<p>DS is growing up so fast! I'm sure you all know with your LO's. I just can't believe it's already been two years. Everyone said it would be fast, but this is ridiculous! We're talking about #2, but not really trying yet. DS is still nursing, and doesn't seem ready to wean at all yet, though I have to admit I dream of having my boobs back to myself one of these days...I'd kind of like to at least night wean but haven't really tried at all yet.</p>
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<p>Birthday: DS turned 2 on the 8th, and we had a party for him on the 5th. We did a much bigger party than we initially wanted to, had family and friends with kids to the Children's Museum here in Pittsburgh. It was great, a ton of fun, but more money than we really wanted to spend and kind of a bigger deal than we wanted to make. But we couldn't figure out a good way to do a small casual party at home or anything, our house just isn't suited to indoor parties and it's too cold for a cookout! I have no idea what we'll do next year. We have a friend with a LO just 3 months older than DS so we're kind of taking birthday cues from them to some extent <span><img alt="smile.gif" src="http://files.mothering.com/images/smilies/smile.gif"></span></p>
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<p>Toddler Obsessions: Right now, he just likes to 'help'. With EVERYTHING. It's kind of adorable <span><img alt="love.gif" src="http://files.mothering.com/images/smilies/love.gif"></span> Whether it's carrying something, climbing on a stool (tooooool, mama) to do dishes, i.e. splash a lot of water on the floor, or helping my father with his walker (he weasels in between him and the walker and walks in the space there, so funny) that is definitely his big thing right now. Also anything with wheels, and anything that spins. We could be out and in the far distance there's a fan of some kind and he'll spot it and point and say 'round, round' because it goes round and round...that's been an obsession of his for months! He's also very routine obsessed, sort of. Not really routines, we don't have many which is probably why sleeping/bed is our big awful issue, but once he has done something somewhere, he'll remember it and have to always do it again. Like going to a friends and remembering that he played with her silicone muffin cups and where they are and immediately wanting them when we go back, or deciding that the only place he's happy reading stories with grammy is on the stairs because they did it there before, so now he goes and sits and pats the step next to him and yells 'mimi' at the top of his lungs for her to come and read to him. He just cracks me up on a daily basis...</p>
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<p>Favorite words/phrases: He's not doing a lot of phrases yet, just experimenting with putting words together...but recently mama has turned into mommy, out of nowhere....he says 'up me' when he wants to be picked up, which is all of the time. And he says 'piece' when he wants something or part of something...he also yells it at other random times, sometimes then it seems like maybe its 'peace' and he's asking for amnesty of some kind, lol...he has a shirt with a peace sign and i taught him the hand symbol for peace too, so he always says it and tries to do the sign when we put the shirt on...needless to say we had some confusion when we tried to teach him how to show people he's 2 with this hand <span><img alt="lol.gif" src="http://files.mothering.com/images/smilies/lol.gif"> And he's started saying 'hold on' a lot which must mean I say it pretty often, oops!</span></p>
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<p><span>Potty learning: We're kind of struggling with it lately...we quasi just barely part time EC'd, as in we'd stick him on a little baby bjorn potty when we changed his diaper from about 8 or 9 months on and catch occasional pees that way. Around 17 or 18 months he got interested and starting sometimes telling us when he had to go, and by 20 months he was doing great and probably 75% potty trained! Then we went on vacation. Totally lost the consistency, even though we took a potty with us. That was in August, and it</span>'s been downhill ever since...he's just gotten more and more disinterested, to the point now that he'll yell no if we ask him if he needs to go or wants to use the potty. What's crazy is that if he's naked all day he'll use the potty every time, all by himself. But add pants, or a diaper, or trainers or underwear into the equation, and no dice. Soooo we're just riding out and going with what he's comfortable with....we use cloth prefolds and have been having some serious ammonia issues lately, I can't figure out if it's him or the diapers, which I've stripped and such. It just makes me sad to think how close we were back in August!!</p>
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<p>Congratulations to both of you on your new LO's on the way!!</p>
