More Random Thoughts From a Disorganized Mommy

One of these days I'm going to get it together enough to post more than once every few weeks, and then I will have lots of nice, organized, little day to day stories, rather than letting lose in massive, stream-of-consciousness blog entries about everything I've forgetting to mention.

Today is a wonderfully rainy day, and our calendar was blissfully empty, after our park playdate was rained out.  So Jack's still in his pajamas, even though it's 4 p.m. and he's already down for his second nap.  It's been fantastic.  We've read, we've built a fort, we've danced to new music on Pandora, and we've cooked a lot.  Since we made cookies this weekend, we didn't do that (as Nonna and I always did when I was little), but a yummy acorn squash will be ready as a snack as soon as Jack wakes up, and I've put a brisket on as a surprise for Ben tonight.  

Jack has also practiced his jumping.  We were changing his crib sheet, and Jack decided the mattress on his floor was just the right height to jump on and off of.  He's continued doing it all day.  It's really adorable, because he doesn't quite know how to get his feet off the ground, so he looks just like a little bird trying to take flight and getting so excited about almost making it!  I tried to get a longer clip, but Jack decided that he wanted to "perform" for 1-2 seconds and then run to my lap to watch the video I had made.  This clip required several takes.

But I should fill you in on some of the things we've been up to in the past three weeks.  Jack's talking a lot more now, adding new words and sounds every day.  Some are a little hard to make out.  "Wa wa" stands for both water and firefly, believe it or not, although firefly is moving closer to "why why."  And his word for milk sounds an awful lot like "no," although it's moving closer to "nawk."  Sounds for a cow and a pig (sounds more like a snort than an oink) have also started popping up.

The new words are, in part, coming from Jack's massive attachment to his books.  He doesn't want to read books just a few times through--he wants them like 10 times in a row, several times a day.  And late last week he suddenly became so attached to his (completely ripped apart) copy of Goodnight Moon that he would scream if I tried to get him to leave a room without it in his hands.  Some days he's more attached to it than others, but he generally spends several hours a day with Goodnight Moon in his hands.

And then there's the development about which I have been most conflicted and concerned.  The one I feel nervous about even mentioning because it makes me feel like the mom at a newborn playgroup who is almost embarrassed to say her child is already sleeping through the night for fear that the other moms would hate her.  I would have hated that mom, given Jack's sleep issues during his first year. So anyway, we're working on a slight early, no-pressure form of potty training.  I know, I know, this sounds awful, since he's not even 18 months yet, but stay with me for a second.  

For several months Jack has been able to make the sign for diaper change.  He started by making the sign while he was getting a change, then started making it when he needed a change, and now does it when he needs to use the potty.  I had also read in a Montessori-theory book that Montessori believed there is a window of opportunity for starting potty training between 12-18 months, during which children are more receptive to learning something like that before the terrible twos (aka the "NO!" stage) starts.  I'm still not quite sure I buy into that, but I figured that if Jack was already telling us that he was about to go, I might as well get a potty chair and show him a different place to go.  I figured that if it meant I had to change just one less poopy diaper a month, I would be thrilled, and I was really surprised the first time he used it.  But now he's becoming more and more clear about when he needs to use the potty, and he's using it successfully several times a day!  We're not even close to attempting it while out of the house, and I'm not anticipating that he'll be done with potty training any sooner than any other child, but it's really nice that on days we're home a lot I don't have to change quite so many diapers.

His sweetest new developments?  While talking to Ben or Nonna or Pops on the phone, he stops, holds the phone out, and gives a big kiss to them on the display part of my cell phone.  And anytime Jack wants to show an adult something, he grabs their hand and leads them to where he wants to play.  He did that with our law school friend Khang who was in town a few weeks ago.  Khang visibly melted and said on the spot that he wanted a baby.  

Three--well, actually two and a half--new teeth have also made their appearance.  Jack's, not mine.  And my teeth are fine now.  The root canal actually ended up happening back to back with my fillings, so I didn't have time to agonize over and fear it.  Honestly it wasn't that bad.  After having given birth (even with an epidural it wasn't a complete picnic) and breastfed, a little drilling in a numbed mouth is nothing.  The worst part was having to have my mouth open for two hours while the dentist fixed it!

And I've been having lots of mommy contact the past few weeks.  So much so that I started craving a stay at home day so much that I reevaluated and decided we needed to slow down some.  I've finally gotten to know a couple of great new friends, several of whom may even become part of my stay at home feminist mommy book club!  And two days in a row I had great conversations with Stacy in London and Juliet in New York.  Both of them had their second babies this summer (Edie in September and Miles in July), which gave us even more to catch up on!  It's so nice to finally feel like I'm back in a situation where I have a whole handful or more of close friends I could call up at any given time to talk with about anything at all.  I love my mommy friends.