Hi, my name is Jesse. I'm two and a half years old. I have a baby sister who came to our house three months ago. I like her. She's pretty, but she cries a lot. Mama spends a lot of time with Molly Ann, but that's Ok because I get to spend a lot of time with Daddy. Daddy is my favorite in the whole world. Unless Marmie is around - she is the best!

Anyway, I got bored in my room after I woke up this morning. My toys need updating. So I thought I'd try some fingerpainting today except that there isn't anything to paint with in my room. And then I had this smart idea.

You see, there's stuff in my diaper that would work great since it's soft and a nice brown color. So I painted Daddy's grandma's footstool thing that is next to my bed so that I can get up on my bed because it's too high for me to just get up. Like the high shelf in the kitchen where Daddy keeps the cookies and Goldfish, except that's way taller than my bed.

Anyway, I was busy painting when Daddy came to get me for breakfast and Little Einsteins. Except that he didn't seem too happy to see what I did because he kind of yelled. And them Mama came in and said, "I'll help." Daddy then put me in the bath. I love the bath! I get to play with my toys and splash the water and blow bubbles.

Next thing I know Mama is leaving for work, telling me to be good for Daddy today, and Daddy is still muttering under his breath while he does whatever in my room. I think he was messing around with my bed, putting new covers on there.

I hope Daddy takes me to the pool tonight like he did last night. That was fun.

I'll post the pictures when I download them from the camera, but in the meantime I'll tell the story of Jesse new toy box.

The box itself is actually my father's old navy trunk - a wood box that he used to pack his stuff for cruises. My sister and I used the trunk as a toy chest when we were kids - it was painted yellow. I later repainted it and used it as a coffee table for years. It has been sitting in our basement where we stored throw blankets.

I cleared out a bunch of those blankets in the winter when we hauled stuff to Goodwill, so I thought that now that it was empty it would make a good toy chest for Jesse. The top needs to be rehinged - I believe that Beau may take care of that today. Yesterday, Beau hauled it upstairs and we put it, sans top, into Jesse's room.

The hysterical crying started as soon as Beau tossed the first toy in there. You'd think we were killing a precious pet or something by the reaction we got to the displacement of Jesse's possessions into a wooden box. Sadly, I didn't think to take pictures of that - I was too busy consoling the poor boy.

Cut to bedtime - I went out to dinner with my small group ladies, but when I got home I went to check on Jesse and say goodnight. When I opened the door I immediately noticed that 1) the floor was clean but 2) the toy box was completely empty. Then I looked at Jesse in his bed and saw that every single toy that had been in the box was now on his bed. And he was laying there with a huge, happy grin on his face.

I called to Beau to grab the camera and to come see the sight. Again there were some tears when we replaced the toys into their new home, but when I reassured him that they wanted to sleep in there he seemed OK.

Pictures to come follow...

I was working in the afternoon yesterday when Beau came down to tell me a funny story. He felt terrible, because Jesse had been awake after his nap for a quite a while. But because The Boy was playing so quietly in his room Beau forgot about him. When he did go up to see how Jesse was doing he found the following:

Jesse was naked from the waist down and standing on the footstool at the side of his bed leaning over the side of his bed. He was muttering, "Poopy," or something to that effect. Laying on the floor very neatly was his soiled diaper - open to show the contents perfectly.

We have no clue how long Jesse stood like that, but I immediately thought it was something akin to the torture accusations. "It's like Gitmo torture!" I said to Beau, laughing hysterically. (Not that toture is funny. Not that I believe that anyone at Gitmo was truly tortured. Just to be clear.)

I was crying I was laughing so hard. Meanwhile, Beau felt terribly guilty for leaving him like that for who knows how long. Jesse seemed completely unconcerned when I saw him mere minutes later, fully dressed. He was ready to play some more.

I need to get the one of his chocolate smeared face from my Dad, but here are the two I took of his bed.

Note the dark spots in the upper left corner of his coverlet in the second picture - that's chocolate drool he left behind in his frenzy.

Like any parents of a toddler, we struggle with getting Jesse to eat properly. I read on another website that it may seem that toddlers exist on only crackers an air sometimes. We quote that to each other in those moments when it seems that the only things Jesse will consume are goldfish and milk.

"Crackers and air!" we cry in mock excitement.

However, he is expanding his foods and seems to sometimes have a sophisticated palate.

Ketchup - this is a new item only recently added. But he took to it like any child will. Last night he ate it by the spoonful. I'm not kidding, he bypassed the tater tots as ketchup vehicle for the spoon instead. I think he ate maybe 2 Tbsp by spoon ultimately. It's kinda gross.

Raisins - Beau and Jesse came in from a hot walk/play time this morning. Beau started munching on trail mix and shared "the black ones" (as opposed to the red, orange, or green M&Ms) with Jesse. He scarfed them down as fast as Beau put them on the counter. The funniest thing was that he held onto a red and green M&M in one hand while he used his other hand to grab the raisins.

Nuts - Also consumed from the trail mix were almonds and cashews. He seemed to prefer the almonds.

Orange juice - He's never been much for juices. And forget about water. He's all about his "nunk." However, he has begged for orange juice the past two mornings while we ate breakfast. Beau puts it into a real (plastic) juice glass for him in small amounts and he practices his drinking from a real cup skills while getting his juice fix. Two treats in one! Apparently, this morning he drank quite a bit of OJ. Yay, fruit.

On the sophisticated palate thing - there have been times when we've eaten something that I'd consider too spicy or strongly flavored for a two year old and he'll gobble it down as if it were peanut butter. For some reason, my mind is blank on specifics right now, except for the crab dip that was at the wedding we went to last weekend. And I made a chicken dish that had chipotle peppers that he seemed to like.

This post is making me hungry.

So Beau has started to reward Jesse with chocolate, in the form of M&Ms or Kisses, when he is successful with the potty. We brought a small ziploc bag with some chocolates to the beach to try to continue the potty training.

Yesterday, the last time I saw that bag of chocolate it was in out bathroom. Jesse has his own bathroom, but we're keeping that door closed so that he doesn't go in there when he isn't supposed to - he slams the shower door, plays with the toilet or the faucet, etc.

So we put Jesse down for a late afternoon nap yesterday. All was quiet and then I started to hear screeching from the monitor that indicated that Jesse was awake and playing with it somehow - either he had unplugged it, turned it off, or changed the channel. I went down to see what was up and found him sitting on the bed with chocolate all around his mouth and Kisses wrappers all over the bed. I couldn't help it - I busted out laughing.

Turns out that Beau had put the bag on top of the dresser, which is tall and should have been safe. However, Jesse did indeed play with the monitor - pulling on the cord enough to cause the bag to fall off of the dresser. He didn't get the ziploc open, but rather just tore into the plastic to get to his booty.

Of course, he wasn't too interested in dinner when the time came.

Hilarious.

I know that in Jesse's head, what he says sounds like it ought. But what we hear is vastly different from what it should be. Cases in point:

1. Milk - he says nulk. This is funny, in that it's very similar to my sister's mispronunciation of chocolate milk at the same age. Her version was colut nunk.

2. His version of chocolate is something like chocat.

3. Anything that starts with TR - he says FR, i.e., tow fruck, frain

4. School bus - fool bus

5. Stuck - suck, as in "I'm stuck," which sounds like "I'm suck"

6. Cookies - at times it sounds like he says khakis

Just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head this morning.

Just a few things new that Jesse is doing or has done recently. In all of the excitement of the arrival of his little sister, I don't want Jesse to get forgotten. Not that he lets us forget he exists - his volume control needs work.

Vocabulary: continues to increase exponentially daily. We really need to watch what we say around him because the parrot feature has been turned on.

The best part is that he is starting to say "thank you" unsolicited. It's a nice surprise to give him something and to hear him say, "Thank you, Daddy/Mama." He does still use the sign language, too, especially when we remind him to say it.

Diet: I read at a website about babies and kids that toddlers often seem to exist on cracker and air. We've taken to reminding ourselves of this when he decides not to eat. "Crackers and air," we'll say to each other in those moments and then we refill his cup with more milk because at least he will ingest that at any time.

However, he has added something new to his culinary repertoire - "sauce." It started with sharing Marmie's ketchup one night when we were eating at Five Guys.

Then the other night we did homemade General Tso's chicken, but rather than saute the chicken we grilled it. So Jesse was out with Beau, playing with fire, and he wanted to taste the extra sauce for basting in the bowl. Turns out he liked it (I attribute that to the sweetness). And he ate several bites of chicken, which rarely happens. By the way, we will have grilled General Tso's often - delish - just watch that it doesn't burn because of the sugars in the sauce.

Yesterday we had lunch at IHOP after Molly Ann's appointment and our trip to Clemyjontri park. Jesse decided that he loved the honey mustard for his chicken strips. He equally dipped his fries into both the ketchup and mustard. He only ate one bite of chicken, though.

Tantrums: Generally, he's a good-natured kid. However, he has started to throw the occasional mini-tantrum. He has quite a temper, which he got from both parents. And his temper manifests itself in the manner of both of us - Beau throws things and I slam doors.

That said, he's responding well to time out. It's hilarious when he gets into trouble because he starts chanting, "I'm sorry. OK," in the hopes of avoiding punishment. It doesn't work, but it's cute and diffuses our ire most of the time.

School: There are times I'm convinced that Jesse is actually reading. Beau is working on sounding out letters and he probably knows how to sound out about 10-12 letters so far. He knows his numbers up to 9, I think, and is learning how to count. He can count to 4 or 5 that I've noticed.

We have a fandex of trees and he knows quite of few of the trees. We'll be driving along the road and I'll hear him name trees from the backseat. He also knows several presidents and he'll be learning the states soon, too.

Big Brother: He's a great BB. He's always coming to see Molly Ann, wants to kiss/hug her, and/or hold her. It's very sweet.

He's a great kid.

I need to post a long update on The Boy. He's grown up so much in the past couple of months. But for now, I'll merely post a few pictures of him as Big Brother to his sweet little sister, Molly Ann.

All parents think their kids are the most hilarious and/or the smartest. I'm no different. Cases in point:

On the hilarious front, take the incident from this morning. I had just gotten out of the shower when I heard the tell tale noises of Jesse making his way back upstairs on his own. I had just hung up my towel and was headed for the bed to start getting dressed when I heard him panting his way into the room. The instant debate was whether or not to continue on - see I have no problem with him seeing Mama naked, but Beau is a wee bit more modest on my behalf. I decided to just go ahead and start getting dressed, hoping that the kid would be distracted by other things in the room (of which there is plenty).

That didn't happen. His eyes got huge as he took in the total picture of his very pregnant mother. He's seen the belly, of course - he actually likes to poke my fast disappearing belly button. But this was a different sight, I'm sure. Anyway, I was reaching for clothes when I said, "Mama's naked and Daddy isn't going to be very happy about this, son," or something like that. By this time Jesse was sort of behind me and I felt his little hand slap my butt as he said, "Naked!" I cracked up and he did it a second time. And got another laugh from Mama. Then I yelled for Daddy to help coax Jesse back downstairs, which he did.

On the smart front, Jesse is already learning how to sound out letters. Beau bought a phonics book and he's been working on some of the simpler exercises. So yesterday, I was resting on the sofa in the living room while waiting for my post-hypoglycemic episode snack to kick in when Jesse grabbed the book and came to me, "Sounds?" I held the book and he would point at letters and sound them out. It's amazing, really, and a testament to his teacher Dad.

I told my mom today that I'm starting to believe that God has us in our role reversals because Beau is the better teacher and the parent that Jesse needs at home for now. Because he would not know nearly half of what he knows today if I were the parent at home, I'm sure of that fact. Jesse is as bright as any other 2 year old, but Beau's dedication to using every moment for teaching is the difference.

Anyway, I joke that my fear now is that Jesse will graduate from high school at 14. How do we keep up with that?

Jesse and Mr. Kitty adore one another. I'm not even kidding. The cat totally loves the kid and it is very mutual. I've mentioned it before, but I can't stress how much they love each other. It's a little weird, really.

However, we are grateful for the cat because he diverts Jesse so much that it spares us a lot of stress wondering what kind of trouble he's getting into or just expending that much more energy trying to entertain the kid.

Mr. Kitty earned extra treats yesterday by playing with Jesse pretty much all day long.

You see, Beau bought a box of diapers at BJs over the weekend. The diapers are all upstairs, but the empty box was on the main level - headed for the trash. Until the cat walked into the over-turned box and lay down for a nap. Jesse took note of the cat in the box and decided it was time to push the cat around. You'd think that would have freaked out the cat, but no, he seemed to enjoy being pushed around in the box by Jesse. And the giggles that emitted from the boy were too good to ignore.

Sure, there were times the cat got spooked and ran away from the boy and the box. But he always came back for more sometime later and the giggling would resume. All day. It was awesome and we didn't get any pictures because we suck as parents.

The bonus was long and deep sleep for Jesse overnight. He slept hard and didn't wake up until nearly 8am. His usual wake up time has been about 6:30am.

Thanks, Mr. Kitty.

Beau has been working on the potty training with Jesse. It's going pretty well - the boy likes to pee-pee on the potty, although he still needs to learn how to tuck in order for the urine to actually get into the bowl. He doesn't want us touching him and he isn't inclined to touch either. So it's an exasperating process.

We've had a couple successful poops in the potty, but Beau's main concentration is the pee-pee part for now.

On Sunday afternoon, I was lounging in bed for a short nap after the long morning at church and listening to Beau and Jesse in the bathroom down the hall. It was pre-nap time for Jesse, too. Things seemed to be going well and then I heard Beau's cry of alarm/dismay.

It took a few seconds for me to get up to see what was the problem. As soon as I walked into Jesse's room I smelled the poop. But I couldn't see anything. They were in the bathroom, where Beau was helping Jesse to wash his poopy hands.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Poop must have leaked out of the top of his diaper," Beau said. "He had it all over his hands."

So I went to the bed, expecting to see a smear of it on the bed sheets, but there was nothing there. Then I started to gingerly check the coverlet and that's when I spied the small smear. Lifting the pulled back coverlet revealed the pile of poop on the bed.

The boy pooped on his bed after peeing in the potty and before Beau could get a new diaper on him.

Fortunately, it was a neat pile that was easily cleaned up, but it had smeared a bit on a blanket at the foot of his bed. We stripped the bed completely, just in case and put on new sheets. What's funny is that with the new sheets, Jesse was happy to sleep in the normal orientation length-wise in the bed instead of across it at the head as he had done since we put him in the bed.

I told Beau that we've been fortunate as parents - I been told horror stories of kids painting the walls of their rooms with their poop. So finding a pile of it on his bed is pretty benign.

We took Jesse for his 2 year check up on Friday afternoon. I love his pediatrician - he's so great with kids and he shares Jesse's birthday so he has that extra bond with him. Anyhoo, here are the latest stats:

Height: 37" - 95th percentile - still tall.

Weight: 31 lbs, 12 oz - 90th percentile!

Head: I don't remember, but it's where it should measure.

The question asked that made us laugh out loud: Does he have more than 20 words in his vocabulary? Uh, yeah - he probably has about 200 at this point.

He said Jesse looks great and gave him an A+. We go back when he's 3.

And the doc noted my huge belly and inquired about the due date. I told him March 30 and he said to make sure to tell the folks at the hospital his name specifically instead of just the name of the practice. That way he (or another doc in the office, if he's not available) will be sure to be there within 24 hours of birth to check out the baby. He seemed excited to be getting a new patient soon from the sparkle in his eyes at the sight of the belly (or maybe that was $$$ I saw in his eyes).

When we were out and about this weekend, I said "dangit" in response to something. Jesse immediately picked up on it, thinking it hilarious, and started repeating it. I made the mistake of laughing, of course.

Potty training is progressing.

Jesse adores banana bread. Beau made a loaf yesterday. The kid would eat it for every meal every day if it were up to him. So I suggested Beau try to make zuccini bread to see if he loves that as much. I figure it's a way to get more veggies into him.

Ok, the explanation is that there haven't been any new pictures posted here since my domain was moved to a new server. I'm having issues getting to the new server through FTP and it's frustrating me. I can't update any blogware. And uploading pictures is a challenge. So while there have been plenty of new pictures posted at my blog, I can't seem to get them to work here (it's a link issue that I haven't taken a huge amount of time to investigate). But I do plan to work on it because I want to get this straigtened out before Jesse younger sibling arrives, because it affects that blog, too. It's a mess.

We realize he's a bit young to pin this on, but we think that Jesse may be color blind.

He learned in no time his numbers and alphabet. He knows shapes. His vocabulary is quite large.

But no matter how many times we show him a color and ask him what it is, he gets it wrong 99% of the time.

It could be that he couldn't care less about learning his colors and that he'll learn them when he's ready.

He has crayons and markers and likes to play with them (not so much to scribble or draw, he mostly just holds them). We'll ask him what color one of the crayons is and he names a color, but it's usually the wrong one. It's perplexing.

But like I said, we do realize that it could be something that he will learn, just slower than the things he's more interested in.

I think Jesse has his first crush. She is ice cream.

I have eaten ice cream just about much every night after dinner for the past month or so. For the past week, Jesse has been able to say "ice cream" pretty well - well enough that I know what he's saying at least.

Beau will dish it up and bring the small bowl to me. A few times he brought it to me sans spoon and I reminded him that I needed a spoon. One of those times, Jesse happened to be out of his booster and he walked to the drawer and started to pull out a spoon. He just couldn't see over the drawer to know where it was, but we thought that was smart of him.

So in the past few days, when I get the ice cream, Jesse would get very excited. I always ask if he wants some and he'll say, "Some. Okay," but when I offer the spoon he turns his head away. What's super cute is that he gets this funny, almost shy smile as he looks at the spoon as he turns his head. I wish we could get a picture of it, but it all happens so fast there's no way.

Last night, he started saying "ice cream" while I was still eating dinner and we went through the whole process again. I thought for sure he might actually take some, but he didn't. One day, though, one day...

So I was on my way out the door this morning and yelled up to Beau that I was leaving. He yelled back for me to wait so that I could see Jesse, who had just woken up. They came down the stairs and I got a great, warm grin from Jesse. He gave me a nice headbutt and a zerbert (at Beau's prompting). Then Beau and I kissed and on a lark I asked Jesse for a kiss.

*hold on a sec, I've got something in my eye*

He leaned toward me and touched his lips to my puckered up lips.

I asked for a repeat and without hesitation he kissed me again.

I got my first kiss from my son this morning and my heart melted just a wee bit. It's a great day.

[x-posted]

Jesse's vocabulary continues to increase daily. New words from the last update include:

The more regular use of Mom or Ma
please - verbal as well as the sign language dog scratch
Einsteins (for Little Einsteins)
feet
toes
nose
mouth (which sounds like mouse, so that gets confusing)
ears
eyes
elbow
knees
chair
bear
sit
milk (which sounds like nulk)

And now, dude, which I call him all the time. On Sunday he repeated it back to me with a huge grin and we now say it back and forth for laughs.

He is able to eat pretty well with utensils, although sometimes he forgets what's going on and he'll wave the fork or spoon around when it has food on it. He's great about using a plate and bowl - we're brave parents who use real plates with him because we don't have plastic yet.

He helps Dad unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher.

He understands the No Corner and the other day when I told him to sit on the sofa that he was standing on, he actually climbed down and walked over to sit in the No Corner. Somehow he associates the word sit with being in trouble, so we'll have to correct that. But it was so cute and we took great pleasure in explaining that he was not in trouble because he was a good boy for sitting.

We're getting ready to transition him to a regular bed. We need to huck out the guest/junk room first. Then we'll switch the crib and bed rather than the whole rooms. The baby doesn't need the huge room and it'll be less confusing for Jesse to keep the room he's been in. So we'll begin the huck out this weekend and I'm hoping to have Jesse's new bed ready for him by Thanksgiving. Then I can work on the new nursery.

Oh, one other thing. Jesse's best friend is an elderly Indian man (Beau says he's in his 80s) who lives in our neighborhood. Singh and his wife came from India to live with their daughter. He likes to walk around the neighborhood every day and at some point months ago he caught up with Beau and Jesse in the playground. Beau and Singh have adult conversation while Jesse plays nearby, but Singh has kind of adopted Jesse and often brings him toys. They have often gone to Singh's house to hang out, too. So Beau told me that Jesse gets weepy and upset when they take their leave of Singh now, which is very sweet.

I'm a terrible Mommy blogger. So long since an update here. My apologies...

Jesse continues to grow into a charming little boy. He is quickly increasing his vocabulary beyond, "Da!" and "Amen."

He is obsessed with Goodnight Moon, also known as "MoMo Moom," and now the actual moon, which Beau showed him last weekend. Every night after dinner he goes to the back door looking for the "moom." During the day he'll point at the sun and say, "moom." We correct him by explaining that the moon only comes out at night and the sun comes out during the day. We'll see when that clicks for him.

When I read it to him, I get all whispery when we get to the line about the "quiet old lady whispering hush." And then he'll whisper "hush," too. It's very sweet.

He rarely calls out for Mom, it's always Dad. So we're working on his use of Mom. He gets all shy and quiet when we ask him to say, "Mom." He gives me a cute little smile when he says it, kind of flirty. It's funny. Then he yells, "Dad!"

The other night we had chicken with carrots and when I asked him if he wanted a carrot (we're slowly trying to get away from the baby veggies in the jar, probably late, but whatever), he gave his dog scratch sign for please and said, "carrots." He ate quite a few happily, which really surprised us. He seems not to like leftovers and I'm thinking it's because they are not as hot as when freshly cooked. His favorite is pasta with no sauce - just sprinkled with a little Parmesan cheese. He also loves pancakes, which we had on Saturday. As soon as he saw them he yelled, "'Cakes!" and started his dog scratch-please thing.

He adores Little Einsteins and gets very excited when it's time to help the Einsteins to get Rocket going on the mission. He wants us to pat with him, which we do, of course.

At church he is in love with the main worker in his room on Saturday nights. She's like a third grandma to him, which is very sweet. As long as she is there, he will go in happy as a clam. When she isn't in there, there is much crying and unhappiness in those first few moments.

He likes to walk down the stairs like a big boy, but knows to hold on to one of our hands and the railing. He actually does very well considering his little legs are barely long enough to make it easy. He does pretty well going up, too. Fortunately, he knows to scoot down on his butt or crawl up when we are not there - if he manages to sneak past a missed gate.

He has no problem with the gates. He will help to close them and he closes doors that we keep closed to keep him safe from a tumble.

Yesterday, while Beau was helping with parking at church and I was home alone with Jesse, I decided it was time to institute time out, what I call the No Corner. I identified a location on the top two floors for this and started using it when he wouldn't obey me on certain things (mainly throwing stuff). At first, he thought we were playing, but by the 3rd or 4th time of being put into the corner, he started to cry. Each time I explained why he was in the corner and that last time I asked him to say he was sorry. He did and I gave him a hug and thanked him. I think it worked because the next time he looked like he was going to throw his book at me, I said, "No throwing," and instead he walked over to me to hand it to me. I pulled him to my lap and praised him and proceeded to read some of it to him. We'll see how he does the next time I'm in charge of him. I told Beau about it and he employed it when Jesse persisted in throwing his sippy cup from the high chair during dinner. Again, he didn't like it, so we'll see how it works the more we use it. The kid throws everything and it has to stop.

So that's Jesse in a nutshell. He's a sweet, happy little boy and the joy of our lives.