Flanagan Clan

On Friday we took Samuel in for his 9 month checkup. The doctor said that he seemed like a happy baby, which of course Sammy is AS LONG AS HE GETS ATTENTION. The doc said he looked healthy, although he does seem to be a little on the short side (thank the Feucht side of the family for that one!!!). He said Sammy’s growing well though.

Here’s his stats:

Head circumference: 18 1/4″
Length: 27 1/4″
Weight: 19 lb, 8 oz.

Sammy hasn’t been quite as mobile as his brother was at this age. At 9 months Patrick was creeping along the ground on his belly everywhere, and was beginning to pull himself up onto furniture. Sammy hasn’t quite gotten to that point yet. He rolls around on the floor a lot, he can sit up very well, and he can propel himself with his feet when he’s on his back. Not that I mind too much! Once he starts crawling around and pulling himself up onto things, things are going to get a lot more interesting in this house!

In other news, Burble the Gerbil died yesterday. We’re not exactly sure why… but now all three of the baby gerbils we bought in December have died. I wonder if they had some sort of weird over-breeding problem or disease or something, because we were taking care of them and feeding them the same way as our last set, which lasted much longer. The other two that we bought in December died in January, which was strange… we found them dead one morning just out of the blue. Who knows… We told Patrick, but we didn’t show the gerbil to him. He walked around for a little bit saying “Burble die, Burble die”. I don’t think he really knows what it meant, and he’ll forget we even had gerbils before too long. Maybe we’ll get some new ones at some point. We still have Cow the fish, who hasn’t died yet despite everything. Fish aren’t very fun pets though. One of these days we’ll get a puppy, but I’d rather wait until we’re done having babies because I don’t want to have to deal with more than one “baby” in the house at a time!!!

Oh, and speaking of dead animals (since we’re on the topic anyways), Patrick found a dead bird in my parents’ yard on Saturday. I FREAKED when I saw him carrying it. It was one of Katze’s kill… evil cat! (And if you can’t tell, I do not like my mom’s cat, esp. because I’m very allergic to it and my mom refuses to get rid of it!)

I got a comment about how we had been posting only pictures of Sammy the past few times. Believe me, we still love Patrick as much as Sammy! Patrick, however, is a little more difficult to photograph because (1) He’s constantly on the move and won’t stay in a cute pose for long and (2) with diaper troubles, he’s usually wearing little more than a pull-up, and it feels odd to constantly post pictures of a half naked toddler on our blog. To prove that Patrick is still alive (in case anyone was in doubt), here’s some pictures taken of him this evening, playing with one of his new favorite toys, his legos! Yes, he does take after his daddy!!

Patrick built this all by himself

A rare picture of him looking at the camera and actually smiling!

Intent on building his tower higher and higher

Our little Sammy just turned 9 months old today! We had a few firsts today, which I would love to mention.

For the first time, Sammy was interested in looking at Burble the gerbil

Sammy tried to eat his first book

Sammy got to sink his little teeth into zwieback toast and Gerber biter biscuits for the first time!

and he thought it was all very yummy!

Today I tried to start taking more notice of Patrick’s little “cues” for when he’s going potty. We had him in pull-ups all day, and after meals I would sit him on the potty. We had three successful pee’s in the potty, but we also had a bit of a set back, when Patrick took off the pull-up this morning while Mommy wasn’t watching, went poop on the floor and decided to step around in it, getting it all over the same carpet that had already been cleaned yesterday. Thankfully, Daddy was kind enough to give Mommy a break and cleaned the carpet for her today. However, neither of us were very happy. So we’re trying a new tactic: Patrick gets an M&M each time he goes in the potty. He also gets to flush the big potty after we empty out his potty, and he can wave bye bye to poo poo and pee pee. And yes, those two words are very frequently used in our house right now. It’s all an interesting part of potty training a toddler!

So, Patrick’s new thing: taking off his diaper after going poop. He did it twice today. The first time he did it while I was on the phone, and ended up making a mess all over the living room carpet, which had to be scrubbed like crazy afterwards. This afternoon he did it again outside while playing. Thankfully, he didn’t make a mess that time, and I ended up hosing his little bottom off in the grass… it’s warm here, so it wasn’t too bad. But I’m getting really frustrated with this new development of his. The books I read say that boys are almost impossible to potty train before the age of 3, but I really need to do something soon, before I go crazy!!! Plus, I’m thinking of all the money we would save on his diapers. I think I’m going to start trying now… beginning with putting on the nasty plastic-lined training pants this evening. He needs to start knowing what it feels like to be wet… and hate it! I don’t know if he’s ready, but the one thing I do know is that he better start using the potty by his third birthday because I’m taking away the diapers…