Milestones

Last week, Daigoro successfully read about fifteen different words independently of prompting after Marli wrote them down for him. We celebrated by taking him to the local library and getting him a library card.

This past weekend, Kenshin requested to sit on the toilet (seat) and peed on his own.

Daigoro has become very interested in Pokemon after I bought him a video game (Pokemon: Colosseum) which features them. I had tried to sell him on Animal Crossing or a few other less competitive games, but he was very interested and I figured that I couldn't just buy completely innocuous kids' games forever.

Daigoro is expanding his eating tolerances, but Kenshin remains firmly in the starch and meat category.

Kenshin and Daigoro have been invited to a few birthday parties at a local playground/party room location - it's a lot of fun seeing them rip around having a grand old time.

Not much snow so far this year -making it hard to make snowmen, snowballs or go for sled runs. We'll see how the rest of February pans out.

Smiley Face

Kenshin is now smiling quite frequently. He lights up with happiness when he's feeling sociable. It's quite a sight. He continues to grow like a weed and is now big enough (at two months) to fit into 3-6 month clothing. Like a typical breast-fed baby, he has rolls upon rolls of fat. My mother says that my brother was once nicknamed "Bud" for his resemblance to the common Chinese and Japanese depiction of a laughing, obese incarnation of Buddha . Our not-so-little Kenshin seems to be following in his Uncle's footsteps. We occasionally call Kenshin "Pudge" for similar reasons.

Daigoro voluntarily used his potty yesterday for the very first time. We've been using a "wetting" doll (complete with potty) as an example for a few weeks now. He's been playing with the young three-year boy that I mentioned we met in the park and seems to have been inspired to trying going potty on his own. The three-year old (I'll develop an alias for him if it looks like he'll be a frequent playmate, as he seems to be becoming) appears to be a good influence on Daigoro, and vice versa.

He also seems to developed a taste for asparagus (Daigoro: " 'spargus"), which is great for nutrition but bad for diaper smell. If you haven't eaten asparagus recently (or not at all, or if you're not genetically pre-disposed), you're not likely to know what I mean, but I assure you, it's pungent.

Curiously, he also likes peas and brocolli, but is not a big fan of carrots, green beans, peppers or many other common vegetables. I don't know if this is some odd trend for him to like foods that children traditionally hate. Perhaps I should serve him some Brussel sprouts.