boys!

Wow I have not blogged in a while, seems like Facebook is getting most of my attention these days with the updates. Ok so blogger doesn't feel left out, thought I'd do a quick (did I say quick?) update on the happenings in our life...

JoJo is fully potty trained! woo hoo!! Pee and Poop! It took a while, and a lot of tears and mostly aggravation (for us) but everything that you read, is right. They WILL do it, but in their own time, and not yours. It's a very VERY frustrating process, and all I can say for anyone going through it right now, is HANG IN THERE....it doesn't matter that your child is 3 or 4 or whatever age and he's not potty trained...they will be soon enough and when they are ready. Oh and there is no magic switch, no magic toy, no magic stickers, no magic song that's gonna work for YOUR child, you just have to wait until they are ready.

Next, body parts. Ah yes. (grrrrr). Ok not so much grrrrr but I wish he wouldn't whip out his penis every 5 minutes to check it out! that's all. I mean really.  I know I know, he's exploring his body, yada yada, but honestly, he plays with it more than his toys lately. He asked what his "eggs" were called the other day, so I told him the real name for them and he asked if there were baby dinosaurs in them. Uh, that would be a big fat NO. I probably told him waaay too much information on what they were for....which reminds me....I need to get a book on body parts as he is at that age where he wants to know EVERYthing...I mean, everything.  What's this called, what's that for, how you spell this, who's that, why why why why why why.....arrghhhhhhh!! He never stops talking....AND he never stops moving!!  But, I like it that way :-)

He is about 38lbs (quarterback material I say) and almost 42" in height.  His shoe size is 11 almost 12, he will be in youth sizes soon! He wears a size 4 pants and size 5 Tops.  He is into Super Hero Squad, copies all the movements on the TV when they do the intro, dances and sings to ANYTHING and is quite a little performer!

We are teaching him patience and likewise he is teaching us patience.  Whenever we get a box from the Post office, he thinks its a TOY for him. Well, when it's NOT for him, he cries, he bawls, he has a little hissy fit and does a WWF on the floor. We are trying to teach him that not everything that comes in the mail is for him and next time if a box comes and its not for him, I told him I want him to say "OK Mommy"...and not cry, otherwise, when a toy does come, he won't get it.  We will see how that goes!

Lately he is into asking about family. About my Dad, my Mom, Clive's parents, his brothers, my sister, he wants to see photos of me as a "squishy baby" *ok so I was little squishy when I was a baby. He wants to see Clive when he was a baby, we have a video of him eating mac n cheese when he was about 18mths old and he LOVES watching that. He sees photos of Clive and I when we first met or after we got married and he says "I was not born yet".  He is just very very inquisitive.  He mentions the fact that "Grandma died" but still not sure if he understands what death is.

So, there's my update! As soon as my husband downloads the video we took of him dancing to Dancing Queen, by ABBA, will most like post that on......yup....Facebook!

Thanks for stopping by!

drama king, dogs and one more thing

So you can see from the below video how good he is at acting, very dramatic ending I must say.
He makes a great tiger don't you think!







and then there's dogs.

we don't go outside because of dogs. we don't go to the park because of dogs. JoJo is EXTREMELY scared of dogs. He was semi-afraid of them before, but after ONE particular incident, he will SCREAM everytime he hears the doorbell......

One of our neighbors has a dog called Daisy. She is maybe a year-ish old. Very active, very feisty dog. The breed is some sort of collie I think, probably a cross breed. Anyway. The doorbell rang and I opened the door, JoJo was standing behind me. DAISY just appeared, acting all crazy and peed on the mat outside the door, and was rolling around and just so hyper is scared the crap out of him. He started crying and I had to tell the girl, who owned the dog, to PLEASE keep this dog on a leash! This dog is constantly running the neighborhood, loose, terrorizing some kids, including mine. JoJo won't even sit in the back garden anymore because they let this dog run all over the place, and Daisy came into the back yard once and scared JoJo.

Now we are having to deal with this. Slowly we open windows and doors, for a short time. We point out dogs in the street, we make doggy noises and we show him doggy pictures and we talk about dogs. I am sure it will be a long time before he is comfortable around dogs. Especially crazy ones.

I told JoJo to just call the doggy Crazy Daisy. Yup that's her new name. He thought that was funny. So now he wants to look out the window and look for "crazy doggy". Maybe that's a good thing.

One more thing. We were at the commissary yesterday and I could tell this guy kept looking at us. He eventually came up to us and asked us if JoJo was Ethiopian. After some exchanging back and forth, he was from Ethiopia too and we were talking about JoJo and when he came home and how marvelous it was etc etc. Then he speaks to him in amharic. I haven't been teaching JoJo amharic and he wasn't even speaking until a few months after we came home with him.  I do think JoJo understood what the language was though, he seemed to smile and then turn his head away almost embarrassed. But it was great meeting someone from Ethiopia, we certainly don't meet that many over here, and I would love that for JoJo.  That's why I am seriously considering a culture camp in the next couple of years.

update

Well here's a little update on his progress...

Potty training:  going pee pee BY HIMSELF now! I don't have to go in there with him. He gets up on the stool, pulls his clothes down, sticks his belly out and pees in the toilet. yaay! He gets a little over the seat, he's not "holding" it yet...but he does pretty good! The best part is, is that he's doing it by himself, all I have to tell him now is "JoJo if you need to peepee go by yourself, ok?" and he says "ok".  I think he just needs to hear it.

Now, #2 is a completely different story. He'll do the poopoo dance for a few minutes (shuffling his feet and pacing the room in a circle really fast)...that's how we know he's "going". We used to ask him all the time "do you need to poo? do you need to go to the bathroom" and all the time he would say NO...then we'd get mad, threaten him, take stuff away... and feel really bad. SO we stopped doing that, it was stressing him out.  We now just leave him. We don't say anything, although I do have to slip in there "poopoo goes in the toilet". and leave it at that.  After he does his poo, in his pants, I USED to stress over wiping his butt...really get on him about it.  And he used to NOT want me to wipe his butt, we could go around in circles, oh for 30-45 mins and he would refuse to take his pants off.  Well, to heck with that.  Now I just leave it.  I just tell him "you let mommy know when you need to wipe ok". I just say it once, and however long it takes him, he will now come up to me and say "wipe now mommy" so I think we are making progress! little itty bitty steps.

He goes to bed around 8-8:30pm and wakes up at 5:30am on the weekdays and usually 6:30am on weekends.  He favorite food until recently was taco rice, now it's just plain ole rice. He favorite thing to watch is anything with dinosaurs in it. Favorite TV show is Dinosaur Train and movie is The Land of the Lost, because it has a big dinosaur in it. He loves to sing along to all the tunes in the shows and dances too. 

Starting next week we are going to try him at Karate.  The school he goes to, Santa Monica, has Karate, Yoga and Ballet lessons for 3+ yr olds.  I personally think he would do great in ballet, but my husband just won't have it. BOO!

He can count to 30, he might miss a couple, but he does really good. He knows his upper case and lower case letters. He can draw an almost smiley face. His coloring is more controlled and not so wild all over the paper. He can spell his name, he cannot write it yet. He loves it when we give him stuff to do, as long as he wants to do it of course!  (sweep, vacuum, put laundry in the basket, put something in the trash, get his clothes out for the day).  He can undress by himself, and dress his bottom half.  T-Shirts are still a struggle to put on, he puts his arm over the top through the neck hole and down, and tries to find the arm hole. It's quite funny to watch, but I usually end up helping him. He know his left shoe goes on his left foot and vice versa. He is learning the days of the week. I got him a chart and he loves running up to it every day and saying "TODAY IS......". of course he gets upset when it's not Saturday or Sunday.

thinking about starting him with gymnastics class on Saturdays, if he doesn't like the karate that is.

OH...and he LOVES playing TEACHER.  We play teacher every night and every weekend! It drives me NUTS!! He loves to get a pointer (usually something that's long like a back scratcher or stick or something) and points to the ABC and number charts we have on the wall and we have to say it all out loud. He says "stand up (please)" (we have to remind him to say it nicely) and then IF we do it correctly he says "Good Job Mommy! You get candy".  If Daddy doesn't say it right, he will say "no candy for you!". hahaha. Yes this is something I have yet to talk to the teachers about. The overuse of candy if the kids do a good job. No wonder he is so bloomin hyper in the evenings.  If he did not say it, I would never have known about the candy.

Oh and at school, starting next week, they are going to start going to the park from 9am-2pm.  Personally I think 5 hrs at the park is TOO long for a 3 yr old, so something else I need to talk to the teachers about.

I guess if I blogged more this post wouldn't be so long! LOL

phew.