Saturday, March 5, 2011

Potty time and piano playing - not simultaneously!

My son is not quite 18 months old and today he used the potty and went #2!!! We're so proud! Or at least I am. Hubby hasn't actually said that, but he did brag on the boy a whole lot.

We've been talking more and more about when he's going (when we can tell) and asking him if he knows what that felt like right before he went.

So today, he said, "I go?" and grabbed his diaper. I asked Hubby to go up and do something about that, not ever dreaming that anything would actually come of it. My belly was hurting and had the brownie box perched on my prone belly - I was occupied! I figured Hubby would put him on the potty, he would cry, and nothing really would happen. A minute later, Hubby hollered asking how to do this. I gave some dumb answer along the lines of "figure it out", until he said "this is really messy, I could use your help". Messy? It's never been messy before! I bolted up the stairs.

Sure enough, we had a mess on our hands. But some had landed IN the toilet!! So while Hubby and I were exclaiming about the mess, of course Quint started to cry. I shifted into calming, reassuring, you did so good type of things to calm us all down. At one point Hubby said, "HOW IS THIS OK?!" I calmly said, "because it is NOT the end of the world and this is actually fantastic progress." "OK, that's true."

We got everything and everyone cleaned up and calmed down, bragging about how good he did. I realize that if I had bolted off the couch at the first sign of "I go?" then we likely wouldn't have had a traumatic mess, but how on earth was I supposed to know?!

I'm frantically trying to think of a fantastic reward when he pats the tub and asks to play in the water in the tub. YES!! So we had a bath, or rather water play session, on a non-bath day and he played and laughed and played. I told him several times that he was getting to play in the water because he did so great with the potty.

NOW TO THE SUBJECT OF MUSIC!

This week, I sold a piece of exercise equipment and took the cash to the consignment sale at church. There, I bought a bucket of musical toys, a tiny wagon, a riding toy for outside, AND a small, musically correct piano! I had wanted a piano for Quint, but the funds don't appear to be in our future at this time. So a $15 piano was just perfect!

The very amazing thing, was that as soon as he played with it at home, he found two notes exactly one octave apart and kept playing them to hear them together! (E flat if anyone cares.) He had tapped around up and down the keyboard, but when he hit those two, he stopped, played them again, and looked at me! I said, "yeah, those sound the same don't they?" and he smiled!He has stopped and played at the piano many times now, and only knocked it over a time or two. It's a great thing for him to play with while I'm in the kitchen, too. We've been working on not pounding it (or the cat) but playing gently. It makes lots of other noises, and has a beat box which he loves to dance with. It also has an off switch and is light enough to hide in the loft if it starts to drive us crazy. All fantastic features - especially for $15!
He has also had much more success with the kid whistles within the bucket of musical instruments than with his daddy's fancy and expensive whistles. Daddy's whistles can actually play TUNES while Quint's can't but we certainly are not to the tune phase of Quint's whistle playing yet. We're to the "I made it go" phase of whistle playing.

So Quint has had some wonderful new developments this week!

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