he looks like . . .

personally, i think the verdict is still out on who nate looks like. or maybe it isn't, and he looks like a good combination of the two of us.

you decide!

jeff as a baby (9 to 12 mos old). admittedly we don't have very many pictures of jeff as a baby or as a child. so this is all you get. sorry.



halo as a baby and as a little girl.



yes, that's red hair on my head.




nate pictures to compare.


yeah, that photographer could not get him to smile for anything!






i think, in the end, he looks like NATE. but at times i see jeff, and at other times i see me.

one time at my grandmother's house, we were looking through a photo album and my mom couldn't tell if the picture in question was of me or my brother or one of my cousins. i said, "who does it look like, mom?" she said, "nate." obviously it wasn't nate (since it was circa-who-knows-what), but that made it pretty clear that it was a picture of me not whoever she thought it was originally.

isn't it funny how one time you get "he looks so much like you!" and other times "he looks so much like his dad!"?

i have to say, i agree, lisa, in that picture of nate, me, my dad, and my grandmother, nate looks particularly like jeff. i think it is more his expression than anything else, though. because other pictures that same day he looks like me.

p.s. did you notice that in the two family portraits the only child in each picture looking off in an odd direction is the older sibling? makes you wonder what was so darn interesting!

generations

Nate, Halo, Dirck (Papa D), and Donna (Nana)


four generations of the DeWitt family in one place. (and a picture of myself that i actually like!)

i wish we could see them all more often, but we get there as much as we can. my parents are actually looking forward to the time when nate, and eventually willow, can come stay with them for part of the summer. not this year, but maybe in a year or two. i remember going on trips with my dad's parents, but not really ever staying with them for long periods of time. and my mom's mom i only went to stay with one summer when she was taking all the kids to Disney World. but i'm all for shipping my kids off for part of the summer!

his feminine side

i told you i'd share this picture when i got it off my camera. well, here it is. he's so proud of himself! that's a gold lame purse in one hand and either some bracelets or another purse on his other arm.

nate-isms

i've missed writing down so many of these over time that it kind of makes me sad. maybe doing this will jog my memory on some of the older ones, too. some recent nate-isms include:

east western = any and all best western hotels
free = three
yo dabba dabba = yo gabba gabba, a very annoying show in nick
honk-choo = snoring
bless-you'd = sneezed, as in "i bless-you'd and need a tissue."
mote comotrol = remote control, either for the tv or an RC car
mabecka = his friend rebecka (sp?) who moved away recently (we miss you, mabecka and chelle and ethan!)
maseem = his friend naseem who lives in albuquerque


some older nate-isms include:

excator = excavator, this was one of nate's first words
alquerque = albuquerque, also a surprisingly early word
snowing = snowing *and* snow in general and snow on the ground (inuit, schminuit, one word works for all of it!)
itty att = with the proper inflection this was his official first word, kitty cat
o? = this was when nate first started pretending to talk on the phone. he'd pick up anything with buttons on it, put it to the very back of his bald head, and say "o?" so grown up!
shishy = fishy, this was usually accompanied by the sign for fish

we all know there are tons more and hopefully they will come to mind again. i think this kind of thing is super cute, and makes him all his own because no two kids have the same little isms.

energy vacuum

why is it when nate gets a cold he has the same amount of energy he normally has. but when i get sick (at the same time as him) i'm totally wiped out?

i recently read a book (Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Kurcinka) that described the difference between an introverted child and an extroverted child. it isn't about whether your child is outgoing or not, or about making friends. the description has, specifically, to do with where your child draws their energy from. an introverted child draws their energy from being alone or with a few special people. an extraverted child draws their energy from others. the more people they are around the more energy they have. can you guess which one nate is? yes, he's a total extravert.

when we are at home, just the two of us, he's calm and reasonable and compliant and happy--ok, i will qualify that with "within the bounds of any 3 1/2 year old." but he is also sucking all of his energy from me. at this point i have limited resources of energy, so he's not getting much, but i have nothing left at the end of the day. (so i'm pretty sure why he has oodles of energy and i'm totally wiped out when we both have a cold at the same time. he's taking all of my energy!)

when both jeff and i are home or we are out somewhere surrounded by people, he gradually becomes more and more unhinged. he just can't contain the energy he's getting from everyone. and of course, that brings along some poor behavior.

one way to tell if your child is an extravert vs. an introvert is to observe how they cope with being alone. is being sent to their room a chance they long for? or is it pure torture to be apart from other people for any length of time? for nate, i might as well have asked him to jump off a cliff because he hates it. although, lately he's been getting better about being alone. we can actually ask him to go to his room and play for a little while, and he'll do it! it helps that he has the bunk bed now. it is like a jungle gym for him. LADDER! and it helps that he's simply getting older. we can also send him to his room if he's being a snot and needs time to reconsider his actions. we give him some time and then go in and talk to him about why he's in there.

sometimes, he'll send himself to his room, but that's not nearly as often. he also, by the way, tries to send us to his room when he's mad at us. but we all know that won't work, just like mama sending herself to her own room won't fly. heaven forbid i should go to my room for a time out, he follows me. part of me thinks this is him growing some independence. it is ok for him to leave me but still not ok for me to leave him. and mostly, i'm ok with that.

i'm just happy that we can use his room for reflection time and for play time. my boy is growing up. *sniff* and *yippee* at the same time.

spoke too soon?

we've been backsliding here in the Golden house, at least when it comes to going on the potty. no it isn't the end of the world, but it is frustrating at the very least.

nate went almost two solid weeks without any accidents. (he was like 2 days shy of the two week mark.) then all of a sudden he was having accidents left and right. i guess the hardest part for me is that it almost seems intentional or deliberate.

me: nate, do you have to go potty?

nate: no.

me: are you sure?

nate: i'm not sure. (by which nate, in his own brand of logic, means "i'm sure i don't have to." yes, i know it is backwards, and we keep discussing the difference between "i'm sure i don't have to" and "i'm not sure.")

5 minutes later an accident. two accidents in two hours under the same conditions. and really there was no reason he couldn't have held them both since he went potty when we arrived. hmph. true, we were at someone else's house to play, so i wasn't shocked. but he went potty when we got there, i asked him directly and he said no, plus he holds it for hours without a problem normally. he plays at school for 2.5 hours and has no problem either going to the potty or holding it the whole time. so i don't know how much i buy the "playing" excuse.

he's also had two poop accidents recently. one in a pull up while he was playing in his room. the other when he was home with only papa in his underpants. now, i was shocked when he started going poop on the potty so easily, so i'm not overly shocked to be having a few problems now. but then again i am a little bit baffled by it. he seemed to "get it" so quickly. and now this.

and this one seems the most deliberate. last night i caught him (not the first time) squatting to "hide" on the other side of the coffee table. "are you hiding to poop?" NO. "then stop squatting there." NO! "haul butt to the bathroom, you are trying to poop and you need to do it on the potty." and after a bit of time, he did go. i'm not an idiot, i knew what he was doing. why did he deny it? we talked about the fact that he knew he was trying to poop and denied it when asked.

i guess it is the flat out denial that gets my goat. i **know** what he's doing when he's squatting and squirming and can't sit still. but instead of stopping to really decide if he has to go, he denies what he's doing, argues all the way to the bathroom, and then has an accident. (one time he had an accident standing at the potty trying to pull his pants down after dragging his feet and arguing all the way to the bathroom.) so we are trying to be patient and working on not giving mama and papa "automatic answers" but actually considering if he really has to go, and not denying what is happening.

thing is, i can't figure out why. nothing much new is going on around here. baby willow is still months away and we don't do a great deal of talking about her arrival or even her in general. is it just a normal part of the process? am i looking for too much? sometimes he does great, other times it is like he wants to still be in diapers (which he absolutely denies).

i guess, ultimately, it is a process. and a learning process at that. accidents or no, we love him just the same.

more potty progress

at this point nate seems to have the whole potty thing pretty much down. (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!) we have changed the chart in our living room from "number of times going on the potty" to "number of days dry." we have the days broken up into chucks of time.

wake = dry when he wakes up and goes on the potty as soon as he can (which is sometimes hours later and freaks me out)

AM = dry between that first time and nap time

nap = dry when he wakes up and goes on the potty as soon as he can (again, could be hours)

PM = dry between nap time and bed time

poop = days that he poops on the potty (he's not an everyday pooper, more like every 2nd or 3rd day)

in the last week or so there are only 3 blank squares (not including the poop column). he had a little accident in his pull up one AM, an accident in his pants one PM, and this morning he woke up with a wet pull-up (but that was because he basically had OJ for dinner last night and it was late, late at night).

he wears big boy underwear pretty much all day now. takes his nap in them, too. but still wears a pull-up at night. he stays dry at night--for the most part--but i am just not ready to deal with accidents in bed yet. i am trying to find a reusable underpad or two that i can put down under him. then i'll be brave enough to ditch the pull-ups all together. honestly, he doesn't even bat an eye at the "difference" anymore. even if he's wearing a pull-up all day (weekends when he stays in his jammies all day long), he still goes on the potty.

he's even gone to santa fe twice wearing underwear and had no accidents. we take him potty before we leave the house, and we ask him about half way there if he has to go. both times he has said "yes" but when we get him out of the car and take him in the gas station to go, he's got nothing. i guess the next step is albuquerque, which might be this weekend. we are supposed to go down to albuquerque for a few days starting sunday. and it seems as good a time as any to try it.

so on to the next step!

F - L - Y

that was nate's first word. not the first word he said, but the first word he READ.

this morning, as we were getting ready to take him to pre-school, he was looking at an old toy catalog. on the front, sort of in the background of the main picture, is a toy that says FLY on the front of it. without a lick of help from me (or me even realizing what he was doing until it was all over with) he sounded out each letter (ffff lllllll yyyyyyy) and said the word. i had to look at the catalog to see what he was talking about, but sure enough, there it was. fly.

neither jeff nor i have any recollection of having read that to nate in all the months he has had it (since the xmas season). we do know that he might be able to sight read 'fly' because he watches Word World (love that show! PBS) and they have a fly flying around, and we read The Diary of a Fly. but this wasn't the same as him reading something in a book we've read before. he can nearly recite entire books to us that way. and it wasn't the same as him reading a word where the letters of the word make the shape of the object, which is the whole premise behind Word World. this was him sitting down, sounding out each letter, and putting all the sounds together.

immediately after FLY he went to a box in the living room and tried to do it again with a longer word (FLEXA--the boxes for his bunk are all over the house right now), but couldn't. he can pretty much always sound out each letter, but with longer words by the time he gets to the last sound, he's forgotten what the first sound was so he can't ever really put them all together.

so there you go, our son (not quite 3 1/2 years old) is starting to read. i'm excited and extremely proud. but i'm a little bit freaked out. it's great, but come on! he just, and i mean JUST, figured out the potty! i guess i shouldn't be surprised. jeff learned to read, pretty much unassisted, at a very early age, too--actually at about the same age, if i remember correctly.

potty progress

in the last two weeks nate has gotten really good at the whole potty thing. but he was still, very much, resisting pooping on the potty.

now when he says he has to go pee, he goes quickly. no longer do we have to read 5 books to him before he's done. thank goodness.

last night he agreed to move the potty into the bathroom. it had been residing in his bedroom. i guess he felt a level of comfort and privacy there, so he'd go more easily there than in the bathroom. he and i, together, carried the potty into the bathroom last night. when he was finally diaper-free this morning and had to go, he only paused for a moment about going in the bathroom. i reminded him that we agreed last night to move it. after that he was ok.

he's had the same pull-up off and on for two days--still dry. the rest of the time he's either in underwear or in a diaper for bedtime.

he's still a little reluctant to go on the potty first thing in the morning, but we're working on it. we are also working on going "out and about" in underwear. we went to coffeehouse on friday in underwear. he went on the potty when we first got there, but then got distracted playing and had an accident. after that he opted for a pull-up, which was fine. so we will have to venture out to a few more places in the next couple of weeks. building confidence--for both of us.

then today he major progress. before he was out of his cloth diaper (which is what we use at bedtime), he tried to go hide. hide translates to poop in our house. typically if he's in his cloth diaper i won't let him go hide. i'm DONE with poop in cloth, at least with him. so that's the point at which he got dressed for the day. big boy underwear and all. and made a point of telling him that if he pooped now, it would be in his underwear. he went pee once. said he had to go again, but didn't or couldn't. (it wasn't that long since the first time he had gone. so i wasn't surprised.) then within short order he said he had to poop. so he went to the bathroom and sat on the potty while i got some books to read. (this one isn't as "down" as the peeing so it could take a little while.) i didn't even get two pages into the story i was reading and he said he was done. "do you want to see it?" YEAH! there it was. a big fat turd in his little potty! HE DID IT!!!!! as soon as he stood up he said, "it looks like a worm." and then "that's icky poop." i told him that's why we go in the potty and flush it away. so that's what we did. (and then cleaned out the potty.)

he got 4 candies for going poop on the potty. and tons of praise. we called papa to report the good news. we called and left a message for mama D, too. (we enlist all the help we can for potty encouragement. it can't hurt.) he'll get a star on his chart, too.

i believe this is only the 3rd time he's ever gone poop on the potty. the first time freaked him out, completely. the second time was the first day of preschool. we've been waiting to repeat the performance, but he's been very resistant to it.

i'm so happy!!!! and i feel like a total idiot for being so excited about where my child poops! but i know i'm not alone.

so YAY nate!!!! way to go little man. we love you.

wait! that's me!

thanks Jenn. sorry my blog is so boring! not much ever happens here.

this is the ABC’s of me.

[Each player tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.] i don't actually know 6 people with blogs, so i doubt this will actually happen. but here are my answers anyway.

A- Attached or single: happily attached
B- Best Friend: Jeff, my husband, sounds cliche but i really like being around him and doing things together
C-Cake or Pie: cake, but for the right pie (custard pie) i could be persuaded to change my answer
D- Day of Choice: saturday . . . i get to sleep in!
E- Essential Item: books
F- Favorite Color: blue
G- Gummi Bears or Worms: bears, i decapitate them first!
H- Hometown: what are we calling a "hometown"? i was born in Panama City, FL, but moved from there at 6 wks of age. i suppose i spent the better part of my childhood in Colfax, WA. that's where i graduated from high school and where my parents still live.
I- Indulgence(s): hot baths, romance novels, eating out, and preschool
J- January or July: september! i like the temperatures more moderated. january is boring and cold. and july is just plain too hot.
K-Kids: Jesper, Nate, and Willow (who is due in may)
L-Life is incomplete without: family and friends
M- Marriage Date: June 17, 1995 (that makes me sound old!)
N- Number of Siblings: 1
O- Oranges or Apples: apples, honeycrisp apples to be exact
P- Phobias or Fears: spiders and bugs
Q- Quote(s): Time has healed me, but time has not made me forget. -Janis Heil
R- Reason To Smile: i love you mama!
S- Season: fall. brisk days, crisp, colorful leaves, warm sweaters.
T- Tag Six: i don't know 6 people with blogs. and since this request came from Jenn, my list of blog-owners is down by one to start with.
U- Unknown Fact About Me: is there anything people don't know about me? let me think . . . i like my oysters raw? but you might already know that.
V- Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: i'd gladly eat only vegetables, but animals are so very tasty!
W- Worst Habit: perfectionism, i'm too outspoken, i'm too opinionated. pick one.
X- X-Rays or Ultrasounds: ultrasounds . . . they are usually a much happier event. x-rays go with broken bones. ultrasounds go with babies.
Y- Your Favorite Food: a good, juicy, medium-rare steak with roasted brussel sprouts and mashed sweet potatoes. mmmmm. what? i'm pregnant! there is no such thing as "favorite food," singular; it has to be a meal. my other favorite is orange-glazed salmon with rice and broccoli.
Z: Zodiac: virgo, virgo, virgo!

time to run, the natives are getting restless.