Milestones and Firsts

Chanler decided that he wanted to learn how to solder, so we got him a kit from the Maker Shed to learn on.

I think he did a very good job on the soldering, it looks neat and very well done, especially considering it was his first go at it – not too much solder, not too little.

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He seems pretty pleased with the result!

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And here it is in action – Chanler’s Ultimate Useless Machine:

(Video to come shortly)

Chanler was taking photos one after another, and I started to wonder if I could channel that somehow, since I find it a little annoying (cause it seems pointless and all – such an adult I am). Since he had seen a stop motion video recently, and seen a movie where they did special effects by clipping out sections of the movie reel, I started talking to him about stop motion movies, and he was pretty interested.

We talked about some things that he would want to make a video of, and after we worked through the problems of the things needing to be able to stay still while you take pictures (i.e. no flying without strings, cannot take pictures of things that happen too quickly), he decided on the below two ideas.

(To be fair, he was inspired by a video that we watched on how to make a Lego man move, but he totally did the execution, all I did was keep the base steady so it did not move (much) as he took the minifig off the base.

Mind The Gap

Chanler lost his first tooth today! It has been super wiggly and last night he told Scott he could lift one side up… and today he wiggled it out all by himself!

Chanler has his first loose tooth! Bottom Front Left! Can’t believe he is old enough for this… I’m not ready

I may have mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating … Chanler dislikes change of any kind immensely!!!

And now on to the actual reason for the post…

A little over a month ago Chanler started wearing underwear. We have always said that we would be the kind of parents that let our kids drive the potty training process – no cajoling, no bribing, no reminding, no pushing them before they were ready, etc. Well, transitioning Chanler to underwear challenged every one of those tenants.

Long ago when Chanler was under 2 we though he was interested in using the toilet and bought him potty stuff (seat reducer, underpants, etc.) but his interest was short lived and life continued on. Within the last year I had tried again to induce interest in the potty (tie-dyed underpants, privileges for boys in underpants, etc) to no avail. In fact it seems that while Chanler could indeed use the potty and recognize when he needed to go, he didn’t care to be bothered with it. This was intensely frustrating for me – I believed that children are at some point supposed to want to no longer be in diapers, but my reality was the opposite.

Finally I had had enough and we broke down and tried what had worked for so many of my friends (and which I had mocked and sworn never to do!!!) We bribed. Jelly beans for using the toilet. Guess what – it didn’t work! All that jelly beans taught Chanler was how to produce pee when ever he wanted a jelly bean… (the kid is too smart). I was devastated! I had caved and it hadn’t even worked! After a few weeks of jelly beans on demand I lost it again and just put Chanler into underwear at home all the time. He did fine with pee, but managed (of course) to only poop when we were out of the house (so annoyed at this point). Finally 8 days after the diaper came off at home (and 4 days since he had pooped last) Chanler finally went poop on the potty! And without prompting!

After that he never looked back! That night when we went out to get some dinner he decided he wanted to wear underwear out of the house. I was amazed at how fast he switched!

What I have come to realize it that there were two problems holding Chanler back. 1) Chanler doesn’t like new things or change of any kind. He typifies “Why change if it isn’t broken,” and it wasn’t broken for him. 2) Chanler lacked confidence that he could poop on the potty and didn’t want to fail in his attempt.

So now for the last month Chanler has been wearing underwear. He has had a total of 2 accidents (both of which involved jeans that were too hard to get off by himself fast enough) and doesn’t need reminded or really helped much at all. It isn’t how I pictured it, but it has worked for Chanler.