Growing Up

Both kids seem to be at really fun ages right now.


Of course we know that each age and stage comes with its own particular joys and challenges, but there just seems to be a lot of fun stuff going on right now with these crazy yahoos:


First up, this handsome little man:


Juan Pablo is really enjoying "school" right now. On Monday morning, while Jeff and I were still getting ready upstairs, he went down to the basement to wait for us. We must have been taking too long, because after a while we heard him singing and doing our regular morning prayers by himself. By the time we came downstairs, he had finished prayer time, and was sitting in the schoolroom, almost done with his worksheet for the day! We're talking about the letter "M" this week, and he had already colored in the worksheet, and had done a fantastic job tracing all the capital and lowercase M's on the sheet as well. It was a very encouraging moment...maybe we can actually pull of this homeschooling thing! We've also seen Juan Pablo really seem to be growing in compassion lately. He seems more conscious of Ana Luisa's capabilities and needs, and really tries to help her out when he can. I've been working out during Ana Luisa's naptime, and usually Juan Pablo draws or colors while I work out, and then we read books together. Last week, Ana Luisa woke up from her nap earlier than usual, while I was still in the shower. I heard her wake up on the monitor, then heard Juan Pablo's footsteps as he ran upstairs. I got out of the shower and got dressed as quickly as I could, and by the time I got up to her room she was standing in her crib, and Juan Pablo was sitting in the rocking chair next to the crib, rocking and singing her a lullaby. She was still crying, but he just kept singing and trying to comfort her, which is a huge step for this little boy who usually responds to his sister's cries by trying to make even more noise than she is making. Progress.


The biggest news in Juan Pablo's world is that he wears big boy underwear now. Jeff and I decided long ago that we weren't going to push the potty training too much with him. He likes to do things on his own terms, so our hope was that if we just gave him enough time, he would pretty much potty train himself. Over the last year or so, more and more of his friends have moved on from diapers to underwear, and he showed very little interest in doing the same. Occasionally he would ask to wear underwear, but would never be able to wear it and stay dry more than a couple hours. Then last Thursday he asked to wear underwear, and this time, he just went and used his potty all on his own whenever he needed to. As we expected, he's taken the potty training in his own hands. He doesn't like to be told to sit on the potty, and he wants to do it all himself. Which has been really great at home...we've barely had to do anything except occasionally bribe him with a Hershey's Kiss when we know that he must have to go but he's not willing to take time out of his busy schedule to stop and use the potty. The challenge has been leaving the house, because when you're three years old, it's a little harder to go use a restroom all by yourself with no help. But this is Juan Pablo we're talking about so of course he did try. Since he's an all-or-nothing kind of kid, he insisted on wearing his underwear out of the house from day one. No slowly transitioning into it and practicing a little more at home for this guy. Over the weekend he managed to stay dry during our morning outings by simply holding it somehow. Then Monday he had an accident at a friends house, and put himself in a diaper the rest of the day. We stayed home all day on Tuesday, to build up his confidence, and by Wednesday morning, he was maybe a little too confident. We went on our usual grocery shopping trip to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. At the end of the Trader Joe's portion, I insisted he sit on the toilet for a while, with no results. When we got to the end of the Whole Foods part of the trip, I asked if he had to go, and he insisted adamantly that he did not. I told him that we would sit and eat our snack, and then go try sitting on the toilet again before we left. We finished our snack, and as I was cleaning Ana Luisa up, he suddenly went running towards the restroom area. I followed him as quickly as I could, and went into the family restroom first, figuring that's where he would be since that's the only one we had ever gone into for diaper changes. He wasn't there. I walked back out and heard him crying so I went next door into the women's room. Not there. That meant he was in the men's room. I cracked the door open a couple inches and said, "Juan Pablo?" He shuffled to the door, pants and underwear around his ankles, soaking wet, crying and said, "I fell in the toilet!" It was so hard not to laugh while I changed his clothes and reassured him that it was ok, and that next time instead of trying to go on his own, maybe he could tell me and I could help him so that he wouldn't fall in the toilet. Of course Jeff and I laughed about it the rest of the day....it's just such a Juan Pablo thing to do. Our crazy, independent little man.On Tuesday, Juan Pablo also turned three and a half. We have no intention of making a big deal out of or celebrating half birthdays, but with the potty training in full swing and Juan Pablo's recent interest in being a "big boy", we decided to use the event to reinforce this. It was a good opportunity to talk about what a half is and get a little math lesson in there. We also made a cake together. Juan Pablo cracked the eggs, measured all the dry ingredients, and mixed the batter together. Then he decorated the cake all by himself. Because that is what big boys do, apparently. They also make funny faces.
Now this means that he always asks for three AND A HALF of everything. Three and a half chicken nuggets please. Just three and a half more minutes. He was very distraught when we left Trader Joe's the other day and he realized that he had only asked for three stickers instead of three and a half. At least he's learning math, right?

And this little girl is also growing up...

...perhaps a little TOO fast.

Now that she's all caught up on her gross motor skills and has both her lip and palate repaired, Ana Luisa's language skills really seem to be improving. We went to see a speech pathologist a few weeks ago, just to get a baseline on how she's doing, and she was right in the normal range for her age for both receptive and expressive communication. The speech pathologist showed us a few tricks to help her learn to pronounce her m, b and p sounds better, since she still needs to figure out how to use her new palate to block air flow through her nose. She had been calling Jeff "mama" for the longest time, and within a week of her appointment, with a little practice at home, she started to be able to say "papa"! This is good, because she has really become a daddy's girl over the last couple months. When she wakes up from her nap, the first thing she does is look for my phone so she can call papa at work. As soon as I start getting dinner together she starts to look out the window to see if he's coming, and when his car pulls in the driveway she goes crazy, jumps up and down, runs in circles yelling "Yay papa! Yay papa!" at the top of her lungs. It's the cutest thing ever.

And as always, she thinks Juan Pablo is pretty much the coolest person ever to walk the planet and so she imitates everything he does. Seriously, everything. Mostly he enjoys it, but sometimes it does drive him crazy. For example, since he's been using the potty, she wants to be doing it to. While he was using his little potty she would try to pull it out from underneath him so that she could sit on it, and when that didn't work, she would try to just sit on top of him. Now that he's using the big toilet more and more, she follows him into the bathroom, gives him hugs and kisses while he's sitting on the toilet, and as soon as he's done then she wants a turn sitting up there herself. Very sweet and flattering in a way, but really he would appreciate it if she could stay at least 24 inches away from the toilet while he is sitting on it, thank you.

Of course that means that a lot of her language practice comes from him too...and he's a very encouraging teacher. A couple weeks ago they were watching a Baby Einstein DVD together, and I overheard the following exchange:

Juan Pablo: "Ana Luisa, puedes decir tortuga?" ("Can you say turtle?")
Ana Luisa: "Goguga."
Juan Pablo: "Muy bien! Puedes decir ballena asesina?" ("Very good! Can you say killer whale?")
Ana Luisa: *says something completely unintelligible*
Juan Pablo: "Muy bien!"

It's fun to see both kids learning and discovering so many new things every day. And it's fun to see them playing together more and more. This is what they did a couple days ago while I was making dinner:
Juan Pablo went and got blankets while Ana Luisa climbed up on the couch. He tucked her in with her favorite photo book on one side, and then he got settled in on the other side. They read, made funny noises and faces back and forth, laughed and played together for a long time. So cute. We're excited to see what they come up with next...