You may remember this post, from a month or so ago, when Jonathan announced that he wanted to use the potty. Since then, he’s announced that he wanted to go potty about every other day. And each time, he’s sat on the toilet for about ten seconds, announced that, “it not work,” and got back up. That is, each time until this morning. Yep. This morning, Jonathan said, “I go potty,” as I was changing him from jammies into clothes. So I sat him down like usual. But this time, I could see him concentrating on what he was doing and . . . there it was! Peeing in the toilet!! When he finished, we flushed the toilet and did a little potty dance in celebration!

I don’t expect him to be out of diapers tomorrow, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

If you had told me the upheaval that could be caused in a household by a missing stuffed bear a couple of months ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. But when Bear went missing a month or so ago, it was heartbreaking to listen to Jonathan laying in his crib whimpering and quietly calling out “Bear?” “Bear?” Luckily, that only lasted a couple of nights. It was still a struggle to get him to bed for a bit after that, but he started carrying around his “How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight” T-Rex and we figured it would do while we frantically searched for a replacement for the now-discontinued Carter’s bear.

Then, miraculously, we found bear!! Sure that this discovery would be met with uncontained joy when we shared it with Jonathan, I got positioned with my camera as Miriam prepared to reunite Jonathan with his lost love. But when presented with Bear, I could almost hear the thought balloon that appeared over Jonathan’s head. “Look, no hard feelings, but I’ve moved on. Really, it’s not you, it’s me. I’ve found someone else.”

What Jonathan actually said was, “no way!” He shoved Bear aside, grabbed up his dinosaur, and walked off to play.

We had a crazy day yesterday. Miriam had an early morning court appearance, so I was in charge of getting both kids to school (usually, Miriam takes Jonathan and I take Mikaela). Unfortunately, my brain wasn’t fully functioning yet by the time we left, and I managed to forget to pack Mikaela’s dance bag and swimming stuff for her busy Thursday afternoon AKK schedule. Miriam’s afternoon was open (she was planning on spending it cleaning her office), so she decided to run by the house, pick up Mikaela’s stuff, and then drop it off at the JCC. This is where the real fun begins.

While getting out of the car, Miriam’s finger got caught in her keychain, which in turn got caught by the car door as the door slammed shut — on her pinky! Ever the dutiful Mommy, Miriam wrapped up her hand and delivered Mikaela’s stuff to the JCC before calling me and having me meet her at the ER to get her finger examined. With an assist from Zaydie Larry, I got to the ER in time to hear the diagnosis - the radiologist saw a very small break at the end of Miriam’s pinky. In addition, it was cut all the way through the nailbed, so the ER doc put three stitches in through Miriam’s nail and put her on antibiotics. With pain meds onboard, I took Miriam back to her office for her afternoon client appointment (I used to the time to do some overdue server updating).

After the client meeting, we went together, in Miriam’s car, and picked up the kids at the JCC. It was Miriam’s car, but between the new stitches in her pinky and the pain meds, I was driving. As we pulled out of the JCC parking lot with the kids, Jonathan pipes up from the backseat, pointing at me and saying, “Mommy’s car! Mommy’s car!”

It took a minute to register, but he was concerned because he knew we were in Mommy’s car, but Daddy was driving it. So I told Jonathan that yes, it was Mommy’s car. But that she was giving me a turn to drive it.

Jonathan thought about it for a moment, and then he pipes up, “I have turn?”

To which Mikaela replied with a horrified, “NO!! That would be dangerous!”

I was surfing through the archives, testing out this new theme, and noticed that I’d done a development update post for Mikaela at 22 months, so I figured a similar update for Jonathan would be interesting. Following the format from that post:

1. Vocabulary - I don’t really have anything concrete to back this up, other than my own perception, but it seems to me that Jonathan’s vocabulary is broader and more advanced than Mikaela’s was at this age. In addition to being on target with possessives (”my”, “Mikaela’s”, “your”), he identifies by correct name a number of different kinds of dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Myasaurus, and Iguanadon, at least).

2. Cognitive Development - Jonathan counts to seven in English, and to five in Spanish. He’s just starting to sing along with the alphabet song. He has a well-developed sense of humor, acting goofy to get a laugh, and he loves the “oops, I’m a sugar bowl” version of the “I’m a Little Teapot” song. Jonathan has been identifying colors correctly for months now. When he’s unsure what the correct name for a color is, he always guesses “purple”. He loves having books read to him - one of his favorite things to do is to climb up onto my and Miriam’s bed, pull the covers up to his chest, and announce, “read books!” He even does “voices” like Miriam and I do when he reads along with some of his favorite books (notably, “But Not the Hippopotamus”). Oh, and he recognizes a Jayhawk on sight, and identifies it by pointing and shouting, “Rock Chalk Jayhawk!”

3. Physical Development - Jonathan is a little monkey. He climbs over just about anything in his path, including sofa backs. He loves running around on the trampolines at Open Gym at Blue Valley Parks & Rec. And he can jump off of two feet and get off the ground. Jonathan’s pretty good at throwing a ball, and not so adept at kicking just yet. And he can stack wooden blocks - but he’d rather knock them over.

Tonight, when we got home from Rosh Hashana services, I sat down with the kids and read books for a bit before heading up to bed. After reading a couple of books, Mikaela excused herself to go potty. A couple of books later, Jonathan announced, “I go potty.”

Hmmmm. OK. It was his idea - gotta support the effort. So I undressed him and brought him into the bathroom. I stood him on the step stool in front of the toilet. He stood there for a couple of seconds and proclaimed, “It not work.”

Guess he’s not ready just yet. But nice that he’s thinking about it.

While I’ve been driving back and forth to St. Louis, Miriam, Mikaela and Jonathan have been going about the business of starting new school/day care situations, new extra-curricular activities, and new neighborhood activities. Miriam, with at best a minimum of help from me, pulled together some 40 trash bags full of outgrown baby and children’s clothes and got them organized for the neighborhood garage sale. And that was while continuing to successfully run her own law practice and handle the kids’ daycare/school/activities with my sporadic assistance.

Mikaela started school and Jonathan started daycare at the JCC Child Development Center on the same day back on August 18. Mikaela has taken to school like a fish to water. At the moment, her biggest challenge is adjusting to being asked to write properly. She already knows how to form all of the letters. But she doesn’t always write them “correctly” - the right height and width and on the correct line. It’s been frustrating for her being told that she needs to do something she thinks she already knows how to do differently. But Miriam’s got some elementary school lined paper and helped her practice, and it’s already getting better. Hopefully, handwriting isn’t genetic - because given both my and Miriam’s handwriting, the poor kid is in for a world of trouble if it is. Today, Mikaela got to fill the “Mystery Bag” and share something of herself with her class via what she put in the bag. Mikaela chose to share her headband collection (she’s very into the idea of collections these days). Mikaela also enjoys the AKK program at the JCC. In addition to making her lunch as noted previously, her favorite thing is being the first one picked up by the bus for the ride to the JCC.

Jonthan’s adjustment to the CDC has been a bit more challenging and has taken longer. For the first two months of his time at the CDC, Jonathan WAILED when he was taken there. He’d start as soon as he was being strapped into Miriam’s car in the morning (since, to him, getting into Mommy’s car in the morning meant going to the CDC). He’d try to keep from getting buckled in and tell us, “no way, no way!” He’d also cling to whoever dropped him off at the CDC, whether it was Miriam or me, and continue to cry even when after we’d left him. The morning tears started ending sooner a couple of weeks ago. And finally, this week, a breakthrough! Since Tuesday, Jonathan has gone to the CDC in the morning without complaint. Yesterday, he refused to take off his Diego backpack, but he didn’t cry when Miriam left. And then today, not only did he let Miriam put his back away in his cubby, but he walked into his classroom at the CDC on his own, trotted right over to the other kids, and didn’t even give Miriam a second glance.

Whew! That should make mornings at our house MUCH more pleasant moving forward.

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve made a blog post. Life has been unusually hectic lately. I hadn’t done much traveling for work in about a year or two, but that all changed at the end of July. I was assigned as second chair to a series of very large OSHA cases involving a company that is based in St. Louis. The cases revolve around three separate fatal accidents that all occurred within about five months of one another. The first accident was in St. Louis, the second and third in Kansas City, all back in 2006. The St. Louis case finally started steaming toward trial in late July.

It started slowly - a short trip to St. Louis in mid-June, another in late July. But since August 10, I’ve been in St. Louis for at least a couple of days every week for the last seven weeks. In that time, I’ve eaten more than my share of tasty (but probably not so healthy) Zephyr Burgers at The Shed. I’ve earned Gold Member status in the Starwood Preferred Guest program, thanks to the Westin Cupples Station and the Sheraton St. Louis City Center (The Westin Cupples Station is a great hotel - I highly recommend it). And I’ve logged over 3500 miles on my odometer. I’ve also gained great experience, participating in what is probably the most important case of my legal career so far.

Miriam has been amazing keeping things together on the home front with me away so much the last couple of months. And Mikaela is certainly not fond of daddy’s frequent trips. She’d prefer I just tell my bosses “no” when they tell me I need to go back again. Tomorrow starts day three of a scheduled five day trial. It’s going well so far, and I’ve gotten great opportunities to develop my trial skills. Once this trial is over, things should slow down at least a little bit. We still have the two Kansas City cases, and I may find myself making more laps on I-70 for depositions in those cases as well. But it will be nice getting home on Friday night and not having to think about packing for the next trip right away.

The kids enjoyed the evening, playing on the deck.

I’ve mentioned before how much Jonathan likes to go to Deanna Rose Farmstead to feed and pet the goats. Tonight marked a new stage of Jonathan’s relationship with the Deanna Rose goats - now, he’s teaching them manners! He would take a pellet of goat food and let a goat eat the piece of food. And then, he would scold the goat, “Say thank you!” He went through an entire handful of goat pellets, insisting after each bit he doled out that the recipient say thank you.
(Now that I’m back home and got the details of the story, this section needs to be rewritten).

Jonathan would feed a goat a goat food pellet. And as soon as the goat took it; Jonathan would lean forward, throw his arms back (we call this “flight position”), and shout at the goat, “THANK YOU!!!” - in his barely understandable 20-month-old patois. It wasn’t the polite lesson that I initially thought it was. It was more of an annoyed insistence that the goats use their manners!

I think it’s time to teach Jonathan the saying about teaching a pig to sing. “Never attempt to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

Mikaela started kindergarten at Cottonwood Point Elementary School on Monday. So far, she LOVES school. She was nervous in the days leading up to school starting. She worried about not knowing anyone’s name and, oddly, about there not being a bathroom. In fact, in amongst all of the things she excitedly told me about her first day of school was, “Oh, and they DO have a bathroom.” She likes her teacher, Mrs. Hopkins. On the first day, her favorite thing was meeting the computer teacher (and finding out that they were going to get to use computers) and the new friends at her group of four desks. On the second day, she was most excited about reading a story about The Gingerbread Man — and about following clues to find a hidden Gingerbread Man in the library.

After school, Mikaela goes to the AKK program at the JCC. She likes the busy AKK schedule (which includes swimming twice a week), and bringing her princess lunchbox with the lunch she’s made herself in it. She’s adjusting to the lack of naptime.

Speaking of adjusting, Jonathan’s adjustment to the CDC is going a bit more slowly than Mikaela’s adjustment to kindergarten. On his first day, Monday, he started out OK but had a major meltdown in the afternoon - so major that the CDC had Miriam come and pick him up early. On Tuesday, he did a bit better. He got picked up a bit early anyway, because Miriam was picking Mikaela up for an appointment anyway. He had been crying, but it was just after naptime and he’s often cranky right after waking up. Hopefully, by the end of the week, he’ll hit his stride.