will try to post again tomorrow about her stats.
I am trying to transition to using initials or nicknames for us. Since I am getting ready to teach it is usually advised you don't have anything out there kids can access too easily about you. Even though this is a nice, family blog I have decided to go ahead and change things. I need to decided something else to call Wy though.. We call him Booger or Baby boy here at home so I may go with that =).