History of the J Man

We’ve just finished our holiday letter.  Only a few days left till Christmas but we’re sending it electronically this year so most everyone should have gotten it already.  For those only on snail mail we’ll send them out. 

If you didn’t see our letter come through your inbox, just email Chris or Julie or leave a message here and we’ll send you a copy.

Happy Holidays to all!

Over the last month or so we started struggling with getting Jonah to bed.  I’m not sure if it was his new found use of the English language that kept him wanting to stay up and learn or what.  We certainly had to fight him there for a time.  Now, it seems that we’ve slipped back into more of a normal routine without the fight, however, now mornings are becoming challenging.

Weekday mornings Chris gets up at 5:30, showers, walks the dog and leaves for work around 6:30.  Most days Jonah would wake up some time between then and 7:00.   I should back up and say that at night now he wants to fall asleep with his light on low and his door open.  He asks for both specifically.  Both seem to help keep him calm at bedtime so that’s fine.  Whatever works.  I go in and check on him once he’s asleep and turn off the light.  At some point during the night I check on him again and close his door so Chris doesn’t wake him in the morning when he goes to walk the dog. 

For the past couple mornings he’s woken up and started screaming because his door is closed and he can’t open it himself.  We have one of those toddler door knobs on the inside because we don’t WANT him opening the door on his own.  We don’t want him wandering the house at night getting into who-knows-what.  I’m a light sleeper but I’m not sure I’d hear everything. 

(Side story: Last Saturday when he woke up early Chris walked to his room and told him he had to play quietly in his room till 7:00 but didn’t close his door.  At some point though I heard him and it didn’t sound like he was in his room anymore.  Chris again went back to check on him and said he was reading books in his bed.  Well we were both right.  The little stinker had gotten his chair, moved it up to the shelf in the dining room where we keep his box with crayons and craft supplies and helped himself.  He even got paper.  When I got to his room a little later I saw that he was working on a project with his glitter glue in his bed!  Fortunately I only saw glitter on the paper and on his pillowcase.  All his crayons were in there too and I don’t want to imagine what he could have done with those!  Needless to say, that container is up and out of reach now.  Ok, end of that story.) 

So as he cried to me “no close door” yesterday morning I contemplated leaving it open all night.  I really don’t want to do that though so I told him that I close it in the morning so daddy doesn’t wake him up.  I told him just to call me and I’d come get him but if he woke up too early he could turn on his light and play quietly in his room. 

So what do you know?! Before Chris left with the dog this morning I asked him if I should get Jonah up to get him ready for Leah’s house and his response was, “I think he’s already up, his light is on.” It’s really nice that it was so quiet today until about 6:15 but now I’m not going to have any idea how much sleep that kid is getting.  I doubt it, but for all I know he could have gotten up at 5:00am today!  Unlikely but possible. 

For now, while it’s dark in the morning and I’m not too pregnant to be uncomfortable sleeping I’ll take those few extra minutes of quite in the morning as long as I can.  In a diaper, in his own room there’s not much damage he can do, right? 

We’ve taken a bunch of holiday related video lately so I have a few more to upload but this one is ready today.  I doctored it up a bit by pulling out the best parts of a bunch of short videos we have of Jonah baking and decorating cookies and cupcakes.

Holiday Baking from Julie Diehl on Vimeo.

Chris only gets to see Jonah for a couple hours a day during the week because he leaves so early in the morning then we try and get Jonah to bed by 8:00.  So they concentrate on playing together on the weekends, especially ones like this one when I had a errands to run for a few hours. 

Here’s a video of what they were up to while I was gone.  Jonah calls these “houses” but I used to always call them forts.  This is exactly why we need a new house with a family room and a separate living room.  So he can use the family room couch cushions for this and not take up our living room. 

They obviously had a good time while I was gone.  In case you can’t tell exactly what Jonah is saying for his name it’s “Big Boy Jonah D….!”  We’ve gotten him to add his last name but that “Big Boy” part seems to be sticking. 

Jonah & Daddy with fort from Julie Diehl on Vimeo.

On an unrelated note, he’s still doing a great job with potty training.  We haven’t had any accidents while he’s in his underpants.  He will go and pee in his potty on his own when he has to go.  We’ve even been out in pull-ups a few times and he’ll wait and use the bathroom there instead of going in his pull ups.  He still asks for a diaper when he has to go #2 but I’m not pushing that to change because I figure it will happen on it’s own.  He did get away with a diaper for longer while I was out on Sunday though by telling Daddy he still had “more poops.”  That works with Daddy but this morning he tried to pull it with me too and I put underwear on him and told him if he still had more he could do it in the potty.  So far so good.  We have Thomas undies for Hanukkah and Christmas too, just to keep the momentum going.

Just look how proud he is in those big boy underwear?!  They are Mickey Mouse ones and he literally wanted to pull out the ones he wore yesterday to wear them again.  Good thing we have 2 sets.

Last night he wanted to put a diaper on to go #2 but once he was done we went back to underwear and he’s been good about going on the potty every time.  Hopefully we can keep up this new trend.