Dax's Journal

Included

People often ask me if Dax is excited about getting a baby brother. Indeed, he is. In fact, awhile back he started to include his baby brother in many things ranging from games we play to story time to the artwork he churns out at school.

Here's one of his drawings that his teacher helpfully tagged for us so we'd know what we were looking at (because the last time he brought home a picture of the whole family we thought baby brother was the sun until he corrected us).

He also makes sure baby brother gets a bingo (or Zingo) card whenever we play and he often tells me that baby brother wants a particular bedtime story. I think it is safe to say that he's excited.

Now we'll see if he STAYS excited when his baby brother actually arrives.

Well THAT didn't last long

Tonight during Dax's bath he and I struck up a conversation about Christmas. He was playing with a couple of new toys that Santa brought him so I asked, "Santa is pretty cool, huh?" His response totally took me by surprise because I was not expecting my three-year-old who had JUST THIS YEAR been introduced to the idea of Santa to tell me that he was pretend.

That's right. Dax informed me that Santa? He's pretend. We pretended that Santa came to our house and brought presents. Wha????

When I asked him who told him that he had no answer. I asked him if one of his friends at school had said something and he said, "No. The schoolers think he's real. Ty Ty said Santa is real."

"And what did you tell Ty Ty?"

"I told him Santa is just pretend."

Oh, that's just peachy. You always hear about the kid who ruins Santa for all the others by telling them he's not real. I didn't think it would happen in the preschool set and I certainly didn't think it would be MY kid doing it.

And so I feel the need to proclaim here, in this public forum, that it was NOT US who told him Santa was pretend.

I'm wondering if this will pass. I mean, when next Christmas rolls around will he simply scoff at the man in red or will he believe?

If he remains a skeptic then these are the Christmas cards all his little friends will be getting.

Merry Christmas!

Hope your Christmas was merry and bright...and filled with oodles of goodies.

At least his vocabulary is advanced

I am beyond frustrated. This potty training thing has me bamboozled. If "Potty Training" were a course in school my son and I would both be failing a remedial course by now.

I wish this entry was only going to cover the fact that Dax finally went poop on the potty this week and earned himself a Spider Man stickerbook and a trip to "Old McDonald's Playland" with daddy. And then I'd move on to yesterday when he went poop on the potty again and got to call Nanna and Poppa and leave them a message bragging about his good news.

But instead this entry will point out that I have cleaned more poop AND pee off of my floor in the past few days than any person should EVER have to. (Just a tip: Taking your kid's pants off and letting them roam free like an untamed jungle boy is probably a great approach. In the summertime when they can do so outside and not anywhere remotely close to carpet.)

This morning he and I went to buy some more underpants (because we've come to think of them as disposable). He picked out some baseball ones and some Spiderman ones. This is all part of the "don't put him back in a pull-up NO MATTER WHAT" approach. We sort of tried this before but when he decided that he would just STOP pooping altogether (resulting in a rather unpleasant visit to the pediatrican) we caved. This time we have the power of a prescription laxative to keep that from happening again. Bwah-ha-haaa!

I'll be off for most of the next week and Dax will be at home with me. This will be the first time I will have had the chance to spend an extended period of time WITH him while attempting to potty train (as opposed to nights and weekends and then depending on his school to get the job done). I'm somewhat optimistic that this will make a difference. Somewhat.

And now? So that I don't have to end this on such a bleak note? I'll leave you with this:

We have an awesome grocery store near us that lets you place your order online and then someone else does the shopping for you and you just pull up, push a button, announce your arrival and then everything gets delivered right to your car. AWESOME! We almost always have the same person helping us, too, and she frequently will remind me of commonly purchased items that I may have forgotten.

This time our usual person was on lunch break when we picked up so the woman who brought our groceries out said, "Jenny wanted to know why you didn't get yogurt this time." I replied that we had some at home already but then Dax piped up from the back seat, "My yogurt is EXPIRED!" And, um, sadly he is right. I had forgotten. The look on the woman's face was fantastic, though, because she clearly did not expect him to say that. Quite frankly, I didn't either because usually he just describes things as "yucky" or "old".

So my kid may be a total striver in the potty department but his vocabulary is not hurting.

Oh, yeah. This is also awesome. I especially like Daddy Clay's take on bribery because, clearly, the things I'm using ain't cutting it. Maybe $100 a poo will convince him.

Santa

Dax met Santa yesterday because Ol' Saint Nick stopped by the school to bring all the good children an early present and a candy cane.

Almost all of the kids were pretty happy to meet Santa. Fortunately, Dax was one of the happy ones. He was so excited, in fact, that he could not stop himself from assaulting the man with a steady stream of conversation peppered with MANY! EXCLAMATION! POINTS!

Our little one seems to be quite excited about Christmas this year. Just wait until he finds out that all those presents under the tree? He gets to OPEN them and KEEP what is inside.

He's even more excited about the year 2008. He told his teachers that would be when his baby brother finally gets here. He reiterated that for me about a million times on the ride home tonight. He then tried to convince me that January would be much better than February and, heck, let's just make it January right now.

I hope he is still as excited about his baby brother when he actually arrives.

Not so warm welcome

Last night we went to Cat's company Christmas party (yes, they DO get to call it a CHRISTMAS party) and had a grand time. We had wonderful company, Cat got a spectacular bonus, and we learned to play roulette.

Dax was at home with Miss Merissa having an even better time. We very rarely go out so this was the first time EVER that we had a sitter come to the house. Dax ADORES Merissa and knows her very well since he sees her every day at preschool. He was a bit excited already but then he got a bit of leeway on bedtime (where "leeway" means that I told Merissa he could stay up as late as he wanted) so when we walked in the door at 11PM he was still wide awake.

I have to confess I was a bit glad he was still awake because I envisioned his cheerful and loving greeting when he saw us, his loving parents. I pictured him jumping up and running over to give us big hugs and to tell us how much he missed us. Ahhhhh.

Instead, he looked up at us with a look of clear disappointment in his eyes and said, "Go away."

I guess he thought we'd gone away for good, freeing him up to live with Merissa and to never have a set bedtime again.

Here they are together back in August. I know he looks suspicious but it is clearly only because I was taking the picture and he knew I was going to make him come home with me.