2023 has bought some changes for our big boy. Well, actually, I’m hopeful for a change for both of the boys in sleeping arrangements, eventually, because we bought them bunk beds. Ash stills nurses at night, so he’s not quite ready to vacate our bed. But we’ve practiced napping in their new beds a few times. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it takes less time to get them in their new beds than it did for Quinn to decide to use the potty. He finally took my bribe to receive his toy laptop. I wish I knew what prompted it, other than repeatedly suggesting that he do it. I was giving the boys a bath, Quinn got out and asked if he peed in the potty if he could have his laptop. I said yes, so he did. Just like that. He made it three days, having only 2 accidents, one of which was right after he woke up in the morning, so after holding it all night. But then, of course, we couldn’t let a new month happen without someone getting sick, which derailed us just a little. Quinn started it off, and then passed it to everyone else. They oozed snot and crankiness for days. You would think it would be the child who puts everything in his mouth that would get sick first. I mean, Asher literally licked the bottom of Quinn’s shoe one day because it didn’t get put away into the shoe cabinet. Quinn has finally (FINALLLLLY) mostly stopped putting things in his mouth, yet he’s typically the first to get infected. No matter who starts it though, I’m absolutely over it. Anyway, this relates to my potty saga because we had to take a two-day break in the potty using while he was sick. Even still, he did use the potty a few times; he just kept having accidents, so we told him he could wear a diaper until he was feeling better. He went right back to it after those two days. I’m using a controversial motivator: Potty Candy. Every time he pees in the potty, he gets to choose a piece of candy to eat. This is controversial (even within myself) because rewarding with food maybe isn’t the best idea. I don’t want him to have issues with food, or end up with a sugar addiction (again, like myself). He really liked the idea though, and it has been working well to keep his stubborn ass on task. Occasionally he will forget to ask for it after using the potty, and I don’t remind him. I just tell him how proud I am of him and maybe give him a high five.
Toddlers are incapable of doing something until they are developmentally ready. While Quinn has shown typical signs of readiness for a long time now, Philip and I agreed that we weren’t going to try to push him to potty train, outside of suggesting it’s use, so as not to make it into a battle. There are few things that children have complete control over—sleeping, eating, and using the bathroom. You can’t force them to do those things. You can manipulate the environment around those topics i.e. making them go to bed, sit at the dinner table, sit on the potty, etc., but you can’t actually make them do those things. I never wanted using the potty to become a power struggle. I believe that waiting until he was ready is what made it go so smoothly.
Fence to keep little brother from bashing his face 😬. It’s a floor bed so the fall is like 3 inches, at most.
Quinn helped Philip build them. He was on the right track until he got out his chain saw 🤪.
When he first got his laptop ❤️.
He wanted me to get my laptop so we could work together 😆.
He went and got Ash his laptop.
We went to Walmart to get pull-ups and potty candy. We got Minnie Mouse pull-ups because I didn’t realize there were options. Quinn said he liked that they were purple because then he looked like Hulk with his purple shorts 😆.
Quinn’s potty using coincided with another developmental stage: lying. Several weeks ago, I was putting Ash down for a nap and I heard a conversation between Quinn and Philip involving candy. I knew that Philip got him a piece already, but when I came in once Ash was asleep, Quinn asked me for some. I asked him if he already had some and he said no. Affording him a chance to self-correct, I explained what lying was and told him it wasn’t nice and then asked him again. Still, he said no. Because he was ready for a nap himself, it escalated into a huge ordeal with him crying and yelling at me. The proof was laying on the couch, he didn’t throw his wrappers away, so there was no chance I was wrong. Anyway, that was the first incident. I was curious to see how long it would take before he would start lying for potty candy, which wasn’t long. During the first few days of using the potty, Quinn went and tried to pee like 85 times. I rewarded him if he even had a drop because I wanted him to continue trying. Sometimes he would say that he didn’t have any, and I would tell him, “That’s okay, you can try again later.” I think it was like the second day when he told me he “had some,” when he didn’t. I asked if he was lying, and he got a smirk on his face. I told him I could see how his face was smiling so I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. After that, he started lying to me by covering his mouth 🤣. Once I told him I could see his pee in the toilet, he pretty much stopped trying to fool me. I also know that he only pees a handful of times each day based on how often I used to change his diaper. He would pee in his diaper and immediately want changed, so I didn’t believe he suddenly had to pee 5 times an hour. It’s been three weeks now and he’s doing great! When I realize he hasn’t gone in a while, I ask if he needs to, or if we’re getting ready to leave the house. Otherwise, I try not to hound him about it and let him listen to his body.
Trying to cover his smirk when he lied.
It's not unusual for Quinn to claim that he wants to be Naked Man after he uses the potty. For some reason, peeing in the toilet really speaks to his primal being, apparently. I don’t care what he wears or doesn’t wear, but I get frustrated when the urge strikes and he strips his clothes off and just throws them on the floor in the kitchen 🤬. I’m constantly telling him to pick up his clothes, and if he forgets where he put them, he gets new ones when he’s ready to rejoin the civilized world and get dressed again. He doesn’t have many responsibilities yet but one that he does have is putting his own laundry away. I usually end up folding it on the kitchen table and leave it in stacks according to the drawers they go into. He is then required to put it away. He complains every single time, but he does it. I tell him if he didn’t change his clothes 5 times a day, he would have less laundry to put away. Those two things haven’t made a connection in his brain yet though.
If you’ve ever wondered about the male penis obsession, let me tell you, it starts at birth, basically, and only gets worse. I can’t change Asher’s diaper without his helpful hands grabbing his 🙄, and Quinn loves to make a production whenever he gets out of the shower with Philip. Philip always wraps Quinn in a towel to dry him off, and Quinn opens it up and says, “Welcome to the horn!” Every. Single. Time. Interestingly, he only does this with his dad. I bathe him and Ash together and he never says that when I get him out of the tub. There must be too much masculine energy when the two of them get together.
I may prefer that to what he did say to me the other day, after a bath—that he hates me. I told him that was a really mean thing to say. He said, “Well, I hate you.” I told him I wasn’t going to talk to him until he could use kind words. He tried to get me to talk to him by saying my name for 3 straight minutes, and then he said he didn’t hate me and he was sorry. A few minutes later he was becoming intentionally louder and louder, saying, “bada bada baDA BADA BADA BADA!” Our bathroom is tiny and loud noises are unbearable. I said, “That’s enough! You’re about to go in time out. I’m getting frustrated and this is not a good way to start our morning.” He said, “I h…” I gave him a look and he said, “I hate when you say that! I said I hate when you say that I didn’t say I hate you.” 🙄
He has a fantastic grasp on communication, and one of the ways in which he learns is by asking about everything imaginable. If we’re watching a show together and something funny happens: “Why you laugh a little bit?” If I attempt to acknowledge something he said that I wasn’t really paying attention to: “Why you say hmmmph?” If we’re sitting in my car, waiting for the Walmart workers to bring out our grocery pickup order: “Why you look back?” One day, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to tell him he wasn’t allowed to ask me what I was doing anymore. He said, “But can I talk to you?” I said, “Yes, but I don’t want to explain every single thing I’m doing,” and he said, “Okay. Did you know Bigfoot ate a girl’s head off?” 🤦🏻♀️🙄
He has so many stories, most of which begin with, “A long long, long, long, long time ago…” or “You’ve never going to believe this.” He has lots of songs, too. He asked me the other day, “Do you know the hot dog song?” I didn’t, so he sang it for me. It was just the word, “hot dog,” said repeatedly to a rhythm in his head. He’s starting to remember the words to lots of songs, but not usually in the right verse order, and he sometimes gets the words from two songs mixed. He always wants me to sing the “Happy Family,” song, as he calls it. It’s the song from Barney (at least that’s where I know it from) that says, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me, too?” I know you have that stuck in your head now and you’re welcome 🤪. Quinn can sing most of it, out of order, but instead of saying, “With a great big hug,” he says, “arm,” confusing the line from Blippi’s excavator song, where he says, “With a great big arm and a great big boom, if we start digging now, we’ll be done real soon.” Sorry if you now have that song stuck in your head. Although, of all of Blippi’s songs, that one isn’t the worst. Quinn was singing the Five Little Monkeys song the other day and he kept skipping the line that says, “One fell off and bumped his head.” So, just, “Five little monkeys jumping on the bed. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed!’” Philip was trying to get him to remember it without straight out telling him, so he asked, “Why did Mama have to call the doctor?” Quinn said, “Because they fell off the bed.” He asked, “When,” and Quinn said, “Just a minute ago when they were jumping on the bed!” 🤣🤣
I honestly can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when Ash starts talking more. He already squeals constantly and drives me nuts with it. He fell back and bumped his head one day and started wailing. I picked him up and was shhhhshhhshhh-ing him when Quinn yelled, “Let Asher talk!” 🙄🤦🏻♀️Another time Asher bit me hard on the shoulder, so I told him, “No,” and put him down. He screamed, of course, and Quinn got mad at me. He told me I needed to leave because I made his brother upset.
The drama with these boys is top tier. I had to wake Quinn up early from nap the other day to go get my niece and nephew off the bus. It was a last minute emergency situation so I just scooped him up out of bed and carried him to the car. He was very confused when he woke up while I was buckling him in his car seat. I told him what was going on but he just kept yelling, “I can’t see! I CANT SEE!!” 😂 He couldn’t tell me why he couldn’t see, so I assumed it was because it was bright outside 🙄🤦🏻♀️. Asher is so theatrical I almost regard him like the boy who cried wolf. He screams the same when he pulls to stand and gets stuck, as he does for a face bonk to the floor. I’ve become a bit desensitized to it, which could be dangerous. Nothing pisses him off more than not feeding him at the pace at which he thinks you should, changing his shirt, and cleaning his nose. Basically, anything that involves him having to be still is out. Changing his diaper is surely comparable to muzzling an alligator. He is still nursing before naps and bedtime, but I’m counting down the days until he is done. Now that he is mobile, he doesn’t want to sit still for anything, including that. He literally tries to do Downward Dog while he is latched. It is annoying as shit. I won’t entertain it for long. I pop him back into position once or twice, but if he won’t surrender, I make him stop, telling him I don’t want to wrestle.
Asher leads with his head everywhere he goes, and I don’t mean that figuratively. His big noggin leads him face first off of any elevated surface and into chair legs, bed frames, and sliding glass doors. I’m considering putting a cone on him for his own safety 😂. Come to think of it, that would solve his occasional biting problem, too. Win-win! 🤷🏻♀️😉
Another change for our big boy: a new car seat. Ash has outgrown his infant carrier so he inherited Quinn’s seat, and Quinn got an upgrade. He likes it because I told Hulk would keep him safe in the car.
His first boo boo from his new bed 🥺🥺
Ash has gotten the hang of his straw cup but still can’t properly tip up a sippy cup, which is totally backwards as far as development goes. He has been exclusively nursed since he was about 5 months old, so he didn’t learn how to hold a bottle. Until about 6 weeks ago, he had no use for a cup, as I haven’t been pumping milk, and he didn’t need liquids with his puree diet. He loves drinking water now though. He is doing really well with eating and feels entitled to bites of anything anyone has. I now have to be mindful of where I sit food because Ash will take it as an invitation to feed himself. I was sitting on the floor with him, feeding him cottage cheese one day, and Quinn asked me to get something for him. I sat the bowl on the couch in their room, thinking it would be safe for a sec. I came back to a gigantic mess. He loves nothing more than eating, brushing his teeth, and stealing things. He was in the bathroom with me one day while I was brushing my hair after a shower. I turned around and he was gone, along with the bathroom rug. Anytime I empty the dishwasher, he crawls over and takes silverware out of the door. He and I woke up from nap one day before Quinn, so we were sitting in the living room. I was distracted, shopping for something on my phone, and Ash was crawling around. He went over by my desk, out of sight for a minute, and when he came back, he had Quinn’s scissors that had been left on the floor. I’m glad they’re very blunt and that Ash brought them straight to me 😳🤦🏻♀️. He responds when told to “Come here,” luckily.
Lesson learned 😩.
Nom nom.
He lovessss pasta 🍝
I’m fairly certain that Quinn was about this same age as Asher when he started getting the zoomies at bedtime. I guess learning to travel unlocks some sort of energetic compulsion that kicks into overdrive when he knows it’s about time to be still. He loves crawling back and forth on the couch, especially. I don’t like having him on there because he can fall off, obviously. I have to lay along the edge to roadblock him. He loves when Quinn sits on the couch while he’s on there because he makes a great obstacle to crawl over or attack.
Ash can play peekaboo, clap my hands together, blub his lips as he makes noises, and dances to anything that resembles music. He is cruising along furniture and can occasionally let go and lower himself to the floor. He has no fear and if I reach out to him, he will let go and fall into my arms. I feel as though he has many, many more boo boos in his future of learning to walk. He has picked up speed with his crawling, racing toward any noisy action. I’ve nicknamed him Ash the Flash, which Quinn really likes.
Ash has had some spurts of extreme attachment lately, treating me as though I’m another appendage to his body. If I’m out of sight, he is fine, but the moment he spots me, he’s stuck like glue. He’s in the pulling to stand on everything imaginable phase, so I can’t sit down without being used for a prop. I think Quinn gets jealous from all of the attention Asher gets in terms of holding him, so he constantly wants to climb on my lap as well. Some days I get to the point where I just want everyone to stop touching me. It can be really overwhelming.
The whining can be just as staggering. Is it okay to tell your kids that their brother has reached the threshold for whining tolerance, so he’s not allowed to whine anymore? 😬 I’ve seriously considered getting earplugs. It is so loud, all of the time. I remember when I used to leave my brother’s house and just take a deep breath and enjoy the silence of my car. Now, I want to escape to my car from my own house 😆.
Until recently, Quinn wasn’t aware that I leave the bed after he falls asleep. I always lay with him at bedtime and he would typically lay there for about half an hour before falling asleep. Lately, he’s been laying there, messing around, talking, doing anything he can think of to keep himself awake for an hour or more. I got tired of it taking over my decompression time and told him I was getting up. I told him I had things to do and I would be back when I get them done. He was okay with it at first, but now he doesn’t like it. He tries to guilt trip me by saying he’ll be scared, despite having Asher, 10 stuffed animals, a nightlight, and the answers to a list of questions he asks every night:
There’s nothing scary in here? No.
Outside doors are locked? Yes.
Sophie wouldn’t let anyone in? Like a robber or a tiger? Right.
She would bite them? Yes.
But she wouldn’t bite my cousins? Right.
I don’t want him to be scared but I’m at my limit right now. He’s been on an asshole streak lately and I can’t take much more. Limit testing, sassing, arguing with everything we say, and just being difficult in any way imaginable. I’m going to need a break really soon. I can’t pour from an empty cup.
Quinn was having a hard time a few days ago and wouldn’t stop wailing. We told him it is okay to be sad but we were overwhelmed with all of the noise and needed him to go into his bedroom for a bit. We told him he wasn’t in trouble and could come back out as soon as he was done doing that. He spent about 15 minutes in his room, calming down shortly after going in. I heard him talking to himself but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I yelled for him after awhile and asked if he was doing okay. He asked if he could come back out. I told him he could and that he wasn’t in trouble. He said, “I just needed some alone time like you do at bedtime.” Exactly 👍🏻.
He has been really hard to do much of anything with lately because of his commitment to refusing to do anything that isn’t his idea. Because of this, I honestly haven’t played with him much. Instead, I’ve tried calming my anxiety by organizing lots of different areas in our house. That’s my coping mechanism.
Our bathroom shelf
My craft supplies.
The boys’ room.
On a much smaller scale, Sophie is annoying me, too. She always seems to appear whenever anyone is eating. We joke about how ✨ pretty ✨ she is (aka not smart 🤪), but she has learned that Asher eating=multiple opportunities for Sophie snacks. While I don’t like her impeding presence during meal and snack times, I do appreciate her services when he drops food on the floor. I rarely have to pick it up 😂.
I love when she props her ear on things 😆.
What a life 🐶
We played a freeze dance/snowflake movement game. Quinn walked around the circle of snowflakes while I played music. When I stopped the music, he had to do the action stated on the snowflake: waddle like a penguin, roll like a snowman, fall like a snowflake, etc. we played a similar game at the library.
I made snowmen out of ping pong balls and wrote numbers on the back. Quinn rolled a die and counted the number on it, and then tried finding a matching number on a snowman to put into another container using the tongs.
I made Quinn pretend skis. It was harder than I expected for him 😆.
We made a handprint polar bear craft. January is when he decided to finally wear the Christmas pajamas I got him🙄.
We put a sheet over the climbing dome in the basement and made a tent, and then looked at the cool projections from the machine my friend Chris for Quinn for his bday. We pretended to be camping so Quinn caught us food to cook with his fishing puzzle, and Philip made a ‘fire’ with the rainbow pieces 😆.
Asher was mesmerized.
I made a ‘Floor is Lava’ game where Quinn had to hop along the foam circles to get pieces of a puzzle I made and bring them back to the ottoman. The puzzle was a picture of himself with balls stuffed in his shirt 😂.
We tried working on patterns, but the information wasn’t getting through. We’ll try again in a month or so and see if he’s more receptive.
I made Officer Quinn a ticket tin, repurposing the container my glass screen protector came in.
He enjoyed writing tickets to anyone “going too fast.” They just had a bunch of Q’s on them 😆.
Ash got one…
Sophie did, too. She was pretty bummed about it, as you can see.
We repurposed the box Asher’s replacement toy from Fisher Price came in to be a race car.
Quinn practiced waddling like a penguin by putting a balloon between his knees.
Ash has spent tons of time amusing himself with a balloon, as well.
Asher played with friends at the library…
❤️
And while this doesn’t look like anything to you, this is a picture of progress. Quinn has never wanted to sit on the floor with the other children at the library, always opting to sit with or by me, in a chair. Two weeks ago, he decided (on his own because there’s no other way, right?) he wanted to get a cushion and sit on the floor ❤️.
We made bird feeders to hang outside using plain gelatin and bird seed. I was hoping we could watch some birds from our front window by enticing them onto my weeping Cherry tree. Unfortunately, it rained really hard the day after we hung them and I think the gelatin dissolved. They all disappeared, so something ate them but I’m not sure of what 🤷🏻♀️.
🐦
We got our new wind and rain shield for the double stroller! I wish I could say we’ve logged tons of more hours outside this month, but we’re sitting at 9.5 for the year so far 🫤. Since the boys got sick, I didn’t want to take them out in the cold.
I ordered the boys each a mini Warmie animal to help keep them warm on cold walks. Ash got a dinosaur.
Quinn got a tiger. They were a surprise so they were excited.
After our last cold walk, Quinn wanted to warm up in his robe and drink hot tea, like I was drinking 😆.
We made it out when it got in the 50’s last week. We did a winter scavenger hunt and Quinn marked off items as we found them.
We couldn’t get everything, but we’ll try again.
He loves being outside ❤️. It makes him stop screaming for a while, so I love it, too 🤪.
We’re prepared for the next warm, rainy day! I got Quinn a giraffe rain suit 😃 🦒.
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