Seriously, You Have to Go NOW???

Yesterday I arrived at the boys’ school for pickup. I always get Liam first (don’t know why – it probably goes back to the days when Liam was in the baby room, and they didn’t allow the older children into the room, so I would just get Liam first, so Zachary didn’t have to wait outside the room like he was contaminated with some infectious disease). After I got Liam we went to Zachary’s class, and he came running over. He was kind of all over the place, so I asked him if he needed to use the potty. “Nope”, he said, “I’m good! I don’t need to go!” OK, so we headed out to the car. I strapped Liam into his seat, and was going around to the other side of the car to help Zachary get buckled in (I need to find out when kids should be expected to be able to buckle themselves into their booster seat – any thoughts???) and he said to me, “Oh! I need to use the potty!!” REALLY?! Last time this happened (sadly, this was not the first time he’s done that), I actually unstrapped Liam, and we all headed back in so he could use the potty. But I was slightly annoyed yesterday due to the fact that I had JUST asked him no less than 2 minutes before if he needed to go. So I made him wait. I figured it would either teach him to hold it for a little bit (we don’t live more than 1 or 2 minutes from the school) or there would be a big, wet mess in his seat when we got home. Thankfully he held it.

I need to try & get some video of Liam talking, but he is just talking up a storm these days. Most of what he says would probably be completely unintelligible to anybody but Josh & me, but we’ve cracked his code, so to speak, and can understand much of what he says. My favorite is when he asks for something. There are a couple of words that he knows very well in sign language – “more” and “please”. Yesterday we got home and he headed right to the part of the kitchen where we keep his snacks, and he started doing “more” in sign language and then began rubbing his tummy and saying “meee” (translation: “please” – rubbing the tummy is “please” in sign language and “meee” is his way of saying “please”). It’s so stinkin cute, that it is hard to say no to whatever he wants when he does that. My other favorites are “Elmo” and “camera”. If you show him Elmo & ask who it is, he will say “Ello? Ello?” (which, by the way “ello” also means “yellow”, and he has also used it when playing with a toy phone, as in “hello” – so you have to use some context there). We gave Zachary a little V-Tech kids digital camera for his birthday (it takes pretty crappy quality pictures, but I figure it’s relatively indestructible, so good for kids…besides, I think for them, most of the fun is in actually taking the pictures, & not so much what you do with them later). However, this has become Liam’s new favorite thing. Yesterday he walked around for like 30 minutes with that camera, turning it on & off (how did he figure that out???) and I kept seeing the flash go off (he was actually taking pictures!) and the whole time he was saying “Mee-muh! Mee-muh!” I guess “mee-muh” is “camera”. It is fun trying to decode what it is that he is saying. Every day is like a new puzzle for us to solve.