I didn't get up at 5am

I had that whole intention. I also had the intention of starting my 545am workout regimen. I have crap for will power. I do. I admit it.

The truth is, our little dog and pony show has had a tough summer (year? year and a half?). And I know my my Bleaders (blog readers) are as tired of reading about our latest insect infestation/crazy illness/asthma flareup/ear infection as much as we are tired of living it. It'll get better, I know it will. Just feeling a tiny bit impatient on that one.

Howeva.......

Me and Rob? Got some cute kids. Like real cute. Here's a update on that business.

This baby????

Why, this baby is 11 months old. How did that freakin happen? He was born yesterday, I swears. I'm totally in love with this kid, he's the happiest kid on the planet. Except when you aren't holding him. But then don't sit down to hold him, cause that's super boring and he must get down. He has a LITTLE problem with biting, for which we are doing the totally correct thing that I'm sure we should write a book about: putting a pacey in his mouth. The way I see it, he's biting because his shark mouth has 8 teeth and more on the way and he doesn't understand that my fat thighs are not teethers. He isn't going to kindergarten with a pacey. I hope not anyway. And if its still a problem, I'll just homeschool. I have it all planned.

He has said his first word: LOLA. The two of them have a love like no other. Lola tolerates him pulling at her ears and crawling on her, in return she gets lots of yummies dropped in her general direction from his high chair.

He is a lover of all things meat. Its like he's on a self imposed South Beach diet. Well, if bananas and cheerios were allowed on SBD.

He is definitely sleeping better. And Rob and I grew some guts and have let him cry it out and go to sleep on his own. Some nights now, he almost seems thankful to be put in his crib, flops on his belly and is out, other nights, he tells us in baby talk that we are the worst parents on earth and he'd like to phone a friend (or Grammy). He's on about an 8pm to 6am sleep shift, and this I cannot judge.

I learned with Rylan to slow down and enjoy the ride. Enjoy them as babies, you don't get it back. Well, Max doesn't want to be a baby. He wants to hang with Rylan. He ate baby food for maybe 5 minutes, he crawled at 6 months, he'll be walking within the month, and now he stands up in the middle of the bathtub "look ma, no hands."

This big boy?????

Is 99.9% potty trained. And you'd never know he was adverse to the idea of peeing in the potty a day in his life. And that e-book I followed to do the super crazy 3 day training? She kind of knows what she's doing. I'm not saying its for everybody or even normal at all. It just worked for us. It was more like 5 days, and I changed some of the rules. But, the end result was that he's potty trained, he now tells me when he's got to go and we've used a million and a half public potties with success.

And sure, he did pee at Whole Foods next to the play area. And we did stick a diaper on him before driving 3.5 hours to see my parents. And I put a pull up on him to go to a play date cause he'd had some, um grossness the night before and I'd rather take a step back in potty training than clean grossness off of someone's furniture. But, I am soooooo proud of that kid.

We've been trialing him off of dairy for the summer with some luck. He's always had some stomach issues. I finally talked to one of the GI docs I work with and he gave me a list of symptoms that kids with dairy intolerance have. They include bumpy skin on the cheeks, arms and legs, lots of ear infections at an early age, asthma, and diaper grossness. Rylan got a checkmark next to every thing on the list. His, bathroom issues are sooo much better, and most of the other issues are too (minus the asthma one).

That's them in a nutshell.