Max is Three!

Our baby boy turned three years old on February 1. We scheduled his wellness check up on the his birthday so I was able to find out his stats.  Weight is 32lb 6oz (50 - 75%) and height is 37.25" (50 - 75%).  Max is growing well and very healthy.  The pediatrician tried to carry a conversation with him to test out his verbal skills but he had a little stage fright and didn't say much.  At home, we've really noticed a big difference in Max's language skills in the last couple of months.  He's really stringing lots of words together and I'm particularly impressed with his proper use of tenses and pronouns.  Here are some of the things you might hear him say:

me: Max, eat your rice and tofu please
Max: I DID, I already ATE my rice!

Max: I'm tired
Jalen: then go to sleep!
Max: I WILL!

Max (on seeing a picture of Rick on the TV): that's YOU Daddy, that's YOU!

Here are some other things that are memorable about Max at 3 years old:

•  He loves his set of 4 wooden Thomas the Train puzzles.  He will do them over and over again even though it probably takes him less than 5 minutes to complete each one.
• Unfortunately, he doesn't know his numbers and letters that well yet.  We really have to work on this one.  
• Max is obsessed with the Disney/Pixar Cars movies.  He especially loves Mater and loves all of the Mater's Tall Tale shorts.  He can almost recite all of them by heart even though he doesn't understand all of the words.
• He loves to eat oranges.  When he eats navel oranges, he really cleans up all of the flesh.  He also loves to eat strawberries.  Other than that, he's quite a picky eater.  When he likes something he'll eat a lot but otherwise it can be quite a struggle to get him to eat. His all time favorite food is probably french fries.
• Max is 90% potty trained!  He stays dry all day in his underwear.  We still put him in pull-ups at night but he's been dry overnight for at least 1 month.  He doesn't quite tell us when he needs to go pee so we do remind him to but he always tells us when he needs to poop because we let him watch Mater's Tall Tales as a treat afterwards.  I still need to get him to be able to go to the bathroom all by himself (without peeing all over the floor).
• Max is not great at sharing toys.  He and Jalen often fight over the same things and egg each other on.  I often have to separate them and tell Jalen to play in a different room.

This year, I decided not to throw a big birthday party for Max.  We don't have a lot of friends with kids his age so if I had a big party, I'd be more worried about entertaining the older kids than Max.  So instead, I decided to have a birthday outing for him instead.  We took him to the Seattle Children's Museum for the afternoon.  Jalen and Max both had a lot of fun exploring the museum.  I still don't think Max realized that we did that for him, he was just having fun.

Here's Max in the art studio making a heart with clay.  He looks adorable in his little apron!

Potty Training Round 2

When Jalen reached about two and half years old, the day care that he attended at the time naturally started to potty train him.  They took him to the toilet about every 2 hours and encouraged him to use it in front of all his toddler friends.  When the school felt he was ready, they asked us to send Jalen to school in underwear (along with a couple of set of extra clothes).  After just a month or so (and a couple of accidents) we were diaper free with Jalen!  He kept his underwear dry day and night and rarely had accidents except when he waited too long to go to the toilet.  I was extra proud because I reached my goal of potty training Jalen before baby #2 was born.

This time around with Max, we started trying to get him to pee in the toilet around 2.5 years as well.  He showed little interest at first until we finally had a break through after Jalen showed him how to do it.  This was around last October so he was about 2 years and 8 months.  Max's school was a lot more passive compared to Jalen's old day care.  Whenever I asked them how Max did on the toilet at school they kind of just shrugged and told me that he wouldn't go.  This meant that we as parents had to take on a much more active role in potty training.  After the break through in October we decided to put him in Pull Ups and take him to the bathroom every 2 hours.  He did well and peed every time we took him but he wouldn't proactively go to the toilet.  It goes without saying that he wouldn't tell us when he needed to poop either.  After a couple of months and a few boxes of Pull Ups later, I decided to pull the plug on the expensive Pull Ups and went cold turkey with underwear.  Getting him to wear underwear was no problem since we bought a 10-pack of Cars 2 underwear from Costco a long time ago in anticipation of this.  He had 1 accident the first 2 days on the weekend.  When I sent him to school on Monday I was extra nervous and packed him 2 sets of extra clothes.  When I picked him up later that day, I was shocked that he was still wearing the same clothes!  The teachers said he did great but no poop.  Later that night, Max came over to me and said "uh oh, all wet".  He had peed in his pants.  After we took off his pants, he said "I need to go poo poo".  I was thinking, "could this be?!"  I sat him on the toilet and sure enough, a few minutes later he made his first #2 in the toilet!  This is a gross and most proud moment in a parent's life.  We hooped and cheered him on to give him all the positive reinforcement we could muster.  After that milestone, he stayed dry with no accidents (and 3 more poops in the toilet) until the following Saturday when he pooped in his underwear while we were visiting a friend's house.  Now it's day 16 with big boy under wear and no accidents at school so far (knock on wood).  He still wears pull ups at night but if this pattern continues, I'd be perfectly happy.  I'm already imagining the days in my future when I can leave the house without a giant diaper bag.