30 Months Old

Noah loves cookies.

Noah is 2.5 years old today.  Sometimes I look at him lying in his crib and I just can't believe how big he is!  Where did my little baby go?  Every day his personality develops more and more...and he is clearly a little rascal!!  A couple of weeks ago, he started talking about his teacher, Ms. Jeannie, how she "kept saying stop" so I asked him what he was doing at school that she was telling him to "stop." He said "I keep running in classroom...Ms. Jeannie say stop." So I asked him if he listened to Ms. Jeannie and stopped running, and he said, with a big smile on his face, "Noooooooo..."  What a rascal! I was worried that he was causing a lot of trouble in the classroom so I mentioned this exchange to his teachers, and one of them just said, "Oh, Noah is such a lover [I'm not sure why she always describes him as a "lover"].  He's very sneaky, but he's so good natured and happy that you just can't be mad at him!"  Sigh.  I'm glad that he's good natured and happy, but it seems like he's just going to keep trying to smile his way out of trouble.  I have to admit that when he flashes those rascally smiles at me, I just can't help but laugh.  So sneaky.  He is also super whiny.  If a toy falls on the ground, or you close a door that he wanted to close, or if you turn the page of a book that he wanted to turn, he often goes into crying and whining mode right away.  Kind of annoying.  But again, it's so hard to keep a straight face and tell him to stop whining when he says, "I need a hug..." or "I need a kiss..." through his tears.  Terrible two's, we have arrived.  Or at least I hope it's the terrible two's...because then at least this phase will pass.

In other news, potty training is....progressing.  In general, Noah still doesn't like to stop play to use the potty, but he's used the potty successfully many times now, and has even initiated visits to the potty a few times.  And even though he still hates diaper changes, every once in a while he will ask that I change his diaper.  I've heard of those potty training in one day books, but I think Noah is going to have to be converted slowly.  I am convinced that he will eventually get used to using the potty over time and then maybe with a little push from me, it'll all just work out.  Haha!  I am also not interested in putting underpants on him and letting him pee all over the house until he learns....that will be the last strategy, if we are a week before school starts in the fall and I'm desperate.  I just hope it doesn't come to that.

Napping has become an issue this month.  Noah still takes naps in the afternoons, at around 2:00.  He naps until 4:00, sometimes 4:30, but then doesn't fall asleep at night until 10:00 sometimes!  We put him down for night night between 8:30 and 9:00, and he doesn't protest, but soon after we leave the room, we hear, "Where are you Mommy....where are you...Mommy where are you...."  The past few nights we've had to go back into his room multiple times to read more bed time stories before he finally fell asleep....and then he still wakes up at 7:30 the next morning!  Yesterday I tried waking him up a bit early from his nap so that maybe he wouldn't have such a hard time going down at night, but he was dead asleep.  I went in there, turned on the lights, nudged him, Sarah was in there being noisy, and he would not wake up!  This is going to be a serious problem when we move in a couple of weeks and transition him to the big boy bed.  At least right now he's still in his crib and doesn't try to escape.

Noah doesn't like to go to sleep, but once he's sleeping, he doesn't like waking up.........kind of like me.  Hahaha..

Finally, the most exciting thing that's happened this month: chopsticks.  Yesterday, he kept asking me for "chock siks" around lunch time, and I kept thinking he was asking me for chocolate, because he had just been talking about chocolate milk.  He kept saying, "I want hold my chock siks" and I just kept saying no, no chocolate.  Hahaah... Finally I realized what he was saying, so I figured why not, let's give it a try again.  So I gave him his chopsticks, briefly demonstrated the motion by opening and closing the chopsticks while he was holding them, and then he did it!  I ended up tearing up his grilled cheese sandwich up into pieces for him to eat using chopsticks, and then he ate some blackberries too... I'm pretty sure he picked up those blackberries faster than when he uses a fork.  Here's a video:



Yay!