Together Again and Some Milestones

Yesterday, we picked up George from the airport after a two-week separation. Although he was only gone for a week, I left the week before to visit with my family and attend my cousin's wedding reception. Although we missed being together as a family, we were able to visit with our own families and create some good memories. Interesting enough, I was in Washington state and he was in Washington D.C.!

During the two weeks that we were apart, we had some major milestones in our family. Dallin has been taking it slow as far as his gross motor skills are concerned. He can feed himself with a spoon and color with a crayon, but crawling, climbing stairs and walking didn't happen until about a month ago and he did them all within a few weeks of each other. First he began this dead leg crawl, one leg would move and the other he would drag. He seriously looked like an amputee the way his leg curled under as he crawled along. He then felt confident to climb the stairs. He has been walking along walls for sometime now, but he walked really well by himself in the beginning of July. He did that for a day or two and decided he'd rather use the walls again. I'm not sure if an older brother and large dog had anything to do with that!

Well, the day after I arrived at my mom's house, Dallin took off on his own and now he's walking, dancing, turning, squatting and he's even beginning to run. Although Jaren walked at nearly the same age, it's amazing how different they are. Jaren crawled for months and was the fastest little crawler I still have ever seen! Speaking of Jaren, he is finally FULLY potty-trained! I started potty training him last year, a couple months after Dallin was born. I thought that once he was used to his baby brother, things would go so smoothly. How naive I was. I swore never to use Pull-ups, but after many, many, many accidents, I thought it was a good investment in my sanity. Not to mention that I started cloth diapering Dallin earlier this year and cleaning his diapers and Jaren's soiled clothes was nasty business.

Jaren mastered going potty last summer, but then became lazy and would have "accidents"(Is it really an "accident" when kids purposefully won't go to the toilet?). He absolutely refused to poop on the toilet until May when I forced him to while we were waiting outside the temple for George's brother and his new wife. That was a one-time occurrence until the last couple of weeks when I figured out that Jaren enjoys seeing what size poop he has: a baby poop or a daddy poop. Furthermore, I told him that he cannot go to school until he goes poop on the toilet all the time, not just once a day. So, we've gone one full week without any accidents whatsoever! I really don't consider a child potty-trained until they take themselves to the toilet without reminders and accidents are rare. So, Jaren is a bit older than most kids when they are potty-trained but now I can finally say he is! Does anyone want to potty-train Dallin next year?