A Milestone, I Hope

Nick achieved a milestone! A gross milestone! Thanks to Erik having him sit on the potty chair and watching him like a hawk most of the day, he finally went #2 there. He got his promised ice cream cone, months and months after the promise was made.

We're hoping this was the breakthrough. Since he trained himself for #1, we assume that now he knows that it actually works, he will do the same for #2. If it wasn't the breakthrough...I will be sad.

I slept half the day yesterday without feeling any less tired. It is probably the running (as little as I have been doing) and it makes me feel like an old lady!

In other news...Nick hums his way through most activities. He even "read" a National Geographic book to me the other day by asking, for each page, "You wanna hear the lizard {or whatever other creature was on the page}?" When I said yes, he would hum a phrase for that animal. A different phrase for each animal.

As a result of his humminess and talkiness, there is almost never a silent moment here. I must have finally gotten used to it; it doesn't bother me. It does bother Xander, when he is trying to watch a movie, talk to me, play, or rest.

(Well, to be completely truthful, it is trying on those days when every sentence is opened with, "Mo-om! Mo-om! Mo-om! Talk to Nick!!")

This is just one more sign that Nick is really into music. I am going to have him study songs and composers along with Xander (to the best of his ability) because I think we would be shortchanging him not to encourage his musical interest.

Xander loves music, too, especially patriotic songs. He can identify orchestral instruments with great accuracy when we're listening to a song being played by those types of instruments. He even recognizes one or two classical music songs. I'm hoping that I can find some way (or some person) to teach him voice lessons so he can gain a stronger, more tuneful voice. Very soon, I will be teaching him to play the recorder. If he will keep up with it (cheerfully), I think he will love having the ability to "make songs" himself.

The boys played around experimenting with our keyboard yesterday. Erik played some tunes as well.