Happy Birthday to my Favorite Three-Year-Old

I still can’t believe that my tiny baby is three years old!!

When I was putting him to bed tonight, I asked him what was his favorite part of his birthday. He said:

“Getting an orange car, and my very own flag, and eating my racing car cake, and also ice cream, and especially when my friends came over.”

Well, that about sums it up. But for those of you who weren’t here, here are a few good photos.

Here you can see both the cake and the orange car. Each of his buddies got to choose a racing car to take home.

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A closer shot of the cake. Note the #3 flags, one of which Thomas claimed as his “very own.”

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No photos of the ice cream, but here are some of his friends:
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So there you have it. Thomas’s birthday in words and pictures as remembered by the little man himself. Lots of fun was had by all. And now it’s time for me to go to bed.

Things Thomas has shouted from his room since being left there for bedtime tonight:

(at the top of his lungs) “MOMMY!!! COME BACK!!! I’LL BE QUIET!!! I’LL BE QUIET!!!”

“Mommy!!! I bumped my head on the floor!!!”

“Mommy!!! I took off my pajama pants!!!”

Sigh.

UPDATED: 20 minutes after Will went in to reinstall the pajama pants:

“Daddy!!! I took off my pajama pants and my diaper!!!”

We’ll keep working on this one.

Me: It’s Earth Day!

Thomas: Whose birthday? My birthday?

Me: No, Earth Day. It’s a day where. . .

Thomas: WHOSE birthday, Mommy? Let’s sing Happy Birthday!

Me: No, Thomas, it’s not a birthday. It’s Earth Day. It’s a day where we celebrate the Earth.

Thomas: What’s the Earth?

Me: It’s the ground, and the dirt, and all of the trees, and plants, and beautiful flowers, and other things that live in the earth, like. . .

Thomas: Like garbage trucks!!

Me: Well, not exactly garbage trucks.

Thomas: Is it the garbage truck’s birthday?

Aspirations

Overheard today:

Thomas: When I grow up, I am going to be a farmer, and then a tiger guy [i.e. the tiger trainer we saw at the circus], and then a racecar.

Will: A racecar driver?

Thomas: No, a racecar.

Adventures in Potty Training: Part 1

Somehow, suddenly, we are in the thick of potty training.

I was taken completely by surprise by the whole thing happening so quickly.

For months we had been doing the things you’re supposed to do: watching for “signs,” showing Thomas how big people use the potty, letting him sit on the potty, watching potty videos, talking about How Great It Is To Use The Potty, etc.. We had a couple of false starts, where we started putting him in underwear and enticing him with various bribes; during these forays into the undiapered world, he would cooperate enthusiastically for a few days and then suddenly refuse and throw crying/screaming/body-stiffening fits of rage and dismay. So both times we backed off and went back to diapers full-time.

Then all of a sudden, with the help of a train-themed sticker chart and a set of die-cast construction equipment, we are doing it. For real. Crazy.

For over almost three weeks now, Thomas has been in “big-boy pants” all day (even during his nap) and in a diaper at night. He goes potty in public restrooms (actually he loves the public restrooms because the toilets make such a (for him) pleasingly profound loud whooshing noise). The other day he even went potty in a port-a-potty at the park. He is a big boy. He goes potty.

We have had a few (but to me a surprisingly few) accidents. Most of them have happened when I stopped paying attention and forgot to take him to the potty at the crucial 1-hour mark, which I consider to be totally my fault, not his.

But we have had one horrifying accident. In public. Those of you who do not want to hear the gory (poopy) details should just stop reading right now. Seriously.

The accident in question happened a couple of weeks ago. It was Sunday evening. Earlier in the day, we had been out of the house for nearly 4 hours, and Thomas had performed smashingly, using multiple public potties with no problems and no mistakes. I actually had a conversation about it with one of the women who was staffing the nursery at our church.

“Just so you know, he’s potty training and he’s not wearing a diaper. But he just went potty, so he should be fine,” I told her (I was only dropping him off for about 20 minutes, and he’s usually good for a solid hour after a successful visit to the potty). “But if he has an accident, I have extra underwear and pants in my bag. And a diaper.”

“Great,” she said. “You’re prepared. If you weren’t, he would almost certainly have an accident.”

Thomas was such a good boy the rest of the day that I thought I’d treat him to a quick trip to our nearby mall to play at the toy store, which is one of his favorite things to do. I was only planning to stay for 20-30 minutes (I’ve noticed that the toy store employees get annoyed when I’m there for longer than that without buying anything, which I think is stupid, but that’s for another post). I took Thomas to the potty right before we left home, and since he had just gone and had done such a good job all day, I decided to leave the extra pants and diapers at home. Heck, I thought, I’m not planning on buying anything, so I won’t even bring along my purse.

You can all surely hear the church lady’s words of warning and can see where this is going. But at the time I was completely oblivious. I was just looking forward to seeing Thomas’ wonder and amazement at the store’s near-miraculous assortment of cars, trains, and trucks.

Within five minutes of our arrival, I could smell the first sign that we had a problem.

“Are you pooping?” I whispered to Thomas.

“No!” He answered as always.

“Did you already poop?”

“No. I didn’t.”

But he had.

I scooped him up and rushed to the nearest bathroom, which happens to be in the fru-fru independent film cinema just across from the toy store. I took him into a stall and began to survey the damage. It was immense, in size, consistency, and smell. Disgusting.

I took Thomas’ pants off. I decided that, due to the consistency of the item in question, I could not successfully negotiate the situation except by removing the underwear with the contents still inside. I decided maybe I’d better remove Thomas’ shirt just to be safe. I took off his shoes. And should have removed the socks as well, but didn’t. I began trying to slide the underwear slowly down Thomas’ legs, gingerly holding the affected regions of the big boy pants as far away from the legs as I could. I was relatively unsuccessful.

In the meanwhile, the naked-except-for-socks Thomas was alternately sticking his hands in the sanitary napkin container, removing wads of toilet paper from the paper roll, and bending over to try to look under the divider into the next stall. “Stop! Gross! Just stand still!” I was telling him, weighing the grossness of the various parts of the stall against the grossness of my poop-tainted hands and deciding that my hands were grosser. As I finally got the pants down to ground level, I asked him to slowly pick up his feet to step out. Not surprisingly, perhaps, poop ended up on both socks.

Of course, all of this would have been much easier if I had had my bag along. The wipes in particular would have come in handy, but instead I was left to clean up the mess with plain old toilet paper. I did my best (it took a while), then put Thomas’ shirt back on, then put his pants on sans diaper or underwear, and his shoes back on sans socks.

Now what to do with the offending items of clothing? I did not, as you recall, have my bag. Or any bag at all. The only solution I could identify, short of calling Will to come save us (which would have meant many more minutes trapped in the bathroom) was to turn the socks inside out, wad up the underwear and wrap it in toilet paper, and jam all of this into the pocket of my handy-dandy Northface vest.

Sigh.

All this time Thomas was alternating between being enthralled by various gross objects in the bathroom and bemoaning the fact that he didn’t have a chance to play with the trains at the toy store. So, after vigorously washing all four of our disgusting hands, I took him back to play for a couple of minutes. I figured the worst case scenario had already happened and we’d be fine. For at least a few minutes, which is all the longer we stayed.

When we arrived home about 20 minutes later, I handed the lad to his dad and explained the situation. No more instructions were necessary, as Will carried him straight to the shower where he was hosed down and disinfected.

Thankfully, we have not had any repeat incidents of this magnitude. Cross your fingers for us. And the moral of the story: always bring along the bag. Always.

Now, to counteract the disgusting images of this post, here is a cute and poop-free photo:
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Now You Know Mine ABCs.

In lieu of other posts I’ve been meaning to write but haven’t found the time (topics ranging from potty training to playing in the mud), here’s a video of Thomas singing his ABCs. He’s been reciting them for quite a long while, but until recently he would chant them in a high-pitched monotone and accelerate over the course of the alphabet, so that by the end nobody but me could really tell what he was saying. Now he does them in something resembling a rhythmic melody, which is a fun development. Also note his inability to sing without climbing. The two seem to go hand in hand.

Password = alphabet


Now you know mine ABCs. from Andrea on Vimeo.

“Motorbike Guy”

Here’s what Thomas has been up to this week. I swear that he came up with the idea completely on his own. Whenever anybody walks by our yard, he shouts: “Hi! Hey, I’m a motorbike guy!”

Towards the beginning, you can hear him saying his favorite catch phrase: “Everybody ready? On your mark, get set, GO!”

Also: For those of you who are worried, the mulch pile is only about 2 feet high. And we got him a bike helmet a couple of days after this footage was captured. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that what he’s doing is completely safe, but he can (and regularly does) find ways to sit on the couch that are more dangerous.


Motorbike Guy from Andrea on Vimeo.

The password is: stuntman
You might have to pause while it loads.
To see a slightly larger version of the video, click on the caption “Motorbike Guy” just beneath the embedded video on this page.

Today = Awesome.

Thomas and I were outside for over three hours today. It was lovely. He is filthy. That’s okay, because Will’s home now and he’s going to give Thomas a bath. I am enjoying a glass of wine. Really, what could be better?

Except maybe this hilarious conversation we had in the car just now after picking Will up from his office.

Thomas: Daddy, you got a package!! [Tomorrow is Will's birthday. The package is his gift from Thomas and me, but I wisely did not tell Thomas what it was since he cannot keep a secret.]

Will: Wow!

Thomas: What’s in it?

Will: I don’t know. What do you think it is?

Thomas: Hmmm, I think maybe it’s a semi truck, or a cement mixer, or a forklift.

Will: Those would be really nice birthday gifts, huh?

Thomas: Yep. Can we open it?

Will: I don’t know. My birthday isn’t today, it’s tomorrow. I’m not sure we should open it tonight. Do you think it’s appropriate?

Thomas: No, I think it’s a forklift.

Yikes.

Another long blogging hiatus. [Insert apology and promise to do better in the future here. You've seen it before.]

Truth is, we’ve been busy. I don’t know how the real bloggers do it. What with the laundry and the dishes and the playing with the adorable munchkin, not to mention going to work and having a few minutes here and there to hang out with Will, I just haven’t managed to find the time.

But in the meantime so much has happened. There’s no way to sum it up. So I’ll just give you a glimpse into life around here these days:

Scene: our livingroom.
Props: a laundry basket

Thomas [sitting in the laundry basket]: I am racing on my motorcycle [making sound that is supposed to sound like an engine revving but doesn't really. he's still learning].

Me: Wow, you’re going fast.

Thomas: Yeah! I am winning the race! [he suddenly throws himself out of the basket and flips it over.] Uh oh! I crashed! I need to take my motorcycle to the mechanic. Mommy, will you be my mechanic?

Me: sure.

Thomas: [addressing me as if I'm a new person who isn't familiar with his recent unfortunate racing accident] Mechanic Mommy, my motorcycle is broken. See? It needs new batteries.

Me: [pretending to open up the battery compartment and install new batteries]: There, now it’s fixed.

Thomas: No, Mechanic Mommy, you have to use a hammer.

Me: [using my hand as a makeshift hammer]: Okay, it’s fixed now, Thomas.

Thomas: I am not Thomas, I am Motorcycle Racer Thomas.

Me: Oh, Sorry Motorcycle Racer Thomas. Your motorcycle is ready.

Thomas: Thank you Mechanic Mommy!

I am not making any of this up. It went on like this for at least six repetitions of the race and the accident. Hilarious. Just call me Awesome Pretender Mommy.

He’s so polite.

Me: Thomas, how is your diaper doing?

Thomas: It’s fine. How are your big boy pants doing, Mommy?