Potty & Table Manners

Funny how Carrie just posted about Charlotte’s potty tease today. I was thinking of something similar for today, although we have not had quite as much success as they have so far. But there have been 2 times now where Liam has told us he has a stinky diaper. And it’s not that we ask him if he has one and he just says “yes”, but he actually comes up to us – without any prompting – and says “tinky diaper”. He is also fascinated with the downstairs bathroom. Thankfully, it’s mostly with the sink & washing his hands, and less so with the toilet. Although the other day Zachary came out of the bathroom sounding all distressed as he told us that Liam was using all the paper towels in the bathroom. I kept telling him that there aren’t any paper towels in there, but he kept insisting there were. I finally went in to see for myself, and Liam was busy unrolling the toilet paper. He had already unrolled probably half the roll before I found him. Luckily it was salvageable. But, maybe we will consider bringing the small potty back out & see if Liam has any interest in sitting on it. It would just be nice this time around to not have to do it on a 3 week timeline, with the added pressure of HAVING to have it done by a certain time (like we did with Zachary).

Liam continues to entertain us at the dinner table. Not only does he still rarely eat veggies (although they told us yesterday that he ate 100% of his cucumbers at lunch!!), but he is just a mess. I can’t remember if I mentioned that we decided to ditch the high chair a while back. He kept standing up in it, even when strapped in (he is a little Houdini and can wiggle his way out of most types of restraints like that – luckily not the car seat…yet). So we moved him to a kitchen chair, using Zachary’s old booster seat (now that Zachary has decided that he doesn’t need it anymore). Liam still stands up many times during dinner, but he usually takes the opportunity while standing to scold Herschel for something he may or may not have even done, and then he’ll say, “Sit down Leemie!” (he thinks his name is Leemie – and apparently the other kids do too because I heard one of his little friends call him Leemie yesterday). It’s hard not to laugh when he does that because it’s like, you know he hears us, because we tell him to sit down all the time. But he’s just not really bothering to follow through. He is really trying hard on his table manners though. When he gets his hands dirty (because, you know, he’s happy to hold the fork in one hand, but he’s going to just grab the food with his other hand…) he always asks for a napkin, which he manages to crumple & wad up in one fell swoop, and then promptly gives it to me… “Here Mommy!” He will also wipe his face when we ask him to, only sometimes he misses right around his mouth. So we’ll tell him to wipe his mouth, and he then sticks his tongue out and wipes his tongue with the napkin (and then gives the dirty napkin back to me). It never ceases to amaze me how different 2 kids from the same parents can be.