More Nate conversations

I love when Alisa texts me with pictures of the kids and funny things they're doing and saying. Here are a few recent ones:

"So Nate is trying to get out of feeding himself applesauce. The latest reason: This is so going to wear me oooouuuutttt!"

Alisa: It's potty time!
Nate: NO! It's changing time! You have to change! I will get in trouble if I potty!
Nice try, buddy.

Scene: McDonalds drive through
Alisa: I need a chicken nugget meal ...
Nate: Stop saying words! I'm trying to sleep!

A few days ago, Nate was sitting on the potty (notice a theme with these stories? He's on the potty a lot) and he was drumming (always drumming) with some markers. I noticed he had a couple of pink spots on his legs and I thought he had colored on himself earlier. But after a couple minutes I noticed LOTS of pink spots on his legs. I realized the marker was leaking and threw it in the trash. Nate looked down at his legs and gasped, "I'm Pinkalicious!" (If you haven't read the book "Pinkalicious" it's about a little girl who eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink.)

Some very common questions we hear around here are:
What's YOUR number? Translation: "I am 4. How old are you?"
What's YOUR letters? Translation: "How do you spell your name?"
What's YOUR color? Translation: "What color is your hair?"

And today, Nate had me laughing so hard out of nowhere. We were in the truck for hours and were a little stir crazy. When Blake got out to pump gas, the truck went "beep beep." Nate went beep beep. I said "honk honk." Nate said "choo choo." I said, "meep meep." Nate said, "toot toot." I said, "Moo moo," and Nate said, "INTERRUPTING COW!!!" Oh my gosh! I couldn't breathe. I have been trying to teach him that knock knock joke for months now. (Knock knock, who's there, Interrupting Cow, Interrupting Cow Wh---MOOO!) He still has yet to tell the joke correctly, but that right there was 1000x funnier than the original joke!

You may be wondering how potty training is going--very well, actually! I may be a bit premature in saying this, and I'm knocking on wood right now ... but I'm going to say it--Nate is potty trained for poop! He has pooped in the potty every single time for two weeks now. In fact, Friday night I was getting Nate settled in bed and had already read him his stories when he said, "I have to go potty." I thought he was just playing a trick on me to let him go back downstairs where his potty is. I told him if he really had to go potty, he'd have to use the one upstairs (which he doesn't like). He said fine. Well, he went in there and pooped in the potty!!!!! And he TOLD me he had to go! I'm so excited. Now he does have a tendency to get a little constipated here and there, but it's nothing that we can't control with his diet, so we're going to have to be extra careful about it now.

We still have a ways to go with the peeing. We sit him on the potty every 45 minutes, and just about every time he'll sit down and pee very well. Many times he'll stay dry between pottying, but very often he's not dry. Right now we're using pull ups because I was ready to collapse at the thought of changing underwear 8 or more times a day for the forseeable future! But it's going pretty well and we're just going to keep at it. It looks like we'll send him to preschool next Monday in pull ups, but he'll go to the potty 2 or 3 times during the school (half) day just like all the other kids.

Nate has been doing VERY well with walking up and down steps by himself (holding onto a rail with one hand). This is major progress! But a few days ago he tripped and either badly stubbed or broke one of his big toes. I have not taken him into the doctor because I really feel like there's nothing they can do about it, but it's turning black and he's having trouble walking on it. Other times he pays no attention to it. I've broken and badly stubbed toes over the past year, and I know that both HURT. Poor guy.

The other thing Nate is doing very well is swimming! A few months back we had to drop aquatic therapy because of our insurance, so we picked up swim lessons since being in the water has been so good for Nate. Well, the last couple of weeks, he has been dog paddling (with just a float-thing on his back) from one end of the pool to the other and back again! He complains about it the whole time, but he does it! This picture is a little dark, but it's Nate jumping in the pool to his teacher, BJ.

After all that about Nate, I'll update on Georgia too. She has this ornery little crinkle nose grin that I just love. I'll post a picture another time. She's saying "Boo" (which sounds like "buh") all the time now--when opening a door, or taking off a hat, or hiding behind a curtain. Her favorite thing in the world is to empty out my purse. The child still won't play with actual toys but loves anything that seems to be a no-no. I see her wandering around with random objects in her hands. Like a box of tic tacs and a tissue. Nate's toothbrush. Fingernail clippers and a shoe. Oh, and the other day I met Alisa and the kids at the park, and they were climbing up to this little kid slide and sliding down, and while we were talking, Georgia slid down all by herself! She is such the daredevil--she giggled the whole time.

An update on Blake and me--Last week marked our 7th wedding anniversary and 11 years together! Wow! That's more than 1/3 of my life! I don't think anyone ever expected us to make it this long, lol!

Blake is notoriously bad about gift-giving. While I put thought and time into getting the "perfect" gift for every occassion, Blake asks me what I want. And I've learned to just order what I want myself so I'm not disappointed. This tells you how clueless he is about gifts--One of his good friends got married this weekend, and when I asked him what we should give him as a wedding gift, he suggested something for the guy's baby .... Honey, you don't buy a baby gift for a wedding. So imagine my shock when Blake got me a lovely anniversary gift! Sunday night Blake said he'd gotten me something and asked if I wanted to know what--NO! He is also notoriously bad about keeping secrets! I always get my gift before my birthday, or he tells me what it is. Well Monday, he called and asked, "Did you get anything from me this morning?" I said, "I got that picture of the kids you emailed me." "No, anything else?" Then I realized he had sent me flowers! And he totally spoiled it by telling me! Anyway, 18 beautiful red roses arrived at my office later that day. The next day, my coworkers and I were standing around when the FedEx guy brought in a box. We weren't expecting anything. He said it was for me! It was a dozen of the most gorgeous fancy chocolate covered strawberries! And the card said something like, "You gave me two precious gifts, so I wanted to send you two gifts for our anniversary." And this from the man who suggests rotating my tires for Christmas! (Not really, but that's not far off.) He did good!

Well it's been a very long weekend. I hosted a program for adults with SB Saturday in Louisville. Then we drove to Owensboro to attend Blake's longtime friend Scott's wedding and to spend the night at Memaw and GrandBob's house (where Memaw successfully got both of them to sleep by herself while we were at the wedding!). Then Sunday morning after breakfast we drove all the way to Lexington for a playgroup for kiddos with SB and their families. It was a VERY fun weekend, but I'm beat. I have the day off tomorrow, and I'm going to get my house in order, grocery shop, and take a nap!