Travelling Summer
August was highlighted by rapid progress in both walking and talking by Nick. By the end of his first month walking, he is running around like a normal kid his age, though he still teeters like a drunken sailor at times. His vocabulary has blossomed and he now has hundreds of words, plus is starting to use multi-word expressions. He can even count to 10. Much of it is simply imitation of his older sister, without real comprehension, but it is still amazing to us. His 18 month doctor visit happened close to his 19 month birthday. He is doing great and got his last shots until he is 4 years old. He is 25 lbs 10 oz (50th percentile), 34 inches tall (90th percentile) with an 18 7/8 inch head (60th percentile), so he is continuing to develop as he has been. His tendency to get rashes is long gone, and now replaced with a tendency to get numerous self-inflicted head wounds from falling off chairs and down stairs. In the last month, he gave up his dream feed, so he is no longer taking any bottles or formula at all. Only when he is really concentrating on something do we hear hints of his old soft trachea issue. The doctor said he should keep drinking whole milk until he is 2, then he'll switch to the family milk (Skim Deluxe). Basically, he is a pretty easy, good little guy with a great sense of humor, though he is prone to periodic temper tantrums.The other big news is that Lux is now completely potty trained. It took three days of what we called Commando Potty Training, which isn't as scary as it sounds. During the terrible August heat wave we simply stayed at home and put Lux in underpants instead of diapers or pullups. We let the kids watch lots of TV, kept the potty nearby and asked Lux to sit on it frequently. She didn't want to pee in the potty, but was pretty horrified when she peed in her pants. Three days and only three accidents later (Lux learned to hold it a LONG time) and she was trained. Now she never has accidents. We bought her a more comfortable, sparkly pink princess potty and she uses it always. She now pees and poos in the potty, dumps it in the big toilet, cleans out the potty, wipes and washes, all by herself. She actually gets annoyed if we try to help her. Now we just need to get her comfortable on the big toilet. She does use the big toilet when out, like at Baysox games, shopping or at playdates at school, but needs to be held while doing it as she fears falling in. Hopefully she will be able to get more comfortable in the coming weeks, as she starts school.
Nick was more interested in putting toys in the potty than the whole using it for its intended purpose, but the novelty of that wore off soon enough. Especially since every time he tried it Lux yelled at him a whole lot.
Lux had her three year doctor visit and everything is looking good. Her umbilical hernia is still quite prominent but it will still be at least a year or two before they'll want to put her under general anesthesia to repair it. If she ever has to go under for some other reason, they'd fix it, but otherwise they'd rather wait until she is older. She is 38 1/4 inches tall (85th percentile) and 29 1/2 lbs (50th percentile). One new thing was that Lux got her blood pressure taken for the first time (78/58) which she found strange but tolerable.
Later in the month Paul went to Prague for the IAU General Assembly, but left too early to participate in the final voting that demoted Pluto from the ranks of planet. Susan and the kids stayed home this time, but we can tell that they are getting very close to being ready to travel to cool destinations with us and we really are looking forward to showing them the world. Lux is currently on a big Hawaii kick and likes to play "fly to Hawaii" in her playroom, which can be really boring for the person playing with her since you just sit there like you are on a plane and never really arrive in Hawaii. Luckily, we're going to Hawaii for real in December to celebrate Susan's 40th birthday, so Lux will get to experience the real thing soon enough.
Over Labor Day weekend, we got to try something really new and had Nana Jane out to watch the kids while we went on a road trip to Knoxville, TN for the season-opening football game for Cal. The game was a forgettable blowout, but the roadtrip was awesome, and the kids never seemed to miss us during the four days we were gone. They'd say Hi on the phone then just hang up and go back to playing with Nana and Aunt Karen. We're really glad they weren't having fits the whole time, but it would have been nice if they had missed us at least a little. :-)
On the way home from Knoxville, we took a detour through the Smokies which made us think it would be a great place to vacation with the family, if only we could find a way to avoid the very scary Pigeon Forge. Sure, the kids would love the mini golf and go karts, but we would have to find a way to eat that didn't involve "country comedy" dinner shows, bible laser musical dinner shows or animatronic dinosaurs. Still, we are pretty certain that a trip to Dollywood would be an excellent counterpart to the trips Lux wants to take (Hawaii, Paris, Tasmania, and Kenya - yes, those are her choices).
Today, Lux got to meet her teacher from preschool, Miss Rose. She is REALLY excited for preschool to start on Monday. We've done most all of the prerequisit forms, TB tests, meetings, etc... so we're ready for school to start as well. The cooperative preschool seems really perfect for us and the kids and parents we've met all seem really nice, though there are only 3 girls out of 9 students in the 3s class so far. Luckily, Lux gets along well with the boys, especially Sam who plays dinosaurs with her at the playground.
As a last note, Lux and Nick are starting to play together really well. We're looking forward to a final summer weekend at the beach, and to Lux's first day of school on Monday.
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