Hooray!

Hey! Richie finally used the potty for number one all for just one M-n-M!
Hooray!! (Yes, my first thought was to grap the camera.)

Almost forgot

We woke Richie up to go see the fireworks for New Years. After we went home, we opened a bottle of sparkling grape juice and offered some to the boy. We did warn him that it was "bubbly." He took a sip, made a horrible face and then said, "I LIKE the bubblies!" And took another sip! And, yes, he came up with the pronunciation "bubble-ee's" on his own.

Phrases

While at the beach in Ft. Myers, we asked Richie if he was hungry. The usual answer is, of course, “No.” But that day he provided an enthusiastic, “Yeah!” Mama asked him what he would like to eat, to which he responded, “What does the beach HAVE to eat?” (Ultimately, it turned out that the beach had French fries.)

If we’re asking Richie to do something he does not want to do, or saying something he doesn’t want to hear, we will hear, “Mama/Gaga not talk.” For some reason that does not bother me as much as I imaging it will the first time he tells me to “shut up.”

Frequently, we will have to ask Richie to repeat himself. He still lacks in enunciation, but age appropriate. Sometimes a big long string of gibberish spews out of his mouth to which we will ask him what he was saying. Frequently he’ll respond with a, “Oh Mama/Gama, I’m just talking.” Which means “I’m not talking too you so I don’t expect you to understand me.”

Even better, when the gibberish comes out, one of us will ask him what language he’s speaking. The most frequent answer is, “German.”

Recently we made a road trip to south Florida. When we’d pass an 18 wheeler, Mama would ask Richie what he thought was in the truck. The most common response was, “Yummy Lollipops.” Occasionally we’d here, “Yummy Lollipops and Clean Underwear.” Once in a great while it would dirty underwear in a truck.

For the first 2.75 years of his life, we have been trying to teach him how to throw, so he would not end up like his Gaga. Since he was not that good at it, we did a lot of training in the house. Three weeks ago, he figured it out and decided to show off by throwing one of his wooden activity table chairs. Clearly now we have a zero throwing tolerance in the house and that has resulted in many episodes of timeout. By his reaction, you’d think we were eviscerating him by putting him in timeout. When we were visiting GG’s, he kept throwing his wooden trains at GG. I think he spent more time in timeout and sleeping than he did in free play because of that. Really, he was just ready to play catch!

While visiting Mama’s Mama (AKA Ningning) Richie was scolded for putting his bottle on Ningning’s coffee table without a coaster. It was explained to him that it would damage the wood and it was not polite. Later, Richie was putting his feet on the coffee table and he was told that was not polite, either. So he put two coasters on the table and plopped his little feet right on them!