It’s hard to believe it has been a month since I last posted.

Where did the time go?!

We’ve been working hard on lots of things around here, including keeping our sanity through the Michigan late winter. This year has been particularly mild though (as I write this, the sun is shining and it’s a balmy 50 degrees) so it is easier to endure.

I still owe you all a post on our trip to London at the end of January for the A Day of Rest conference and a few days of site seeing. I have some scanning to do before I have enough pictures to post so know for now that post is in the works.

Note to self: Go find the functioning scanner

Teddy started walking while we were out of the country, of course, and just before our pediatrician’s 16 month deadline before we’d need to seek professional intervention. One day he took 5 steps on his own and the next day he was practically running around my parents’ house. Typical of Teddy, he was waiting until he was sure he was ready.

Just like most skills that Teddy has learned, his teeth are taking their sweet time. Ben always cut 3 or 4 teeth at a time but Teddy gets one slow tooth, has a week off, then gets one more slooooooow tooth. It looks like he is cutting both of his top one year molars right now so hopefully those will be in soon and Teddy will become less of a drama queen again. He learned to throw full toddler-sized tantrums too and exercises his right to throw one daily.

Teddy is talking much more too. His words include mama, dada, Nene (Benny), kkkkk (kitty), fffft (hot aka coffee), mo (more), baba (his burp cloth), da (down), bah (ball), chhhhh (cheese), and kawkaw (cracker). He has perfected the signs to accompany many of his words and also regularly signs please, drink, water, and milk. He adorably will wrap his arms around our legs and left one leg to indicate he wants to be picked up (never arms raised, for some reason).

Ben is so, so, so, so ready for school and it’s killing him that it is so far away still. It’s especially hard because I registered him for preschool (afternoons but first on the waitlist for mornings) at the beginning of February and he can see the kids playing at the school from our house. He tells me often, “I’m BIG so I can go to school now.” He craves more stimulation than what hanging out at home with mom can provide and often asks to go play at someone’s house or “go somewhere.” He never has any answers of with whom to play or where to go but he’s ready to have a big kid routine. I’ve started donating plasma and our local donation center has a locked, supervised kids play area and he’s already chomping at the bit to go play while I “give my blood to the sick people.”

Also of note is that he finally chewed a hole in his last pacifier and, with plenty of warning, that got thrown away and he’s now pacifier free! It was a rough few days and I don’t think he’s taken a nap since we took it away at the beginning of February but he still sleeps well at night.

To (hopefully) protect my lose grasp on sanity, we’ve been talking through days of the week and working on a preschool friendly way to mark the passage of time. He has a calendar that we write important events in and he helps count the number of sleeps we have until the next event. He is doing a great job at counting to 10 and number recognition but the alphabet is still rather mystifying to him. He’s got “B” down and we’re working on recognizing and writing “E” and “N” so he’ll be able to write his name soon. He’s made pretty good progress with our really casual approach to pre-pre-preschool. He has a super short attention span and seems to struggle with creative drawing so we’re slowly trying to make some progress on those skills too.

How is potty training going? Two REALLY BIG thumbs up! I can only recall one accident in the last month and that was because he got distracted by toys instead of heading straight to the potty chair to do his business. He’s self-initiating all trips to the chair (that we leave in his room), stays dry overnight, and takes himself to the potty chair without a parent in the morning. We ended up using pull ups for about 3 weeks before feeling comfortable going without. We are really proud of him!

Upcoming excitement for the Richards family includes a trip to Atlanta for Brian to speak at a WordCamp (and for the boys and I to spend lots of time playing with friends) and hopefully a long and slightly overdue family trip to Orlando and, of course, Disney World!