Another Month Goes By

This past week Jake turned 17 months and Samantha made it another month closer to the big 3! We've seen lots of changes over the past month. Jake went from 2 naps a day to 1; luckily for me, Jake and Samantha nap at the same time in the afternoon. Jake also stopped drinking from a bottle. We had weened him down to just 1 bottle before bed and this last week we really noticed him drinking a lot of milk from his sippy cup at meals and decided to take away that last bottle. So far, so good! Jake is saying more and more words, and using sign language. He will drop whatever is in his hands to sign "more". Just this weekend he started putting his finger to his lips to say "shhhh". Lots of drool comes out of this mouth during the "shhh", but it is still too cute!

Samantha had a mysterious situation this week that we thought surely must be a bladder infection. She had a bit of a rash and was screaming bloody murder right before she had to go to the bathroom. One catheter and a urine sample showed that she did not actually have any infection. Her little rash went away, and now she hasn't been bothered by any pain. Hopefully it was just the rash, but she's had worse rashes before that didn't result in the reaction she had. The nurse asked if she was toilet training yet (no), and said that kids at this age who are either toilet training, or are getting ready to have some really bizarre stuff going on as a result. Yikes! Can't wait for that toilet training!

7 months ago I posted this, and realize now that Samantha's protesting and whining was nothing then. He newest 2's behavior is to say she wants one thing, and then when you are doing that one thing to say she wants another thing. So, you stop doing the first thing to do the second thing, only to have her say she wants the first thing. Are you with me?? This behavior was happening a bit 7 months ago, but not to the degree it is now. Over the weekend we came home from somewhere and she wanted me to get her out of the car, but then wanted Chris, so I stopped coming toward her side of the car, but then she said she wanted me, so I started to get her out and then she said she wanted Chris (this back and forth changing her mind could go on FOREVER). I don't even remember now who got her out of the car, but you can be certain that it wasn't who she wanted to get her out! It really feels like we are up the creak without a paddle sometimes. It is so frustrating to go into a situation knowing that it is going to be a battle. We certainly do our fair share of distracting and redirecting, but sometimes there is just nothing that can be done to avoid the struggle. Let this be a quick phase!