Little Kite Girl

Because seriously.

I am really bad at remembering Cy’s monthly birthday lately.  On the 19th of every month I say to myself, “We’re getting closer.”  But I’m never sure to WHAT exactly.  He’s full of mystery, that one.  And I just can’t even bring myself to understand that he’ll be 3 in a couple of months.

So Cy.  What can I say about Cy? He is really rather witty lately.  And he REMEMBERS.  Oh, how he remembers.

He got a globe beach ball at the library (for completing a certain number of hours of reading or listening) and after we blew it up he looked at it and said, “Where Russia, Mommy?”

Me: Blank stare while I remember that one of  his best little friends has been visiting her grandparents in Russia this summer.

Me: “Right here, baby. The big one near the top.”

Him: “Where is America?”

Me: Again, blank stare.  Maybe he got that from the fourth of July songs at church? “Well, this is the America we live in.  And this is South America.  And this is Mexico where Leo is from.”

Him: “This is Mexico.”

I find him alone with the globe, pointing at the countries he knows and saying their names and the people he knows that come from them.

And the story telling is killing me. I LOVE to hear him “re-tell” the days events as he remembers them.

We went to swim class last week and he told John all about how his teacher helped him swim, and how I showed him how to go under water while he held the side of the pool.  It went something like this.

“I went swimming.  SWIM SWIM with arms, SWIM SWIM with legs! And Miss Teacher Lisa say, “GOOD GOB CY!” and Mommy goes UNDERWATER and I hold the side.  And Mommy goes UNDERWATER AGAIN and I hold on the side.  And I get ALL THE DUCKS!”

Or this recap of his weekend after I got back from Jersey.

“Daddy and Cy watch FIDERMAN! And we EAT KIPS! on the COUCH! and make a DOGGY HOUSE IN LIVING ROOM!” (Translation: they watched Spiderman, ate chips, and put up a tent to play in.)

He’s been saying more and more, “I need a Mommy cuddle” and yesterday he fell asleep right on me.  He’s still doing great at potty training (accidents here and there) and like to earn play doh whenever he poops in the potty.  Yesterday he asked my brother to help him potty, which cracked me right up.  I was proud of both of them actually.

We were in the bookstore the other day (milk and cookies time) and I told him he could have a book, but no stuffed animal.  He picked out a little Boots doll thing that he wanted, and told John, “I want Boots! No Book!” and put the book he had chosen back on the shelf.  A woman standing behind them raised her eyebrow, obviously bracing themselves for the meltdown.  John leaned down and said, “We decided today that we were going to buy a book for Cy.  You can have a book if you want, but no Boots today.”  Cy looked at Boots, at the book, traded the doll for the book which he stuck under his arm and asked, “Cookie time?”  I was SO IMPRESSED with him.  He still has his tantrums, for sure, but I love how he listens and reasons and thinks.

I also love how he answers in complete sentences.

My Mom ”Would you like to bring your Spiderman toy into the grocery store?”

Cy: “Yes, peese.  I want to bring Spiderman into the grocery store.”

or how he uses adjectives:

“I saw a great, big, giant BEAR on the TV!”

Or how he tells me things:

“Mommy, I want a Toy Story birthday in STEPTEMPBER. (There goes my cute owl theme.) And, I want a big silly hat with a STAR!”

We’ll do just that baby. :)

On to the pictures! All from my phone, and repeats from twitter.

Cy loves to help. Makes Mommy nervous.

Play-doh reward system, still working pretty well.

Stress reduction for the Bubbs and me.

Waiting for his friends.

The heatwave drove us indoors.  The puppy needed a bath.

and then Cy jumped in. Why not?

Meanwhile…this is my new personal goal.  Wish me luck :)

So.

Cy is increasing his witty/funny factor at an amazing speed these days.

For instance: We have been having accident issues with potty training.  To be expected.  That’s what happens when you shirk the Pull Ups.  That’s why we’re doing it this summer. He does really great, usually only one accident a day.  And he had NONE today.  Yay Cy!

But today, we entered a new phase of potty motivation tactics.

Juggling.

He likes to watch us try to juggle.  Well, John likes to juggle.  I just drop the balls on the floor a million times and Cy seems to like that too. He laughs and claps and sings and badaboom! He’s done his business.

But seriously, can you picture what he’ll have to tell his wife one day?

“Honey, why do you sing that Circusy song when you’re in the bathroom?”

Also, he lost his conductor toy.  You know, Dinosaur Train.  The Conductor. Today he woke up kind of upset about it.  I’m pretty sure we lost him on one of our walks.  I let him bring toys in the stroller to keep him busy.  So after explaining about how he’s gone now, Cy looks at me and says, in all seriousness, “The conductor ran away.” And pulls the saddest face ever.  Poor kiddo! He was sad enough that my Mother packed him up and brought him to Target to look for a new one.  But to no avail. I guess we’ll just have to keep our eye out.

Another way in which he amuses me.  So he’s been obsessed with the earth/sun/stars for awhile now, but just recently he started to worry about falling off the earth.  I don’t know if was Mickey Mouse Club House (Martian Mickey!) or Blues Clues or Berenstain Bears On the Moon, but I found him laying on his stomach in the living room saying, “I no fall off earf!” So John explained about gravity, but Cy still held our hands pretty tight when we went outside for a couple of days.

I recently introduced him to some of my favorite books.  We went to a new toy store on the 4th of July, and there, waiting for me on a little mushroom shaped table, was a copy of Flicka, Ricka and Dicka and the New Dotted Dresses.  I’m pretty sure that book is one of the reasons I’m still obsessed with polka dots.  I also got Snip, Snap and Snurr Learn to Swim.  They’re books from Sweden and are sweet and perfect and Cy LOVES them, although he does prefer Snip, Snap and Snurr over Flicka, Ricka and Dicka. I got the Dotted Dresses out of the library about 23,845 times growing up.  Maj Lindman writes (wrote?) such sweet stories, and I was really excited when Cy loved them too.

We went to the lake yesterday and he was crawling around in the water saying, “I SNIP! I SNURR!”

And here, for your enjoyment, it a cute picture of Cy and Ah-na.  The not twins.

A few other notes, because I’ve lost the ability to blog and shall just provide you with a list of Cy moments/tendencies:

- He pretends to be a puppy.  A lot.  With licking.

- He occasionally asks me to get back into my belly.  I told him no, one day we might have another baby in there and we need to keep the current vacancy.  He says, “No! I first!”

- He’s sleeping like a champ in his crib-turned big-boy-bed.  In the morning he yells, “Mommy! Daddy! I awake!” He won’t get out of bed unless we go get him.

- To celebrate a potty training day gone right, I got him a tiny puppy from Target while picking up some prescriptions.  On the way home the puppy was chatting with a dinosaur.  I love hearing Cy’s little voice, “Hi puppy! I glad to see you!” “Hi dinosaur! I glad a see you TOO!” Where does he get this stuff?

Cy in his “Big Birds” playing forts with his “best, special friend” Finn.  John said that the “Best, Special” title comes from Thomas and Percy.

So we did it.  We put all the cloth diapers away.  (Away, by the way, is code for sitting on my bedroom floor right now.  I want to sell some, put some away, give some away.  I need to sort them.)  After a few week stint with PullUps we decided that we all treat them like diapers, and they were too expensive.  And there were all those cute underwear sitting in Cy’s drawer.

On Sunday one of Cy’s friends was in his upes.  (Upes=underwear, by the way.  Consider it my boy word for “panties.”)  I thought to myself, “Well, that’s it.  No more procrastinating.”  I made a plan to start the next Wednesday with a timer, some treats, and special baskets of toys and books near the potty.  And I woke up Monday and just put underwear on my child.  And we are all still alive.

At first I set the timer and used various bribes to get him to go when he didn’t want to.  The first day he was excited to go, so he just…went.  He used all of the potties in the house, his two potty chairs and the big “toy-its.”  He was really into it.  On Tuesday he was less excited and we ended up bribing him with some Peanut M&Ms, which worked well.  If he didn’t want to go I’d say, “Do you want a blue sweetie? Or a GREEN ONE? No…know…a YELLOW ONE!”  And then I’d run like a spaz to the bathroom and he’d follow along.  The M&Ms stopped working yesterday, though.  In all of that, he hasn’t had a pee accident at all since the underwear thing started.  Not in his car seat, not in Target (although I do insist on a potty break in Target), not on our 5k walk we took a couple times this week.

Poop is another issue.  We had to bring out the big guns for poop.  The first time he went he got the dinosaur train train.  I know.  Shameless.  Then he had a small rebellion and pooped in his upes.  Wednesday night I was in the middle of a lecture and glanced down at my phone mid-sentence to see a picture of a huge poop in Cy’s little potty.  My students were amused at my befuddlement.  I didn’t show them the picture.  I was happy, but confused as to why Cy would poop when John was home and not when I was home!

Turns out Cy kicked John out of the bathroom, shut the door, did his business, and then called him back in.

So the kid wants privacy. More than M&Ms or Dinosaur Trains.

Which makes sense, since he hides to go normally.

So this morning I put his potty chairs in his normal hiding places, put the potty seat on the big potty, and took off his upes.  I told him, “When you have to go, just go in the potty.” And then I let it go.  Less than 20 minutes later I hear Cy calling me from the kitchen, “Mommy! Look at ‘dis!” and sure enough, he did it all on his own.

I know we have a long road ahead of us.  I still have to remind him to go a couple times an hour, and I think we’ll still be hit or miss on the pooping front. Sometimes he’s willing to go and sometimes he’s not…but I’ve found a secret weapon.

my iPhone.

Seriously.

He’s always loved watching music videos on YouTube (muppet Ode to Joy, 5 Little Monkeys, etc.) and it’s not my favorite pastime. So if he needs to go I saw, “Hey! Do you want to watch Twinkle Twinkle?” and sure enough, it’s enough motivation! Who knew that my iPhone would be a better motivator than the M&Ms.  iTraining, for sure.