I can’t believe my little Monkey is only a couple of months away from being 3! It feels so grown up and impossible for my baby boy to be that age… but at the same time it makes sense as he has grown up so much lately and is such a lovely little lad, he melts my heart daily (as well as driving me crazy multiple times a day 😉 !

So what is he up to? Well lots and lots he is always on the go! You may have read the recent updates about him – Monkey Says and Learning to Read but there is lots more going on too.

Playgroup report

We got his first update from Playgroup recently and it was lovely to read such sweet things about him. I think it is amazingly good for him and great for me but it is still a bit weird to leave his care in the hands of other people after it being my responsibility for the last 2 1/2 years, so it nice to get an update about how he is doing. Our favourite snippets of the update were “He is polite and friendly with both adults and his peers” and “When he has achieved what he has set out to do he will tell an adult what he has done with pride and smiles.” It’s lovely to know that he is getting on so well and he absolutely loves it. We constantly get told “got that at traygroup (playgroup)” and “did that at traygroup!”

Making friends

One of the things they have mentioned to work on is his playing with other children. He talks to them and plays alongside them but doesn’t really play with them yet or have any firm friends as far as I can tell. That’s why it was lovely when some friends came to visit recently and he and their little girl got on so well and played together really nicely. He did the same when I met a friend with a son a little older than Monkey, they had great fun together! Maybe he is better one on one than a group setting? Or maybe he needs more encouragement? I’m not sure. We are off to a birthday party for 2 of the boys from playgroup today so we will see for ourselves how he interacts with them all I think!

I can do it!

He is growing in independence and wants to be able to do everything. Although “I don’t want to” is also very frequently uttered. usually in conjunction which is frustrating! We are going with his desire for independence and using it to encourage him to get dressed and undressed by himself. He has been really reluctant to do this until now and always just says “Mummy do it” Daddy do it” and to be honest as it is just quicker we have got on with it. It is nice now that he wants to do it and actually says “let’s get dressed!” in the mornings too rather than fighting us over getting his clothes on. This is thaks in no small part to a Bing Bunny book (still one of his faves) about Bing getting dressed.

Preparing to Potty Train

We are also using this to gear up towards potty training. As I mentioned the other day, as much as I would love him to be trained, we are not going to rush headlong into this as I fear that could make it worse, so we are laying the foundations. We tried once after Christmas and he was nowhere near ready, but we do feel he is getting there now. We are using pull ups so he can get to grips with pulling his pants up and down himself. We are also trying to change his attitude towards his private area. He has never liked being naked and doesn’t like looking at or touching his privates at all, which won’t help with potty training (Not really sure where this has come from tbh as we aren’t exactly prudes).

So we are encouraging him to see it as just another normal part of his body. We are also helping recognise the difference in being wet and dry. For a long time he hasn’t cared about having a huge wet nappy, and if that doesn’t bother him, how can he be ready for potty training? So we have been encouraging him to dry himself after each nappy change and so far it is working pretty well. He now tells us every time he has done a wee wee, helps pull his nappy down, dries himself and puts a nappy back on. Which over just a few weeks is a huge improvement. We are going through a lot more nappies but it is a means to an end!

I want to make sure we potty train him when he has a good spell away from playgroup. I know what he is like and he won’t want them to help him go to the toilet so I want to start potty training near the beginning of the summer holidays so that by the time he goes back (or on to pre-school) going to the toilet instead of using nappies will be second nature and this will hopefully mean less accidents there. That’s the theory anyway! I also have a plan to use Bing Bunny to help him through the process. We shall see how that goes but am trying to think about what works with him and revolve our methods around him rather than what works for other kids, if that makes sense?

Dressing up

For a long time I have been looking forward to the day when we would play dressing up, but our little strong willed boy was not ready, until now! He got a great dinosaur costume from his uncle for Christmas and he will finally wear it now! He looks so cute! Don’t ask me why he has to wear glasses with it though lol.

He also got a lovely pirate costume from his auntie recently and he loves being a pirate. He even went to a fancy dress day at his playgroup in his pirate costume, which I was dead proud of. Was so cute walking him there with his pirate hat on and looking through his telescope 🙂

His little ways

Lining things up

Our little Monkey has his ways and likes things to be just so. His cars get lined up neatly and there are so many times when hubs and I ask each other if the other has done something, and we never have, it’s always Monkey! Of course this doesn’t mean he is always tidy, no just when he wants to be! For the most part the house still looks like a tip 🙂

 “All of them!”

He has this really cute habit at the moment of gesticulating wildly when describing something. When he is talking about “all of them” he waves his ars over his head. So on the way home from playgroup he says “I did alll the gluing and alll the sticking” with his arms going in big circles around his head. So cute 🙂

“I not a good looker”

As much as he is growing up so fast in so many ways, there is still tonnes of evidence of how little h is really. I mentioned recently that Monkey by his own admission is “not a good looker” and he really is useless. Trying to get him to pick something up that is right next to him is a ridiculous palava. “It’s next to you, no the other side, no there, on the floor, by your foot, the other foot, behind you, no the other way, near the table, no the table you were standing next to not the table in the other room…” and so it goes on. By which time he is chuckling away as he thinks it is a great game and Daddy and I are rolling our eyes and he either finally sees it or we give up and get it anyway!

“Don’t like the light”

This isn’t a new habit, it is one that has been around for ages but Monkey hates bright lights. The sun, the light on the extractor fan in the kitchen, the dining room light. Any of them can reduce him to a full on meltdown. We daren’t leave the house without the sunglasses (and there has been manya stressfest trying to find them while also trying to get us all out the door) for fear of a meltdown. Our living room gets a lot of sun so on days he doesn’t nap we generally have to have the curtains closed all afternoon until the sun has gone down. We eat meals in semi-darkness because the light is “too bright.” Honestly it drives me crazy. It’s all psychological and sometimes you can win him round with a joke or just by saying your eyes will get used to it, you will be ok… but other times that just doesn’t cut it and the only way to stop the meltdown is to produce sunglasses, get out of the sun, or turn the light off. Drives us bonkers to be honest!