Two Big Milestones!

Olivia has been fascinated with our cat, Sampson, since she was three months old. On February 19, I wrote in her baby book that she was staring at him with great interest and even reached out to pet him, which he let her do. When she was six months old, she would immediately search the room for Sampson if she heard someone say the word 'cat' or meow. So here we are just shy of eight months, and her first official word is cat. She makes a hard C sound followed by a T sound (no short A yet, but she's working on it) completely unprompted by any of us as soon as she sees Sampson. If you say it back to her and start talking about the cat, she'll repeat her version of the word with excitement and smiles like she's so happy to be understood finally. It's really cute! I can't wait to hear what she'll say next.

Collin has been doing wonderfully with the potty training with only a couple of accidents a day, including naptime. That's pretty impressive considering the boy has to use the bathroom 10-13 times a day. We were at the park with Collin in underwear, not pullups, and he said he had to pee. Mike took the opportunity to teach him the fine art of choosing the perfect tree to use for cover. Of course when they found the tree, Collin got scared because they were in the spooky woods, and that just wasn't cool with him. So we told him to hold it until we got to the grocery store because we had to stop there anyway to pick up some things for dinner. I was skeptical because 1. when he has to go, he has to go...holding it hasn't happened yet and 2. public toilets have been a total failure. But guess what? Not only did he manage to stay dry for an extra 12 minutes, he also went in the grocery store toilet with no issues (probably since he had to go so badly he didn't care at that point). Hooray! Then the next day, Collin wore underwear all day, including a trip to a friend's house where he used their big toilet twice, and only had one accident right before bed. I am cautiously optimistic that he's getting close to being trained, but I don't want to speak too soon. It's only been three weeks. Knocking on some wood right now!!