Choices

Erik is just starting to be able to make some simple decisions. Up til now, he mostly would repeat the last option we gave him (milk or water? -water). On Monday I was putting his shoes on him to go outside. I grabbed his white shoes. He started saying, "brown brown brown". Ok, we'll put the brown shoes on! Tuesday morning I asked if he wanted Cheerios or a banana, he paused a really long time, and then said "apples". It's great to see that he keeps ideas in his head that he can pull up on his own without me offering them. So this afternoon I asked him which costume he wanted to wear trick or treating tonight. He chose the pumpkin.
It worked out well, we went to Mac for lunch with Joe today. Erik was already wearing regular clothes and I didn't feel like changing him. So I put the firefighter costume on over his clothes and he really got to wear both costumes today.

At the Zoo

Last Saturday we took Erik to the Lincoln Park Zoo. He had a great time and loved it.
He's learning to say many animal names like giraffe...

and of course he's been saying "fish" for a long time.
Erik can also make many animal noises so when we told him what animal we were looking for he would make the appropriate noise. I think Joe was disappointed there were no elephants, and I was disappointed I didn't get around to buying an ice cream cone. But these were minor compared to the fun of taking Erik to see so many animals.

voting booths are now open

We can't go wrong this Halloween with two options as cute as these:
Option I: Our Little Pumpkin

Option II: Our Little Firefighter


voting booths will be open until Noon on Wednesday, October 31st.
Thank you

Do it yourself potty training

Last January I bought a seat to put on our toilet for when Erik is old enough to start trying. I wanted him to be very used to seeing it. It hung in the bathroom for months. Then this summer he became very interested in Mama and Papa's use of the toilet so we started having him sit fully clothed on his seat. Then he would tear of one square of toilet paper, throw it in, flush and wash his hands. He loves doing this. A couple weeks ago we had Erik sit naked on the seat while he was waiting for the bath to fill. This worked well because he was super excited about the bath, so sitting on the potty didn't bother him, and well, you know what listening to running water does to a person.


Thursday afternoon Erik was playing when he looked at me and said, "poopy" and pointed to himself. I asked if he wanted to sit on the potty and he beamed and ran to the bathroom. I took his pants down and sat him on his seat. Imagine my surprise when he, uh, well, peed and pooped in the potty! Since then he will ask to sit on the potty a couple times a day. Sometimes something happens and sometimes nothing happens.

It's pretty cool. He's so proud of himself.

Whatever happened to September?

Well, here's the thing. For those of you who don't already know, we're expecting in April. So if Erik's sleeping, I'm sleeping too. I sleep a completely ridiculous amount of time. I'll be glad when this first trimester exhaustion is over. So, despite many adorable things happening in September, it's completely gone from Erik's blog. Oh well.

And may I suggest that you sign up for Google Reader or an RSS feed to your email, if you don't already do this. In Google Reader, you create a Google account. Then you can set up Google reader with the blogs you read. Everytime you log into Google, it will update you on your blogs. So then you don't have to check them all everyday, it will let you know if there's anything new. That's what Joe & I do. For the RSS feed, I guess it sends you an email with a link to new posts. Joe thinks this would be the best option for anyone who considers themselves not so tech savvy.

I hope to see more of you all in October!

Barnehage

Today was Erik's first day of Barnehage. We had signed up for a Birth to Two-year-old parent and child class, but it was canceled due to only five kids enrolled. So we checked out the class for two year olds. The biggest drawback is that it's during Erik's regular naptime. I haven't decided for sure if we'll join the class. I hate to think of him as fussy every Monday morning as he was today.

We showed up, had some free play time before circletime started. At circle time we sang a hello song and "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" in Norwegian. Then we went down to the gym to run around. The theme for the month is free time activities. So the instructor, who chose the unfortunate name Huldra, had the kids run back and forth doing different actions (hop, crawl, kick) while labeling them in Norwegian. Erik lost it at this time. He went to the door and cried that he wanted to leave. I sat by him and persuaded him to stay by letting him know next would be snack - juice and bread. So we went back upstairs and he drank apple juice and ate bread with brunost. We left then. I decided not to stay for the final half hour of art.