Monday, February 28, 2011

Nathaniel -- Two and a half (almost)


Nathaniel's vocabulary is finally starting to grow at a noticeable rate. He surprised me yesterday by say, "More cookie." In many ways he speaks more clearly than Edmund. Have I ever told you that Edmund has a lisp? His tongue gets in the way whenever he tries to say the s and th sounds. But even besides not having that lisp Nathaniel speaks more clearly. He does not have as much difficulty with sounds made in the throat, such as g and c/k. Just another difference between the two boys. His new word of the week so far is "read." And believe me, he uses it a lot.


Nathaniel is quite the bookworm. He can sits for an hour sometimes reading books. He loves to carry stack after stack of books to one of his favorite reading spots, then sit down and read each one page by page. Regular children's picture books are great, but some of the most common books he picks are the big story collections or children's encyclopedias. The more pages the better. When we go to the family's house he heads straight for the horse encyclopedias. The strangest and funniest book he likes to read is the Bible. Yes, our regular Bibles that don't have any pictures whatsoever. And he will sit there turning page after page, looking at each one.


Nathaniel didn't take well to the idea of potty training. Too much other stuff to do maybe, or else he didn't want to have to think about when he needed to go potty, but rather just let it happen when it happened. Whatever the case, it took longer than with Edmund to get him to actually tell us when he had to go. If we happened to ask him right when he needed to go we could catch it, but if we asked a few minutes to soon he would say no, then the next thing we would know he would be going in his pants. We used candy (Skittles in this case) as a reward for when he used the toilet and after a couple of weeks he picked up on the idea and got pretty good at telling us when he needed to pee.

Pooping on the other hand took much longer. He absolutely refused to go in the toilet for a few weeks, even to the point of sitting there for several minutes every hour and just holding it. Somedays he would find a quiet place or catch a quick moment when our attention was elsewhere to poop in his pants. With Edmund we gave him one candy for peeing and a second one if he pooped, too. With Nathaniel that second one hardly made a difference. We had to make it an extra four candies before it was enough incentive for him to start going on the toilet.

Thankfully all of that is behind us now. It has been many a week since he has had an accident. He almost never goes even when he is sleeping now.


Nathaniel is starting to pay attention to colors. Everything is "blue," though he can say red, black, and gray when he is prompted. He counts, "two, three, two, three," even lining up his toys and counting them at times. When asked how old he is he knows to say, "two." One of his favorite toys is a plastic Bob the the Tomato that was handed down to us by some friends. He doesn't sleep with his Gorilla any more, but does like to have him on the shelf at the head of the bed. He almost always greets Jeremiah with a hug and a kiss when Jeremiah wakes up from his naps. He calls Jeremiah either "Baby" or "Jack-Jack." He refers to himself as "me" and calls Edmund "you," though he does know all the other names of people in the family.


Dairy still bothers Nathaniel, so we are cutting back on how much we give him. We originally intended to take him off dairy completely, but that is proving harder than you may think. It is amazing how much of the food we eat has even a little dairy in it. So instead of going cold turkey we are slowing taking him off. So far I have switched from butter to oil when cooking for him and have dairy-free pancakes in the freezer for him to eat whenever we have pancakes for breakfast. I used our regular pancake recipe which we already use oil instead of butter when we make and replaced the milk with soymilk, cooking them in oil of course. The soymilk makes for a heavier pancake, so I may try adding a little more baking powder next time I make some. They aren't as flavorful either, but with jam on top he doesn't seem to notice. I am also looking into other alternatives for him.

All in all, Nathaniel is quickly progressing from baby/toddler to little boy. He is very energetic and curious (what child isn't). He is a handful for sure. :)

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