Milestones and catching up

Woah, the minute I don't make time to blog, I have a million things to say! Or show, more like it. So come along with me for a little pictoral journey.

Elijah (or "Ijah", as Andrew calls him) had been sleeping thorough the night (from 8 or 9 until around 6 in the morning, then back down again for a few more hours until Andrew woke up at 8!), but started to get up at least once every night to eat. I started to get very weary of this and suddenly thought (or actually my mom thought) "Hey! Maybe the little guy's hungry." So Grace and I gave him his first taste of banana.


As you can see, it wasn't a big hit at first.


Soon though, he was snogging down 3/4 of a banana per shot!! And that was after a full "both sides" meal of breastmilk. Woah. He was hungry.

So now he eats barley cereal mixed with banana, and today he'll try some sweet potato that I baked this morning. For those who care, his first taste of banana happened in Florida on September 11th.

Andrew has started potty training. I am a firm believer in "windows training", which is to say: I don't believe that there is a hard and fast rule that says what time you train your kids to do any one thing. You look for windows (which are usually fairly obvious) of opportunity and take them if it works with what you're doing in your life just then. Andrew probably could have started potty training a few months ago, but because of everything that was going on in our lives, I knew it would be time wasted on my part. Soooo....

On October 20th (this past Thursday) we went out to buy the new potty. I explained it to Andrew and told him that it was his, and he proudly held it on his lap as we went to the check-out. When we got home, he and Elijah tried to figure out exactly what it should be used for (aparently my detailed instructions were like water through as seive).


Because really -- there's a cup, so shouldn't we be drinking out of it?


OK, Mommy didn't react too well to that one. Well, no matter, if all else fails, throw the thing! That's always a good idea.


Aha! So this is what she was talking about. Cool!*


I have never cleaned up so much pee in my life. But he does get everything in there more than not, which is good. Also, not to go into too much gory detail, but he pooped in there yesterday and today, which is a big step. Usually toddlers are very upset about the idea of pooping anywhere but their diaper (Andrew feels this way too), but I was able to convince him otherwise.

Andrew will eat almost anything as long as it's dipped, and usually the dip is ketchup. Here he is dipping soup:


Yesterday (finally, I'm caught up!) Andrew and I made the Fabled Date Nut Bread from Sarah K's family recipe. That stuff is amazing, I tell you, and I have no idea why it took me so many years to start making it. Every year Sarah's family would bake up truckloads of the stuff in cleaned out coffee cans and hand them out at Christmas time. They'd be wrapped in foil with a little festive bow, and the bread would be so dark and sticky that you had to use a can-opener on the bottom of the can and push the bread out that way. There were some people who didn't use their noggin and thought the only way to get the bread out was by scooping it out with a spoon. But scoop they did, because that bread was not to be wasted! The best thing about the bread is that the longer it sits, the better it gets. There was this story (included in at least one of her dad's christmas letters, always taped to the bread) of some lady who kept hers for some unbelievable amount of time and when she finally decided to eat it it was still good. Sarah would have to back me up on that one, because I don't remember the details of it.

Anyway, Andrew helped me by eating flour (Mmmm! Good!)

He ate at least a 1/4 cup of it straight before I could add anything else, so I wasn't sure if they'd still turn out right, but they did

Elijah wasn't allowed to eat any, but he bounced away for most of the baking time in his jolly jumper:

As you can see, he was very jolly.





*Yes I do realize that Andrew will be mortified** in about 10 years when he realizes that his first potty attempt was blogged, but the picture was just so damn cute I couldn't help it. Anyway, it's a modest one, so I'm ok with that.



**If he ends up like Greg, he won't be mortified.*** He'll be proud.



***Have you ever read a footnote to a footnote to a footnote?