Lots of Learning

There's a lot of learning-new-things going on in this house.  It's been fun and exciting.  Let's start with Weston.  He has been taking steps for a few months now but still just wanted to crawl because it was easier and faster.  The first part of October he started walking more to get from point A to point B, and just this last week he's decided that walking is much better.  I didn't want him to walk for a long time because I was trying to hold onto him being a baby, but I don't know who I was kidding because even if he couldn't walk he was past the baby stage anyway.  It's so fun to have him walking around everywhere and I LOVE the cuteness of the little toddle he has (and all new walkers).  Every time I've tried to get video of it the battery on the camera is dead so I don't have video but here's a picture of him showing off his new skills.  (This is when he was just deciding that walking was cooler than crawling, he's much better now).

Such concentration!

As for Landon, he's been learning to use the toilet!  We tried potty training at the first of the summer and it was a terrible idea, he had a mini-nervous breakdown one day into it.  So we quit.  Since then we've just encouraged him to try now and then but there was no pressure at all and he was successful a couple of times over the past few months.  Landon does very, very well with a lot of preparation for big things and charts.  So at the beginning of October I printed out a calendar with the day highlighted that we were going to start the process.  Each day we would look at the chart and cross off that day then count down how many more days he had until he would say, "Bye, bye diapers!"  He loved it.  When he woke up that morning I reminded him what he was doing that day.  It started out rough.  He pretty much held it in all day--he had 1 accident, held it until we put a diaper on for nap, then had another accident.  That was it for the whole day.  Day 2 and 3 he had 1 accident first thing in the morning, day 4 was the worst with three accidents before 9:30 a.m. but then he's been great since then!  Wahoo!!!  I'm so proud of him and he's thrilled every time he does it.  I really need to get a video of the cheer that he does for himself half the time because it's so funny how excited he is with himself.  He's been great at telling me when he needs to go, he hasn't had to go when we've been out yet (whew!), and he's done fine at preschool.  He was ready for it so I'm glad we waited a few extra months, I'm sure it's been much easier than it would have been if I'd tried to force it when I was ready for him to be potty trained.