Once Upon a Potty (and other stories)

For a couple months Oliver has enjoyed sitting on his potty, fully clothed, reading books.


When asked if he would like to take off his pants or diaper while on the potty his answer has been "No." His no has been one of force and of surprise, as if we are crazy to even think about sitting on a potty with no pants covering our butts. It was, therefore, a surprise last Wednesday morning when Oliver asked me to help him take off his pants and diaper prior to parking his little butt on the potty. It was also a surprise when he peed in the potty (he is going to be so embarrassed when he reads this post when he is older). Even more of a surprise, he repeated the pants off, diaper off, pee in the potty performance on Thursday morning. Since then Oliver has preferred to spend his potty time fully clothed. While I think we are a ways off from saying good-bye to diapers, we were all very excited by the events of last week.



Of note, Oliver's favorite book to "read" on the potty is Principles of Military Communication Systems. He flips through the pages, stops to look at a formula, points to it and chuckles as if to say "these guys have it all wrong, I know a better way to achieve X, Y or Z." I find the whole thing pretty hysterical (especially since I can't make heads nor tails of the book.

Other big events of last week - Oliver is now a tower builder. Yes, he still loves to smash towers, but in addition to demolition Oliver now creates towers.


Oliver has also learned his first letter - "O." I thought it was a fluke but I conducted a number of very (un)scientific studies and it appears that he does know the letter O.

Also, thanks to a very loud and favorite toy of Oliver's (thank you to Liz, Ben, Ethan and Adam), Oliver now counts to three in Spanish - we are still stopping at one in English.

All in all, last week was a pretty busy one for Oliver. One might venture a guess that Oliver's new adventures would tucker him out - not so - the little guy still manages to get by with little sleep. We were able to get him down the other night after a shark fight.