Small Victories

Brayden has some interesting war stories to tell from the last week. We are deep into the toddler version of self expression through wardrobe choices. And while he is a little hot body that runs and runs around inside of our 68 degree house, it is still only 68 degrees and we insist on long sleeve shirts or a sweatshirt. At times, this is enough to create a maelstrom of toddler furry, tears and discontent; and he spends a good part of the day asking to take the sweatshirt off, and if it happens to have a zipper on it, we can keep it on him for about…5 minutes. We recently found a long sleeve shirt with puppies on it and that helps quite a bit. Socks however are another matter all together.

Brayden received a pair of socks for Halloween that he loves; loves as in wears three days a week if he can find them. This morning Daddy tried to put socks on him that were not Halloween socks…which was fine until Brayden spied his Halloween socks. I have to hide them in the laundry basket tonight when he goes to bed!


He also started asking to go on the potty again. He will stand in the living room and say “Potty?” and then I go along with it, certain he is teasing me and run to the bathroom, where he pulls his potty seat out of the closet, we really quick get him undressed, start to read him a book and sure enough, he goes potty! Then, we say “bye-bye” to the potty as it is flushed away, and we go and call someone as a reward. The child loves the phone almost as much as he loves his books and his daddy’s hats (so if you get a phone call, and all you hear is a sweet little voice saying “POTTY!!”, it’s not a prank, it’s just us-go ahead and help us celebrate!).


This is what my little booger wanted to wear to daycare today. Daddy is his favorite at the moment (which is such good, good timing, and only a little bit of a bummer…I would get used to it faster if Little Stinker would just go ahead and be born already!)

Oh, and here are some pictures of the ducks. We find them in the strangest places these days: on top of the bird feeder, in the trees, on top of the barn, under the three season porch, or just hanging out on the front patio. Here they are on top of the house. Probably hiding from Grizzly, who’s job it is to protect us from the male, who has decided to attack us whenever he sees us (he may find himself on a plate if he doesn’t behave himself through the winter!). This is the female, and she is just checking in to see if we were thinking we were going to come outside anytime soon.

Here is a picture of the day he decided he and his puppy needed to take a nap on the toy box. I guess he does look pretty warm, doesn’t he?