So Many Transitions...
In the last several months, Jake has had to make a lot of transitions in order to prepare for the arrival of his baby sister. The first transition we decided to tackle was potty training. Jake started showing an interest in using the potty somewhere around 18 months, but I wasn't ready for full blown potty training at that point, so we just let him go when he would ask to go. We bought him his own potty, and he went pee pee on it pretty much the first time he sat on it. In my mind, I wanted to wait until he seemed more ready before really doing any hard core training, so we waited until he was 2 1/2. Within a couple of days of training, he stopped having accidents, and started wearing big boy underwear during the day. We still put him in pull ups at night and at nap time, but other than that, he is doing pretty well. Going poop on the potty has not been so easy, however, and he has definitely shown his stubborn streak in this area. Thankfully, he is a private little guy, and will only go during nap time or at bedtime, so we just put him in a pull up during those times. Everyone keeps saying not to push the issue, so we deal with it for now. Any helpful suggestions would be welcomed, though : )
Ironically, Jake's reading the book Where's the Poop?
The next transition we decided to tackle was moving Jake from his crib to a toddler bed. I honestly think he would have slept in his crib until he literally wouldn't fit in it anymore, but we thought he probably needed to make the change before that point : ) We had thought about getting him a toddler bed, and just using his furniture for the new baby, but when we mentioned that, he was not excited about giving any of his things to a new baby. Thankfully, though, we had friends offer to let us try out their son's toddler bed before making any decisions, and Jake decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, the first night we tried it, Jake stood up on the bed and fell backwards, knocking his head on his dresser, causing a giant knot to form on the back of his head. We just knew he wouldn't want to get back in the toddler bed, because he was too scared, but he said he wanted to, so we gave it another try. He slept great that night and called for us to come get him when he woke up the next morning. The best part, though, was that he learned his lesson and does not stand up in his bed anymore. It has also been nice that he is one of those kids who stays in his bed, just like he would his crib, and won't get out unless we tell him it's okay. We have a video monitor, and it's so funny to watch him, because if he drops something out of his bed, he'll look at the door first, then quickly get out of bed to pick up whatever fell and then run back to his bed so we won't find out.
The last major transition was moving Jake into his new room. We only have three bedrooms, so we had to move our guest room/office to our basement/playroom in order to have a new room for Jake. We let him help pick out new bedding and paint to get him excited about moving to a new room, and the transition went really smoothly. He LOVES his new room. We also brought more toys up to his room, because there is a lot more room to play than he had in the nursery, and it has been nice to have him spend more time in his room playing. I've posted a few pictures of what his room looks like now.
Jake's New Interests...
For those of you who have been following Jake's cooking career, I am sad to say that this is no longer his greatest interest anymore. In fact, we rarely even watch Ray Ray anymore. He still pretends to cook Ryan and I dinner on occasion, but his new interest is definitely playing with his cars and trucks. I'm pretty sure this makes his daddy a lot happier than his interest in cooking did : ) Ryan and I both liked to play with cars when we were younger (I was quite the mixture of girlie girl and tomboy when I was little) so it is no surprise that Jake likes to play with cars. I've realized, though, that as an adult, I'm not so fond of playing cars. I have a lot of fun watching Jake play, though, especially when he has conversations about where his cars are going or what they are doing. The little men that drive his cars also have very interesting conversations.
Jake also likes to "drive"cars (Chuck E. Cheese cars, police shopping carts, and even fire trucks)
With the baby coming, Jake has also taken quite an interest in taking care of his "baby." He is not allowed to have a baby doll, per insistence of his daddy, but he has decided to make one of his stuffed animals his baby. He changes his baby's diaper (she poops more than any other baby I know), puts some of Gabby's outfits on her, including shoes, and places her in all of the baby stuff (i.e. pack n play, swing, bouncer, etc.) that I've recently brought out again. He also likes to give her a bottle, and hands her to me when she's crying. I think it's cute that he is so caring, but I just hope that is the case when the real baby gets here. He keeps telling me he will help change her poopie diapers, which I think is ironic since we are still changing his. Oh well, at least he's offering to help.
Playdough has also become a big favorite in our house. His favorite thing to do with it is break it into tiny little pieces and pretend to cook it, which is probably my least favorite thing he does with it, since he gets it all over the place. He's also gotten to the point where he's started being influenced by commercials on TV. In fact, we have acquired a playdough ice cream maker and hamburger maker due to this influence. Now when he sees commercials for these two things, he talks to the kids in the commercial and says, "Hey kids, I've got that one." I have to say that Ryan and I at least had some fun with these gadgets, as you can see from the pictures above. I'm just thankful that he is no longer waking up every morning and asking to make ice cream or hamburgers, though, because for days, and even weeks after buying them, he literally asked to play with them 24/7. I love that he's creative, but playdough is soooo messy!
One of Jake's greatest interests these days is playing with friends. We try to have play dates as often as we can. He really likes to play with my friend Ashlee's girls because he gets to play with all of the things his daddy doesn't want him to play with, like baby dolls and doll houses. He also loves watching kids, especially older kids, and tries to interact with them no matter where we are. He has a really hard time eating at restaurants, because he is obsessed with watching or talking to any kids that are around us. I find it humorous that he's like this, because he is a pretty shy kid and takes a while to open up to people, especially strangers, but when it comes to kids, he is all up in their personal space, stranger or not, as long as it is on his terms.
Funny Things...
There have been so many times I wish I had the video camera out to capture something Jake has said, because he has said some really funny things. Unfortunately, I never remember to videotape him, and pregnancy brain has sucked all of memory, so I may have trouble remembering a lot of what he has said. I will try to list as many as I can, though, so you can see why he cracks us up. Ryan's favorite thing recently was when he was holding Jake, and Jake grabbed the sides of his face and said, "Hey, you my best friend." When Ryan wants to get Jake's attention, he grabs the side of his face and makes him look at him, so I guess Jake really wanted Ryan's attention. Pregnancy has brought out some funny things, like Jake thinking baby Gabby is in his belly sometimes. He also thinks it's funny to tell me to look at how Gabby is making his belly button poke out just like mine. When a cartoon is over or even a commercial that he likes, he says, "I miss that show." A funny thing he says that shows his lazy side is, "This is hard work." He might be referring to walking up the stairs when he wants to be carried, carrying something he wants us to carry, trying to poop on the potty, or any other physical activity that he just doesn't want to do. When he tells me this, I like to point out that I am always carrying a baby in my belly that keeps getting heavier, on top of a 32 pound toddler who wants to be carried up two, sometimes three flights of stairs when he's tired, but I don't think he quite gets the point.
He is also obsessed with how people feel, including himself, Ryan and I, people we are around, or even people on TV. It all started with him saying, "I'm sad," all the time, even when there seemed to be no reason for him to be sad. I guess that was the first feeling he really identified with. Then he thankfully moved on to telling us he was happy. He likes to ask us, "Mommy, you happy? or Daddy, you happy?" I don't know if he needs the reassurance or what, but it's always funny when he asks. He's recently added angry and frustrated to his list of feelings, which is really nice when he comments on other people feeling this way, especially when they can hear him. Maybe instead of a chef, he is going to be a counselor or psychiatrist. He definitely likes to analyze things.
Crazy Spring Weather in Missouri...
Missouri weather is always crazy, but this Spring has been especially bizarre. On the first day of Spring, we had a snowstorm that produced enough snow for Jake to build his only snowman of the season. Although we had a lot of snow this year, Jake didn't get to play in it a lot, because he just happened to be sick or recovering from being sick, or it was just too cold to be outside. So, I guess it was nice to have one last snow, even if it was in the Spring. We always have storms in the Spring, but we had one particular hail storm that seemed to last forever, and just happened to be during Jake's nap time. I was so afraid he would wake up and get scared, but he slept through the whole thing. I took pictures, because it looked like the ground was covered in snow. We also had a week early on in the Spring that was really warm, so Jake and I got his water table out and played with it several days that week. After that, though, the weather cooled off and got rainy, so we've had several weeks of typical Spring weather.
Finally, the Holidays...
Halloween
In preparation for Halloween, we went with some friends to a pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin to carve. Unfortunately, I think we picked the coldest day of Fall to go, which didn't make for a very pleasant experience. You might be able to tell from the pictures that Jake was not having a good time. He did manage to pick out a pumpkin, though, and we were very excited to carve it. Ryan always prides himself in carving a creative pumpkin, and this year, Jake was excited to help. Last year, he helped a little, but he didn't like getting the gooey pumpkin guts on his hands. We sort of waited until last minute this year to carve our pumpkin, and when we got home from running errands on pumpkin carving night, we noticed that our pumpkin was missing from our front porch. Someone had stolen our pumpkin, which was a little bit hard to explain to Jake. It was too late to go buy another pumpkin, and most stores were sold out because it was so close to Halloween, so as a result, we did not get to carve a pumpkin this year. Hopefully next year will be better. This incident reminded me of my high school days, when some of my friends got caught stealing pumpkins from other people's houses. If any of you are reading this, now you know how those people probably felt : )
Jake had so much fun at Halloween this year. We let him choose his costume this year, and he decided he wanted to be a kangaroo. It was between a kangaroo and a monster, but we couldn't find the monster costume in his size. Anyway, he made a very cute kangaroo. He especially liked the fact that there was a little joey that came with the costume. He doesn't need to know that he was dressed as a mommy kangaroo : ) Although he is typically slow to warm up to new people, he showed a completely different personality when Trick or Treating. We went with some of our friends in their neighborhood, and he knocked on doors, said, "Trick or Treat," and then said, "Thank you," when they gave him candy. Who knew candy could be such a motivating factor in getting a kid to be more outgoing. He rarely gets candy, so he was VERY excited to get to indulge for once. Thankfully, after a couple of days of having him ask for candy constantly, I hid his pumpkin full of candy, and he eventually forgot about it. Ryan and I did not, however, and greatly enjoyed the yummy goodness.
Thanksgiving
We celebrated Thanksgiving by visiting our families. We drove to Arkansas for Thanksgiving to spend a couple of days with Ryan's family and then drove back to West Plains to spend some time with my family. Jake has finally gotten to an age where he likes to play with all of his cousins, and it doesn't take a lot of time for him to warm up to our families, which is nice. That's one hard thing about living away from all of our family. We also decided to tell most of our family that I was pregnant. We had already told our parents, but the rest of our family didn't know yet. They were all rooting for the baby to be a girl, especially on Ryan's side of the family, because most of the grandkids are boys. I guess God must have heard them and decided we needed another girl in the family.
The Christmas Nightmare
Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays, but it is becoming less my favorite as the years go by. I don't know what it is about West Plains, but every year when we go visit our families for Christmas, the stomach flu is prevalent in one or both of our families. Or, it is just going around the whole city. Needless to say, almost every year since Ryan and I have been married, one or both of us has managed to get the flu while we are in West Plains for Christmas. This year, we somehow managed to avoid getting it, but our poor little guy managed to get a pretty bad case. In fact, we missed opening presents with both of our families this year because Jake was sick. Thankfully, we opened our presents with each other before we left Kansas City. Those are about the only Christmas pictures I was able to take. As much as I HATE the stomach flu, I definitely would have preferred having it over having to watch Jake feel so bad. The fun thing is, about one week after we got back home from West Plains, Jake got sick again. This time it lasted much longer, and the side effects of dehydration (dealing with two months of constipation) was absolutely horrible.
Easter
Easter was a much better experience for us! Once again, Jake got to enjoy a holiday that involved getting candy. His Aunt Jen organized an Easter egg hunt for all of the cousins at Ryan's parents' house, and Jake loved finding eggs. He had to open each one up to see what was inside, though, before he would look for another one. His older cousins were so nice, too, and would leave eggs for him to find. He had a great time. This was the first trip that he got really sad when we had to leave. I love that he is starting to feel so close to our families, because there were times when he was younger that he was so shy and even scared at times to get close to some of our relatives. Now he talks about them all the time and says how much he misses them.
