Phases

Both of my children are in "phases" right now. As in "I hope this is a phase and a short one too!"

Jonathan had his first public tantrums last week; three in the space of four days. This is calling for some decided thought and creativity on my part as I try to anticipate, redirect, and (unfortunately) handle the results of said tantrums. It is a lot trickier than I had considered.

Thomas is, I think, highly frustrated with his lack of mobility in a very mobile family. Crawl, child, crawl! He wants to be carried a lot right now and if I put him down and walk away he has developed a very loud, very carrying, very obnoxious grunting/squawking sound that has a similar effect on me as that of nails on a chalkboard. Well, it is effective, I'll give him that. :)

On a more positive note, both kiddos are also blossoming in beautiful ways at a truly amazing pace. Jonathan seems to be having another language explosion. His sentences are becoming quite complicated, and he's experimenting with a lot of new grammatical construction. The results are sometimes funny, but he's getting better by the day. Sometimes Gabe and I will just look at each other and say "did he really just say that? Our two-year-old?"

Thomas is starting to add "lalalala" and "yaya" sounds to his previous cooing. I'd forgotten how much fun this stage of language development is.

My mother just mentioned that I may have forgotten to post about the result of our potty training experiment. It worked. :) Jonathan is now in diapers only for sleeping. He has occasional accidents, but they are usually my fault rather than his (as in: "Mommy, pee's comin' out" followed by "oh dear, hold it, um, while I find a bathroom, after I pay for the groceries, um, can you make it until we're home?") :)