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Elliot loves to lick the salt off of pretzels. He hands the pretzel back to me when the salt is gone and asks for another.

And pickle spears? He loves them, too, he just eats the seeds out of the center and hands the rest back to me.

Annoying Orange during din-din.

Yesterday. I carried up Elliot from the Garden PreSchool to the car in the parking lot. He pointed at something on the ground, at a distance and kept saying “Eight! Eight! Eight!”.

I looked in the direction he was pointing and did not see anything. But he kept persisting, “Eight! Eight! Eight!”. So I looked again and saw this overturned Lego piece. I was about to say, “Oh, that’s just a Lego piece” when I realized that it is in fact also the figure eight.

I love moments where my child can show me the world in a different light, a light I’d never seen before. Maxi did that for me a lot, too.

I taught Elliot the word “bar code” a few weeks ago. Whenever he goes shopping with me, he wants to ring up the items at the cash register. One day he pointed to the stripes and said “What’s this?”. Now he says bar code everytime he sees one and loves to hear the beep when the barcode is scanned.

I finished this book on Sunday, my second Steinbeck book in a year (the previous one was “East of Eden”). What a marvelous book that really helps me to understand where workers’ rights came from in this country.

A couple of days ago we were reading Splat the Cat and Elliot said, “What’s this?”. I said Splat is dreaming. Dreams are pictures or stories when you sleep.

A couple days later, he awoke from his afternoon nap and said “Dreaming!” I asked what pictures he saw. He told me, but o couldn’t understand.

Date unknown but I’m sometime Winter 2020 based on the hat and coat.

Hi guys. Elliot has been doing so awesome with potty training at school! If you would like to start sending him to school in underwear instead of a diaper, we are definitely ok with that! He’s been doing an awesome job of staying dry and telling us when he needs to go. 
Also, he’s doing so well on his letters! Today he was using magnet pieces to make letters, then telling me what letter he made. 
-Ms. Sam and Ms. Bella 

Elliot first peed in the toilet on Monday, Nov 23, 2020. We all cheered!

This morning he told me he had to poop when we were about to leave for school. Of course I rushed him upstairs, undressed him, etc. Nothing happened, and I think he just did it as a stalling tactic.

Last night, 15 days later, he said to me in bed “poop!”. I rushed him to his training toilet and pulled down his pants. He pooped. I called Karolina and Max. We cheered and danced and celebrated. Elliot was elated and wanted to poop again.

We use 3 or 4 quarters to get candy in this machine. Then I say we have no more big coins, only small ones. So Elliot goes to the fountain in the background and plucks out a quarter and runs back to the gumball machine.

Little 2-year old thief!

I was laughing but also impressed that he knew which coin to take — there were pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. And of course I was always impressed that he thought to take one from the fountain, a demonstration of spontaneous inductive reasoning.

November 16, 2020 email from Sarah Morgan, one of two of Elliot’s preschool teachers:

Hey! Thought I would provide some info about our potty training attempt today before I forget. 

Elliot was wonderfully willing for everything. Every time I asked him to sit on the potty he did so happily. A few times he said ‘potty’ so I took him potty. 

He didn’t have a diaper on for the first few hours. He told me he didn’t want a diaper so I left it off. Then after his pee accident he agreed to wearing a diaper. As soon as he peed he told me about it. 

Even while wearing a diaper, he would still tell me if he wanted to sit on the potty. He did this after nap.. 

I was originally doing a sticker for potty attempts and offering a (kosher, stale) marshmallow for successes. But he conned me into giving him pieces of marshmallow for attempts, haha. 

In general we discourage against pull ups, but I feel it could be helpful for him. He’s so enthusiastic about sitting on the potty and diapers just make it more difficult (even Olivia has a hard time pulling down her diaper after nap to pee). I’m encouraged by how long he was able to stay dry, and his awareness of being wet. 

He wasn’t in the bathroom while anyone went potty today. I think this may help in the future if he sees someone else using the potty. 

When we are getting more serious about potty training, it is important that he have clothes he can manipulate on his own. This generally means no onesies and (preferred) pants with an elastic waist band. This will help him take responsibility and helps encourage independence in using the potty. 
Overall, I feel like today was great for building confidence and getting Elliot used to our toilet at school. I’m so encouraged by his frequent speech and that he stays dry for hours. 

My recommendation at this point would be to buy pull-ups the next time he needs diapers, so it’s convenient for us to put him on the potty at school when he requests it. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions. 

-Sam

Hi Sam,

Thank you for the detailed email! It is amazing to hear how interested he is in this… at home we have a toddler potty but he’s not too interested in it except just before taking his nightly bath.

I will make sure he has pull-ups and drawstring pants.

We appreciate very much your attention to Elliot. It is clear you love him and we couldn’t ask for anything more.

Thanks for the potty training! We will work on it at home, too.

Eric

And the next day from Sam/Sarah:

Potty training attempt: day two

1. He really likes using this with our big potty 

I think he enjoys climbing up the steps (he kept saying today “one step, two step!”) and he also very much likes flushing. So I could totally see him being uninterested in a little plastic potty, especially if it doesn’t flush. 

I truly feel at this point, he does not understand the mechanics of how to actually pee. I tried turning on the faucet and having him be in the potty while others use it to try and have them model the behavior for him. Today he would sit for just a second on the potty then tell me all done. I thought he was just trying to extort marshmallows from me, but then he was completely fine when I didn’t give him a marshmallow….

I love his enthusiasm for sitting on the potty, even when he doesn’t get a reward. 

I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m very optimistic because he loves being on the potty. Also, he’s really been peeing only three times a day (at least while I’m at school, between when he arrives and 3}. This is awesome because he’s demonstrating bladder control. We’ve had other ‘potty trained’ kids that have to be put on the toilet every 30 minutes or they will pee in their pants. He generally wakes up from nap dry, which is awesome! He also tries really hard to push down/pull up his undies/pants. 

Let me know how you’d like to proceed! Any time on baby connect you see potty attempts not very far apart, it’s because Elliot says ‘potty’ and wants to try. At this point I haven’t been verbally cueing him at all, it is totally him telling me “potty”. He’s been requesting no diaper in the morning so we’ve been leaving it off until his second accident (which is usually right before lunch/nap) then putting it on. He’s been doing so well with his speech and verbalizing what he needs. 

We have less kids this week (tomorrow it’s just me and five kids) so I’m more than happy to put him on the potty when he asks. 
Please let me know your thoughts and such!

-Sam

Elliot: “Robots”
Aki: “More Robots?”
Elliot: “K”

One of the songs Elliot asks to listen to when commuting to/from the Garden Pre-School is We Are The Robots by Kraftwerk. He starts kicking his leg in the carseat when it plays.

So tonight I showed him a few videos on YouTube of real robots, like Atlas, Spot, Spot Mini, and BigDog from Boston Dynamics. There were others like a fish robot, but Boston Dynamics are always the most impressive.

Elliot was enthralled with the videos. He put down everything and just watched. He had been playing with a Halloween toy before — a doorbell that makes noises and sounds when a button is pressed. We would not put that thing down for a half hour, since it was new. But when I put on the robot videos on the basement TV, he immediately dropped the toy and was fascinated.

Tonight Elliot discovered an Etch-A-Sketch in the toy room. He loved it. He understood how it worked very quickly, and liked to watch the line move. He kept saying “Up? Up?” and I would help him to move it up since neither of us can remember which knob in which direction to turn.

He brought it into the bath tub and played with it. He brought it to bed and continued playing with it. All in all, he played with it probably 30 minutes, or more, and did not want to put it down.

I can not remember the last time I was that excited about Etch-A-Sketch!