Hallie and Travis

Today, Hallie was on the potty and I was outside with the door open. Hallie tapped on the wall a few times and then peeked out with a mischevious look and announced, “There’s a bat in the wall!” The next few visits we heard from the bat. Then tonight, with some encouragement from Mark, Hallie placed a call on her plastic phone to “the Batman” to come get rid of the bat. At one point I heard her say, “You’ll need to come over so I’ll give you a kiss but I don’t want to give you a kiss so you should just come over.”

Before Batman could arrive, Hallie figured out how to solve the problem herself. “Shine the flashlight on the wall and the bat will go away,” she announced on the phone. Then she hung up on the Batman, requested the flashlight, and rid our home of bats. If only all pest elimination were that easy!

For the last few months, Hallie’s really been having fun moving her body. She loves to dance and twist and “jump” (though both feet never quite leave the ground at the same time). Now she’s giving names to some of the things she does. She’ll be leaning on the couch with one leg up and say, “This is the hold your leg in the air move.” Or she’ll announce the “twist, turn, and flop move” or the “head upside down balance move.” I know she’s just going to love the dance class that’s part of her new preschool next year!

We’re definitely doing better on the potty front. Today, for the first time, Hallie actually told me in advance that she needed to go. And she peed and pooped! We were still far from being dry all day. But I’m getting better at watching her signals and remembering to give her lots of tries. And of course the praise is ridiculous when she’s successful.

We’re still having incidents where I mention that “in a few minutes we’ll try the potty,” and then she immediately pees in her pullup and gleefully announces, “Mommy, I’m peeing!” I’m hoping that by failing to give her a big reaction, I’ll discourage this very soon!

Travis has learned something new the last two days. Instead of the static smile he typically gives, he has taken to scrunching up his nose and wheezing a bit. We’ve dubbed it the Popeye Face.

He will also mimic any Popeye Face you do for him, which is a fun way of interacting with him. It’s nice to see him respond to you when you initiate it: he seems aware that its a playful little game.

His faces also have the benefit of highlighting his two lower teeth, so you get a good look at those whenever he scrunches up his nose.

I think this is the beginning of a long line of faces and fun interactions we get from T.

We’ve always known Hallie is creative and good at entertaining herself. It’s really fun to watch her make up her own games or use common objects for hours on end.

This week I was trying to clear some unused things out of a cabinet. I put several extra baby spoons and the lids for some baby dishes on the counter, planning to store them. Hallie latched on to them and spent the rest of the week (literally hours) using them in all sorts of ways. She was a waiter serving meals and a cook preparing them. She carried the spoons around in her pocket and shared them with the neighborhood kids. And she used them to make shapes and letters and to play “Spoon, Spoon” (see below).

For months Hallie’s been bugging me to open a set of Little People animals we got T for Christmas. I finally gave in this week. She was thrilled. They hadn’t been opened long before she’d created the game “Animal, Animal.” The rules are simple. She lines up all the animals, and then we take turns taking one away and putting it back. And each time, Hallie narrates. “You take one away. And then you put it back!” You always have to take the one Hallie tells you to take, and it always has to go back in the same place.

This game also got adapted to “Spoon, Spoon” when the baby spoons came out. And the last two days, her “toy” of choice has been her drawer full of hair clips and barrettes. Her hair accessories have been money, food, and decoration for the hem of her shirt. She’s spent a lot of time “selling money” at the store. We’re not sure what rate she’s getting, but it seems to be profitable.

We’ve finally started doing baby signs with T. It’s going to take us a little while to get back in the habit, but T already seems really engaged by them. When you do a sign for him, he looks at you very intently, like he knows you’re teaching him something.

The main signs we’re using so far are Mommy, Daddy, More, Eat, and Fan. I’m convinced Fan will be the first one he does. He loves fans! Especially the one in our office, which is brightly colored. When you walk into this room with him, his head whips around, following the fan no matter how you hold him. When he first sees it he shrieks and cackles, and he grins ear to ear when you do the sign for him. Hallie’s having fun with this, too. Our book mentions how older siblings who signed will often pick it up again really quickly. T should learn even faster with three of us teaching him!

Overall, my experience nursing T has been a fantastic one. We’ve had our challenging spots, but lately we’ve had a really long stretch–about 3 months–of things being really easy and relaxed. Now we seem to be back to another challenge. During the day especially, but sometimes even at night, T is just too eager to look at everything (and “talk” about it). I usually have to go to another room if Hallie’s around. Even the slightest noise is enough to make him pull off. And of course it’s hard on Hallie to have to be still and quiet (or in another room) that whole time.

I’m not ready to quit by any means. But this is definitely a new phase from our relaxed and predictable recent months. In hindsight, it seems he was a pretty calm and focused on our trip compared to what he’s doing now. All part of his growing up, I know!

We’ve slowed down the pace of potty efforts and things are going a lot better. We’ve gone back to pullups and I’ve stopped expecting Hallie to tell me when she needs to go. Instead, I’ve just been having her try several times a day. She’s become much more agreeable about these efforts, and often they are successful. I’m not sure why she was fighting me so hard before or acting so pleased when she announced she’d peed or pooped everywhere. Now she’ll get on the potty without a fuss. Often she’ll tell me before she gets on that she doesn’t have any pee, and generally she’ll be right. But other times she goes right to work.

We still have regular episodes where she’ll announce that she’s peeing or pooping right after she’s been on the potty. Sometimes I can catch her mid-poop and then she’s so proud when she finishes up in the potty. I’m being more relaxed about it, which I’m sure is helping her. It will be a while before we leave the house in panties, but we’re making progress!

OK, that title is an exaggeration. But Hallie DID read her first word today!!!! We were playing with her “magnet school” this morning before Mark left for work. I laid out a couple of three letter words and we talked about what they spelled. Then I put down the letters D-O-G. Almost absentmindedly I said, “See the letters D-O-G? What does that spell?” And Hallie looked up and said “Dog!”

Of course we went nuts praising her and taking pictures and being very excited. We tried a few more words with no success, and I’m not sure if we tried “dog” again we’d get the same result every time. But even if she went more on the cue of my saying the name of the letters than on looking at them, we’re still pretty darn impressed. Not yet three–what a girl!

Now that we’re settled at home for a while, we’re focusing on potty training. With mixed results. I still don’t regret waiting–it would have been an enormous challenge to add getting Hallie to a potty to all the craziness of our trip. But I’m wondering if we’d have had an easier time if we’d started sooner.

For a couple of days Hallie was really excited about wearing her new panties. But after three days of going through several pairs a day, we’ve gone back to pullups. Hallie’s got a funny attitude about this. We know she knows that we want her to pee and poop in the potty. But she’s practically gleeful every time she soils herself, announcing “Mommy, I peed everywhere!” with a huge grin. And while dirty panties seem to bother her after the initial announcement, she could care less if her pullup is wet.

I know we’re early in the process. But it’s a funny dynamic and one that we don’t want to turn into a power struggle. If we can convince her to sit on the potty frequently (which is getting a lot easier, so we’re making some progress), she’ll sometimes have success. But other times she’ll sit there for a while, say she doesn’t need to do anything, and then a minute or two later pee everywhere and announce it happily (like last night, when she got off the potty, walked into our office, and then peed the whole way back down the hall to the bathroom, where she announced what she’d done).

Today she announced she was pooping in her pullup while I was nursing Travis. I whisked her onto the potty and she finished up there. I made a huge deal about it and we even got Goodberry’s while running errands. She also peed at the library. But we didn’t do very well for the rest of the day.

(This pooping episode was in contrast to yesterday’s. Hallie’s often a bit constipated, resulting in lots of pellets. When she told me yesterday she’d pooped, I hoped maybe she wasn’t quite done and I raced her onto the potty and yanked down her pullup. Of course she was already done pooping and I sent the contents of her pullup flying everywhere. Hallie, always helpful, provided a running commentary as I cleaned it up. “Mommy, that poop landed on your foot.” “Mommy, there’s some over there.” “Mommy, don’t forget that piece of poop.” “Mommy, we made a big disaster!”)

We’re trying really hard not to fall into the “you get an M&M (or other treat) every time you use the potty” pattern. But I can see why people do it. Since she’s not fighting us so much anymore when we ask her to give the potty a try, maybe having some successes by accident will help move toward using the potty on purpose.

For some reason I was thinking that this would be a lot easier, maybe because we waited so long. I guess it’s time to do our homework and make sure we’re taking a sound approach.

On a related note, Hallie’s been doing a good bit of testing of us since we got back. I don’t know if that’s potty-related or not. It probably is. She often gets up in Travis’s face when I’m trying to nurse him (which is the last thing we need) and gets defiant when I ask her to back off. Tonight I asked her to use her spoon at dinner and she looked right at me and said “No!”, which got her taken to her room for a little chat. I told her, among other things, that the next time she did that she’d spend the rest of the evening in her room. So, when she said it again in a different context, in she went. It was close to bathtime, and Mark and I took turns talking to her, so we didn’t leave her in there alone. It’s very clear, though, that she’s trying to see what she can get away with. So far I think we’re doing OK on the consistency front with her, but we really need to make sure we keep that up!