Number Two

My number two child is obsessed with going "number two." He squeezes out multiple tiny poos every day and demands a treat each time. You should have seen the effort he made at Nona and Papa's house on Sunday. They have better treats than we do.

Potty-trained!

Somehow in the last 2 weeks Benny figured out pooping. We put a pull-up in his little potty for a while to "catch the poop," then we would hug and hold him while he sat there. But now he goes on the big toilet eagerly -- so eagerly in fact, he has pooped 4 or 5 times the past few days to quickly fill his sticker chart. He caught the vision!

This morning he earned his last sticker and therefore got his fire truck. JB and I went out to dinner alone to celebrate our success (well, almost alone. We took Andrew. Thank you Nona for taking the older boys for us!).

Mini-JBs

Andrew looks like he was caught by surprise, doesn't he? "Oh, you want to take my picture again?"

I swear each of my boys look like JB. I love it, because it's a great look. So handsome. Well, Benny has a lot of me in him. Andrew has Max's mouth but Benny's cheeks I think. I keep calling him "Baby Benny" by accident.

He's smiling more and more now and sometimes says "ga." Music to my ears. I'm still trying to distinguish his cries -- they say by now you should know hungry, tired, full diaper, etc. I do know his annoyed cry. It comes when I suction out his nose or give him his dropper full of Vitamin D. He gets ticked. So fun!

He also has his cranky colicky cry, which we hear most evenings between 7:30 and 10. But if he's like his older brother Max as a baby, this should end by 3 months. We hope.

Follow-up to the Airing of Grievances...

....or Why My Brother Rocks.

My brothers James and Peter visited us this week from Missouri. In the course of 2 days, James fixed, well, everything.

Peter and James with Benny and Max

The dryer turned out to be just fine -- it was the wiring that led to that outlet that was wrong. He fixed that in 5 minutes. He also leveled the washing machine and gave it a tune-up (he's a Sears home repairman but said our jobs were easy). He also fixed our printer/scanner and got us all squared away with a new hard drive and backups and other computer stuff.

Peter meanwhile quickly became a favorite uncle with My Three Sons. We haven't seen him in 3 years. Now he's bearded!

Uncle Peter with Andrew

Oh, and the plumbing -- JB had been fixing a lot of it, but something was still not quite right. Then look what James pulled out of the depths of the pipes in our home. It's a whistle and a bottle cap.

From now on, the boys' bath time will no longer include toys or any item besides soap.

And the other issues I mentioned in last week's post about grievances?

• We found a binkie that Andrew will take sometimes, and that is helping us in the evening when he can get quite fussy.
• AND (though I'm afraid I may jinx it) we may have turned the corner with potty-training #2! He voluntarily did a #2 yesterday on the potty.

Plenty of seating

This is our kitchen. Notice how it says "A toddler and a newborn live here!"

The bouncy seat is in the kitchen so Baby Rocky-Drew can hang out near us while we cook and eat. The potty is in the kitchen because we thought it might help Benny poop.

There are days when we just KNOW he has to go (he's squrimy and sad), so we beg him to "sit down and see what happens." It still takes a LONG time, and I was tired of hanging out in the bathroom waiting and waiting for him to quit being so stubborn and just let it go. You can lead a horse to water....

Chubby Chubberson

Whosa chubby cheeksies? Huh? Whosa chubby chubs?

Today I went to the doctor for my postpartum checkup (a little late, it's been 7 weeks tomorrow). They had a baby scale, and weighed Andrew just for fun. With his clothes on, he weighs....wait for it....13 pounds 11 ounces.

I swear he grows everyday. The picture above was taken a week after the picture below:


I brought up the 3-6 month clothing from storage last week. It was time.

About sleep

We had talked about several different names when I was pregnant. We settled on Rockwell for the middle name pretty soon after we found out it was a boy. For a first name we mentioned Andrew for a while. Then I liked Samuel while we were on Trek, and loved James for the last several months. But when the nurse handed him to me all wrapped up, he just LOOKED like Andrew.

After last night I may rename him.

7:30 PM: Max and Benny fall asleep both at the same time for the first time in a long time without crying, fighting, giggling or calling for me. Good thing because Andrew became Grumpy Grumperson.

8-10 PM We nurse, rock, swaddle, shush, nurse, swaddle, shush, rock, walk, change a diaper, then start all over.

10 ish: Grumpy toots and toots and then settles down to really get to business with the nursing. JB, dozing on the couch, stumbles off to bed.

11:00 PM: I catch Mitt Romney doing David Letterman's Top Ten, realize Andrew is finally fully asleep, and put him in his bassinet. I go downstairs to cover up Max and Benny and put chapstick on their lips (I do it while they sleep so they don't lick it off), and put the dishwasher on a 4-hour delay so I don't have to hear it while I fall asleep.

2:00 AM: Andrew wakes up to nurse. But instead of going back to sleep, he becomes Grumpy Grumperson again. Squirmy and tooty again.

3:00 AM: JB takes Grumpy out to the living room to walk, rock, swaddle and shush him.

I send a text to my sister that says "Darn you kale. So yummy in soup, so gassy for baby's tummy."

3:10 AM: I hear the dishwasher start. Great.

5 ish: Andrew wakes up to nurse. I tuck him in bed next to me and we both fall asleep. Yes! I dream I'm part of BYU's coaching staff. Weird.

7:20 AM: The boys come upstairs to our room. "We saw a seven!" they say. They aren't supposed to leave their beds until they see a 7 on the clock. We set their clock to give us a 20 minute buffer window of sleep. JB gets up, I keep sleeping.

8:00 AM: Andrew wakes up, but he isn't Grumpy anymore. Then I realize I had all the leftover soup yesterday as well, which means tonight we could have a repeat performance.