Adlai at Twenty Three Months
Adlai turned twenty-three months old just before Thanksgiving which means we're spending time deciding how to celebrate his twenty-fourth month. Since my birthday, in early November, Adlai has been singing "Happy Birthday". Recently, I've taught him to say "TWO!" when ever anyone asks his age. He says it with gusto every time. Luckily, all the Kagle boys will be in town for the event.
Adlai has moved from using and repeating words or phrases to combining them into small sentences. "Where did Mama go?" "I want that!" "It's MINE!" "Elmo needs a binkie!" You know, the things that you'd expect an almost-two-year-old to say. If you ask him if he wants X or Y he will sometimes say X instead of his previous habit of always repeating back the last word of the sentence, Y. He now gets the joke when we ask him if he wants something and he says "NO" and then we ask him if he wants something else and he says "No" so we keep asking about different items, "A hole in the head", "World domination", "A pony"... eventually he laughs and it takes him out of his negative funk.
Speaking of negative funks, Adlai seems to go through days of being super cranky before the fogs lifts and he spends a day being silly and happy. No one wants to be around a cranky Adlai. He starts the cranks early in the morning with the diaper change and really doesn't stop screaming until after throwing dinner, refusing a bath, and wrangling into pajamas is over. Luckily, he seems to be having fewer of those days as of late but, really, we're not expecting the little tyrant to gain control over his emotions for at least the next year.
On the positive side, he has been spending more time enjoying Simon and Simon has been nothing but patient with his little brother - engaging him in the type of play he enjoys (mostly running trains along tracks). Adlai refuses baths these days in favor of showers (which he hates) only because he wants to shower with Simon (really, to spray Simon in the face with the shower head). A couple of weeks back Adlai wanted to pee in the toilet just like Simon so the boys stood in front of the toilet pre-shower and made their first attempt at crossing urine streams. This was Adlai's first attempt at using the toilet and it was a success!
Having been badly burned by early potty training with Simon, we have done very very little to encourage Adlai to use or have any interest in the toilet. Amazingly, last night he asked to go "poo poo" and ran to the toilet to try to stand in front of it and pee. After some assistance, he peed twice. So we have some hope that, this time, things might be easier. We aren't placing any bets.
We took the boys to Santa Cruz to see the migrating Monarch butterflies a few weeks ago and it turned out to be such a nice day that we ended up at the beach and they ended up half naked, running through the surf. We visited Sacramento for Thanksgiving - Simon walked his first dog and Adlai threw lots of rocks on a walk along the American River Parkway. Last weekend we took the boys on a Roaring Camp Railroad steam train through the redwoods which turned out to be a bit of a bust. Adlai loves trains but is most interested in train crossing signals. Not a single signal was found and less than a quarter of a way through the trip Adlai wanted to get off. Simon was exhausted from lack of sleep the night before. We had more fun after the ride at the park near the train station where Adlai fed the ducks and Simon made a friend.