Princesses and messes

Brennan talks about princesses all the time.  Every time he sees dresses or dolls he says princess!  Also he asks to be a princess and wear the tutus that Sara has.  He also loves to play with a doll that she has that was Grandma Bell's doll, a Russian doll.  He and Sara carry it around the house and play "parents".  It's really cute, I should get a video of that.  Also, this week when I painted Sara's nails, he insisted on having his painted too, so we did.  He has blue sparkly nails and pink toe nails. 

I'm not that worried about it, although I do take his tutu off before we go in a store.  I feel like maybe it will bring out his sensitive and nurturing side and when he's old enough it will work itself out.  We have relatives whose boys are very tough, always hitting and wrestling and honestly I'd rather Brennan keep that kind of behavior to a minimum.  If parents do have any influence over how their children turn out, I'd rather steer him towards art, music, dance, outdoors activities, etc and less the football, karate, kick ass and macho type mentality stuff.  Who knows, he may choose that someday anyway but for now, he's happy with being our little biking princess. 

Dan is dabbling in toilet training Brennan and I'm not sure I'm really on board.  He toilet trained Sara and I'm glad he's willing to take on the task.  However we waited until Sara was three and she was totally ready and it went smoothly, or maybe it was just because she is Sara and has always been easier to deal with.  With Brennan however, he can't communicate as well, so we can't really explain to him why you have to wash your hands and why you can't just run around the house with no pants on peeing all over everything.  I'm afraid it's just going to mean lots of hassle and nightmare type trouble for me and it's unnecessary torture, if we just waited.  

Case and point, he thinks it's OK to take off his pants and diaper off now whenever he wants.   He's apparently feeling a new freedom and running with it, literally.  This week he walked up to the toilet and peed on it, not in it, close but no cigar.  Also, while I was talking to a neighbor, he ran inside and I assume he tried to sit on the toilet and poop, but the poop ended up in the diaper and he took his diaper off himself.  Then he came back out, naked on his bicycle and ran around the yard naked in front of everyone.  Anyway, I was terrified to go back into the house to see what kind of mess was in store for me.  Sara helped me hunt down his diaper and we totally got lucky that he just stepped out of it and didn't play with the poop or walk it all over the house.

 
I told Dan all of this and he still wants to try and toilet train him now.  I just think it would be easier and better for everyone if we waited until B's communication skills are better, and his maturity but I guess I'm along for the ride.  I just really don't want poop and pee all over our new house but maybe it's unavoidable anyway. 

 On a brighter note, we've been doing even more arts and crafts and B has really been getting into them.  He gets a certain look on his face when he's really entertained and fascinated by something.  He had that look doing these activities and he was for sure really into it.

Painting, I got a vid of him doing paints, funny to see the difference between how he paints, very messy and to compare it with his sisters.

Moosey really enjoyed playing with our homemade play dough this week too.

He was really proud of this little alien that he made.

Brennan is really sweet, he asks for hugs and kisses and says " snuggle" and then will roll all over you like a little puppy.  He really loves to read books, mostly the my first word books but Big Red Barn is his very favorite book.  We read it at least 5 times a day despite the fact that it is falling apart and missing pages.  It was Sara's favorite too.

He loves playing trucks and he has a large ball that we play with in the house.  He still asks to ride his bike all day long, it's probably his favorite thing.