Monthly Newsletter #34

Dear Landon,

This month has been one of the best and one of the worst months. We spent 75% of this month together, I was laid off from work and I decided to keep you home even after I knew that I had an eminent job offer. In some respects it was perfect timing.

You are potty trained. And so proud of it, the ladies at the day care were also so excited to see you were potty trained, although they quickly discovered not to ask what's on your underwear, because you will drop your pants right then and there to show them. You quickly grew tired of the positive reinforcement prizes we put in place. You're perfectly happy to just pee in the potty, because you know it means you won't be sitting around all wet. Now if we could just get you to stand to pee, we'd be in business.

When I found out that I had a job, but just had some time off, I started planning lots and lots of fun things to do. Some ended up being more fun than others. As it turns out, we could have gone to Hermann park and just rode the train all day - it would have been more fun than going to the zoo in 100° weather. And also, the play I took you to at Miller Outdoor Theater was kind of a letdown, but riding and getting on and off the train that day was super awesome. The Blue Bell ice cream factory was probably the least exciting for you, but you did like that it ended with ice cream. I think our best adventure was to the Children's Museum and I can't wait to plan a day to go back again.

We also did a few things that were cheap and free. You have a new found love of the library and your 20 books trophy. Next year if we participate, we're doing 20 hours instead of 20 books. Because you and I can go through 15 books in one sitting, and that doesn't even count that fact that we read each one at least twice.

We probably went to the park one too many times, although on one trip when we fed the ducks we discovered one of the large male ducks had fishing line wrapped around one of his feet. It was so tight he was limping and it was swollen. I called animal control and the guy showed up to look at him. I told you that he was the animal guy and was going to fix that duck. We talked about how when something is wrong, you should do what you can to fix it, and if you can't fix it you should call someone who can, and that's what we did by calling animal control. And thank goodness when we went back about a week later I couldn't even tell which of those ducks had been the hurt one.

We also discovered a few more, better shows on TV instead of only watching Sprout. I have a higher tolerance for Caillou when it's not the same 3 episodes over and over again and we discovered Sid the Science Kid (whose grandmother needs to stop laughing or get a new laugh or something - but otherwise is a neat show) and Super Why (although the concepts and letters and spelling stuff is a bit beyond you, you love this show too.)

I'm not going to lie, you are a handful and my patience was wearing thin, and I was really pretty relieved to hand you back over to the Day Care. But I was also relieved that you wanted to go back. When went to tell them the Thursday before you started back that you were coming on Monday and you pitched a huge fit about not wanting to leave - it was a good sign, but even better was that on Monday morning, you gave me no problems about going back to school. I'm glad we had this month together. You may not remember all the stuff we did later on down the line, but I think it was worth it anyway.

This month is going to be different, not better, not worse, but different. Please have patience with me while I adjust to my new job, oh, and consider standing up to pee - it's all the rage amongst the people who have your similar parts.

Love,
Mama