Growing Up

Yesterday marked Jacob "turning" 2 yrs 9 months and Luke "turning" 9 1/2 months. Both seem to have made big strides towards "growing up" in the past several weeks.

Jacob is well on his way to potty training. I'm hoping we are only in diapers/pull-ups at night by the time he is 3. We'll see. It seems to be a 2 steps forward, 1 step back process that doesn't seem to be going as quickly as I would like. Once again, it is a situation where I am comparing his progress to others in the same boat, and I shouldn't. Like everything, each child potty trains in his or her own time. I plan to put him in underwear soon (and hope we don't have too many accidents to clean up) so we continue to progress.

We are also in the early stages of weaning him off his pappy. He has made it through the night twice without it, but needed it during naptime today. We don't want to rush him, but I think he is ready to give it up. He continues to be a pretty good eater, but we have heard "I don't like that" a bit more, even for foods he was eating just 5 minutes earlier. And yes, he is still obsessed with cars.

Luke seems to change everyday, which is typical of this stage, but it doesn't make it any less amazing. He made a huge leap forward in his eating several weeks back, suddenly liking all the food we offered him and only occasionally gagging as he had been doing before. Shortly thereafter, we started feeding him table food, and he hasn't looked back. He loves to feed himself and will eat just about anything you put in front of him...and a lot of it.

He has also found his voice and "talks" a lot...and very loudly. We've heard mama, dada, lala, baba, and several other unintelligable sounds, but nothing associated with anyone or thing just yet. He started doing a full arm wave too and thinks it is hilarious if you imitate him. I fully expected to see him walking by now since he started crawling and cruising so early, but so far, he shows no interest. He stands on his own (and loves it), but won't take steps, instead he just falls forward. I'm in no rush for him to walk though...I'm going to cherish these last few weeks/months of him in the cutest stage ever...as a crawler.

Jacob has started taking a bit more pride and "ownership" of Luke, telling us and others that Luke is "my brudder." It is so cute. Of course, this doesn't stop Jacob from sitting on, laying on, or wrestling Luke while he struggles to get away. Not to mention the pushing, pulling, and toy yanking that goes on. Someday they'll be friends....

***I'm sure there is a lot more I could share, but I'll end for now...don't want to run my readers off with extra long posts. There is always tomorrow...