Recently Wesley began using possessives. That is Mommy’s food or baby’s milk or daddy’s shoes. Being the ever thinking little guy that he is he figured out how to say that something was his. He generalized “add an apostrophe ‘S’” onto the end of words to indicates who owns them. Okay, so he probably didn’t think to himself apostrophe “S”, but he did see the pattern. And being a good scientist he generalized to other situations. Unfortunately for him this is English and the only patterns that do exist are really just meant to clearly indicate those people for whom English is a second language.
Me + apostrophe “S” = Me’s. Me’s shoes. Me’s milk. Me’s daddy. Me’s shirt.
I felt I had to write this quickly while this is still absolutely the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m not naive enough to think that this will be fun forever. I know that in no time at all we’ll be hearing Wesley scream: “Mine. Mine. Mine. MIIIIIIIINE!!!!”. This should occur about the same time Jillian is able to grab things and put them in her mouth. For now I’m just enjoying me’s kid.
Saturday we headed down to McKinney Falls State Park. Mat and Becca had been last weekend and said it was great. They told us stories of tons of frogs, snails, and great hiking. We didn’t see quite as many frogs, but I think we’ll definitely be back. As we’ve come to expect from Texas they charge per person to visit (kids under 13 free, others $4) instead of per car. Although a state park pass is available for $60 a year and covers everyone in your car. Go figure. The park itself offers camping (pretty normal sites without much privacy), picnicking, a little hiking and biking and of course hanging out at the falls. I was surprised to see that the campsites were full. But down here Veterans Day means camping just like Memorial or Labor days do in Washington. After all it is 80F down here this weekend.
Much like Bull Creek the falls and Onion creek run over solid rock that has been smoothed, shaped and carved by the flowing water. You walk across several hundred feet of solid rock to get to the creek near the Lower Falls. The surface is pocked with small to large holes many of them filled with water even though we haven’t had much rainfall. Wesley had a good time exploring these holes and we had a hard time convincing him that we should keep going and that cooler stuff was up ahead.
Before we crossed over the lower falls we stopped along the creek to skip some rocks. We hung out for a bit and Wesley had a good time. I did too. Apparently throwing rocks is something men never grow out of. I’ve been wanting to skip rocks for a while, but the only body of water we go to is Mills Pond near our house and their aren’t really any stones let alone flat ones.
Tags: Amber, Austin, Jillian, McKinney Falls, State Park, texas, Wesley
I hit the hundred mile mark on my shoes last night. I bought them shortly before starting the marathon training during my mom’s last visit to Austin. After last night’s run I am at 100.88 miles according to the shoe tracker on MapMyRun.com. A lot of those miles aren’t part of the “official” training (59.45 miles), but I’m still excited .
Every time I enter a run I check which pair of shoes I wore. It keeps track of the miles for each pair and lets you know when you might want to replace them. Basically you’ll probably get 300 really good miles and as many as 200 more okay miles out of a good pair of running shoes.
NINE miles tomorrow. Yikes!
Amber and I are both tired of changing dirty diapers. It isn’t fun and Wesley’s poop is clearly out of the baby range. It is large and nasty. Dirty clothe diapers just aren’t as much fun as they used to be. It is time, we believe, for him to experience the joys of using the toilet. We know he can do it because he trained himself for three days before moving back to diapers.
I spoke to my mom and she told me that she essentially bribed me. You go to the bathroom in the toilet you get a treat. Simple as that, no stick, just the carrot. So we filled a jar with Skittles (I think Mom used M&Ms, but they are too messy for me) and filled Wesley in on the details. Go to the bathroom, get a treat (three Skittles total).
So far we have gone through one and a half jars of candy. Wesley has eaten maybe 15 pieces. Amber and I have been using the potty regularly and rewarding ourselves consistently. He wants the treats, he knows what to do, he just doesn’t want to go on the toilet. If you ask him how he can get a treat he’ll tell you or run into the bathroom. But when he gets that look on his face (all parents know “the look”) and you say “Hey, lets go to the bathroom and get a treat” he tells you “NO” and pushes it out as fast as he can.
When he asks for the treats he gets a simple explanation of the rules again. That usually suffices and he moves on. Not to the bathroom, but back to whatever else he is doing.
He is still young for training, but a man can dream can’t he? We’ll keep the treats in place. When he is ready he probably won’t need any external motivation. But I bet he’ll take the treats anyway.
Tags: Potty Training, Wesley