I'm a big boy now!

Starting this spring, I began potty-training. At first it was just being put on the potty every 20-45 minutes, with little success. And then the move kind of set me back, since it was difficult with all the packing and unpacking and 28-hr car rides and exploring a new city to go on a regular basis.

When I started at my new school in late August, after a couple days there Mommy and Daddy and my teachers decided I should just wear underwear there. If reminded to go, I only had 2-5 accidents a week - not bad. By the end of September, I wasn't really having any accidents, so Mommy and Daddy decided to let (make) me wear underwear at home too instead of pull-ups. During the first week of October, it clicked! I started realizing when I needed to go, and I've only had ONE accident, at home OR school, since then (and that wasn't my fault - we were in the car and were unable to stop soon enough)!

I've also been waking up dry at night and asking to use the potty before I go to bed and after I wake up. I even woke up in the middle of the night to let Mommy know I had to pee, rather than going in my diaper! So for the past three days I've been wearing underwear fulltime. No more diapers! Yay me!

(Although I'd like to wear them - I told Mommy and Daddy, "Babies wear underwear and big boys wear diapers. I need a diaper!" They strongly disagreed.)

The great computer breakdown of '09

Our computer with all the pictures on it is out of commission for a few days (bad power supply, Daddy thinks) until the parts arrive to fix it. So, the next few posts may be chronologically out of order. Sorry!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I really love the children's museum here in Fargo. It's open late on Thursdays so we always go then after school, and usually one - or both - days on the weekend. I love the trains, both the wooden ones to play with and the big one to ride.

Sometimes they have a fun activity going on too. On the second weekend of September, they had "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles :

Take a seat in a real Semi Truck, Police Car, Ambulance, Fire Truck, or a Race Car! Race your own car across the grounds, explore, and create. Pack a picnic lunch and enjoy the beautiful Alphabet Garden. A fun filled day for the whole family."

I had the chance to look closely at a cement mixer, sit in a semi and a race car, and of course crawl all over an ambulance and firetruck. I don't think I'll ever get enough firetrucks.
Even cooler than the firetruck, however, was this thing that I found abandoned by the racecar. How awesome, a rocking airplane that I fit on!

Kansas City trip

For Labor Day weekend we went to Kansas City to visit Aunt Debbie and Uncle Dan. It's a loooooooong drive, so we split it into two days on the way down - halfway Friday night, then halfway Saturday morning.

Unfortunately Uncle Dan wasn't feeling well, so I didn't see much of him.

We went to a really cool farm/petting zoo place, Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead in Overland Park, Kansas. As soon as we arrived, I headed for the best part - the playground, of course. Because there aren't two separate playgrounds just a few blocks from my house, as well as one at school.
After spinning the steering wheel, going down the slide, and riding the duck, it was on to better things.
Goat lovin', of course!

We didn't stay in the goat pen very long though, because those things are aggressive, with a one-track mind focused on food (both the standard pellet type and the wallet type)!
Next was the tractors. I tried to ride one, but my legs were just a little too short.

Then I explored a teepee. After trying to pull it down (there was a rope hanging in the middle that I kept tugging on), it was off to climb on a big tractor, or Terrance, as I called him, because I call everything by its Thomas the Train name.
The best part of the trip though, hands down, was the hotel. I love hotels. I get to stay up late (Mommy and Daddy gave up on trying to get me to go to bed at a normal time during trips years ago), watch TV shows that we don't have at home (we don't have cable), and sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed, and - best of all - I can go swimming! My idea of swimming is putting on my trunks, heading to the pool, and going as far in as my ankles - sometimes my knees. But at this hotel I actually went in. The hot tub temperature was set very low, so I splashed around in there and had tons of fun.

While it was a fun trip, and it was great to spend time with Debbie and Dan, next time we're definitely going to take more time. Ten hours of driving each way on a three-day weekend doesn't leave you much of an opportunity to enjoy your destination!

Psych eval

My new daycare is run by a nonprofit, so one of the things they do is developmental evaluations of all the kids to see if they need any therapy or extra attention to address a developmental lag. I had my evaluation right before Labor Day.

Basically, everything was okay, although there were a few things that the specialist was concerned about:

• My size. I'm tiny. I went to the doctor at the beginning of August for my asthma medicine, and I was still 22.5 lbs, the same I was in Feb. '08. And still 35 inches, like I was for my two-year check-up. I'm now 0 percentile for weight, and 3rd for height (But the doctor also said I was :exceptionally bright", so he wasn't worried). Daddy explained to her that Mommy is tiny too, so she wasn't as concerned after that.
• My strength. I gave her what she described as a "weak" high five. Yeah, that's because I don't like strangers.
• Colors. I know my colors, really I do. For example, when a reddish-orange train goes by, I always refer to it as James. If you ask me to get you a blue crayon, I will. But it's also a lot easier to just rattle off color names until I get it right, or until you stop asking. This is something Mommy and Daddy are working on with me (mostly by bribing me with M&Ms).
• Body parts. She asked me where my tummy was, and I pointed to my tongue. Had she asked where my stomach was, or my belly, I would've pointed to the right spot. However, Mommy and Daddy never say tummy, so how was I supposed to know?
• My last name. When she said my full name and asked me if that's who I was, I said, "No, I Jax! I a big boy!" Because I am.
• Artistic ability. At almost 3, I can't draw a recognizable picture. But at 27 Mommy can't either, so no big deal.
  

However, I did great with my words! I have a HUGE vocabulary, and I speak in complete sentences all the time, as well as correctly using conjugated verbs.

So, while there are a few things to work on, for the most part I'm doing great!

Trains

Like I said, I try to go to the children's museum at least twice a week - on Thursdays after school because they're open late, and on the weekends. I love going late in the day because there's usually no one there, meaning I don't have to share the trains. And Mommy loves it because she has the chance to build me an awesome track without some little kid wanting to test his engineering skills as well, because she always feels obligated to let them play. She really does make some awesome tracks! Lots of bridges and overpasses and curves and branch lines, sometimes using up most of the pieces of track. Me, I'm content to just drive the trains into the station or through a tunnel.

Visit from Bamfa

Bamfa came to visit us at the end of August. He hadn't been able to visit us for awhile because he got hit by a car in February and had really nasty vertigo that left him unable to drive or work. But now he's able to cope with it better (and he's back to work after 6 months off!), so he came up to see us in our new city.

We went to the airplane museum. Bamfa and I flew a helicopter, and Mommy and I flew a fighter jet.

Then we went to the children's museum. I go there at least twice a week because it's so much fun. They have a train in the back that you can ride on. Bamfa rode it with me.

Great-Bamfa knows that I like trains, so she got me this really cool puzzle track set. You just put the track together and turn the cars on, and away they go!

Bamfa also read me lots of books while he was here. We had so much fun with him!
(Note: Mommy broke our old camera when she spilled a bottle of water on it, so we got a new one that takes much better quality videos. Enjoy!)

Firefighter obsession

I love anything having to do with firefighters - videos about them, looking at their trucks, riding in toy ones, dressing like them...

My current firefighter ensemble includes helmet, jacket, boots, mask (usually an extra bed riser thingie that I hold over my face), gloves (either an old pair of gardening gloves or a pair of Mommy's gloves), and hose. Once I'm suited up, I jump in my firetruck and off I go!

(A couple notes about the video: it was taken in the basement so it's a little dark; the flash reflects off my jacket so hopefully we'll get some pictures of me wearing it in bright sunshine; I've since decided to wear my hat the right way, but only because I wanted to, not because anyone else told me that I was wearing it wrong.)

I also love to wear all this stuff out and about town. The warmer the day, the more I want to wear it!

Firetruck parade!

If you haven't noticed, I LOVE firetrucks. And I also love parades, especially when they throw out candy. Therefore I was so excited when the nearby town of Casselton decided to break the world record for the most firetrucks in a single parade. I donned my gear and headed out.
There ended up being 181 firetrucks, ranging from shiny local engines to older collectibles. Lined up waiting to start, they stretched for over a mile (which is funny because the parade route was about 10 blocks). Unfortunately it started raining so we left early, but I still was able to see a lot!

Jamestown, ND

We've been exploring the area up here a lot. There aren't a lot of roads up here, so we're pretty limited to 4 basic directions, and then it's just how far we feel like driving. East is Minnesota: Walmart, Dilworth, a big skiing/outdoor area at Detroit Lakes, and eventually Minneapolis. North is Grand Forks with its Super Target, then eventually Canada. South is the zoo in Wahpeton and then into South Dakota. And west is Valley City, a beautiful town with absolutely nothing to do there; Jamestown; and then Bismarck, which we have yet to go to.

In late July we went to Jamestown. Its claim to fame (being generous here) centers around buffalo: the National Buffalo Museum, a couple white buffalo, and the World's Largest Buffalo.

All are located right next to a restored prairie town. Now, when you've seen one restored prairie town, you've seen them all. Seriously. A couple log cabins, the jail, a post office, and a church are standard, with a couple other buildings thrown in for good measure (this one had a dentist's office; there was definitely something going on between the dentist and his patient).
What made this one different? It had a Wild West Gunfight!
See that guy? He's the sheriff. But how can he be the good guy if he's wearing black? If only that was the worst thing about the show.
These are the bad guys. I could've ad-libbed a show better than them, and they've been doing this once a week for the last 10 years. Wow. It wasn't pretty.

Fortunately there was the World's Largest Buffalo as consolation. North Dakota has a lot of these things (the World's Largest Catfish is nearby in Wahpeton, ND, but we haven't been to see it yet). I guess it's an excuse to stop and stretch your legs while driving.
The white buffalo is actually pretty interesting though. Apparently there's a Lakota legend about it. Once when they were going through troubled times, a woman appeared to help them. After that, she told them she'd come back whenever there was trouble, and she turned into a white buffalo and walked away. Right now there are three known white buffalo living, something that's never happened before, which is a definite sign that we're living in the end times. Maybe Tim LaHaye can work that in to his next set of stupid apocalyptic books?
Personally, I liked the playground the best.

Although a bit hokey in its tourism attempts, central ND is really beautiful. There are rolling hills, scattered trees, and a wide, open sky. It's all farmland except for a few small towns, so you can go miles without seeing more than a handful of houses.
After the buffalo overload, we tried to find sunflower fields. ND is America's largest grower of sunflowers, and according to pictures we've seen, there are giant fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. Mommy loves sunflowers, so she was excited when someone at the gift shop told her where to look for them. Unfortunately, we didn't find any (although we later realized that they don't bloom until late August). But we did discover that there are so few roads in ND that the national atlas we were using had dirt roads listed on it!

Butterfly!

What to do here...

When we told people we were moving to North Dakota, everyone thought we were crazy. Because seriously, what is there to do up here? Even the people who live here think we're crazy for moving here.

Well, I'll tell you what you can do here: go to the zoo and watch a turkey chase a peacock. This went on for at least five minutes, with them flying at each other every couple minutes or so.

(Really, there is more to do up here. I'll get to that in my next posts.)

Trip to see the bamfas

After we moved up here we ended up having a few days before Daddy started his new job, so we went to the Quad Cities to see Grandma and Grandpa (or as I refer to them, Bamfa and Bamfa). It's about a 9 hour drive, made longer by me potty-training and wanting to stop constantly to use the bathroom, a tactic I use whenever I'm bored.

We stopped through Cedar Rapids to go to dinner with Mommy's friend Liz and some friends of hers. I used the potty at least 6 times during the hour and a half we were at the restaurant!

Of course we went to breakfast with Great-Grandma (or Great-Bamfa, as I call her). And Bamfa wore his picture shirt. Mommy thought this was very funny, especially because she didn't point it out to him beforehand.
We went to a museum too, where I dressed in costumes and rode a firetruck. And then threw a massive tantrum because I had to leave the museum and said firetruck.

We had dinner at Bamfa's house one night, yummy pizza from Benny's. I noticed that Bamfa has a guitar, so he showed me how to play it. Kind of.
We went to the zoo, of course. I love zoos. In one of my favorite Barney videos, BJ goes to a zoo and takes lots of pictures of all the animals. Last year Aunt Debbie got me a camera for my birthday, so whenever I go to the zoo I have to take lots of pictures. And like BJ's, mine don't really turn out either. I think I was aiming for a turtle in these shots.
While we were there, we also went to Sunset Resorts campground, where Bamfa and Bamfa Don have a membership. Mommy used to go there a lot as a kid, and she said not much has changed since she was there. Bamfa and Bamfa Don have a RV that they keep out there. It was so cool! I would've loved to have just sat in it all day, pretending to drive and climbing in and out of the bunk above the cab (well, having someone lift me in and out of it).

We went paddleboating - it was so much fun! I got to wear a life jacket, and since I was in the middle I got to be the one steering! I had two directions: all the way right and all the way left. We went in a tight circle, then almost ran into a tree hanging over the water (the only thing that saved us was ducking). Mommy and Bamfa tried to steer sometimes, which of course led to lots of tears on my part. When I wasn't crying, I sang my sailing song: "SAIL-ing, SAIL-ing," over and over and over.
We also went swimming. We waited until after lunch to try to give the water a chance to warm up, but it refused to cooperate. Did that stop us? No! Not me, at least. And I dragged Daddy into the water with me. Mommy just sat on the side and took pictures. My kind-of-but-not-really step-cousins went swimming too, with my kind-of-but-not-really step-uncle. We men can handle it!

The big move

As I mentioned early, we just recently packed up and moved to the Frigid Northlands of North Dakota. Fargo, to be exact. It was quite an adventure getting up here.

The movers came and loaded up the truck. They were really thorough, which was both good and bad. They opened a hatchway in Mommy and Daddy's closet, a hatchway which unfortunately leads to the underside of the bathtub and an empty space on the other side of it. Not knowing it was open, after their room was empty two of the cats were thrown in there - Panic, who used to be pretty feral but is getting better about being around people, and Kolya, who's moving in the opposite direction. So of course the kittens went in there and wouldn't come out. We spent the night in a hotel since everything was packed and hoped for the best.

Saturday morning, Panic had come out but Kolya hadn't. We did some last minute cleaning and then it was time to get Grandma at the airport - she was driving up with Mommy, me, and three of the four cats (Tybalt, Daddy's cat who has a Siamese voice, doesn't do well in car trips when he's confined to a carrier, so he was riding with Daddy in the truck). Daddy decided to stay an extra day in Durham to try to get the stupid cat out of the wall. Mommy and I were off!

Google Maps had assured us that it was a 24-hour trip, which we were breaking into two days. We made decent time the first day, although I had some bathroom issues - mainly that I demanded a diaper change everytime I was wet, and I had several frantic false alarms. But we had a good drive the first day, and the scenery was very pretty driving through North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio. We stopped for the night just over the Indiana border, and of course I wanted to go swimming even though it was almost midnight. But fortunately for me swimming involves putting on my trunks and maybe putting a foot in the water, so it wasn't a problem.

The next day Kolya still hadn't come out of the wall, so Mommy and Daddy made an executive decision that we'd only have three cats from now on. Daddy called the Humane Society and they dropped off a trap, which he baited with food and water. Our very nice realtor agreed to come by everyday until the stupid cat was out.

The second day of driving was very long. We went through Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota before finally, after 29 total hours of driving and at 12:30 AM, we were in Fargo!

We spent the next day exploring the town and deciding on a house to rent. Daddy made it in late that night. Grandma flew home on Tuesday. Kolya came out of the wall on Wednesday, four days after she'd gone in.

We really like Fargo. Daddy's working for North Dakota State University as a grant specialist in the animal sciences department. Our house is only a few blocks from the Red River and a great park, the library, and downtown. We can walk to all those places or ride our "motorcycles" (as I refer to our bikes). Daddy walks or rides to his office everyday, something he enjoys. And of course the weather is beautiful here - no humidity, not even really a need for AC (which our house doesn't even have). Sure, we might feel differently in a couple months when the snows set in, but right now it's great!

Farewell party

Right before we moved we had a big going-away party. Mommy was hoping the weather would be nice so we could have it outside, but of course it was 95 degrees, so we were all crammed into the living room and kitchen.
The moms had the bright idea of trying to take a group picture of half a dozen or so toddler and preschoolers. Yeah, that'll work just great.